Hitchens vs. D'Souza in South Bend, IN

The motion for this one was "Religion is the Problem," which somehow seems to me a bit overbroad. Doesn't really matter, though, because the interlocutors weren't too concerned with staying on topic.

Main Arguments
As one might expect, Hitchens leads with the abuses of the Catholic Church, by way of rebutting remarks made in Rome comparing the publication of atheist books to the waging of a pogrom. He notes that pogroms are not usually lead by deaf and dumb children, a somewhat unsubtle reference to the worst sexual abuses ever covered up by a major world religion. I wonder how long it took Hitch to come up with the most offensive subject he could think to bring up at a bastion of Catholic learning. Hitch goes on to run his usual arguments about the primitive origins of religion and the seemingly haphazard and chaotic nature of the universe (e.g. galaxies colliding, stars collapsing, species going extinct, etc.) and calls into question the idea that everything is created for our benefit.

D'Souza notes upfront that Hitchens' arguments don't directly address the central topic of the debate, whether religion does more good than harm. This is true, and a bit disappointing, because Hitch spent a decent portion of God is Not Great making a detailed case about how religion causes harm to societies and individuals. He then goes on to attack evolutionary biology for not yet understanding how life arose on Earth, and runs his usual knob-twiddling universal fine-tuning argument. He also runs an argument that individual acts of altruism (towards non-kin) cannot possibly have evolved, thereby implicitly assuming that every human action is genetically determined and that altruism towards non-kin cannot possibly be adaptive, and throws in the moral lawgiver argument and an appeal to popular consensus (which sounds a bit like a nod to reformed epistemology) to boot. At this point, he is pretty much Gish-galloping, raising as many arguments as possible in just a few minutes.

Rebuttal (5-mins each)
Hitchens leads with the problem of falsifiability, and hammers on that topic for a bit. D'Souza retorts that the Hebrew theory of creation was indeed falsifiable, but later scientifically verified, and that the Hebrew prophecy of a reconstituted Jewish nation-state was also fulfilled.

Review
Overall, this was a fairly weak debate on both sides. Hitch rambles too much and D'Souza was too busy galloping to really make any detailed arguments worthy of explication and analysis. I'd skip this one and listen to other events featuring either or both of these speakers.

• Unbeliever rating: 2.5 stars
  
• Believer rating: 2.0 stars
  
• Overall rating: 2.5 stars
  

Ehrman vs. D’Souza at UNC

I purchased this debate so that you will never have to do so. Seriously, don't bother, there are far better debates available entirely for free online, many of which include video.

Ehman does a fine job of unpacking the problem of suffering, just as he has done in plenty of other debates. D'Souza, to his credit, dose a fine job of muddling the issues by bringing in a few facially plausible analogies to childrearing and parenting, along with the bizarre idea that a decent respect for human free will obliges one to stand back and allow rapists and murderers to act as they will. He makes it sound better than that, of course.

The rebuttal period was lamentably short, such that no one really digs into the problems of whether the free-will defense is soundly grounded upon facts about the world, although Ehrman runs a clever rebuttal based on the putative nature of the Christian afterlife. Moreover, the soul-building theodicy is put forth but never really examined. There just wasn't enough time to do so.

Overall, both speakers do a decent job, given severe time constraints, but they never really get beyond the first level arguments and hinting at a few possible theodicies. Best take a pass on this one and find another one of Ehrman's several debates on this topic.

Barker vs. D'Souza in Plano, TX

Both debaters give pretty standard arguments here, fine-tuning and first-cause from D'Souza, and prebuttal attempts at scientific and philosophical rigor from Barker. For example, if we have a gap in scientific knowledge, it is okay to fill that gap with the God of Abraham? They also dwell a bit on the historical problem of how to evaluate and accept the Jesus narratives. The back-and-forth between the two speakers after the rebuttals was particularly muddled, because Dan less articulate but more up-to-date on the science, while Dinesh articulately expresses outdated cosmological ideas.

It's a good introduction to these ideas, but I've seen both men do better than this on other occasions. This one is not particularly worth watching, unless you've never seen these guys in action before.

