William Lane Craig has faced Richard Dawkins in a debate about the existence of God only once. It was on November 13, 2010—part of La Ciudad de las Ideas, a three-day, all-star conference in Puebla, Mexico. The setting there suited the drama of the occasion; a podium stood at the center of a full-size boxing ring, which the debaters mounted in turn. The event’s organizer, the Mexican television personality Andrés Roemer, later described them to me as “gladiatores mentales” in “a war of intelligence and arguments.” There were three men on each side. Three thousand people watched live in the audience, and as many as ten million saw it on TV, especially when it was rebroadcast after the boxing match the following night between Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito.
Richard Dawkins, whose name many people are likelier to know than Craig’s, was once professor of “the Public Understanding of Science” at Oxford. He wrote a parade of well-regarded popular books on evolutionary biology. In retirement, he has turned his attention to—or, against—religion.
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