The debaters are Christopher Hitchens, for atheism, and Douglas Wilson, for Christianity.
They first debated one another in a series of letters in Christianity Today; those letters were released in book form in September of last year.
Now, a film documentary is forthcoming in which the two men debate one another for three days in a variety of formal, informal, and personal settings.
According to a witness of the documentary process, Douglas Wilson is unfazed by Christopher Hitchens's well-known penchant for profanity and blasphemous humor. Wilson believes in humor and satirical exchange as a valuable method for apologetics.
Here are the goals that Wilson claims for his debates:
1) to protect and strengthen the faith of the believers who witness the interaction--care for the sheep before the wolves;
2)to rattle and shake the skepticism of those unbelievers present -- till soil and plant seeds;
3)to win the opponent himself.
I'm really looking forward to this documentary. I don't believe I've ever seen two expert debaters lock horns over faith and atheism. I may also have to go look up the Wilson/Hitchens book of letters.
4 comments:
JC Lamont posted a video debate between Hitchens and Christian Dr. Frank Turek on her blog Saturday. The entire thing is almost two hours long, but I was rivetted by Turek's argument.
Hitchens, not so much. He could say nothing to refute Turek's argument. The only thing Hitchens could do was bash organized religion and call himself intellectual.
LOL, Kat! That doesn't surprise me about Hitchens. On the rare occasions when I meet Hitchens-fans in everyday life, they don't have anything of substance to argue. They just say stuff for shock value and refuse to follow or acknowledge a logical line in a discussion.
I am going to check out JC's post after I get some stuff done - thanks for the tip!
The funny thing about atheists is that they consider themselves intellectual and "so much more educated."
I don't know how many times I've heard an atheist use the statistics: "Most believers have two years of college or less of education. Most atheists are professors, lawyers etc."
My thought is that those atheist professors are indoctrinating the malleable minds of these college students, and they continuing believing the tripe their atheist professors have taught them when they get out into the working world.
What this tells me is that Christian parents aren't building a stable enough foundation for their children to defend their faith when they get out into the world. (Oh, it hurts me to admit that.)
I don't care what they say; Atheism, itself, is a religion. They indoctrinate. They evangelize. They even have their own non-profit alliance. Hmmmm...sounds like a "church" to me.
OK. Sorry, my horns are showing. I'll get off my soapbox now.
I agree that kids don't have the foundation to withstand the assault of anti-Christian ideologies in the academic marketplace.
That's the thesis of They Like Jesus But Not the Church. He points to a number of key issues on which we need to have strong answers for very sophisticated questions from skeptics. He doesn't provide the exact answers, but that's because doing so would require several more volumes! He just indicates which areas need much more discussion and training, so that people really understand rather than just parroting shallow answers they've heard sometime.
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