Wednesday, March 03, 2010

D'Sousa/Loftus Debate

You know, if I didn't see that this debate was sponsored by two Catholic organizations and two atheist ones, I would swear that it was rigged. D'Sousa, although his arguments are not always air tight, is at least coherent. Loftus comes off sounding like he is just shooting from the hip and as though he had never debated this issue before. Surely atheists can do better than this and Dawkins! What about Anthony Flew? Oh, wait; he converted to theism.

2 comments:

Joe said...

Okay, I have only watched this first part. I do intend to watch as much of the rest of it that I can possibly stand. This Loftus fellow is, hmmmm, let me be uncharitable, a mental midget?

I'm not a fan of the so-called "New Atheism," because it all seems to me to be an American fundamentalist counterpart to American fundamentalist protestantism. I've read Hitchens and Dawkins and I wasn't impressed.

I can't see too much else until I've watched the rest of the debate. And I can't promise that I'll do that if the Loftus fellow doesn't improve over time.

Let me make one distinction that I believe is important. The question of whether the Christian God exists and whether the Christian God is defensible are related, but not the same. I just point this out because to argue that the Christian God does not exist (at least to argue that we can disprove the existence of the God of classical Christian Theism)is unsuccessful. To point out difficulties with such a conception of God is another thing altogether :-).

Robert Gotcher said...

Right. I think D'Sousa understands the distinction you are making. At least I get the impression he does. Debates are disjointed at best. It doesn't help if one of the debaters is a disjointed thinker as well. I'm not talking about D'Sousa.