Just watched the debate (direct link) from a couple of months ago. This is the first I have heard from both D’Souza and Hitchens and I am pretty impressed with the former; he’s a pretty sharp guy. I will let them speak for themselves, but being in the Roundtable I noticed a few things:

Maybe it’s me, but it seems like Hitchens doesn’t quite answer all the questions precisely and goes off on tangents. D’Souza did that a few times as well, but generally answered the questions very much to the point and only drifted off to answer Hitchens’ comments.

D’Souza didn’t use the bible at all in his debate, as he stated beforehand he wouldn’t. That’s a perfectly fine thing to do, as a matter of fact I love the arguments for God derived simply from logic. Some questions, however, are much easier to answer using the bible. One is the occurance of miracles. People like to question them, which is quite silly and shows the different presuppositions we function under.

1. God doesn’t exist
2. Miracles happen in the bible that are physically impossible
3. Therefore the bible/Christianity is wrong

It doesn’t take a philosophy degree to see the problem here. Independent from one’s own presuppositions, the situation taken in the context of the bible is this:

1. God exists
2. Miracles happen in the bible that are, at best, improbable
3. The bible is internally consistent

One cannot simply take the bible and its content, remove God, and question said content. It doesn’t make any sense, yet I still see it used.
Back to the debate and D’Souza not using the bible. The downside to using the bible is that it needs to be established as authoritative first, because most people don’t accept it as such, again mostly because they suppose it to be wrong/full of fairy tales from the start. In a recent discussion I had, this was still so after I gave a good amount of evidence for its authority or at least accuracy, without ever hearing a counter argument other than “it’s a fairy tale,” with an appeal to common knowledge: “Everyone knows that.”

Overall interesting debate to watch and I am looking forward to reading Dinesh D’Souza’s newest book.