Hitchens Versus the Christians (Video)

I was fortunate and attended the debate last night hosted at Biola University between Hitchens and Craig. Pretty tame stuff, with Hitchens refusing to answer Craig’s ignorant rhetoric on the definition of atheism the way Craig wanted it answered. But most amazing were the leaps of logic that Craig comes to in deciding God must exist (e.g. – Scholars agree Jesus was a real person, they agree that the tomb was empty, they agree there are numerous recountings of his resurrection, therefore Jesus was the Son of God, therefore God exists.) I would have liked Hitchens to call him a fool a bit less subtley, but I understand it would have hurt his case in the long run if he lowered himself to that level.

Ah the stupid, it burns. I’ve only watched the First 20 minutes but the arguments the Christians put across are rubbish. Surely they have a nuanced and intelligent opinion between them that they can use?

He throws the “i was an atheist” card out their but he speaks as if he never read a single atheist argument.

Strobel certainly believes non-reason produces reason, he’s constantly passing the one off as the other. He’s either lying about knowing and understanding arguments of atheists like Hitchens, or he’s lying about being an atheist at all. I haven’t heard a reasonable argument why the “cause” of the big bang has to be atemporal or uncaused, let alone personal, I thought Turok’s hypothesis that doesn’t include any of those properties was just one of many possible hypotheses. Finite and infinite minds, something from nothing, he is operating from a different dictionary because those phrases don’t mean anything to me.

Gotta say, that was painful to witness. It was like watching Inherit The Wind all over again. Only this time with an overwhelmingly disproportionate ratio of Matthew Bradys to Henry Drummonds.

If that’s the case Tim D then they still lose.

The moderator’s lil speech about how theism offers stuff for those who aren’t intelligent and lowly really doesn’t help make a case for theism. It just makes it sound like those who can’t think will believe in theism because they’re so lowly.

I’m impressed by you guys. I only made it through 1:37 (that is, 97 seconds). When the moderator said he was the editor of Christianity Today and then started hawking the rag mag, I felt I’d seen enough.

Am I being closed minded for thinking that these people can’t tell me anything new that is important? I mean, if there ever was real empirical evidence or proof for god, surely it would be the leading story on CNN, right?

I managed 31 minutes, when they all questioned how atheists could be moral, and rejected the answer without understanding it. They lost me before though, when they talked about pop fizzing as if that was equivalent to the human mind. It’s clear that they were all singing from the same hymn sheet, I don’t understand why they all had to be there apart from to monopolize the time.

I watched the whole thing. The arguments for god were weak. I’m left wondering why Hitchens didn’t answer them properly. Forget morals for a second, why was there no discussion on the anthropic principle or infinite regression? Is there recent evidence that refutes either of those? Back to morals, where’s the answer to ‘Is your belief the only thing stopping you acting amorally?’. Have I missed something? Shouldn’t this have been an easy win?

I watched the whole thing and although it was often painful, it was informative to hear the stock apologetic responses all at one time. The one point that Dawkins probably would have made that Hitchens didn’t emphasize is that the main reason why people believe in one religion or another is because they were conditioned in childhood to believe it and those beliefs reinforced throughout life. Without that conditioning, religion would collapse. Christians know this all too well. Thus their Sunday schools for children, etc.

I did agree with Hitchen’s theme that Christians are arrogant to think they (and they alone) know the mind of God.

The other thing that struck me is the cleaver (only in an argumentative way) tactic of listing off all these Deist arguments for a first cause and then kind of slipping in anecdotal biblical “evidence” as somehow being of the same category for the truth of the Christian gospel stories about why they are Christian instead of some other religion. I also agree with Kiera that the last closer (the guy on the left) was by far the most pompas of them all. His “job”, as it were, in being the last speaker was to leave the Christian audience thinking they were morally and intellectually superior.

I also agree with Kiera that the last closer (the guy on the left) was by far the most pampas of them all.

