Dennett Debating Plantinga At The 2009 Central APA

December 30, 2011 By 3 Comments

This morning PZ is drooling over the book Science and Religion: Are They Compatible? (Point/Counterpoint) because it features a debate between Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett, and because he is seriously jonesing to see Plantinga get pwned.

Well, thanks to YouTube, one can hear it instead! Below is an audio recording of their debate at the 2009 American Philosophical Association Central Division conference which laid out the arguments that they then adapted for the book.

Your Thoughts?

Filed Under: Daniel Dennett, Daniel Dennett, Philosophy, Religion and Science Tagged With: , , 3 Comments
  • philosophickle

    I think I would much rather hear it than read the ridiculous circle-jerking of Myers and Coyne, et al. Thanks for the link.

  • AgeOfReasonXXI

    well, one can also can be forgiven for bursting into laughter when a person who believes in immaterial souls, people rising from the dead, uneducated carpenters walking on water, etc, or suggesting that the natural “evils” may be due to demons, has the balls to say that Dawkins is “dancing on the lunatic fringe”!
    If that ignorant moron, and a “pretentious clown” (to quote P.Z. on Plantinga) is really the most prominent Christian philosopher, Christianity is worse off than I thought.

  • blablabla

    Just a quick remark regarding Plantinga and theistic philosophers. Take a look at this debate between WL Craig vs Quentin Smith (http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-smith0.html):

    Bill Craig opens like this:
    “During the last quarter century, a remarkable revolution has occurred in American philosophy. This change was so noteworthy that even the popular media observed it. In an article entitled “Modernizing the Case for God,” published on April 7 of 1980, Time magazine commented,

    “In a quiet revolution in thought and argument that hardly anybody could have foreseen only two decades ago, God is making a comeback. Most intriguingly, this is happening, not among theologians or ordinary believers, but in the crisp intellectual circles of academic philosophers, where the consensus had long banished the Almighty from fruitful discourse.”

    The article quotes Roderick Chisholm to the effect that the reason that atheism was so influential a generation ago is because the brightest philosophers were atheists. But today, Chisolm says, many of the brightest philosophers are theists, and they’re using a tough–minded intellectualism in defense of that theism. Premiere among this new crop of philosophers stands Alvin Plantinga of the University of Notre Dame”

    Q. Smith replies like this:
    “I think that I can agree with Bill that many of the brightest philosophers today are theists, but I recall Shakespeare’s statement that it is the fool who knows in his heart the truth, and I rely on Shakespeare to defend me in my response to Bill tonight. ”

    So Smith agrees with Craig that the brightest philosophers today are theists. Now this debate was in 1996, but the picture hasn’t changed much. One recalls philosopher and atheist Antony Flew shocking the world in 2003/4 by declaring he now believed in an intelligent designer.