Last night in Orange County I had one of my liveliest debates with atheist Christopher Hitchens and the Jewish radio host Dennis Prager. The debate--a sort of Christian-Atheist-Jew slugfest--was held at the Bat Yahm synagogue in Newport Beach. There was a sellout crowd of 1,500, with about 400 turned away.
The debate was unusual in that it involved not two but three different perspectives. Hitchens was particularly harsh in his exchanges with Prager, at one point accusing Prager of covering up for anti-Semitism. My exchanges with Hitchens were consistently sharp but also mutually respectful, and later Hitchens told me that I am one of the most formidable debaters that he has ever faced. I predict this debate will generate huge interest when it is posted on the web. After the debate Hitchens joined my wife and me at the bar where we downed two bottles of Pinot Noir and solved many of the world's problems.
Since our debate focused on God as understood from a Christian, Jewish and atheist perspective, missing from the event was a Muslim perspective. This is a pity, because one staple item of atheist rhetoric is the equation of Islamic extremism with Christianity. In my cross-examination I pressed Hitchens on this issue, and will let viewers watch our exchange for themselves and make up their own minds.
We find the equation between "Islamic fundamentalism" and "Christian fundamentalism" not only among the new atheists but also in the popular culture. Several weeks ago Christiane Amanpour of CNN did her special on "God's Warriors." The premise: The Abrahamic religions all lead to extremism. So Amanpour did three segments, one on Islamic extremism, one on Jewish extremism and one on Christian extremism.
Striking to the viewer, however, was the strained attempt to equate the three. Islamic extremism featured the 9/11 attacks, the Bali bombing, the London bombing, the Madrid bombing, and the list goes on. What about Christian extremism? Well, there was Christiane Amanpour in desperate search for the Christian Bin Laden, the Christian Al Qaeda, the Christian Hamas, the Christian Hezbollah, the Christian state currently run along the lines of post-Khomeini Iran.
Poor Christiane came up empty handed. So she was forced to locate marginal groups which would be repudiated by 99.9 percent of Christians and try to pass them off as the Christian equivalent of the Islamic radicals. I was especially interested to find out that there is an old guy in the hills of Montana who wants to blow up the world in the name of Jesus. Too bad he's broke and doesn't have any teeth. Still, one day he hopes to get a job and carry out his nefarious plans. I suppose this is the closest thing to a Christian Bin Laden. We are all supposed to be very afraid of this man!
One of the new atheists very cleverly termed 9/11 a "faith based initiative." But the witticism conceals an intellectual sleight-of-hand. Bush merely wants the government to be able to support faith-based charities on the same basis as it supports secular charities. What happened at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon seven years ago can hardly be placed in the same intellectual category.
Of late some of the new atheists are backing off from their fraudulent analogy between Islamic extremism and Christianity. This is a powerful blow to the new atheism, because so much of its relevance came from its ability to surf on the wave of current events and interpret modern terrorism as the expression of a generic religious impulse. In reality Bin Laden is more accurately compared to an atheist despot like Pol Pot. I realize the analogy is not entirely fair--to Bin Laden! After all, Bin Laden's death toll (several thousand killed over a dozen years) doesn't come closer to Pol Pot's 2 million killed in the space of three years.
Besides, Pol Pot was a Little League atheist compared to Mao and Stalin, whose death toll was in the tens of millions. When it comes to mass murder in the modern era, Islamic radicalism simply cannot keep up with atheism.
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 54)
1. It's going to be a great weekend chewing through this one. With only 2 bottles of Pinot noir, what did Hitchens drink? We'll be watching for the usual Salem Witch Trial overreactions as atheists try to beef up the numbers, but in reality, DD is right, again.
fanmanaf1 at 2:29PM on May 2nd 2008
2. DoubleD, your Atheist Bashing Week was WEAK.
JefFlyingV at 2:37PM on May 2nd 2008
3. http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/main.htm
You want the truth? Please everyone watch then and pass it on to everyone you know. Do it today, the truth is coming out.
Steven Parker at 2:53PM on May 2nd 2008
4. http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/main.htm
Click on this link! Learn the truth! MURDER MURDER!
You want the truth? Please everyone watch then and pass it on to everyone you know. Do it today, the truth is coming out.
Steven Parker at 2:55PM on May 2nd 2008
5. Dinesh D'Souza you lies have caught up with you. I hope you go to hell you so famously predict the rest of America will suffer. Know the truth people, you have been brainwashed. The truth is about to be revealed to all. You are going to be so mad when you learn their dirty secrets.
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/main.htm
You want the truth? Please everyone watch then and pass it on to everyone you know. Do it today, the truth is coming out.
Steven Parker at 2:58PM on May 2nd 2008
6. Steven, why don't say what you're really thinking instead of beating, beating, beating around the bush?
fanmanaf1 at 3:07PM on May 2nd 2008
7. Do let us know when the debate videos come available online.
E. I. Sanchez at 3:08PM on May 2nd 2008
8. Debate this movie you damned war criminal. If you do not have anything to say about this information found in this documentary then the world will know your lies have caught up with you. American citizens please learn the truth. Bush's approval rating is at an all time record low of 6% according to the latest AOL poll. Most of America is waking up to the horrible truth! MURDER!
