General Biases present in the presentation: male centric as images of people in authority were male, other photos of provocatively dressed females. This imagery choice demonstrates a male-centric view at work, and therefore unbalanced presentation can be reasonably expected – so the need to be more careful in the listening. The bias begins around 1:00 min into Part one when the non-believer is characterized as someone who only (by implication) presents valid and sound arguments. This of course we know to not be true as any person or group of people are just as likely to present unsound and invalid arguments than any other. And curiously, at the end of part 2 he goes on to do just that my providing non-scientific and invalid evidence to support a supposed hypothesis (more on that later). At approx 1:20 talks about “apologist” Mr Craig. On the outside nothing wrong with this as definition of an apologist is simply someone who argues in defense or justification of something. But the key point in him doing this, is that he similarly does not use that label for people on the other side of the debate. Given that this is a presentation in the open forum of the Internet, where the reading and understanding level is probably 6th grade, most people will hear the word “apologist” and not know what it means, and instead of looking it up will simple conclude that it means something relative to what it sounds like, someone who needs to apologize for their contentions, so a negative context. So again, a unwitting bias or lack of balance. Maybe small, but depends on the audience. And speaking of “audience” this is again an unwitting bias he presented as he implied that the only speakers who tailor what and how they go about persuading to the audience at hand, which he gave I felt a somewhat negative connation to in his speech tone, he again implied was something only religious do, when in fact all good debaters and persuaders do this as it is a powerful thing to understand in persuasion tactics.
At approx 1:41 he explains Craig’s contention that not argument but a more secure foundation is needed to come to understand God, which is the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit. His reaction to this is a condescending remark “Whatever that is.” Which was done in a tone of dismissal. I found this really curious as since this is a debate, not a scientific inquiry, a person presented a point which they felt had bearing on the topic, and the other party, our non-believer, dismisses it as irrelevant because they did not understand it. This is an obvious bias and probably a reaction of his due to an assault on his core beliefs as a non-believer. In any event, not valid for debate or scientific inquiry. When you do not understand something, then you can’t assess it’s pertinence or validity, so bad form all around.
At approx 2:40 into part 1 a subtle form of persuasion was used by the author to bias the slant against the religious…so again entry on unbalance in the presentation. When showing that Christians are not the only ones to use the argument that “argument is superfluous” (i.e., the inner testimony concept), he turns to what is America today is probably the strongest image of those who are not rational in our post 911 world, a Muslim speaker presenting at a gathering. Of course I am not saying that Islam and Muslims are bad in any way, but there is a strong negative perception here in the US due to the events of today, right or wrong, and the author of this video is trying to leverage that. So again, much unbalance in his presentation.
Part 2 presents an argument based on the statement in St Anselm of “Unless I believed, I should not understand.” He then goes on to outline how this is a begging of the question. But what we really have here is a misapplication of the meaning behind the statement, which again goes back to a Part 1 misunderstanding related to inner testimony of the Holy Spirit. God is not an understanding that one can arrive at via argument, and has never been characterized as such except on the periphery to try to give some understanding to those whose psyche at the moment only resides in the realm of argument. Again, a misapplication, just as said before, understandings of emotions are similar and can never be arrived as understandings through argument as experience is the only route to them. No argument can prove love as it were.
In the section of Part 2 where he discusses Jennifer Faust’s contention that the failure to persuade using argument in religious debates is as true for religion as it is for science, this I felt was right on the target because again, her definition of religious argument was one that is quite narrow and encompassed only those religious arguments which have an aim to establish or undermine religious belief. So in that context, it means arguments by the faithful trying to persuade the non-faithful, and also arguments by the non-faithful (often using science as a foundation btw) trying to persuade that there is no God. Then she gives examples of how many times, non-believers have core belief structures also so generally reject arguments on the other side due to that and that non-believers similarly have beg the question issues.
The most interesting thing for me in all of this, is how in his explanation of where he and Jennifer Faust parted ways at 7 minutes into Part 2. He presented a contention of his as a “hypothesis” (7:35 to 8:10min) to give his presentation the “appearance” of a coming scientific approach. Then, when it was time for him to provide the “evidence” in support of his hypothesis, it was completely, 100%, anecdotal (8:25 min)! The sole basis of his evidence was “his sense” and “his experiences” and that these things provide “preliminary support for his conclusion.” So nothing that would pass any serious scientific scrutiny!! Again, in the argument process, we see pseudo science and bad science by those tendering arguments and evidence, on either side, and in this case by the non-believer’s side. Finally he asks that maybe he is simply defending a core belief instead and goes on to ask viewers for their thoughts.
Overall, a good topical presentation, but it had lots of issues as it was not balanced, was incorrect as it used non-valid and bad science for some conclusions, and leveraged some quite overt biases and prejudices. I have not read the Faust article he mentions yet, but sounds to me like it is probably more true overall, and that core belief structures within non-theists and theists alike will tend to make any debate on religion that is aimed at convincing for God or convincing that there is no God unsuccessful. I actually think this contention is rather interesting as it does provide a good tactic for debate and argument in that if the goal is to bring down the core belief, whatever that is in science or religion, then attacking the core is an approach that is not going to be successful, and instead you should attack the periphery until the core must fall – so basically choose your battles tactically well.
Thanks for the link…it was an interesting listen
