Refuting the Proselytizers: Hitchens Shows the Way
It's Zombie Worship Eve for the freakazoids, so as a public service we bring you Christopher Hitchens demolishing a pathetic proselytizer.
Courtesy PZ Myers at Pharyngula:
I have encountered this pathetic rhetorical game so often…it's one of Ray Comfort's favorite tools. Christian goes up to a stranger, and says he'd like to play a "what if" game with you. What if there was a god, and the ten commandments were his rules? Do you agree that if they're real, you'd deserve to go to hell? But look, Jesus says you don't have to, if you believe in him! Isn't that nice of him? It's all a stupid con — they ask you to hypothetically accept their premises, then lead you through a script which they demand that you answer in agreement at every step, and then at the end of their absurd, comical series of weird demands, they tell you that you've agreed that Jesus is your savior. Every year at our county fair they have their "Are you going to heaven or hell" booth that tries to bamboozle kids with this spiel, and I thoroughly detest and despise them.
Todd Friel, one of those glassy-eyed glad-handing used-car-salesmen of the soul types, tried to pull this same routine on his radio show…on Christopher Hitchens. Listen as Hitchens simply refuses to follow the script, and keeps on bringing up objections to the sloppy logic of the radio show host. Friel can't cope; he's like a dumb robot who can't comprehend anything outside the narrow scope of its programming, and keeps trying to shoo the Hitch back onto his preplanned track. Friel sounds like a fool, which is great, since he is one.
Part One:
Part Two:
Thanks to PZ commenter Frank Voeth, here's the interview on MP3.
Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....
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5 comments:
So that's what is meant by a "contrarian"....
I gotta give Friel one kudo (is that possible? I've only ever heard the word as a plural): He had the nerve to pick an adversary as worthy as Hitchens. But in the end, Hitchens carries the day. I mean, for a schlemiel like Friel, this would be a little like inviting Satan on your program.
I bet, though, that Friel actually thinks he won the game. No way to know without asking him, but I'd just bet that Friel, and any listener who thinks like him, thought it was a victory for the gawd squad.
Thanks for posting this, though - I don't really like Hitchens, except when he does stuff like this. Which is to say, eviscerate a self-involved nitwit.
Didn't see it; can't watch the vid-link. This was two losers appearantly trying to one-up the other loser.
Hitchens outta pick on someone his own size. x-ian fish-bait are renouned for stupid. Their (all of 'em in a group photo) is included with the definition on Wiki.
Meh, the problem with Hitchens is that when he picks on someone his own size, he invariably loses.
What can I say? I hate the man, although mainly for political reasons.
Welcome, Chemist!
Yeah, Hitchens made my permanent shit list with his Iraq War humping and general apologizing for Smirky-Darth's torture. And in debates on those subjects with his intellectual peers he usually lost.
But among the freakazoid proselytizers there is no one within an order of magnitude of Hitch's intellect, yet they are so good at using gross illogic to frustrate the normally intelligent into the screaming meemies, that I greatly appreciate Hitch's willingness to do the dirty work.
Point taken.
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