There is a YouTube channel devoted specifically to the recent debate between Christopher Hitchens and Tony Blair. I’ve yet to watch it, but I find both men to be quite intelligent. (Update: I have watched it.) Hitchens’ intelligence is crashingly obvious; I’ve never seen him lose a debate point. And I absolutely love how he will routinely bend over backwards to grant as much as possible to his opponent just so he can point out that he still has the point won. Anyone who saw that awful creationist movie with Ben Stein should be familiar with this tactic: In the Richard Dawkins interview, Dawkins granted that it’s possible that we could have been designed by aliens, but even if that were so, we would still need to appeal to evolution in order to explain their existence. Stein, unsurprisingly, takes the dishonest route of claiming that Richard Dawkins is only against intelligent design when it involves a god. This was rather expected since the creators of the movie lied to every biologist involved, not to mention the fundamental dishonesty behind creationism intelligent design. But I digress. Blair’s intelligence is clear enough, but I think perhaps some of my perception of it comes from the contrast of it with Dubya’s lack of smarts.
Anyway. Watch the debate. (Skip the first video if you just want to get to the meat of the debate.)
Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, Religions | Tagged: Ben Stein, Christopher Hitchens, debate, Richard Dawkins, Tony Blair |
For the Sake of Science 
The consensus of those who watched the debate and posted comments was that Blair trotted out the three usual tired arguments and then repeated himself over and over. They all said Hitchens won with superior arguments.
Blair really struggled through the whole thing. He had nothing original to offer and his points often conflicted with his goal of showing religion as a force for good. For instance, he cited religious leaders coming together in Northern Ireland in order to stitch the religious conflict there. Hitchens quickly countered by asking what the source of the religious conflict was in the first place.