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/main.htm
FOLLOW THIS LINK TO THE TRUTH!
Steven Parker at 3:09PM on May 2nd 2008
9. An Interview with Antony Flew
In his comment on my post on There Is a God, John left a link to an interview with Antony Flew conducted by Benjamin Wiker on October 30, 2007.
Wiker is a Senior Fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology and the author of four books. The following is an excerpt from the interview:
Benjamin Wiker: You say in There is a God, that "it may well be that no one is as surprised as I am that my exploration of the Divine has after all these years turned from denial.to discovery." Everyone else was certainly very surprised as well, perhaps all the more so since on our end, it seemed so sudden. But in There is a God, we find that it was actually a very gradual process-a "two decade migration," as you call it. God was the conclusion of a rather long argument, then. But wasn't there a point in the "argument" where you found yourself suddenly surprised by the realization that "There is a God" after all? So that, in some sense, you really did "hear a Voice that says" in the evidence itself " `Can you hear me now?'"
Anthony Flew: There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself - which is far more complex than the physical Universe - can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source. I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code. The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins' comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a "lucky chance." If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion.
Wiker: You are famous for arguing for a presumption of atheism, i.e., as far as arguments for and against the existence of God, the burden of proof lies with the theist. Given that you believe that you only followed the evidence where it led, and it led to theism, it would seem that things have now gone the other way, so that the burden of proof lies with the atheist. He must prove that God doesn't exist. What are your thoughts on that?
Flew: I note in my book that some philosophers indeed have argued in the past that the burden of proof is on the atheist. I think the origins of the laws of nature and of life and the Universe point clearly to an intelligent Source. The burden of proof is on those who argue to the contrary.
*******
Wiker: You are obviously aware of the spate of recent books by such atheists as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. They think that those who believe in God are behind the times. But you seem to be politely asserting that they are ones who are behind the times, insofar as the latest scientific evidence tends strongly toward—or perhaps even demonstrates—a theistic conclusion. Is that a fair assessment of your position?
Flew: Yes indeed. I would add that Dawkins is selective to the point of dishonesty when he cites the views of scientists on the philosophical implications of the scientific data.
Two noted philosophers, one an agnostic (Anthony Kenny) and the other an atheist (Nagel), recently pointed out that Dawkins has failed to address three major issues that ground the rational case for God. As it happens, these are the very same issues that had driven me to accept the existence of a God: the laws of nature, life with its teleological organization and the existence of the Universe.
*******
Wiker: Do you plan to write a follow-up book to There is a God?
Flew: As I said in opening the book, this is my last will and testament.
Mini-Me at 3:11PM on May 2nd 2008
10. Does DD think Pol Pot would be the ideal presidential candidate for atheists? It's hard to tolerate his apophenically-driven inductions.
Mokele Mbembe at 3:11PM on May 2nd 2008
11.
If you keep saying something, people will start to believe it no matter how stupid it is (how about a boat big enough to hold all the worlds' critters.)
The "atheist mass murderers" thing- These crimes weren't committed in the name of atheism. They were committed by sociopathic control freaks. Anyone who posed a threat to these people were killed, regardless of religion. Intellectuals, military leaders,journalists, teachers, the lists are endless.
Since the BTK killer was a devout christian, can we link the killings to christianity? Hardly not.
ex-christian at 3:14PM on May 2nd 2008
12. Mao, Stalin, and PP - DD's sacred cash cows. His primary end-all apophenically cherry-picked elite weapons toward his inductive deistic engame. What the world really needs is a campaign of fabricated prejudice, right? Has he even broached an American example, or does any nation and decade make an apropos context of evidence to justify a locally advertised prejudice? That's what prejudice is, deductive conclusions from inadequately or selectively induced heuristics.
Mokele Mbembe at 3:28PM on May 2nd 2008
13. 685. ... god and religion is a man made construct.Man came first, then religion and finally god comes into existence.
You see yourself as saved? Congrats. But I really don't see a difference between you bible thumpers or the radical muslims or the communists. You all kill to create your better world.
JefFlyingV at 5:58AM on Apr 30th 2008
JefFlyingV at 3:41PM on May 2nd 2008
14. Well, we all know what Christian extremism would be like: the witch trials, the Spanish Inquisition...and we all know what Islamic extremism would be like: the two towers in NYC...but what would Jewish extremism be like?
The Goddess Athena at 3:44PM on May 2nd 2008
15. Not that Mr. D'Souza cares, but I do love the way he cherry picks those horrific leaders and states he'll cite for their deployment of historical violence. If he has one shred of decency or true intelligence, I hope he will account for the American Indians, whose numbers today are roughly 10% of what they were when the first European settlers arrived. Or how about slaves? I guess it only rises to the level of genocide if you kill a certain percentage. And, by the way, I'd put Pol Pot and Bin Laden on this list of evil, too. Just so I can't be accused of giving quarter to the enemies of all things decent and neocon...
David at 3:51PM on May 2nd 2008