Excellent production value.

Holy fuck this is long....but good

It is not easy to debate with a man such as Christopher Hitchens.

The audio went a little slower than the video by about 15 seconds at the end.

I watched a debate between these two where D'Souza actually kept up with Hitchens. Not this one. When these two debate, D'Souza always opens by saying he's not going to use the Bible in the debate; effectively "tying one hand behind his back." What you might think is a concession as D'Souza likes to make it seem, in fact, he knows the Bible is an unstable foundation to fight on as demonstrated here in this debate. Hitchens leads him in and scores big points in a fiery back and forth period. D'Souza is a worthy opponent for Hitchens though not this night. There are other debates between the two that you can find on here.

D'Souza accuses Hitchens of having poor knowledge of history and then in the next answer claims that Islam has never mandated forcible conversion to its religion, and earlier denies the fact that the Catholic church lays claim that all other sects and non-believers are going to hell. Is he completely ignorant of historical fact or will he say anything to try to win a debate. In every debate I've seen of these two D'Souza keeps trying to set up a straw man to tear down but Hitchens is far too brilliant to let him get away with it. I much prefer the Hitchens vs Wilson debates. At least Wilson's position is clear and coherent

I second what starflyer403 said.... Hitchens has a habit of not highlighting his opponents biggest missteps and contradictions,this is very evident in the opening statements and rebuttals, but in this back in forth setting he can quickly debunk the asinine statements D'Souza says.


Hitchens does not capitalize on the openings his opponents give by not clearly stating why his opponents views are irrational. One of the biggest missteps that D'Souza makes was his comparison of Jesus and Alexander The Great. Trying to infer that historians and scholars are not as skeptical to the existence of the people who are in our history books. He was trying to ask the question how do you know that any of our history books are true. It is like asking the question that Sam Harris poses in his book "The End of Faith". How do you know that a news reporter is telling the truth if he states that there is a wild forest fire spreading throughout California? Well to answer this you wouldn't assume that he would stake he's reputation to play a prank on us if he was a reporter at a respectable news station. Also you wouldn't assume that the fire was actually in texas and not in California and all the residents of California got this fact wrong. What I am trying to say is that there are ways to prove that certain stories actually happened( i.e. Historical records of the existence of Alexander The Great).


[Side note] It seems the crowd is mostly religious and this doesn't hurt D'Souza in the least when he makes idiotic statements like the one I spoke of above.

Starflower, BJ and Clint. you guys try to sound intelligent but seem to have a bias (my end notes most likely culprit)

Starflower: Were you asleep , eating potatoe chips (crunching noises in your ears) or just ...well Ill be nice. Hitchens can't even focus on answering one point he jumps around like D'Souza says, he is a master of misdirection.

BJ: Listen again 'closely' he's saying Islam meaning in Quran doesn't mandate forcible conversion. Sure there's zealots that in the past probably did do it but there's hypocrites everywhere, even atheists. So the rest you have is void.

Clint: Think you were on the potato chip trip too (crunching) because that's exactly what D'Souza states that there are so many historical books (not just the Bible-yes it is a historically factual book) and names them. You seemed to have missed that part conveniently or inconveniently (chips). He goes a little deeper and states the time (30yrs) some of these historical documents were written after Jesus. If your smart then you know the closer something is written to an actual event the more accurate the account.

In the end, I think you all need to re-listen to D'Souza's second to last statement before the end. The REAL reason for your own personal misdirection that you impose on yourselves is because..and I'll put this in highly intelligent terms: YOU WANT TO LIVE YOUR LIFE YOUR OWN WAY WITH NO CONSEQUENCE OF A HOLY GOD JUDGING YOU.

Ecclesiastes 12:14
John 3:16