Here is audio of a debate of sorts between William Lane Craig and Daniel Dennett. Craig spends 45 minutes going over three theistic arguments in some detail: Leibnizian cosmological arguments, kalām cosmological arguments, and anthropic principle teleological arguments. Dennett responds for about 10 minutes. He seems impressed by Craig’s presentation, but objects that our intuitions (about causality for example) when taken to these conclusions, cease to be intuitive. I’m not sure that’s really relevant though, since the exposition of an intuition is never as obvious and clear as the intuition itself. At any rate, it’s obviously more plausible to affirm the principle of causality than to deny it.
He also objects to the claim that abstract objects do not stand in causal relations. He suggests they can in a sense, but the sense he describes is clearly formal causal relations. The claim is that they cannot stand in efficient causal relations, and so cannot be appealed to as efficient causes.
It ends with a couple of minutes of commentary by “Alister” who I assume is Alister McGrath since Craig’s CV includes “In Defense of Theistic Arguments” in the just-published The Future of Atheism: Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennett in Dialogue.
(HT Quodlibeta)
good source this is a new debate I have never seen, but in my personal opinion Dennett is not a very good debator. He is a research professor
Yes, I enjoyed this one too. It didn’t seem that Dennett had much to say in response to the details of Craig’s arguments. If you haven’t seen it yet, the debate between Craig and Rosenberg was very interesting too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhfkhq-CM84.
Chris
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Thanks for the link, Kevin! I’ll check it out.
Fyi the Plantinga/Dennett debate .mp3 is here:
http://apologetics315.blogspot.com/2009/02/alvin-plantinga-daniel-dennett-debate.html
Thanks. I found that .mp3 on another site after I asked you about it. I looked, but i couldn’t see the word Here hyperlinked last night, Oh well.
Hi Kevin,
The word “Here” is hyperlinked to this web address: http://www19.zippyshare.com/v/85071956/file.html. Once the whole page loads (it was a little slow when I tried it just now), you’ll see a big “Download Now” button on the top, right side of the page. I was able to start the download, so it seems to be working still.
All the best,
Chris
Hi- I don’t see where your link is to the Craig/Dennett audio? You say “here is the link_ -where? Thanks, I’d appreciate the help.
Thanks for the link to the file! I love listening to Craig debate, he’s one of the best I’ve ever heard. I really wish the Plantinga/Dennett one was floating around somewhere.
Thanks, J.W. I’d like to hear that debate too. The Veritas Forum has a nice collection of Plantinga’s talks and lectures here.