Audio from the Hitchens/Dembski Debate November 20, 2010

Audio from the Hitchens/Dembski Debate

By Guest Contributor
November 20, 2010

Did you miss the Christopher Hitchens/William Dembski debate yesterday?

Reader Chuck was nice enough to make an MP3 audio recording from the live video feed, and you can download it here. There are a few “breaks” in the audio thanks to the poor feed, but it’s pretty decent quality.

The “official” recording should be on the church’s website sometime next week.

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  • Matto the Hun

    I <3 U Chuck!

  • Maliknant

  • I’m currently re-uploading the audio to my own site so you don’t have to deal with the BS on that other site. The whole thing will be available in about half an hour here.

  • incunabulum

    Is Dembski reading? I may have to switch to the youtube version.

  • Demsbki was mostly reading, yes. It was … frustrating.

  • Akheloios

    I watched it live (Huzza! for the UK time difference), the school really seemed keen on presenting themselves as giving both sides of the debate. Which I thought was a good start at least.

    That Dr. Dembski rollled out nothing but canard and bad science just showed how hard it must be to present a debate without actively coaching in the favour of their favoured side.

    Kudos to the school, I’m glad the kids saw something interesting that may well give them an anchor point of rationality and science to build on, as Chris Hitchens repeatedly exhorted them to do.

  • Ignore my previous post… I accidentally unplugged the hard drive with the file on it while I was uploading. I’ll have to rehost it later. My bad.

  • hipopotamo

    The video on YouTube is not complete… Too bad because even the “slow” start was good!

  • littlejohn

    It was pleasantly surprising that Hitchens got some applause when he made some of his better points. I thought the audience would be more hostile.
    It was a gutsy thing for the school to do. Surely they were aware of Hitchens’ prowess as a debater. Good on ’em.

  • BathTub

    Perhaps the video was still being uploaded, because it certainly appears complete now.

  • hipopotamo

    Ahem, nevermind my previous post. I found the missing links . Next time no surfing the net without eating first!

    Cheers from the Hippo

  • BathTub

    I enjoyed the debate, but I have to agree with some other comments I saw that the closing speaker/teacher giving his anti-atheist speech right before the prayer was a pretty shitty way of ending it.

  • captsam

    thank you Hemant & Chuck

  • Rabid

    Too bad because even the “slow” start was good!

    I’ll agree with you as long as we disregard Dumbski’s segments (not terribly difficult for me; I practically slept through them). He basically read a pre-prepared script (badly) while pretending he was actually debating.

    I feel sorry for the kids in the audience. If I remember correctly it was seventh graders, which wiki tells me is 12-13 yr olds. Whereas Hitchens, without speaking down to them, actually spoke to and engaged with them on a level that was pretty easy to follow, WD seems to just use it as a platform. I get the impression that he was speaking over the audience, with an eye on the later webcast exposure, rather than actually speaking TO them. I felt thoroughly insulted on their behalf.

    It was painful to watch him bumble through 5+ minutes of drivel where even I, as a 28 year old, was thinking “eh? Where the hell are you going with this… get to the bloody point… *snore*…”, just to hear the same old fallacious arguments rehashed.

    On a personal note, his constant use of phrases like “I know what you’re thinking” and “so as we all know” make my stomach churn.

    Hitchens, as usual, totally outclasses his opponent.

  • hipopotamo

    @Rabid
    Yes, I meant precisely that: Hitchens engaging the audience, making jokes about being the proverbial David being sacrificed to the young lion cubs, and then going into business with good enough definitions, using his glasses to look briefly at his notes and then taking them off to actually address the audience. Yes, slow (too much definitions for seven graders) but good.
    Yes, Dembski read everything, and well, everybody has commented about how that set the tone of the “debate” and foreshadowed the obvious outcome.

  • Okay… the link above should work now. For sure this time. Srs.

  • Bertram Cabot, Jr.

    Hitchen’s gung ho support for the Bush wars destroyed his credibility as far as I am concerned.

    You couldn’t kill Muslims fast enough to keep him happy.

    That, and his degrading remarks about the Jews, saying that if only they had been wiped out in the ancient wars “We could have been spared the whole thing.”, mark him as a bigot and make him a questionable example of an atheist to present to those kids.

    I thinks thats why he was picked.

  • Duo

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhv16xKYcrU

    Someone posted the video on YouTube.

  • hitchens is brilliant, engaging and gracious.

    dumbski is incapable of merely reading his own drivel.

  • Thanks, Maliknant. Now I can watch it later today when I have more time.

  • Ha! Dembski was really boring me, but then he gave a shout out to my Bio professor (go Provine!), and I was suddenly enjoying this debate so much more. I have to point out, though, that when Provine argues that people don’t have free will, he isn’t asserting that they aren’t responsible for their actions, but that when they do something wrong, such as breaking the law, they should not be punished, but rehabilitated. Which Dembski would have to disagree with, I guess, because suffering in Hell for all eternity is certainly not rehabilitation.

  • billybee

    Mr. Hitchens’ closing minutes nearly left me beside myself in consideration of how this world will be more than a bit colder once he is no longer among us. On the other hand, being witnesses to the construction of his legacy is a gift that only this generation will be privileged to partake in. Christopher Hitchens is this generations Robert Ingersol.

  • maddogdelta

    Did anyone else want to reach through their computer and slap dumbski for repeating the standard set of creationist canards that have been demonstrated to be false, repeatedly?

    Slapping through computer

  • ACN

    The video is now available on youtube.

  • ACN
  • Stephan

    The youtube videos have been taken down. Wonder why…

  • Steve

    The Debate has been posted at the “Ministry’S” website:

    http://www.pcawebcast.com/2010debate/

  • Ugh, if that idiot dwelled on if you’re Atheist, you have to believe in evolution one more time.

    Fact is, I was an Atheist for roughly a dozen years before giving any credence to evolution due to the deplorable education I got about it in school. I didn’t even realize that the claim wasn’t that we descended from monkeys but that we and they descended from a common ancestor. The internet has since educated me. Yay, science (even if I don’t understand you)!

    I also wanted to scream at all the big bang had to have a cause and couldn’t come from nothing bullshit while saying everything had to have a designer with no explanation of where the fuck this supposed designer came from then!

  • Slider33

    Quote by BathTub:

    “I enjoyed the debate, but I have to agree with some other comments I saw that the closing speaker/teacher giving his anti-atheist speech right before the prayer was a pretty shitty way of ending it.”

    I felt the same way, I was wondering if anyone else listened to the very end of the audio version.

    To paraphrase what I felt the speaker at the end was saying to the students:

    “We wanted to present you students with both sides and get you to think. But in case you’re having doubts now–ignore the atheist, the atheist hasn’t convinced *ME* yet little children. Let’s pray.”