I started watching the recent debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Dan Dennett at Tufts (video here). I didn't make it all the way to the end, finding myself very early on generally disappointed at the level of the discussion. In this debate, as in most recent debates on theism I've witnessed, nothing new appears on the stage.

The question to be debated is whether God is a human invention. Dennett's opening presentation failed to bring any structure or substance to that question, focusing instead on whether world religions should be a curriculum requirement and then trying to shift the debate to whether religion is a human invention. D'Souza is--as we should all know by now--a simple-minded thinker who recycles the most naive versions of theistic, pro-religion (pro-Christianity) arguments. The first cause, the Anthropic Principle, intelligence can't come from material nature, atheism is also a religion, science is also based on faith, science can't explain morality or free will, etc. He throws out these "arguments" rapidly in all directions, with no unifying purpose except to overwhelm the listener with barrage of nonsense. Some listeners might find a large number of rapid-fire bad arguments to be more convincing than a small number of good arguments. But Dennett--as we should all know by now--isn't one of those listeners. Yet, he goes on the defensive as though he needs to address nearly every bit of nonsense. I would rather that he had taken control of the debate, choosing one point to champion and then provide some substantive thinking on the matter. Dennett has a body of work from which to do just that. D'Souza is unable to handle any truly deep thinking about these matters and would have been quickly overwhelmed himself.

I suppose the nature of the debate forum itself limits the degree to which substantive discussion can surface. But I can't help but feel that Dan Dennett has met Bizarro-Dennett, and on such an occasion there can be no Hegelian synthesis.

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