Over at Townhall, Dinesh D’Souza carefully reaches through his fly with a pair of tweezers and tries to pull out his penis, much like a kid attempting the “remove wrenched ankle” maneuver in a game of Operation. The nerve-wracking procedure is a success, allowing him to piss on America’s shoes, then complain that we didn’t tip him for the shine.
If you haven’t seen my “God v. Atheism” debate with philosopher Daniel Dennett, you can view it at Tothesource.org.
And if you’re the sort of person who would enjoy streaming video of Dinesh D’Souza hectoring an elderly atheist, you could also go hereand find a list of professionals who will beat you about the buttocks and thighs with a rattan cane and put binder clips on your scrotum. But in Dinesh’s favor, his debate video is free.
You should read the comments in response to the debate both on my AOL blog as well as on the atheist site richarddawkins.net. From the atheists you hear statements like this: “D’Souza is a goddamned idiot.” “Odious little toad.” “D’Souza is full of s**t.” “A smug, joyless twit.” “Total moron.” “Little turd.” “Two-faced liar.” Etc, etc.
As you can see, Dinesh doesn’t need to employ a professional dominatrix, because whenever he wants to be reminded that he’s a bad boy in severe need of correction, he has only to express his asinine opinions on the internet. The result is sort of like those sacks of pricey swag that celebrities receive for attending media events, except instead of Fendi sunglasses and bottles of botanical dog shampoo, Dinish is feted with the finest in verbal abuse; and it’s all free!
Now admittedly the topic of God v. atheism can be an emotional one, but you will find no comparable invective on the Christian side. Why then are so many atheists so angry?One reason I think is that they are God-haters.
Yeah, that must be it. And since Dinesh is God’s appointed spokesperson on Earth, he’s gotta take the heat. It’s exactly like being Dana Perino. Except shorter. And with at least a vague idea of what the Cuban Missile Crisis was.
Atheists often like to portray themselves as “unbelievers” but this is not strictly accurate. If they were mere unbelievers they would simply live their lives as if God did not exist. I don’t believe in unicorns, but then I haven’t written any books called The End of Unicorns, Unicorns are Not Great, or The Unicorn Delusion.
True. But then, people who do believe in unicorns haven’t been running the government for the past 7 years, launching elective wars and undermining civil liberties because the terrorists hate us for our mythical horned horses, or declaring, in Mitt Romney’s famous phrase, “Freedom requires unicorns just as unicorns require freedom.” Nor have they been appointing strict cryptozoologist judges to the Supreme Court in an effort to overturn Roe v. Wade, because abortion makes unicorns weep perfect teardrop pearls, or trying to raise a profitable panic about legal threats to our worship of forehead-enhanced ungulates.
Just for perspective, here’s the ad that accompanied Dinesh’s column on Townhall:
Or, more in keeping with Dinesh’s irrefutable analogy:
Clearly the atheists go beyond disbelief; they are on the warpath against God. And you can hear their bitterness not only in their book titles but also in their mean-spirited invective.
If atheists would just accept the fact that this is a Christian nation established on Biblical principles by Founding Fathers who weremostly clerics, maybe they could relax and stop being such potty mouths.
Here is a second reason the atheists sound so angry. They are not used to having their sophistries exposed. For the past three years the new atheists have had a virtually free ride. Dawkins and Hitchens make outrageous claims (“religion poisons everything”) and media pundits like Lou Dobbs and Tim Russert fawn all over them.
Since Hitchens also went on cable TV and made outrageous claims about the necessity of going to war with Iraq, and Dobbs and Russert fawned all over him about that, too, I’m going to hazard a guess that they’re not actually in love with atheism. They’re just in love with fawning.
But in the past few months I’ve been meeting the leading atheist spokesmen in open debate, and challenging them on the basis of the same reason and science and evidence that they say vindicates their claims.
After my first debate with Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptic magazine, several atheists on Dawkins’ site said, “Well, D’Souza won that debate, but wait till he meets Hitchens. Hitchens will wipe the floor with him. D’Souza RIP.” Then after I debated Hitchens the atheists said, “Oh no, this one didn’t go as planned. Hitchens didn’t do so well.” Another commented that atheists could not afford to lose two in a row.
To Dinesh D’Souza? The guy who, in Doghouse Riley’s immortal phrase, had his ”soul depantsed” on The Colbert Report? Thatguy?
Now after my Dennett debate, what’s the verdict?
I’m pretty sure that you and a variety of puppets fashioned from $2.99 per dozen tube socks from Target think you did splendidly.
Well, the audience was full of Dennett supporters who began with enthusiastic applause for him but, as the debate went on, fell largely silent.
I hear the same thing often happens to Washington Generals fans at Globetrotter games.
Several came up to me afterward and told me that I had won.
Atheists: Boiling with rage and loathing, they verbally scourge their opponents with vile and blasphemous obloquy. But they’re gracious in defeat.
Dennett himself seemed dispirited after the event.
Well, he had just spent the evening with Dinesh D’Souza.
Even so, when I posted the debate on my blog, the atheists went into damage control mode. The debate was instantly posted on atheist sites, and atheists rushed to my AOL blog to vote Dennett the winner. This effort gave atheists an early lead, but when the votes were tallied I was the victor.
Sure can’t argue with that kind of “reason and science and evidence.”
Interestingly my margin of victory was even bigger than that for the resolution, suggesting that several people voted that “God Is a Man-Made Invention” and still thought I won the debate.
Or you screwed up while Freeping your own poll.
A good way to assess a debate is to see what the partisans on each side say. Among Christians the verdict is unanimous.
You’re right, that was a good way to assess the debate. Can I go now?
Here’s a sample comment from a Townhall reader: “My heart went out to Professor Dennett because he was so totally over-matched in this debate You totally demolished him as you have the other atheists you have debated.” But all you have to do is to go to atheist sites to see that many atheists also think that I won, although this is sometimes very grudgingly admitted.
Dinesh had the statistics and links to substantiate his assertions, but they were lost in the crash of John Lott’s computer.
Here is a sampling of comments that I’ve taken from richarddawkins.net. ”I was at the debate and thought Dennett did not prove his point.” “I’m so tired of these D’Souza debates. The more people we send his way the larger his smile grows.” “I feel such debates should stop.” “I love Dennett’s ideas about atheism but I do think he handled this debate poorly against Dinesh.” “Ok, Dennett sucked…Dennett’s type of responses just made him look like an ass.” “Dinesh is an amazingly talented orator, considering how hopeless a case he is arguing.” “Hitchens has had a shot, as has Dennett, and neither has succeeded in demolishing D’Souza. D’Souza has a very effective debating technique. Not only did a lot of atheists get up and fire straw-man arguments at D’Souza that he was easily able to counter and make them look foolish, but Dennett…lost his composure and his train of thought.” “Let’s face it, this guy has taken our best shots and still come out looking good. Maddening.”
Why do these mash notes make me think that under Dinesh’s bed there’s a secret journal, its pages filled with doodles of stars and horses and daisies and signed with the looping, curlicued name, “Mr. Anne Coulter” over and over and over again?
So where does this leave the atheists?
Back in your sock drawer?
Otherwise the self-styled “brights” are going to face the empirical fact that when it comes to defending their views, atheists are basically losers. Remarkably, the “party of reason” is simply incompetent to vindicate those claims against an advocate of the “party of faith.” Now what could be more embarrassing than that?
Writing a column proving how cool you are by utilizing Jan Brady’s empirically proven “George Glass” Method?
Posted by scott on December 11th, 2007
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