The Plc wrote:The full debate was so surreal that it was like watching an episode of Father Ted, or an episode of the Simpsons where they mock an extreme caricature of some foreign cultural quirk. I really hoped for the debaters sake that the format was something cultural that I'm just not familiar with at all.
Craig was disappointing, and I've never really watched any of his debates in full, so my expectation going into the debate was that he would demonstrate these world class debating and rhetorical sophistry skills that he seems to have a reputation for, even on atheist blogs and forums. The fallacies were so large that an ocean liner could have been put through them, and indeed, as in the above clip,
Dawkins did do with rather simple clarity and elegance. And then there was his final comment end, when he came close to a hissy fit, sniping over
Dawkins' supposed bigotry in his anti-religious speech the day earlier. He picked up on
Dawkins' point that our purposes are constructed and subjective, arguing that only god and religious can provide objective purpose, but missing the point that until you demonstrate that this god and objective purpose actually exist, then these ideas of theistic purpose are entirely constructed and subjective as well. Those weren't the arguments of a sophisticated philosopher and academic, but the wishful thinking of a desperately lost and frustrated child.
And who else failed to supress a guffaw when the other theist debater described C.S Lewis as a 'great Christian thinker'? Pfft.
It's unsurprising, really. They bring nothing new to debates. Recycling the same old arguments, from and to appeal to emotion, what else.
One of my early observation, when I started watching debates by the dozen, just barely over a year ago, was that almost all the loud ones, the screamers, are on the theistic side. People like
D'Souza,
Chopra or
Boteach think if they are louder they're smarter and what they say magically becomes fact. The only "over-zealous" speaker I've heard, and keep hearing with pleasure, on the atheistic/scientific side is
Neil deGrasse Tyson. But, unlike the theists, in their fervor, who don't actually say anything worthwhile, not to someone who relies on reason, Tyson and Co. are simply passionate about something that IS, something that exists, and not something they (desperately) wish would exist.
I'd also like to ask the Hitch how many times he's been through the Hitler, Stalin, Mao...etc. argument. Just another example of how the theistic side cannot manage to bring anything new to the table. They never could.
They simply reworded already existing, equally baseless arguments that neglect science and scientific facts on the subject matter of the argument. Ontological arguments, intelligent design...etc. all seemingly elaborate ploys to try to push their view into schools and try to make them appear valid and new, when they're transparent, and are clearly nothing worth a breath more.
by 
Bookmarking for tomorrow, not really having coffee at 11pm 
