Posted on 01/04/2008 6:43:04 AM PST by Alex Murphy
I watched the movie "The Great Debaters" last night, and it helped me to understand why atheists are such bad debaters. The movie portrays four students from a little black college in Texas, and shows how, under the tutelage of their pugnacious coach, they went on to defeat Almighty Harvard. Denzel Washington, who plays the coach, says early in the movie that debate is a kind of bloodsport. It's great virtue is that it puts rival ideas up against each other, as argued by people who passionately espouse those ideas, and then it lets the truth emerge through a kind of gladiatorial elimination.
For about three years, it appeared as though the leading atheists were formidable debaters. But the reason was that Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens were selecting weak opponents and then generally giving them a public whipping. In one staged encounter, hardly a debate, Richard Dawkins ambushed televangelist Ted Haggard for a film Dawkins was making. Not only did Dawkins control the format, he also controlled what was shown on film. No wonder Dawkins got the better of that encounter. Harris took on pastor Rick Warren in Newsweek, where Harris made outrageous allegations and Warren basically said that Christians are nice people because they help AIDS victims in Africa. Again, this was hardly a fair fight. Hitchens promoted his book God Is Not Great by traipsing through the South taking on local pastors. Now your typical pastor is not used to debating a versatile and suave character like Hitchens. A few months ago Hitchens embarrassed theologian Alister McGrath in Washington D.C. One problem is that Hitchens has the Richard Burton accent and McGrath sounds like he just came in from shooting birds in the Scottish highlands. Another problem is that McGrath couldn't handle Hitchens' vitriolic accusations and came off looking conciliatory and weak.
Unlike the characters in "The Great Debaters," I was never part of a debate team. I got my debate practice through confronting critics of my various books. Mostly I learned by taking on such seasoned debaters as presidential candidate Walter Mondale, the literary scholar Stanley Fish, and a whole series of civil rights activists from Cornel West to Jesse Jackson. Prior to my debate with Hitchens, he described me as "one of the most formidable debaters on any topic." Richard Dawkins seems to agree: the great Haggard-slayer has somehow gotten cold feet when it comes to debating me. I guess he's afraid that I'll make him look as ridiculous as Haggard.
Then there's Sam Harris, who tells me that debate is not a very useful medium to arrive at the truth. He didn't seem to think that previously, but now it seems that he too is afraid of looking like a public fool. Harris wants to engage in a written debate, and I've agreed, but it should be noted that written debates allow each side to consult experts and therefore they don't reflect the true spirit of debate, which is the clash of ideas embodied in the most articulate representatives of those ideas. I've suggested to Harris a couple of weeks ago that we do both a written and an oral debate, and I'm waiting to hear his response.
Why are the atheists faring so badly in these debates? I think the main reason is that they are so arrogant. Dawkins, Harris, Dennett and Hitchens really think that their position reflects pure reason and that my position reflects "blind faith." If this were really true they should win every single debate, for the same reason that a round-earth advocate should never lose to a flat-earth advocate. In reality there are good arguments on both sides, and I as a believer know this. I know it's hard to make the case for an invisible God and for an afterlife. In short, I know the strength of the argument on the other side. Leading atheists, however, simply do not expect to hear good counterarguments to their position. When they do, they have no idea how to answer them. So they either erupt into jejune name-calling (all to familiar to readers of this blog) or they slowly fall apart (witness what happened to Daniel Dennett).
In reality, I don't have to win debates against atheists; I merely have to draw. Just by coming out even, I defeat the atheist premise that atheism is the position based on reason and religion is the position based on unreason. Even a tie shows that both positions are reasonable. By defeating atheists in debate, however, I have totally exploded the atheist self-pretense. I have shown atheists to be the unreasonable ones, and this is why leading atheists like Dawkins and Harris are now going into hiding. But if these guys are scared to debate me, even in secular university settings where the audience is largely on their side, what does this say about them and about the soundness of their positions? Perhaps Dawkins and company should go and see "The Great Debaters." They might get some useful tips, and they might also get their nerve back.
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This is a good summary of debating. There might be any given subject and the participants might be assigned to debate either side of the subject. Thus, one MUST study and understand both sides of an idea in depth in order to debate it intelligently.
Which is why atheists lose debates.
Honest debates would defeat neoliberalsim like crazy. Too bad honest debate has died in our schools, universities, fraternals, government, politics and media. IMO, it seems to primarily exist in the www (so far).
It is a matter of faith to conclude that “there is nothing”.
Hitchens and others go beyond denying the existence of God. He denies that Jesus ever existed (at least in any context more real than the Athurian legend) and asserts that the world would be a much better place without Christians. This is an anti-theistic/anti-Christian approach. It goes beyond decided for himself that there is no god and that he can go about his own business with a clear conscience. He pushes to convert people to his belief system. His no god god. He insists that your God is the false god and his is the genuine god of ‘mankind’ as supreme being.
