Matt 24 Watch, 142a: Professor Dawkins' manipulation of moral sensibilites -- let's roll the tape

For record (and in reply to ever so much turnabout rhetoric), let's roll the tape on the cynical manipulation by professor Richard Dawkins, as was discussed here at KF a few days ago:

If you take time to watch [11m:55s], you will see that professor Dawkins is evidently on record that he cannot find a cogent moral objection to infanticide, and that he similarly cannot find a cogent moral objection to Hitler's genocide. (This is unsurprising given the longstanding well-known point that unless a worldview has in it an IS that can ground OUGHT, it has no objective grounds for morality, so morality reduces to might and manipulation make "right." [Cf. more detailed discussions here and here. *Cf Appendix below.])

So, the projected moral outrage at Dr Craig, seems best explained as manipulative, as a way to throw up a poisonous and polarising rhetorical cloud to duck having to explain why he seems to be unwilling to stand up publicly to an informed and competent Christian Philosopher and Theologian to examine his claims in his recent book The God Delusion. (In case this is needed, this clip documents Dr Craig's actual views on morality, including obviously genocide etc.)

Perhaps, this second clip, where Dr Craig examines the central argument in this book, gives us a clue as to why:

The takeaway concern we should have, is that unfortunately, all too many out there are all too willing to believe the blood libel that there are Bible believing Christian thinkers and leaders who support genocide -- a taint that once attached to any widely respected Bible believing Christian leader inevitably will be projected unto all of us as a spreading cloud of suspicion. (For, such is the nature of scandal.)

That is a sadly telling sign of our times.

And, it is no storm in a teacup.

Unfortunately, in today's climate, we Christians plainly have to address and soundly answer ill-founded but dangerously popular unbridled hostility and slander. END
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APPENDIX: Will Hawthorne's analysis of the inherent, inescapable amorality of evolutionary materialism:

Assume (per impossibile) that atheistic naturalism [[= evolutionary materialism] is true. Assume, furthermore, that one can't infer an 'ought' from an 'is' [[the 'is' being in this context physicalist: matter-energy, space- time, chance and mechanical forces].  (Richard Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these assumptions.)

Given our second assumption, there is no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer an 'ought'. And given our first assumption, there is nothing that exists over and above the natural world; the natural world is all that there is. It follows logically that, for any action you care to pick, there's no description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer that one ought to refrain from performing that action.

Add a further uncontroversial assumption: an action is permissible if and only if it's not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that action . . . [[We see] therefore, for any action you care to pick, it's permissible to perform that action. If you'd like, you can take this as the meat behind the slogan 'if atheism is true, all things are permitted'.

For example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was permissible. Many atheists don't like this consequence of their worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being logical at the same time.

Now, we all know that at least some actions are really not permissible (for example, racist actions). Since the conclusion of the argument denies this, there must be a problem somewhere in the argument. Could the argument be invalid? No. The argument has not violated a single rule of logic and all inferences were made explicit.

Thus we are forced to deny the truth of one of the assumptions we started out with. That means we either deny atheistic naturalism or (the more intuitively appealing) principle that one can't infer 'ought' from [[a material] 'is'. [[Emphases and paragraphing added.]

 In short, evolutionary materialism faces an often unacknowledged moral reduction to absurdity. Never mind its pretensions to be scientifically established "fact." (The just linked shows that instead it is an a priori imposition on science that -- before the facts are allowed to speak for themselves -- sets out to censor what Science can think and say on, especially, origins.)