The phrase “Dawkins wins” in the post caught my eye because I disagreed; my impression was of the usual stand-off, not of either side winning a victory.

I thought that, from a debate judge’s point-of-view, both sides missed opportunities; Collins in particular.

Collins got Dawkins to accept the idea of something grander outside our universe; Dawkins was eager to do so. But Collins neglected to point out that this acceptance immediately defeats the exclusivity of a Naturalistic worldview. It allows for the possibility of both God as defined in Christianity, and His miraculous intervention in Nature. And it does so in a way which (a.) makes the idea of relative probabilities unusable, and (b.) shows science incapable of dismissing God without (oops!) ruling out the existence of the universe at the same time.

Collins also missed opportunities to fruitfully discuss the relationship of the scientific method to Dawkins’ philosophical worldview (namely, that the one utterly fails to lead to the other except by category error).

Dawkins failed to press his advantage on the probabilities side. As I mentioned above, it’s a view that isn’t acually sustainable if he holds that there can be anything outside our universe. But Collins seems to have been unaware of that objection; this gap in Collins’ armament could have been exploited by Dawkins more than it was.

And, Dawkins failed to press Collins on the matter of miracles. If Collins cannot articulate the distinction between the scientific methods “working assumptions” and their unwarranted adoption as a monistic axiom by those who adopt Naturalist philosophy, then Dawkins could easily exploit that gap, making Collins look like a fool for believing in miracles. He could ask Collins whether he knew of anyone miraculously healed, et cetera. (I imagine most of us Christians know at least one such.) And when Collins answered in the affirmative, Dawkins could have played the “only a rube would say such a thing” card. It wouldn’t have been a win on the merits of the argument, but, among humans, debate rarely is.