Christopher Hitchens Dinesh D'souza atheism debate

my critique of the debate

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Science & Technology

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[mironowak]

Ok , now I know where you are coming from.

Your inconspicuous silence about huge holes in De Sousa's "argument" is very telling.

So please, please in future do not pose as a impartial observer of this debate. I ask in the name of Allah, Yahwe, Ra, Poseidon, Votan, Thor, Zeus, Vishnu, Krishna...

I really hope santa will treat you well this festive season...cheers and greetings from Down Under,mate.

[miggetymike1]

claiming to know where I come from and pointing out the obvious, that my critique was one sided, does nothing to counter the arguments I made.

[mironowak]

How can you have a serious emotional attitude to anything that does not exist ?

You lost me as soon as you started your "mean brother" story.

I send you Season Greetings hoping that you will get a nice book by Dawkins, Hitchens, Stenger, Dennett, Sam Harris or Onfray from a Santa Claus. (You know that I cried for days when my older brother told me that Santa was a fake....I was 6 though) .

[miggetymike1]

You'll have to ask Hithcens how he can have a serious emotional attitude to something that doesn't exist.

Yeah, the mean brother was maybe too complicated for such a simple point: In determining if something does or does not exist your personal affection or hatred for that potentially existing thing is irrelevant.

I've read 3/6 those authors and didn't find their arguments at all compelling and it's unlikely the other 3 are significantly better so it's an atheist free christmas for me!

[gunning4fools]

You really do lack basic understanding at all levels.

[mattattack007]

Well, to me at least, you seem to be trivializing the point Christopher was making. You use the word "decrease" as if it meant these people were just a statistic. The point he makes was that the early human race was suffering and struggling to survive. If humans are the "apple of God's eye", why would he subject all those innocent people who had no idea what was going on and no idea of the message of salvation to go through so much pain and death? I think this question is closer the to mark.

[ruffgreens]

Koresh was a "mean brother". Why is God plagued with all of our negative emotions? "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

— Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion)

[ruffgreens]

You prefer delusion to reality because it makes you happier? His arguements are not non sequitur fallacies just because you can't follow them. What if the "mean brother" was making claims of his own divinity? Would you be able to use critical thinking to determine wether in fact these were the claims of a man or a god? Would his character matter? You know the followers of David Koresh believed he was God? He separated families, committed adultery with the wives and raped the young girls.