{"id":6402,"date":"2011-08-23T09:04:49","date_gmt":"2011-08-23T13:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=6402"},"modified":"2011-08-22T15:09:01","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T19:09:01","slug":"atheists-decline-to-debate-theologian-lane-craig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/atheists-decline-to-debate-theologian-lane-craig","title":{"rendered":"Atheists decline to debate theologian Lane Craig"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>American Evangelical theologian William Lane Craig is ready to debate the rationality of faith during his tour of Great Britain this fall, but it appears that atheist philosophers are running shy of the challenge.<\/p>\n<p>This month president of the British Humanist Association, Polly Toynbee, pulled out of an agreed debate at London\u2019s Westminster Central Hall in October, saying she \u201chadn\u2019t realized the nature of Mr. Lane Craig\u2019s debating style.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lane Craig, who is a professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, Calif., and author of 30 books and hundreds of scholarly articles, is no stranger to the art of debate and has taken on some of the great orators, such as famous atheists Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Harris once described Craig as \u201cthe one Christian apologist who has put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Responding to Toynbee\u2019s cancellation, Lane Craig commented: &#8220;These folks (atheists) can be very brave when they are alone at the podium and there&#8217;s no one there to challenge them. But one of the great things about these debates is that, it allows both sides to be heard on a level playing field, and for the students in the audience to make up their own minds about where they think the truth lies.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to Fox News:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Others have refused to challenge Lane Craig, too, including Richard Dawkins, one of the Four Horseman of the new Atheist movement, which include Hitchens, Harris and Daniel Dennett.<\/p>\n<p>Dawkins, who has labeled the Roman Catholic Church \u201cevil\u201d and once called the Pope \u201ca leering old villain in a frock,\u201d refused four separate invitations, extended through religious and humanist organizations, to take part in debates with Lane Craig during his fall tour.<\/p>\n<p>The controversy wafted into the British press after fellow atheist and philosophy lecturer, Daniel Came, accused Dawkins of simply being afraid, saying, &#8220;The absence of a debate with the foremost apologist for Christian theism is a glaring omission on your CV and is of course apt to be interpreted as cowardice on your part.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Dawkins responded by saying, &#8220;I have no intention of assisting Craig in his relentless drive for self-promotion.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/us\/2011\/08\/19\/christian-pastor-atheists-debates\/#ixzz1VmnmotAC\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>CLICK HERE to read more:<\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>American Evangelical theologian William Lane Craig is ready to debate the rationality of faith during his tour of Great Britain this fall, but it appears that atheist philosophers are running shy of the challenge. This month president of the British Humanist Association, Polly Toynbee, pulled out of an agreed debate at London\u2019s Westminster Central Hall&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[674,32],"tags":[987,1136,1466],"class_list":["post-6402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheist","category-christian","tag-atheists","tag-christians","tag-william-lane-craig"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Atheists decline to debate theologian Lane Craig<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/atheists-decline-to-debate-theologian-lane-craig\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Atheists decline to debate theologian Lane Craig\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"American Evangelical theologian William Lane Craig is ready to debate the rationality of faith during his tour of Great Britain this fall, but it appears that atheist philosophers are running shy of the challenge. 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This month president of the British Humanist Association, Polly Toynbee, pulled out of an agreed debate at London\u2019s Westminster Central Hall&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/atheists-decline-to-debate-theologian-lane-craig","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-08-23T13:04:49+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-08-22T19:09:01+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/atheists-decline-to-debate-theologian-lane-craig","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/atheists-decline-to-debate-theologian-lane-craig","name":"Atheists decline to debate theologian Lane Craig","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-08-23T13:04:49+00:00","dateModified":"2011-08-22T19:09:01+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/atheists-decline-to-debate-theologian-lane-craig#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/atheists-decline-to-debate-theologian-lane-craig"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/atheists-decline-to-debate-theologian-lane-craig#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Atheists decline to debate theologian Lane Craig"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6402"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6405,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6402\/revisions\/6405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}