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Reblogged: DEBATE: Dinesh D’Souza vs. Andrew Bernstein—Christianit

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Just watched the debate. There seemed to be quite alot of a discussion of metaphysics. Which seemed to be not in accordance with the question at hand, though I think both parties deemed fundamental to the debate overall. I think Bernstein had some missed opportunities in that line of discussion to include that logically why a universe exists is not a valid question. Reason (big r) shows why, how the universe exists is a valid inquiry, but that even the suggestion of why the universe exists, denies primacy of existence.

Edited by tadmjones
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Ninth Doctor, and everyone else.

You can link to a specific time in a youtube video by adding #t=?m?s to the end of the address with the question marks replaced with the numbers you want for minutes before 'm' and for second before 's'.

 

I know its not totally on topic, but while D.D is good at paraphrasing wiki examples of logical fallacies his straight man act isn't very entertaining.

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Ninth Doctor, and everyone else.

You can link to a specific time in a youtube video by adding #t=?m?s to the end of the address with the question marks replaced with the numbers you want for minutes before 'm' and for second before 's'.

Is it that you want references for the comments I made? "Bernstein's Wager" comes about 40 minutes in, that's the only note I made and I'm not planning to go through the whole thing again.

 

I know its not totally on topic, but while D.D is good at paraphrasing wiki examples of logical fallacies his straight man act isn't very entertaining.

I gather D.D = Dinesh D'Souza, it took me a minute to figure out who you meant. Anyway, he's obviously active on the lecture circuit, with lots of debates loaded to YouTube with thousands of views. Somebody must like him. BTW, here's a funny little sidelight: I first heard of Dinesh because his book Illiberal Education was carried by Second Renaissance Books back in the early nineties.
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<snip>

And now it's up on YouTube. D'Souza used most of the material I predicted he'd use above. Bernstein did a good job with the "atheist regimes" one, his approach was much quicker and just as effective as what I suggested. He just said he was willing to agree that Christianity was second worst, after Marxism, and that since Dinesh had in effect conceded that Christianity was bad, Bernstein had won the debate. Well played. Overall though, I felt Bernstein was hit and miss.

<snip>

If you are familiar with Objectivist principles, agreed, Bernstein had won the debate. The performance D'Souza gave would probably be more persuasive or plausible to those not familiar with nuances in logic or of being principled upon principle.

Peikoff, on one of his ARI lectures, spoke of entering into a conversation about a debate with the religious perspective. He asked the religionist if he were willing to give up his theistic beliefs if they could be shown to be irrational, while indicating that if the religionist could demonstrate beyond a reasonable shadow of doubt that the theistic beliefs have merit, he would be willing to adopt them. When the religionist said he would not, Piekoff pointed out that there was no sense to pursuing it then.

Edited by dream_weaver
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