Arch-atheist Dawkins now thinks serious case can be made for deistic God?

According to British journalist Melanie Phillips, when Richard Dawkins and John Lennox had their second debate, at the same location (in Oxford) where Samuel Wilberforce and T.H. Huxley famously debated, Dawkins offered a surprising (for him) admission:

This week’s debate, however, was different because from the off Dawkins moved it onto safer territory– and at the very beginning made a most startling admission. He said:

A serious case could be made for a deistic God.

This was surely remarkable. Here was the arch-apostle of atheism, whose whole case is based on the assertion that believing in a creator of the universe is no different from believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden, saying that a serious case can be made for the idea that the universe was brought into being by some kind of purposeful force. A creator. True, he was not saying he was now a deist; on the contrary, he still didn't believe in such a purposeful founding intelligence, and he was certainly still saying that belief in the personal God of the Bible was just like believing in fairies. Nevertheless, to acknowledge that ‘a serious case could be made for a deistic god’ is to undermine his previous categorical assertion that

...all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all ‘design’ anywhere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection...Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.

In Oxford on Tuesday night, however, virtually the first thing he said was that a serious case could be made for believing that it could.

- "Is Richard Dawkins still evolving?", Spectator, October 23, 2008

Personally, I think Dawkins is becoming increasingly incoherent. His latest effort is a bus ad for atheism, which is slam dunk ugly. If the atheists can't hire a better graphic designer, they have more problems than I thought. (What's with the block, upper case letters? Why the fade to yellow on the key message?)

Anyway, why doesn't Richard Dawkins just start speaking in tongues and be done with it. You know, "Is Dawkins also among the prophets?"

Events: New debate on God, atheism, and science on very spot where Samuel Wilberforce debated Thomas Huxley

Christian mathematician John Lennox and atheist public understanding of science prof Richard Dawkins will continue in October 2008 their 2007 discussion on the very spot where Thomas Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce duked it out a century and a half ago:

At 6:00 p.m. on the 20th of October, Fixed Point Foundation will host a public DVD screening of last year's God Delusion Debate between Professor Richard Dawkins and Dr. John Lennox, both of the University of Oxford. The screening will take place in the Main Hall of the Oxford Town Hall and is free and open to the public. For more information about the debate, click here.

The following night, Fixed Point will sponsor a discussion between Dawkins and Lennox on the main floor of the Oxford Museum of Natural History at 7:00 p.m. Both scientists will discuss atheism, the Christian faith, and the claims of their respective books: The God Delusion and God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? The building marks the historical site of the famed evolution debate of 1860 between Thomas Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.
General admission tickets for the October 21st discussion with Dawkins and Lennox are available through Tickets Oxford and can be purchased online at www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford or by contacting the box office at (Tel) 01865 305305 (Fax) 01865 305335. Only 500 tickets are available. They are £15 each and £10 for students.

Richard Dawkins and John Lennox met for the first time in Birmingham, Alabama this past October for another event sponsored by Fixed Point, The God Delusion Debate. The debate, moderated by United States Federal Judge William H. Pryor, examined six theses from Dawkins' book The God Delusion. Garnering the attention of Fox News, Wall Street Journal, London Times, and BBC Radio, the event took place in front of a sold out crowd of almost 1,400. Fixed Point is seeking to generate further public interest on this topic by taking the two men back to their hometown for another event.

Got to hand it to Fixed Point for knowing how to frame a discussion!

British journalist blasts the anti-God “nutters”

Revealing that former British prime minister Tony Blair feared that he thought he would be labelled a “nutter” for believing in God, the Daily Mail’s Melanie Phillips weighs in on the anti-God crowd, charging that the shoe is on the other foot, “The real nutters are the fanatics who despise religious belief.” Granting that Islamic extremists who blow themselves and others to pieces are off the mental map, she argues, essentially, that the climate of intolerance that secularists create is a step in the same direction. For example, Richard Dawkins

... and his followers have created a climate of rampant intolerance towards religion, in which to acknowledge personal faith is to risk professional and social ostracism.

