The God Debate - Hitchens vs. D'Souza
Related
Media
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V85OykSDT8
Overview
"The God Debate", held at the University of Notre Dame on 7 April 2010 under the title "Is There a God?", was one of a long series of Hitchens–D'Souza encounters between 2007 and 2010. Dinesh D'Souza argued from the origin of the universe, the apparent fine-tuning of its constants and the existence of morality, and spent much of his time on the claim that atheist regimes killed more people than religious ones. Christopher Hitchens argued that religion is a human invention whose claims are unevidenced and whose moral record disqualifies it from lecturing anyone. Hitchens was by this point visibly unwell; he was diagnosed with the cancer that killed him two months later.
Notes
- D'Souza's strongest material is borrowed (Kalam, fine-tuning, the moral argument) and his own contribution is the Stalin-and-Mao point, which is an argument about who is worse rather than about whether anything is true. Hitchens's answer, that totalitarianism is itself a religion with a living god, is the standard one and I think it is right; see Communism.
- D'Souza debates the way he writes: fluently, confidently, and without the arguments being able to bear the weight. Compare Is the Bible True - Alex O'Connor vs Dinesh D'souza fourteen years later, where the same manner meets a better-prepared opponent.
- Hitchens is more disciplined here than at Biola (Does God Exist William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens - Full Debate HD), partly because D'Souza is a less rigorous opponent than Craig and partly because the ground is history and morality, which is Hitchens's ground.