Who is the theist? I’ve actually seen Hitchens preform poorly in a number of debates with theists just because he doesn’t really give a damn about responding to their arguments because he rightly finds them so silly. Plus his focus is really on religion being bad more than religion being false and as such is rarely equipped to answer the more advanced theist arguments (like the say the fine-tunning of physical constants) in the way someone like Dawkins is.
(Edit- forget the question. I just read your reason for not naming him. Fair enough. But if you told someone who it was they could watch the debate and indicate to you whether or not you really ought to be worried. Particularly if you don’t end up debating him, we might get something out of watching him.)
I’ve done a service or two to atheism, and will do more services in the future, and those may well depend on this test of calibration.
Who is the theist? I’ve actually seen Hitchens preform poorly in a number of debates with theists just because he doesn’t really give a damn about responding to their arguments because he rightly finds them so silly. Plus his focus is really on religion being bad more than religion being false and as such is rarely equipped to answer the more advanced theist arguments (like the say the fine-tunning of physical constants) in the way someone like Dawkins is.
(Edit- forget the question. I just read your reason for not naming him. Fair enough. But if you told someone who it was they could watch the debate and indicate to you whether or not you really ought to be worried. Particularly if you don’t end up debating him, we might get something out of watching him.)
I realize it is a tradeoff.