Christopher Hitchens: Punching Bag

[merkavah12]

voxday.blogspot.com/2009/02/real-bright.html

I'm usually not one to mock the misfortunes of others....unless they bring it on themselves.

Hitchens doesn't seem to have evolved the finely tuned "avoid getting curb stomped" that we all take for granted. First it was agreeing to debate Craig and now this.....

The sad part?: The comments section seems to be full of people trying to link a drunken brawl to "Christian crimes" (with the help of our old friends, Revisionist History and Argument by Outrage").

[humphreyclarke]

He does that whole section in his debates about whether he would be more afraid on a dark night if he was approached by religious people or non-religious people; and then he gets beaten up Syrian nationalists

The world is full of such delicious ironies

[bernard]

Found a review of the Hitchens Craig debate.

commonsenseatheism.com/?p=1230

[unkleE]

I have seen other reviews (e.g. here) which give more detail of the content of this debate, but all agree that Craig was convincing and Hitchens was not.

Craig was also more convincing than Carrier in their debate, a fact conceded by Carrier himself, which was a nice moment of honesty and humility.

So one wonders (1) why do inferior debaters go up against a formidable philosopher and debater like Craig (Carrier said it was to hone his own arguments), and (2) whether the debates are very useful in changing anyone's minds? I can't help feeling that the adversarial nature of even a friendly debate is counter to what I as a christian should be trying to do, which is "speak the truth in love" and build bridges rather than barriers.

[jim_s]

Here's a review of the Craig-Hitchens debate which concludes by saying that Hitchens won. Although he also points out that Hitchens never made a coherent argument, and Craig made several that Hitchens never effectively refuted. I guess he means that Hitchens won in the rhetoric department.

bighollywood.breitbart.com/dtennapel/2009/04/08/does-god-exist-hitchens-vs-craig/

[unkleE]

Apr 25, 2009 11:29:44 GMT jim_s said:

Here's a review of the Craig-Hitchens debate which concludes by saying that Hitchens won. Although he also points out that Hitchens never made a coherent argument, and Craig made several that Hitchens never effectively refuted. I guess he means that Hitchens won in the rhetoric department.

I thought that was a very fair review. Positives for christians were statements like these:

"Christopher Hitchens ..... was warmly embraced by a crowd who generally disagreed with him even as he hurled the worst insults at God .... This is the demonstration of class and restraint I’ve noticed from a conservative Christian culture that has a much better record of tolerance than the liberal non-Christian culture."

"Dr. Craig won the argument (he was the only one who even presented a formal argument)"

"Hitchens did not make a case for atheism at all."

But more interesting to me were his statements about what criteria should be used in assessing the merits of the overall cases presented:

"In modernity, having the right arguments isn’t enough. More than ever, we are accustomed to disengaging our rational center to embrace an artful presentation." I think he should have said "postmodernity", but it is an interesting statement.

"though Dr. Craig won the argument (he was the only one who even presented a formal argument), Hitchens won the debate. It’s not the argument of the debaters, it’s the condition of the audience that wins the day. ..... Dr. Craig’s arguments are true and well-reasoned [but] difficult to comprehend on a first hearing. Hitchens’ arguments are what we’ll find spoken against God on prime time television, at the water-cooler ..... Culture generally makes Hitchens’ argument by default."

"I think if there were atheists in the audience on the brink of salvation that Dr. Craig’s well-argued positions would find little purchase. Opposite that, the room of Christians would likely have a large segment of doubters, and the cultural arguments against God presented by Hitchens would likely change more minds in my opinion."

I don't know if this is correct, but it is certainly interesting. Mostly the shoe is on the other foot - mostly we hear scientific atheists condemning christians for not using reason. That is "modern" thinking. But here, it is the christian using "modern" thinking and the atheist using "postmodern" thinking.

I think we need to really consider these matters. I've felt for a while that while the "four horsemen" and their acolytes were appealing to the relatively small number of logical modernists in our western societies, they were tending to turn off and lose the much larger number of less logical postmodernists. We christians need to find approaches that allow us to engage with both modernists and postmodernists without turning off the other. Whether Craig needed to do that in this debate depended on the make-up of the audience, which of course he couldn't know, but may have been able to guess.

[bjorn]

I think the challenge here is to make what you say sound like the truth. It is not sufficient to be rational, you need to be reasonable.

And if it comes to a fight between the rational and the reasonable, the latter wins every time.

That's why Craig and others need to read Chesterton.