I watched that debate on your blog and thank you for uploading it. I'm not a big fan of Hitchens but I found myself rooting for him nontheless. Overall, the debate was probably a draw.
I didn't finish watching it yet, but it looks like D'Souza is focusing on Hitchens weakness 'Science'. Dawkins would have easily answered these questions.
Yes and D'Souza does score some points on focusing on Hitchens overly agressive nature as well. Hitchens very much tries to dominate the conversation and appears quite manipulative. I don't think it was fair of D'Souza to claim that this type of behavior is all that all atheists ever do ... Which is the gist of what he was saying. However, Hitchens does have a Bill O'reily air about his debating style which I find very unappealing and manipulative.
Not to be a comment whore, but, on the science issue -- I think that the fine-tuning argument largely contradicts D'Souza's other arguments that creation relys on miricles and magic. It's is in the eye of the beholder whether God came down from heaven and fine-tuned the cosmological constant to 127 decimal places (a very unlikely story if you ask me) however the Anthropic-Principle really just says that the laws of physics combined with 6 physical constants are very well equiped to create stars, galexies, plantets and people without supernatural intervention of any kind. Human beings are not just observers of the universe but part of the universe. As Sagan said: "we are way for the Cosmos to know itself ... "
I watched that debate on your blog and thank you for uploading it. I'm not a big fan of Hitchens but I found myself rooting for him nontheless. Overall, the debate was probably a draw.
ReplyDeleteI didn't finish watching it yet, but it looks like D'Souza is focusing on Hitchens weakness 'Science'. Dawkins would have easily answered these questions.
ReplyDeleteYes and D'Souza does score some points on focusing on Hitchens overly agressive nature as well. Hitchens very much tries to dominate the conversation and appears quite manipulative. I don't think it was fair of D'Souza to claim that this type of behavior is all that all atheists ever do ... Which is the gist of what he was saying. However, Hitchens does have a Bill O'reily air about his debating style which I find very unappealing and manipulative.
ReplyDeleteNot to be a comment whore, but, on the science issue -- I think that the fine-tuning argument largely contradicts D'Souza's other arguments that creation relys on miricles and magic. It's is in the eye of the beholder whether God came down from heaven and fine-tuned the cosmological constant to 127 decimal places (a very unlikely story if you ask me) however the Anthropic-Principle really just says that the laws of physics combined with 6 physical constants are very well equiped to create stars, galexies, plantets and people without supernatural intervention of any kind. Human beings are not just observers of the universe but part of the universe. As Sagan said: "we are way for the Cosmos to know itself ... "
ReplyDelete