Dan Barker vs. Dinesh D'Souza (UPDATE: audio available)
Posted on: April 22, 2008 - 4:41pm
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Dan Barker vs. Dinesh D'Souza (UPDATE: audio available)
They're debating tonight at Harvard University. Hopefully, they'll allow audio recordings, which I can then share. If not, I'll still be back with a general re-cap for anyone who's interested.
UPDATE:
I'm uploading the debate in 11 audio-only segments to my youtube channel.
http://youtube.com/user/eightfootmanchild
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Yes, either way, looking forward to it!
That was pitiful and frustrating. I started out with little respect for Dinesh D' Souza, and now I have none. It was a farce how little he answered of the questions posed to him. He's acting like a second rate politician -- always answering a question that wasn't asked.
Dan did a good job, yet I could tell he was a bit ruffled over the obfuscation of his unworthy opponent. Brian Sapient was right, and we have another example of the inherent dishonesty of theism.
Dinesh D' Souza as always, creates numerous straw men arguments that have no bearing on the question asked. Dinesh in every debate I have seen has never tried to actually address any of the real questions asked of him. He is very effective at hitting his talking points, dodging the question, and then reframing his answer in the form of a question back to his original questioner. While this is an effective political trick, it has no bearing in candid philosophical debate.
He starts out immediately by saying all scientists assume the universe is rational...and his irrationality begins. Dan Barker disputes this ridiculous assertion quite well and Dinesh equivocates to his statement to mean something different, as most of his future responses.
Dan Barker excellently pokes holes through Dinesh's idea that God can exist outside of time as utter absurdity, which it is.
Listening to these types of debates just makes me angry. Barker is there to debate and D'Souza is there to obfuscate, deliberately misconstrue, and lie.
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda
I could not give less of a shit whether D'Sousa lived, died, or fell off the planet. He's never offered anything but a snotty disdain for points of view contrary to his own, and he's never offered any rational argument for his own views. He panders to the religious, at his best nothing more than a talking head, and all to keep himself in beer and skittles.
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
How did you steal his water bottle? I'm not familiar with Dostyovsky's work, why did you have Dan Barker sign his book?
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda
After the debate, there were a bunch of people at the front of the altar (it took place in a church), meeting with the debaters. His water bottle was just sitting on a railing within arms reach, so I nabbed it.
The main reason I had Barker sign my copy of The Brothers Karamazov was because it was the only book I had with me. It didn't occur to me until after I got to the debate that one of the main subjects of the book, the existence of god, was appropriate for the evening.