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Christopher Hitchens debates William Dembski on 11/18

Halfcentaur said:
Perhaps I was not clear. He is now a creationist Christian, but was once a new ager and later a claimed himself a Hindu after leaving his biologist father's household. He claims this all in in the debate, as if he had a spiritual journey that led him eventually to Jesus. I was alluding to all these things on their own merits, not lumping them all together. The fact he was into new age thinking and Hinduism is only connected by his alternative thinking at the time.
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Oh Okay...sorry. Thanks for the clarification. I thought you were suggesting that Hindus had creationist line, I misunderstood. This is not to say that Hindus cant be as wacky and bigotted and superstitious as any other religion, but creationism is not something that they hold up as truth. No creationist movement that I know of in India. Yes they would like the "ancient truths" and stuff taught in schools and colleges (which isn't too much of a bad thing if done objectively, afterall it is good to understand our cul;tural history), and jyotish (astrology) defined as a science (which is definitely a bad thing).

Dont know if there is some esoteric hinduism export in your neck of the woods that holds up creationist ideals.
 
There is a nice MP3 audio-only recording of the debate which you can get here:

http://f6y.ath.cx/Hitchens-Dembski Debate.mp3

I found this at the Friendly Atheist site.

I listened to it last night and finished it this morning. Hitchens really was brilliant. Dembski was out of his league, but I understood what he was trying to do. It was this:

* Atheism is dependent on Darwinian evolution.
* Undirected Darwinian evolution has been falsified by the ideas of Intelligent Design.
* Therefore, atheism is a false view.
* Since atheism is false, there must be a God.

Pretty rickety structure for an argument, but that's what he wanted to show.

Dembski did show a little bit of his human side near the end, when he started talking about all the doubts he has had and still has.

I felt kind of embarrassed for the preacher at the end giving the closing prayer. He hadn't planned ahead too well and wasn't sure what he wanted to say, but was basically thanking God for confusing us with these arguments.
 
phatred said:
I watched half the video last night before bed, when I went on the Prestonwood website this mornining it said it has been temporarily removed. Does anyone have any other link to the video please?
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You could just go to youtube and do a search for Christopher Hitchens debates William Dembski, it has been uploaded by multiple users and plays fine.
 
Was it just me, or did Dembski at one point call Hitchens for Richard Hitchens? Mixing his atheists together? :p
 
mutile said:
You could just go to youtube and do a search for Christopher Hitchens debates William Dembski, it has been uploaded by multiple users and plays fine.
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Thanks - I just watched it. A bit of a marathon but well worth watching.
 
Just started, but got smacked in the face by a Dembski comment. "As any historian of science understands, science is not a cumulative enterprise." He does potentially qualify this, stating that there are mistakes, reversals, etc. Ignoring the entire "science is self-correcting" comeback, in what way is science not cumulative? It is only because science is cumulative that it works. At the leading edge, yes - there is back and forth. Even "breakthroughs" like relativity and quantum mechanics do not "overturn" the past, but clarify, expand upon, and explain actions at extreme scales. Newtonian mechanics is not wrong, but only an applicable within a specific set of conditions. No scientific advance has ever said - the previous assumptions were wrong and have proven to have a theistic cause. It has always been natural explanations.

Also - "for Hitchens, ID is not science, but rebranded creationism." Was it not also a legal finding of fact in Kitzmiller v Dover - the very trial in which he testified?

CT
 
CriticalThanking said:
Just started, but got smacked in the face by a Dembski comment. "As any historian of science understands, science is not a cumulative enterprise." He does potentially qualify this, stating that there are mistakes, reversals, etc. Ignoring the entire "science is self-correcting" comeback, in what way is science not cumulative?
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I was puzzled by that, too. I was thinking that maybe he meant that science's progress isn't linear, which would fit his qualifiers, but what would be the point of that?
 
What was that?
Hardly a debate. Dembski read from a script and made no attempt to address any points that Hitchens made.
Dembski simply read off a bunch of bare assertions.
Embarassing really.
 
It was a bit of a strange pairing. If Dembski had wanted to talk about evolution then maybe he should have sought a debate with a scientist, which Hitchens is not.

Perhaps the school thought that this would be a very polite demolition of the non-technical Hitchens by Dembski.

However I think Hitchens quite effectively countered this by his tribute to the Christian Francis Collins and his suggestion that they read Collins' book - Collins has no time at all for Dembski's views

Dembski spent all of his time on the "God" part and hardly any on the "good" part. Apparently he thought that his argument about a God necessarily being the source of goodness was such a zinger that he didn't need to say any more.

I don't think the "God is good because good is whatever God is" argument would impress a bunch of smart high schoolers.
 
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