William Lane Craig has just devoted an entire 17 minute episode of Reasonable Faith to me, available here . I’m honoured!





The first half of the podcast focuses on my posting a quote from him, a quote that was, at the time, being widely posted and discussed on the internet. Here it is:





The person who follows the pursuit of reason unflinchingly toward its end will be atheistic or, at best, agnostic.





Go check my post here . I provided a direct link to Craig's original full article, and then immediately said: “But does Craig really mean what he appears to mean? You should make your own mind up about that.”





In his latest podcast, Craig says that I should have checked the context of the quote – the original article in which it appeared - and not just repeat it as a soundbite quote out of context.





But of course I did check it. In fact I even provided a direct link to the full article and encouraged readers to go check the original article themselves and make up their own minds.





So Craig is here misleading his listeners – he is missing out key pieces of information about my post, which gives a bad impression of me (P.S. Is Craig deliberately misleading? Well, let me acknowledge the possibility that he might somehow have missed my providing the link to the context - he's just been baffling blind to what's clearly right there in the post.)





Craig later says that I know (and knew) that he doesn't believe what he might appear to be saying in the above quote (about 6 mins - P.S. Yes I know that at about 8 mins he says the he, like me, was suckered by someone into accepting a quote out of context that he should have checked, but do please pay close attention to 6 mins, where he says: “I think Stephen Law should have checked out the context. And he should have corrected those who sent him this quote to him. He knows that it doesn’t represent my views.”). Craig says I knew the quote doesn't represent his views. So he implies I am deliberately and scurrilously misleading people by posting it. I should have corrected the misinterpretation instead.





But actually, I was, and am, remain deeply (P.S. well, somewhat) baffled by that sentence. Even within the context of the entire article, it is baffling. It's baffling precisely because (i) it doesn't fit well with other things Craig has said, yet, (ii) even when placed in context, does seem pretty unambiguous.





Ironically, at the end of Craig's podcast, while the mood music is playing, he rather condescendingly lectures us - and especially me, of course - on how we should try to read people in the most charitable way, "with sympathy". That is ironic. Shouldn't he have given me that courtesy, rather than (i) asserting that I deliberately posted a quote out of context that I knew misrepresented his view (when I might have been, and indeed was, at that point just baffled), and (ii) telling his listeners I had not bothered to check the context when I very obviously had - I even provided a link.



