Saturday, October 27, 2007

Is Religion the Problem

Dinesh D'Souza debated atheist writer Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great) at King's College the other evening. You can read D'Souza's summary of the proceedings at his blog and you can watch the entire debate here.

The topic of the debate was the question Is Religion the Problem? but in my opinion, that's the wrong topic for a debate between a theist and an atheist. The fundamental question which should be addressed is whether belief in God is reasonable. Contemporary anti-theists like to recite a litany of egregious historical shortcomings and crimes of the various world religions and use that as evidence to justify the conclusion that God does not exist. What often gets overlooked is that there's no logical connection between whatever atrocities of which votaries of some religion may be guilty and the matter of God's existence. The historical record only counts against, or in favor of, the truth of a particular set of religious beliefs about God.

Anyway, watch the video of the debate and decide for yourself who you think won.

RLC