I tried - but i cant understand how people are so certain that god exist when the idea is so silly and ridiculous, so sure that they will dedicate their life to "him".

I really cant understand it, it sound like a joke to me (and always have, never had a bar-mitzva etc..)

Basically if god exist and created me - he doomed me from the beginning.

hitchens: missed the point sometimes and truly, he wasnt at his best.

D'Souza: well, i felt he turned every question into something he could answer by: "we wouldnt be there if christians didnt exist"

after the first 50 minutes, there wasnt much interesting stuff to follow. the "clap to everything section" was annoying and the "points" D'Souza claimed werent points most of the time.

These two cruise all over the country together debating the same topic. They're both laughing all the way to the bank.

Hitchens needs a new set of glasses, apparently...

Hitchens, as always, is a very compelling speaker, although his arguments, if analyzed, are often sloppy -- specious, or based on rhetorical exaggeration, or even outright incorrect assumptions. (But who cares? It's a pleasure just to hear him speak -- that's his power. The man is eloquent and uses his eloquence to elevate his opinions and knowledge to a thing of beauty.)

I've never heard D'Souza speak before. I remember him from his long-ago controversial student days at Dartmouth, as representative of a newly vicious breed of conservative. I was surprised, then, to find him a rather nerdy, awkward speaker. But even if I forgive his poor rhetorical skills, I still find his arguments mostly weak and puerile, although he made a few good points. (I suspect the young priest who introduced them could make a far more forceful and persuasive argument on behalf of faith. I intended to fast forward over his introduction, but found him enjoyable enough to watch through.)

One thing I'd like to point out about the general debate that I find supremely irritating: the false opposition of science and faith. Both D'Souza and Hitchens indulged in this specious assumption.

It's one thing to argue (as Hitchens does) that religion, as a sociological force, is ultimately harmful to humankind's well-bring. But it's quite another to present science as the oppositional force to religion.

Science is a method of knowledge based in empiricism and rationalism, and has a specific historical origin, and a specific way of understanding the world. As it has developed over the last 3 or 4 centuries, it has proven to be a remarkably robust, productive method of understanding the physical universe.

But it does not, and can not, answer questions of meaning -- the kind of questions that religion tries to answer. That is not to say that only religion can explore those questions -- literature, music, drama, and many other human institutions also explore questions of meaning. Science is not meant to do so.

So it's a false dichotomy, analogous to placing science in opposition to, say, literature. And it has the unfortunate consequence of leading non-believers into thinking that the only meaningful way of understanding the universe is through scientific materialism. That is a very impoverished way to view the world. Most of the greatest scientists were also quite passionate about literature and music and other entirely non-materialistic modes of exploring our existence in the universe.

There are many more ways of understanding the world than science or religion. They are two modes available to us of many. And that is why I think the dichotomy is false.

(Jeez, I must be drunk to spend time writing a six-page polemic like this for milkandcookies.)