Apparently I'm posting videos all this week (I have one for tomorrow too unless our friendly neighborhood CandyMan has something to say).
Last January Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach debated the question "Does God Exist?" at New York's 92nd Street Y. The event was hosted by Dr. Neil Gillman (not to be confused with the legendary Neil Gaiman).
While at times interesting I found the debate had more entertainment value than intellectual value. In my opinion Hitchens really rips Boteach to shreds, but that may just be my confirmation bias talking.
Who do you think won this one?
(Run time 1 hr 34 mins)
15 comments:
>not to be confused with the legendary Neil Gaiman).
you know, I'm always getting them confused
I don't think its your bias, i heard some rabbis simply state that this is NOT Boteachs strength. He should stick to what he is good at :)
It's been a while since I viewed this debate, but from what I remember, Rabbi Boteach's arguments boil down to atheism is depressing and Hitchens is a fundamentalist (and he displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how natural selection works). I feel bad for Boteach and the others who have debated Hitchens. Not only are they up against a top notch debater, but the facts are against them. They are reduced to name calling and appeals to emotion.
"Not only are they up against a top notch debater, but the facts are against them. They are reduced to name calling and appeals to emotion."
Sometimes he can debate better than he can think or know what he's talking about. The facts are very uncomfortable to atheists which is why they are angry. Although Hitchens is perhaps angry by nature.
The facts are very uncomfortable to atheists which is why they are angry.
I (an atheist/agnostic/apatheist/whatever) am comfortable with the facts that I'm aware of (care to cite any that would make me uncomfortable?) and I'm not an angry guy. The angry atheist stereotype isn't worthy of an intelligent person, such as yourself.
Hitchens and people like him are neglecting something I've said before elsewhere.
G-d serves a purpose in human affairs.
Case 1: No higher powers, man versus man.
The winner is whoever survives the fight. Strength, speed, willingness to strike, etc. The law of the jungle applies. No one person's word is more important inherently as all are equally human and mortal. The only thing that gives rise to more importance for some is that a relatively more powerful group says so.
Case 2: Higher power presumed, man versus man
Higher power is posited to say or believe something, can't prove it, but why risk it?
Threshold of risk now higher as there may be retribution for indiscretion.
Hitchens arouses murderous rage in some of his opponents. He is either alive because his opponents believe G-d exists and says it is wrong to kill him or alive because no one has crossed the line yet.
The majority of humans believe in higher powers and these very beliefs function much as mom does between two quarrelsome kids. Mom might spank you, or might not. If mom doesn't exist, why not beat sister with a stick?
The minute the whole world ceases in believing anything beyond themselves, more powerful than themselves, and believes with certainty that everyone is totally equal at the same starting line, is the moment the world engages in a mutual showdown at the OK Corral.
"I (an atheist/agnostic/apatheist/whatever) am comfortable with the facts that I'm aware of (care to cite any that would make me uncomfortable?) and I'm not an angry guy. The angry atheist stereotype isn't worthy of an intelligent person, such as yourself."
Jonathan I didn't say you are angry or that most atheists are but that the ones who engaged in this warfare are. They could make the same level of nonnoise as with their reaction to flat earthers but they don't because they get serious challenges. As for the evidence. It basically lands up like this. We have a universe with amaazing properties. It and its constituents should not have been and once they had started to be made they should have ended. Consciousness in the universe keeps on showing itself as a possible necessary property of reality itself. Certainly whatever we define as a measurement does. To top it all off and this disturbs me as I don't want to believe and therefore do not believe in such a universe but unless we can explain it away the universe aligns itself with the earth and solar system.
suitepotato,
Case 1: No higher powers, man versus man.
The winner is whoever survives the fight. Strength, speed, willingness to strike, etc. The law of the jungle applies.
What this misses is that civilized behavior is actually an evolutionary advantage. The enhanced cooperation possible in a civilization allows those willing to play nicely a better chance of passing on their genes by improving the average lifespan. The law of the jungle is only beneficial to a select few.
rabban gamliel,
I'm not familiar with the evidence that consciousness is necessary to the universe though I would be interested if you can provide some pointers. However, I don't see how any of what you mention would entail a theistic god who intervenes in the universe.
"What this misses is that civilized behavior is actually an evolutionary advantage. The enhanced cooperation possible in a civilization allows those willing to play nicely a better chance of passing on their genes by improving the average lifespan. The law of the jungle is only beneficial to a select few."
And if you are one of them? Everything lands up being called an Evolutionary advantage when it is a property of the species so the theory goes on. Fine.
"rabban gamliel,
I'm not familiar with the evidence that consciousness is necessary to the universe though I would be interested if you can provide some pointers. However, I don't see how any of what you mention would entail a theistic god who intervenes in the universe."
You are unfamilar with Quantum Mechanics? The world when measured becomes real. What's a measurement? Good question. Read up about conciousness and Quantum Mechanics.
http://quantumenigma.com/bookdescription.html
If the universe is more than the sum of its parts than there is more to it than meets the eye.
You are unfamilar with Quantum Mechanics? The world when measured becomes real.
I'm not sure what you mean by "real." It's not a scientific term. QM is neither miracle nor magic. It's just physics.
If the universe is more than the sum of its parts than there is more to it than meets the eye.
There's no evidence that "the universe is more than the sum of its parts." But there is mounting evidence that everything is made of little tiny parts, and those parts interact in a predictable way.
"The Candy Man said...
You are unfamilar with Quantum Mechanics? The world when measured becomes real.
I'm not sure what you mean by "real." It's not a scientific term. QM is neither miracle nor magic. It's just physics."
It's simple until a measurement is made all exists in probabilities not with a singular reality. That type of real is scientifically meaningful.
"If the universe is more than the sum of its parts than there is more to it than meets the eye.
There's no evidence that "the universe is more than the sum of its parts.""
Yes there is. We can't explain everything by reducing them to their physical parts.
"But there is mounting evidence that everything is made of little tiny parts, and those parts interact in a predictable way."
Those tiny litte parts act in predictable ways on the grandscale together. In any event this isn't a matter of predictable or not. G-d is not the absence of science.
My thoughts were the similar to Candyman's. Our bias toward determinism makes us uncomfortable with the a world defined by probabilities. I'm not sure that we can argue that the world is less "real" until it coalesces into a single outcome.
I'm also not yet convinced that emergence is more than saying we don't understand the middle stage between all the little parts and the big phenomena that we observe. Emergence, the way some use the word, is defined by our own inability to understand how the sum of the parts adds up to the whole. Some day we may be able to understand, for example, how billions of neurons add up to human consciousness.
Anyway, these ideas are still a long way from even hinting that there's a God who cares what you eat for breakfast.
"I'm not sure that we can argue that the world is less "real" until it coalesces into a single outcome."
Well if before you have probability, by definition what is real before is only the probability. My own view is that a measurement is not defined by this or that mechanism but is rather what you would find if you measured something so that before and after here is theoretical.
"Some day we may be able to understand, for example, how billions of neurons add up to human consciousness."
Neurons can serve as a vehicle for it but consciousness doesn't look like a neuron and since measurement may require consciousness we further see consciousness as the starting point of our reality. If reality exists but no one can know what do we mean it exists?
"Our bias toward determinism makes us uncomfortable with the a world defined by probabilities."
You misunderstand. The world is not defined by the probabilities before the measurement it is the probabilities, the possibilites. The cat is both dead and alive untill observed one way or the other.
Boteach got smeared and made a fool of himself towards the end with the I believe in a God who... and nonJew on shabbas bet. On the whole embarrassing.
Boteach convinced me there is no God. Thanks Rabbi!
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