He’s a an Argentine from the fertile grasslands of south America?

I SWEAR I’m not trying to pick on you, Jeff. That just caught my eye.

I can’t comment on the vid, because I can’t watch it. But, the comments tell me I’m not missing anything.

Pedantry alert: Jeff, it’s “pompous,” not “pompas.” Nice try though.

The guy on the far left of the panel (not the moderator) is William Lane Craig. He is deeply annoying to me. I once had a short email conversation with him, posted a few queries to his website and got replies. He willfully misinterpreted my queries to construct strawmen which he then shredded. Once he did it twice it finally dawned on me. Craig is not interested in honest debate. He isn’t interested in dialogue and honest questions and answers. He is an apologist and he has a higher mission, to keep folks christian. If he has to be dishonest in his arguements to do it, he will. Souls are at stake.

Lee Strobel waves the Ex-atheist flag but never seems to engage with any atheist arguements. Instead he peddles the same brand of generic apologetics as the other guys on the panel.

All in all i think Hitchens won this debate. But then i agree with his arguements. I’d like to see what the views of christians that watched it are.

Craig pulled a nice quick move at the end by listing all the questions hitchens had not fully answered, a very sneaky tactic that ensures viewers remember Hitchens failures rather than his victories.

This was painful in so many ways.
First off, I could barely believe that 99% of the refutations from the theists were coming from SCRIPTURE. How was that supposed to enter a logical conversation with an atheist, who contends that the bible is practically rubbish? Secondly, I agree with those who have commented on Hitchen’s lack of coherency in answering the theists’ questions. I wish he had tackled their ontological arguments about the creation of the universe, the existence of morality, etc., much deeper. It did seem that his overall argument was something like, “Religion has done A, B and C. That’s why it’s bad.” Although his points were true, I wish he had tackled their arguments for theism with more scientific facts instead of philosophical rhetoric. It is always a joy to listen to him though… I just think little was accomplished, sadly.

I watched the whole thing. I’d say Hitchens failed. As an atheist, I agreed with most of what he was saying, of course, but I doubt he changed the mind of any Christian.

The apologist who noted that Hitchen’s answer to just about every issue was: God is a peeping tom, God allows bad things to happen, I don’t want a God like that! Said much more eruditely of course.

Points to the guy who made the fizzy soda analogy; at least he was trying to make an original argument. Hitchens didn’t answer all that clearly. He should have started with, “Yes, we are the artifacts of natural processes with no hidden soul. We’re just a incomprehensibly more complex than a quart of soda, though.” He could have pointed out how a single base pair coding error can, if it occurs at the wrong spot, result in non-viable human beings. Things are that mechanistic.

It’s ironic that one of the arguments used by some theists is that one cannot be sure that reality can be interpreted absolutely, i.e. the empirical method cannot be tested for validity. Yet they bang on knowing through personal experience their god and revelation, etc. as being properly basic beliefs.

Eating their cake and having it too?

Hitchens flops from one inflammatory statement to the next, often with a lack of coherent argument. He also often fails to even address the particulars of the theists arguments. Hitchens does not like the way some people believe that God did/does things. He cannot accept religious ideas, and in this particular instance, Christian ideas. For instance, he rants about a god who would create people sick and brutish and cruel and then tell them that they need to get cured. Simultaneously, he’s left with his opinion that humans are sick and brutish and cruel…but in his scheme there is no cure at all and there is no god to blame. IF there is a god, God isn’t doing things the way Hitchens would, and this is intolerable for Hitchens. And therefore Hitchens dismisses all religion. Therein lies the crux of Hitchens platform: a fundamental disgust for the way things ARE; and if there is a god, HE is the one to blame; and therefore Hitchens isn’t going to believe. This is an emotionally-driven belief, and, I believe, the reason why he fails to fairly dispute particulars and instead resort to inflammatory statements of outrage and disgust.