Yet the foundations of British society and Western civilisation rest upon the Bible and Christianity.

It is the concept of a rational creator that lies behind the rationalism of the West. The idea of equality - fundamental to Western liberalism - derives from the belief that all human beings were created in the image of God.

Of course, if all else fails, as Phillips notes, British Christians could try growing a backbone and standing up to the nonsense - as Oxford mathematician John Lennox recently did with his book God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?, in which he shows that science is burying militant materialist atheism.

Lennox-Dawkins debate - updates

Daniel James Devine live blogged the event last night. Here's how to get a copy of the debate.

Comments variously overheard:

Lennox was persuasive, and was devastating on the topic "Do you need religion to be good," demonstrating that you don't need religion to be good, but without religion it's a moot argument as to what is "good" or "bad" since there is no objective standard. Thus Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, and Islamic terrorists have/could be doing the right thing in their own eyes with impunity in the afterlife.

Dawkins was stumped in several places but especially when Lennox questioned him on "how anyone could act in opposition to their genes?" Dawkins really eluded the question by saying that it was just true that humans do act in a way contrary to Darwinian evolution every time someone uses birth control measures. Dawkins never gave a reasoned basis for that action.

On the issue of the birth control. If Dawkins really understood natural selection he would now that birth control is most certainly NOT something that natural selection is not responsible for. After all natural selection gave us the cognitive faculties necessary to develop the pill, the sponge and so forth. It also gave us the desire to avoid all of the responsibilities that come with child rearing. Is Dawkins saying that natural selection isn't responsible for that?

It sounds to me as though Dawkins's key argument is unravelling. Of course, I was in the Lennox fans section of the stands, so to speak. Go here if you want to hear from Dawkins' supporters.

This comment just came in:

I was there last evening. My sense of the crowd was that there was no dramatic shift of opinion toward Lennox’s arguments, though I thought them all extremely powerful and I am certain that seeds of doubt in Dawkins’ atheistic faith were planted in the minds of many secular humanists in the audience. Lennox’s position was bold and unrelenting. I DID find it interesting that Dawkins’ seemed willing on a couple of occasions to smuggle in tacit acceptance of a deistic God, which is not I suppose too surprising since that would be God no one had to meaningfully deal with anyway. The long line of UAB students eager for Dawkins’ book after the event, however, shows that all of us have a great deal more work to do esp. on our campuses. Still, I thought the air at the following reception for John Lennox was justifiably jubilant.

Go here for the original announcement at the Hack.

Also: Naomi Schaefer Riley reflects on the Lennox-Dawkins debate:

Perhaps Mr. Dawkins was surprised by this reception. He recently referred to the Bible Belt states as "the reptilian brain of southern and middle America," in contrast to the "country's cerebral cortex to the north and down the coasts." This debate marks the first time Mr. Dawkins has appeared in the Old South. Maybe his publishers suggested it would be a good idea. After all, "The God Delusion" and similar atheist tracts have been selling like hotcakes (or buttered grits) down here.
But why? Are Christians staying up late on Saturday night to read these books and failing to show up at church on Sunday morning, as Mr. Dawkins might hope? So far, the answer is no, according to Bill Hay, senior pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church just outside of Birmingham. ...

Didn’t the same thing happen to H. L. Mencken? He persistently portrayed Dayton, Tennessee as a rural backwater - though he actually knew otherwise. Here is my view of why and how that happens, riffing off Leon Kass.

Scientist apologist John Lennox to debate atheist Richard Dawkins October 3, 2007

Flash! Daniel James Devine live blogged the event last night.

Go here for the Hack updates.

A friend writes to say that apologist and scientist John Lennox will be debating Richard Dawkins in Birmingham, Alabama, October 3, 2007, courtesy of Fixed Point. Lennox is the author of God's Undertaker: Has Science buried God? and Dawkins is the author of The God Delusion. My friend tells me that Lennox is "well known as a speaker all over the world, but especially in Europe and the former Soviet block." Here's more on the debate. I have not yet turned up the resolution of the debate (as in, Resolved, that ...) - are they still working on it?