Philosophy Is For Everyone

There is a small number of theist promoters, who can be found lurking in the low-viewer-count videos on the internet, who seem to be suggesting philosophy requires years of professional training before competency can be achieved. The most blatant statement of this kind can be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAS0Gcq8Mvo

William Lane Craig is attempting to discredit Professor Richard Dawkins as someone who couldn’t possibly form a coherent argument against religion because his vocation is primarily science. Professor Dawkins receives the majority of this type of attack for obvious reasons. Jonathan Morris can be seen to make a similar statement.

The suggestion that one must be qualified in philosophy in order to make valuable contributions to it is nonsense of the highest order. This statement effectively says, if you’re not a philosopher, you can’t possibly think logically. This statement says that if you’re not trained in philosophy, that you shouldn’t try thinking for yourself because you’ll get it wrong, and that you should entirely trust the philosophers to do the thinking for you. In stating the above, one is encouraging people not to think for themselves. Therefore it is ludicrous. This was how humanity got into this situation in the first place.

Philosophy is something that everyone can do, and anyone can make exceptionally valuable contributions to it.

This notion becomes even more absurd when one considers that in order to study science or mathematics, the capabilities in logic and the abstract that are required often far exceed that required by philosophy. The notion is also a blatant disregard for the obvious knowledge that scientists bring to the debate. Without scientists in this debate, there are many theist arguments that would be harder to bring down.

Anyone who uses this notion should be banned from debating for sheer hypocrisy.