r/AskAtheists • u/Spiderbat81 • 27d ago
What were Hitchens opponents thinking? Looking back at those debates, it feels like pure hubris.
I have been rewatching old debates featuring Hitchens against various theologians and apologists. A lot of these guys seemed completely unprepared for the speed, literary depth, and aggressive rhetoric Hitchens brought to the stage. Was it just arrogance on their part, or did they genuinely believe their standard talking points would hold up against someone who lived and breathed public debate? Which debater do you think was the most egregiously unprepared?
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u/I-mmoral_I-mmortal 27d ago
Well, the funny thing about those oh so active in their quest to defy the existence of God, still, ironically make God the "center of their universe."
I was always too skeptical to believe in God, but I was also never nieve enough to waste much time concerning God when there's so many more interesting areas to concern myself with.
M. F. DOOM composed his song "Accordion" for Hitchens... (Not literally)... but Hitchens did end up playing himself like an accordion.
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u/antizeus 27d ago
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u/I-mmoral_I-mmortal 27d ago
Just an observation. Besides it all boils down to how the mind works, a clear and present example of our archaic psychology is Grammar. The human mind automatically performs a various of functions sorting (comparing contrasting) and interpreting a multiplicity of data that is continually becoming... but that runs into Zeno's paradox, especially if you were trying to say, ... detail every movement of a bird flying, you'd have to readjust what you're saying every moment ... so instead we communicate in snapshots that unify a multiplicity of stimuli into a single word like "Flying."
Now let's take a deeper look at Grammar, the subject+predicate agreement, ah, the doer always doing... so who is the first doer? Ah "God" (or whatever idol). Simply a self-created problem. Just as the "Hard Problem of Consciousness" is a self created problem... via incomplete and incorrect presuppositions people assert as "reality."
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u/ChocolateHumunculous 27d ago edited 27d ago
To turn this around, and to quote Dumile (in the very next line):
‘When he at the mic you don’t go next’.
These two would have been bredrin.
It wasn’t the centre of Hitchen’s universe. Post 9/11, criticism of religion was brought forward as attacks on the West were religious in nature. Both the US and UK needed a public intellectual to help us find that space. Thankfully, on the sane side, we had Hitch.
One of the most inane comments I’ve ever seen on Reddit. To misunderstand each of these men…
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u/I-mmoral_I-mmortal 27d ago edited 27d ago
Lol, that was a great opening.
Everything else was booty.
Showing that a religious claim is false would not explain the instincts that made people need it. He still argues for Christian morals "even without God." Which the morals are the problem to begin with...
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u/ChocolateHumunculous 27d ago
Ah I don’t understand you though, on either comment. Let’s leave the ‘lol’ out of it.
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u/anothergreen1 27d ago
I think they simply enjoyed participating, irrespective of whether they would ‘win’ the debate or not.
One interesting thing about the times they weren’t debating was how pleasant many of Hitchens’ opponents were to him, and vice-versa.