Dennett, Harris, Hitchens vs. Boteach, D'Souza, Taleb

I don't usually outsource my reviews to other (better) bloggers than myself, but I'll make an exception in this case and direct you to PZ's review of this debate. I have very little to add to that review, except to contest the idea that Hitchens successfully "[r]efutes the fine-tuning argument" and to say that I found Robert Wright's perspective refreshingly novel rather than muddled. I'd argue (presumably contrary to PZ) that we need more agnosticism and deism in God debates.

Hitchens vs. D'Souza in Orlando, FL

Yet another debate between Hitchens and D'Souza, in which both debaters attempt to pump the intuitions of the audience as much as possible without making anything resembling a rigorous argument. They each deploy their usual rhetoric, Hitchens appealing to the human desire for liberty from tyranny, while D'Souza appeals primarily to the human desire for paternal love and blessing.

Here is an example of the sort of "argument" you get in this debate: Christianity is unique in claiming that God came down to Man, while all other religions are merely ways for Man to come to God. One might suppose D'Souza doesn't go in much for comparative mythology.

Here's another one: The sun will go out and the universe end in heat death, therefore it is clear that God did not design either the solar system or the universe. Bill Craig would take all of 30 seconds to dismantle this one, as indeed he did upon another occasion.

I've often wondered why popular debaters continue to use the same exact arguments over and over despite having been strongly rebutted either on paper or in person. I am supposing it is because they are more concerned with scoring points right then and there than they are with intellectual consistency in the long term.

I'm also discontent with the format of this debate, which is to give each speaker very short segments on specific topics. I'd much prefer more time for development of an argumentative framework upfront, and more discretion to the speakers on how to do so.

Overall, I'd not recommend this one, since each of these men have performed significantly better on other occasions.

Barker vs. D'Souza in Minneapolis, MN

Dan Barker and Dinesh D’Souza are both articulate, fun, and easy on the ears, which is a big plus.  For the most part, they lack (or avoid) the supercilious tones and lofty language which unfortunately all too endemic to these sort of debates. 

Barker leads with his secular conception of ethics, that is, avoidance of harm.  He points out that ethics are necessarily rational (requires some thought) and situational (i.e. relative rather than absolute) and must be more than blindly following a list of rules handed down by an authority, a position he derisively refers to as “toddler morality.”  He also points out the exceeding virtue of various skeptics and unbelievers, both classical and modern.  He ultimately fails, however, to make a solid argument in favor of a secular conception of morality as opposed to a sacred morality, though he does perhaps make the case that neither version of morality results in a uniform and consistent set of moral principles.

D’Souza makes a fascinating and relatively unusual argument that the ethics of Christianity lead to the cultural superiority of Christendom, which points to the truth and superiority of Christian belief.  He claims that when atheists behave virtuously, it may be because they grew up in a culture inundated with traditional Christian values.  Here is a representative sample, “These are the virtues of our civilization, and the question I want to ask is, ‘What is the source of these virtues?’ in other words if you make a list of these virtues, and take a look at the list I think you’ll realize if you have any historical sense whatsoever that these virtues came into the West (and in some cases into the world) because of Christianity.”  Remarkably, D’Souza includes the following virtues in this part of his argument:

• Sanctity of human life
  
• Scientific progress
  
• Individualism
  
• Abolitionism
  
• Compassion
  
• Feminism
  

Now, one can easily make a case that each and every one of these virtues get some treatment in the Bible (e.g. Jesus elevated women well beyond what one expects of a first century Jewish rabbi) but it is equally true that all branches of the Christian church have opposed each of these virtues on any number of quite significant occasions, at least as often as they moved these values forward.  Barker points this out, although not nearly in the level of detail which one might hope. 

D’Souza also makes the argument that only societies founded on Marxism truly represent the ethics of godlessness, because these societies incorporated godlessness as a core tenet of their political culture.  This is a very difficult argument to meet, because it is undoubtedly true that blind faith in the prophet Marx and his prophecies have caused at least as much human suffering as any (other) religious system.  About the best one can do here is to point out that the post-enlightenment western philosophies of rationalism and freethought bear as little resemblance to the irrational faith of Marxism as Christianity does. 

