Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7aiBbA8_Fg
Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29HxzgqlWrM
What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.
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6 comments:
A very worthwhile watch... Hitchens confronts a real foul-mouthed playground bully type who would rattle any lesser debater with his ferocious and unceasing ad hominem attacks. Hitchens keeps cool, never loses his sense of humor or his faculty for finding the flaw, noting the irony and dispelling the fallacy. He had to know he was setting foot in enemy territory by debating Donohue in a Catholic church.
Very instructive if you wish to be prepared to argue with someone who mainly throws rocks and will concede no point - you must win the audience. Hitchens manages to elicit significant tracts of applause from Donohue's constituents.
Sample some other YouTube videos with Donohue in them - old age has not mellowed him at all. I'd say Hitchens handled him as well as anyone could have.
You said it all. A perfect example of someone being completely outclassed on every level
What's I like about this one is it's the earliest CH religion debate I've seen. This is pre-Letters to a Young Contrarian.
Almost all of CH's later familiar arguments are laid out in nascent yet still biting form.
CH wrote up a review of the debate for Free Inquiry's Summer 2000 edition, describing his experience of "a real whiff of old-style Francoism, rather as I imagine it would be to argue with Patrick Buchanan when he was on acid."
Thanks Rodney, here's the link
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=hitchens_20_3
I agree with the prior comments and would add that the priest "moderator" failed miserably in making no effort to curb Donahue's vitriol even after boasting that the debate's namesakes conducted themselves with "civility and gentlemanly charm" and never uttered a single word in "acrimony or animus."
Ken
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