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Carpool to Shermer vs. D'Souza this Sunday?

briandunning

Thinker
briandunning
Joined
Apr 5, 2005
Messages
183
If anyone's interested in carpooling from Orange County to Caltech this Sunday for Shermer vs. D'Souza, email me at brian[at]skeptoid.com. Plan to leave early and get back home late.
 
Considering D'Souza's new book, I'm guessing it will be something to do with Christianity.

Just Googled it, they're debating whether religion is a force for good or evil, and whether you can be good without God. Looks like D'Souza will be speaking earlier in the day at Westminister Baptist Church in Westlake Village.
 
bokonon said:
Considering D'Souza's new book, I'm guessing it will be something to do with Christianity.

Just Googled it, they're debating whether religion is a force for good or evil, and whether you can be good without God. Looks like D'Souza will be speaking earlier in the day at Westminister Baptist Church in Westlake Village.
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That's what I figured.
 
I missed the debate - how did it go? Did the Christian go down in flames?
 
MLynn said:
I missed the debate - how did it go? Did the Christian go down in flames?
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Hi Mikki!

No, D'Souza did fine, and Shermer challenged him only gently while building his own case for independence of religion and morality. They didn't interact very much, with Shermer talking about the evolutionary origins of morality and D'Souza making historical arguments. Apparently they are good friends, though D'Souza was rather condescending in tone throughout. Maybe he's just insecure?

By a show of hands, the audience was roughly evenly split between believers and non-believers.

D'Souza's main idea was that Christianity in the West was responsible for our most cherished humanist values: compassion, charity, equality, democracy, freedom, etc. In the debate he based this claim on references to some Greek and Roman philosophers who disdained compassion and charity.

He was challenged on this in the Q&A session by citations of Greek philosophers who urged compassion and charity. D'Souza responded that Western civilization was not founded on these philosophers.

He also claims that non-Christian portions of the world do not respond to worldwide disasters as humanely as does the West, and that without Christianity, moral values are doomed to decay.

Merry Christmas! :)

--James
 
Electric Monk said:
They didn't interact very much, with Shermer talking about the evolutionary origins of morality and D'Souza making historical arguments.
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That reminds me, there was another thread (which I won't bother to try to find) about how bookstores file books. I think the OP was complaining about some creationist tome he found in the "Science" section.

My local Borders has D'Souza's book, What's So Great About Christianity? filed, not in the religion section, but in the history section. I went looking for it,
couldn't find it on the shelf, and had to resort to one of their in-store computers to find it. I think less browsers are likely to discover it and purchase it there than they would in the religion section, so I'm not complaining.

Sorry to hear that Shermer didn't rip him a new one. I thought about going, but you had to call somebody to get tickets in advance, and I ended up being busy Sunday anyway. I'm surprised there weren't more skeptics at Cal Tech; maybe D'Souza brought a bunch of the Westminister group with him.
 
bokonon said:
Sorry to hear that Shermer didn't rip him a new one.
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Shermer's always been a laid-back debater. My impression is that he's at a debate to explain the scientific viewpoint, get audience members to question irrational beliefs, and charm and humor them into sympathy, rather than to rip into his opponent. That's fine, but I think that it concedes too much to people like D'Souza. Plus I'd like to see more of a direct approach, too. :)

bokonon said:
I thought about going, but you had to call somebody to get tickets in advance, and I ended up being busy Sunday anyway.
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Tickets were on sale at the door, too. That's where I bought mine. You just needed to get there a bit early to get in the line for seats. Beckman holds about 1100 people.

--James
 
Its an incredible testament to patience and tolerance to listen to dinesh YELLING at you like a little kid that just threw a rock through a window, without getting up to SMACK him

kudos to you all
 
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