By the way, Hitchens isn't dumb enough to make the same broad assertions against Islam. He knows that there would be jihadists waiting to slit his throat if he publicly travelled the world telling everyone that it was a lie that Mohammed ascended into heaven on a horse. Their religion of peace is likewise not condemned with a statement that the world would be a better place without muslims.
considering all the removal of religion from public places, the war on Christmas, and the assault on “under God”, it say Christians are even worse debaters.
If the atheists were that lousy, the results don’t bode well for our abilities either.
You should post that as a comment at the AOL site.
The debate is "religion." An atheist draws the affirmative side and must defend religion. He wins the debate by using the arguments supporting religion that he has encountered in other debates. But he's still an atheist. Shouldn't he have lost because he's an atheist?
You can’t debate with a religious person because faith isn’t based on logic, “god” means anything and everything, the Pope is infallible, the Bible is absolute truth.
No one can debate under those circumstances. The debate rules only apply to the atheist, not the Christian. Case in point.
C: Complex things require a designer.
A: Who designed God?
C: God doesn’t need a designer.
Atheists foolish enough to engage in this non-debate deserve what they get. Dinesh is an expert in this stuff.
I wish to remark again that these atheists never take on or publicly attack the superstitions of non-western “indigenous pipples,” just as “opponents of Western Civilization” never demand that Darwin’s books be removed from study because he is a “dead white male.”
So logic, rightly understood, teaches that the world is self-existent and meaningless? Your being on FR isn't a very good witness to the ultimate meaninglessness of everything. Why not be a true Epicurean, quite worrying about ideology, enjoy the sunsets, avoid suffering, etc.?
BTW, I believe atheism has no place on Free Republic.
I'd give it the same place our Founders would give it in America.
When pressed on the millions of people killed by avowedly atheist regimes in the USSR, China, and elsewhere, they will attempt to claim that those regimes in fact practiced a "religion"! (Evidently militant atheistic socialism qualifies as a "religion", if atheists think they can use it to score points.)
That last tack is beyond logical fallacy and into insane territory.
The glaring fallacy is the category error. Nobody has ever been killed in the name of religion, just as nobody has ever painted a house "color". Religion and color are categories, not entities.
People have been killed in the name of specific religions, just as houses can be painted specific colors. However, if 1, 10, or a million people have been killed in the name of religion "A", that proves absolutely nothing about the truth or falsehood of religion "B". (Strictly speaking, it's not a slam-dunk that it proves anything about the truth or falsehood of religion "A", either.)
I'm not an atheist, but I can't stand religionists who abandon faith and try to debate with logic. Besides I too am a zionist.
I will happily debate as if I'm an atheist if you like though
I'm glad you don't make the rules around here. Religious bigotry doesn't belong on FR or any other republic
BTW, I believe atheism has no place on Free Republic.
I'd give it the same place our Founders would give it in America.
LOL! Our "rationalist" friend doesn't think creationism has any place here. Isn't it amazing the ideals people come up with when they insist that the world, and their lives, are objectively meaningless? Constantly crusading, preaching "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts." We might as well be back living under the "Tyrant of Heaven" with such bossiness, but somehow the very fact that the bossing is being done by someone other than the Creator of the Universe is supposed to make it "reasonable!"
That from the article. IMO, Christians are weak opponents in general because they just don't exercise the defense of their faith. The few that do aren't supported. Sitting on hands with mouth closed -- the typical posture for the great majority of Christians. Is end time prophecy the cause of such apathy?
The problem is mainly with definitions. If something is said to exist, it will have characteristics and properties. The first place to start a debate on the existance of God is with defining what we mean by "God".
In other words, you can't stand logically consistent religionists? So, you're a deist or a double-truth advocate then?
Besides I too am a zionist.
So you believe Mashiach is going to come and annihilate the `Amaleqites, build the Third Temple, and then the dead will be resurrected? How does an evolutionist come off believing such outlandish things?
I will happily debate as if I'm an atheist if you like though
I'm sure you'd be more than happy to "pretend" to be an atheist. I'm equally sure you wouldn't know how to advocate the other position.
I'm glad you don't make the rules around here. Religious bigotry doesn't belong on FR or any other republic
I know! What I don't know is where "rationalists" get all these values of theirs they cherish so deeply! After all, did the big bang give a flying frick whether or not billions of years in the future there would be religious bigotry? Does the vast universe weep tears if someone insults someone else's religion? I'm trying to understand here why "thou shalt not kill" makes any more sense in such a world than "it is forbidden to partake of the sacrifice before the blood has been sprinkled on the altar." BTW, I notice with some confusion that apparently one can only be guilty of "religious bigotry" if one is insulting one "irrational" religion from the perspective of another. Rationalists seem to be able to make any sort of insult and somehow magically escape the label of "bigot."
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