I have returned from the Great Debate and I am rather disappointed in both sides. The first part of the debate mostly consisted of D'Souza and Hitchens making assertions. They rarely addressed anything brought up by their opponent, and provided little, if any, reasoning or evidence for their beliefs. In this regard, I think D'Souza did slightly better than Hitchens, but I could only understand his arguments because I had read his book What's So Great About Christianity. I can only guess at Hitchens line of reason, because it was never stated.

Which puts my predictions for the debate way off. Hitchens made no personal attacks, and only a few sarcastic remarks, some of them directed at the moderator. Hitchens was definitely the more entertaining of the debaters. I do, however, give the money quote of the debate to D'Souza. Towards the end of the debate, each person was allowed to ask their opponent one question. Hitchens asked if D'Souza would rather Hitchens stay an atheist, or convert to some non-Christian religion, like Islam. S'Souza's reply: "It's much safer to debate you as an atheist than a Muslim."

I thought there were a number of fallacies and historical in Hitchens assertions, but D'Souza never dug into them. And D'Souza's arguments were not as strong as they could have been. He could have used some additional evidence and reasoning.

The last part of the debate was a little more lively. The moderator took a few questions from the audience, and Hitchens or D'Souza gave a short answer, and then the other gave a short rebuttal, and they did a bit of back and forth until the moderator cut them off. This is where Hitchens made some of his more egregious claims (the Nazis were a Christian group, the Communist founded a state church based off Eastern Orthodoxy to worship Stalin) that just don't stand up to the historical test. I'm not going to analyze or refute Hitchens' arguments until I've had a chance to read God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, since I really don't know more about Hitchens' position except that he believes every evil in the world is caused by religion and he thinks that religion is immoral because of it. So I want to get his take on that where he has a chance to explain in detail his beliefs.

It was an interesting debate, but I didn't really learn anything from it. I'd heard most of the arguments from both sides before, and without much explanation for their assertions, the ones that were new didn't mean much to me. It was more to see how the two men debated than to really learn anything. It looks like formal debates are terrible forums for either informing or persuading.