I have always voted Labour, and have often been a member of the Party, campaigning and canvassing for them. For what it’s worth, here’s my feeling about voting Labour next General Election: 1. When the left vote Labour after they move rightwards, they are encouraged to just move further right, to the point where they are now probably right of where e.g. John Major’s Tory party was. And each time the Tories go further right still. At some point we have got to stop fuelling this toxic drift to the right by making the Labour Party realise that it’s going to start costing them votes. I can’t think of anything politically more important than halting this increasingly frightening rightward slide. So I am no longer voting Labour. 2. If a new socialist party starts up, it could easily hoover up many of the 200k former LP members who have left in disgust (I’d join), and perhaps also pick up union affiliations. They could become the second biggest party by membership quite quickly. Our voting
Stephen Law is a philosopher and author. Currently Director of Philosophy and Cert HE at Oxford University Department of Continuing Education. Stephen has also published many popular books including The Philosophy Gym, The Complete Philosophy Files, and Believing Bullshit. For school talks/ media: stephenlaw4schools.blogspot.co.uk Email: think-AT-royalinstitutephilosophy.org
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I think the point about putting up an argument one knows not to be true just to win rhetorical points with the audience is a good one.
Regards, Paul.
"Now, first of all, it’s inaccurate to call this being an evil “God” because God, by definition, is a being which is necessarily good."
Hence if I can show there's no good God, I show there's no God, period.
I should have nailed Craig on this in the debate.
I think I mucked up on something after the debate. I think I said that Craig admitted to "debate tactics" when using the "evil proves God" argument, which he himself knows to be easily sidestepped and admitted as much in the debate. In fact his explicit admission of "debate tactics" concerned his saying I has conceded there's a God by ignoring the cosmological argument.
Had Craig dropped the resurrection he would have been down to one argument for a specifically good God, which would be pretty threadbare.
Interestingly, his response to the evil God challenge was to embrace skeptical theism, which is not only implausible and was not effectively argued for in the debate, but has the consequence that it actually undermines Craig's resurrection argument for the Christian God. Again, I should have nailed Craig on that in the debate. Craig plays the skepticism card selectively - being a skeptic about what we can infer about God on the basis of empirical observation when it suits him, dropping the skepticism when it does not.