For those of us who just can’t get enough of this stuff, there’s a new 2+ hours debate from Mexico between Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris (in one corner) against Shmuley Boteach, Dinesh D’Souza, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb (in the other):
PZ Myers at Pharyngula offers snarky summaries:
Shmuley Boteach: Yeesh. What an awful, screechy person. There is a god because evolution is impossible, and god is the only reason people are moral. Oh, and Hitler. Tiresome and cliched. Sam Harris (about 9 minutes in): There are only 3 ways to defend god: 1) argue that your specific religion is true; 2) or you argue that religion is useful; or 3) you attack atheism. Only (1) is valid. He brings up a beautiful metaphor: what would you think of a friend who announced that he was so happy because he was destined to marry Angeline Jolie [sic.]? The usefulness of this belief, or the idea that it makes him happy, is irrelevant against the falsity of the claim, yet this is the kind of argument defenders of religion always make.
Continue reading this at Pharyngula.