Saturday 20 February 2010

dinesh vs loftus

the debate between john loftus and dinesh dsosa is online for people to listen to. Now john didn't do as bad as some people are saying, however i will try and give a fair review:

John
Johns opening speech was amazing - my only critisim is that he quotes a beker person who says that history is all in the mind. later on in the debate loftus claims that he doesnt agree with beker which makes me wonder why he used arguments in his opening statement which he himself doesnt agree with. Surly there are enough good arguments for athism without having to use arguments you dont like.

John says that history is an invalid subject but then claims he can know that jesus was a doomsday prophet, that the spanish inqisition took place etc. you cant claim history is invalid only to use it yourself. if i were john i would have accepted history and then brought up the similarities between jesus and mithras.

John understandably sounded pissed of. rather than calling dinesh brainwashed (even if thats true) he should have answerd his non-arguments.

loftus claimed that he became an atheist after reading lots of books. this is not true - he became an atheist after comiting adultery and getting pissed of with his church. John claims that was once a top apologist and if he was then john must have read lots of atheist books before becoming an atheist and had no problem with these books when he was a christian.

Johns closing statment was incoherent and i didnt undertstand what he was saying.

Dinesh
he was comiting logical fallacys left right and center. his jokes werent funny and he had no arguments. he misquoted steven hawking because hawking does not believe in a singularity model. Dinesh also acused john of lying which is unfair - ok john was overstating his case in saying that all cosmologists agree with his quantum tuneling model of the universe but this isnt lying.

So to conclude. john didnt win the debate but dinesh lost it.