This Thursday I am going to the Great Debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D'Souza. For those who do not know, D'Souza is a Christian apologist and Hitchens is his atheist counter-part. The debate is billed as asking whether religion (read: Christianity) has been good or bad for civilization. It has generated a great deal of interest here in Orlando, with over four thousand people registering to attend, many times more people than the organizers originally expected.

I am most interested in how Christopher Hitchens will present his arguments. I am already quite familiar with the Christian side of this debate, having read D'Souza's book What's So Great About Christianity and then teaching it to a small home group. And in another bible study, we have gone through I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. And as a part of that study we watched the debate between Chistopher Hitchens and Frank Turek.

So after all that study, I am convinced of both the historical accuracy and truth of the New Testament as well as the social benefits of Christianity on civilization. Hitchens, however, believes that religion in general and Christianity in particular has been a destructive evil and civilization is well to be rid of it. So I am curious to know what evidence Hitchens has and what reasoning he will use to show the evilness of Christianity.

I am afraid he was not terribly convincing in the Turek debate, seeming to rely on general accusations and insults, avoiding or ignoring any issues raised by his opponent, and otherwise not actually answering the question of the debate. I rather expect him to use the same tactic, but it would be nice to see the pattern established. It might be time to obtain a copy of God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and see if he is any more reasoned when he has time to put his thoughts in order.

Meanwhile, I expect D'Souza to show up with statistics, historically verified facts, and common sense and debate straight from his book, which addresses debate's question directly. I don't expect Hitchens to be impressed with D'Souza's arguments, but I would like to see if he actually refutes them or if he dismisses them with a snide comment and moves on. I also want to see how D'Souza approaches Hitchens. Turek seemed to be somewhat out of sorts trying to debate someone who wasn't actually debating anything and I want to see how D'Souza handles that.

Post debate analysis to follow this weekend.