The rebuttal periods are really quite fun, both debaters do a fine job of more or less directly addressing each other’s arguments without too much in the way of misconstrual or prevarication.  Indeed, this debate is relatively free of such things, at least until near the end of the Q&A, in which D’Souza attributes to Barker an impulse to believe and practice Dostoyevsky’s claim that, “If God is not, everything is permitted.”  The implicit premise in any argument claiming that metaphysical naturalism implies moral nihilism must be that the only possible reason to be moral is the fear of divine retribution.  I had thought that “toddler morality” is perhaps too strong a phrase for the theistic position on the nature of ethics, but it would seem that D’Souza has chosen to flesh out this strawman on his own.

All told, I’d give each of these guys four stars, and I look forward to hearing more of them.  

Hitchens vs. D'Souza in Boulder, CO

Links to debate: video, mp3

D’Souza cedes ground early on by narrowing the playing field to arguments “rooted in reason, and skepticism, and history, and philosophy, in other words, Christopher Hitchens and I are debating…on the same ground.” It wasn’t a particularly good idea for him to play to his opponent’s strengths up front. A professional debater such as William Lane Craig would never make such a mistake against such a learned opponent.

As he did in against Barker, D’Souza leads with a list of secular virtues:

• Individuality
  
• Dignity of women
  
• Abolition of slavery
  
• Compassion as a social virtue
  

Once again, his opponent does take the trouble to point out that these virtues have been retarded by religious faith at least at much as they’ve been advanced thereby. One need only look at the official position of the Church of England on (1) the individualist manifestoes of the Enlightenment era, (2) the suffragette movement, (3) the abolition of slavery in England, and (4) radical life-saving advances in medicine. In each case, England’s faith-based bastion of transcendental moral virtue lagged behind the English-speaking culture at large, which definitely undercuts D’Souza’s claim that it was the Christian faith which drove things forward.

Hitchens’ main argument (like Hitchens himself) was interesting if a bit sarcastic, “Life was nasty, brutish, and short. For the first 98,000 years of [human history] heaven watches with indifference. Who cares? Doesn’t look terrific, but they’re inching along, I guess. Let’s see how it goes. Two thousand years ago, it is decided, actually now we have to intervene - but only in illiterate parts of the Middle East. To reveal Our Face to the species and tell them how to behave - that should do it.” Hitchens claims that if you can believe this, you can believe pretty much anything about theology and ethics.

Eventually, they got around to cross-examining each other to great effect. While Hitch gets in more barbs, D'Souza manages to seem composed and even a bit amused.

Hitchens vs Prager vs DSouza (2008)

A Catholic, A Jew, and an Atheist walk into an auditorium... (video, audio)

Hitchens makes his usual spiel, which I consider more rhetorical than logical and more entertaining than persuasive. His opening statement sort of toys around the edges of Drange's arguments from unbelief and suffering, without actually stating the premises or making the arguments themselves.

D'Souza also gives us a variation on his usual spiel, including his personal background and an argument from cosmological fine-tuning to (presumably) deism.

Prager makes the argument that we can use "common sense" to understand cosmology, and that the atheist must explain how we went from nothing to Bach. He seems to believe that theism is a sort of default position, and anything less than an exhaustive scientific explanation of life, the universe, and everything should allow for reversion to his favored hypothesis -- a magical mind mediating by mysterious means.

None of the opening statements were particularly perspicacious or insightful, however, around 24 minutes in the various speakers start going back and forth and things really get going. At this point, the event rapidly turns into something I've only ever seen or heard on the internet, that is, an enthusiatic, energetic and enjoyable three-way exchange.

Singer vs. D'Souza in Los Angeles, CA

In this debate, both Peter Singer and Dinesh D'Souza lead with the argument that the other guy's ideology suffers from a problem of evil.  D'Souza argues that the godless communist regimes were quite horrifically murderous, while Singer's argument is basically that a Heavenly Father would never allow such atrocities to happen.  Neither of these interlocutors manages to quite directly rebut the arguments of the other, possibly because they were still making new arguments during their rebuttal segments.  Singer does manage a stinging reply noting that theistic ethics justified genocide and rape in the Old Testament, issues which D'Souza pretty much ignores.  They also go back and forth a bit on cosmology and fine-tuning, but not to any great effect from either side.

Overall rating: 3.5 stars

Shermer vs D'souza in Nashville, TN

This debate covers a lot of ground, but it has far more breadth than depth. Michael Shermer is almost always careful and circumspect in his assertions and arguments, while Dinesh D'Souza is almost always overreaching in his arguments and hasty in his inferences. This event provided no glaring exceptions to these general rules.