Hitchens demonstrates again here the rhetorical skills that I so admire.
If you like, you can watch the video of D'Souza embedded below or you can trust that my descriptions and transcriptions are honest and accurate.
Among the things D'Souza says:
...I have just published a book about life after death...it's called Life After Death: The Evidence.
Got that? "Evidence."
...The atheist is posing as the champion of reason and science and evidence. I want to beginby showing that on an issue crucial to religion - is there life after death - the atheist is not only AS ignorant, but MORE ignorant than the religious believer.
D'Souza goes on to correctly describe how the atheist will disparage the view of the religious person who believes in life after death because a "holy book" SAYS there is life after death. He correctly describes the atheist reponse that the believer has access to no knowledge that can confirm the existence of life after death.
But what if we were to turn the camera around and say to Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris or Daniel Dennett: "Do you believe there is life after death?" They will say no!
Well this is very interesting. YOU haven't been to the other side of the curtain either, you haven't interviewed any dead guys! What information do YOU have that the religous believer does NOT have?! And the answer is none. And so the atheist and the believer are in exactly the same position. Both are making a truth claim and both are totally ignorant. Both are stating a belief on a position on which neither one has any evidence at all.
Dinesh isn't a stupid man, so I can only assume he is aware of what a bad straw man argument this is and is just an intellectually dishonest man.
But Hitchens responds to this dishonest argument more elgantly than I could.
I'm sorry, Dinesh:
Atheists do NOT say "we know there is no God."
We say, to the contrary, no argument and no evidence has ever been aduced that we consider to be persuasive.
There's no reason to beleve in evidence or argument, ontology or science.
The same with the afterlife. Of course we don't say that we KNOW there isn't one. We say that we don't know anyone who can bring any reason to think that there IS.
This is a very important distinction and it is very regretabble that you miss it and I'm sorry to say, Dinesh, that the immediate loser in an argument about things of which we can and can't be certain...where the only thing that IS certain in these laws is the principle of UNcertainty...the immediate loser, the man who has to leave the island (sorry Dinesh, again) right away almost, is the man who says "I already know all I need to know, I already have all the information I need- indeed I've been given it by a supernatural body."
Hitchens video embedded below:
"I can say with reasonable certainty: I don't think all this was undertaken so that one primate species on one small planet could hear the Pope telling them that AIDS may be bad, but that condoms are worse. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, what could be more self-flattering, pathetic, and yes, superstitious than that?"
An opinion poll conducted by the Focus magazine found that 56 percent of the 600 German participants have no confidence in the Church, which has been rocked by an unending stream of sex abuse allegations against priests.
Some 26 percent of the country's Catholic population is now considering quitting the Church, according to the study which is to be published in the magazine on Monday. The respondents said that this is regardless of the consequences of the move on their income tax.
On their INCOME TAX? Huh?
Germany is among a number of European countries that impose Church tax (8-9%) on followers of any religious congregation, unless a member officially quits their communion.
...and the German government gives the income from these taxes to the Church! Got that? The supposedly secular government collects tithes for the church!
An Italian Catholic Web site is claiming that a retired bishop has blamed the Jews for the current backlash against the church over sex abuse claims.
Giacomo Babini, 81, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, allegedly said in an article on the Pontifex Web site that he believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism of the church, considering how “powerful and refined” the criticism was.
“They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers,” he was quoted as saying.
However, Bruno Volpe, who interviewed Monsignor Babini for Pontifex, confirmed that the bishop had made the statement, which was reported widely in the Italian press today. Pontifex threatened to release the audio tape of the interview as proof
Pope Benedict XVI's personal preacher on Friday likened accusations against the pope and the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal to "collective violence" suffered by the Jews.
...what? The "collective violence" endured by the world's Jews can largely be traced to the Catholic church's holding Jews collectively responsible for the death of Jesus. It wasn't until the Second Vatican Council (in the 1960s) that the Church decided that maybe this wasn't quite fair.
So, I think that pretty much means that Raniero Cantalamessa (the aforementioned priest making this comparison) and the rest of the Catholic church may have a bit of a screwy idea of what persecution actually IS.
Again, the church isn't under attack. Priests committed horrible crimes against children. The Church systematically and by policy covered it up. Wanting to hold the criminals and those who protected them from justice is not persecution of the church.
To make such a comparison is not only disgusting, but shows how outrageously out of touch the church is with the real world.
"I'm sad for the priests, for the hierarchy taking so much grief," says 80-year-old Nancy Caruso, who regularly attends Mass in Boston's North End. "I'm sad for the pope. It's happened. Nobody wanted it to happen, but let's move on. Let's not forget the tenets of our religion."
Which tenets of the religion indicate that this should be set aside, Nancy? You're sad for the priests who raped children or those in the hierarchy who covered it up? How about being sad for their victims?
In this NPR story, one Catholic student, Mike somebody, says (at 1m44s):
"...I definitely don't think things should be swept under the rug- at the same time I hope this doesn't turn into another Salem witch hunt."
[blink]
Mike, you must not be much of a student, because your analogy is backwards. The Salem witch trial are an example of what happens in the ABSENCE of due process and religious extremists are allowed to hold far too much power. What victims are asking for is due process.
"We have had FAR more horrendous times in the history of the Church. Not just the Renaissance, but other times as well, where the papacy was, you know, in REALLY corrupt state. So, to suggest that this is equivalent to some of those situations is way out of proportion."
Because the Church has done much WORSE things in times when it had more power and less transparency, this isn't such a big deal?
So, Sister is using a history of atrocities and corruption in the Church to excuse ones which are, today, better hidden. Shame on her for her appalling moral relativism. The Church covered up the rape of children. In what world is that anything less than completely unacceptable?
