Lenny vs. Squiggy
Dinesh D’Souza recently debated John Loftus.
D’Souza had an apologetics career before this Christian touring – namely, he has been an apologist for state violence. I have disliked him ever since reading (I think in high school?) the horrid and self-effacing chapter, “Two Cheers for Colonialism” from the first installment of his silly brand, What’s so Great about America? I have never understood what’s great about Dinesh D’Souza, hopefully the title of his (inevitable) memoir. Dinesh just wrote another book, diverging from the brand, which will probably be worse than the previous two, Life After Death: The Evidence.
Anyway, leading up to the debate, during it, and after it, Loftus has obsessed over the event on his blog, as he is his favorite topic. Apparently everyone, including atheists, think he “lost” (whatever that means), and Loftus sort of admits it. Here Loftus says “I am NOT making excuses,” even though that post and others are littered with them. Some of the excuses are amazing: “Dinesh arrived just in time for the debate while I was overdosing on sinus medications.” Loftus at first has a hard time accepting that he “lost” the debate here, with this funny statement: “So here I am still wondering why my perceptions of the debate are different than the young skeptics in attendance.” Indeed – how could it be that Loftus’ inflated view of himself is so unique to himself?
Here I watched a couple of annoyingly edited minutes, and was amused that D’Souza expressed one of my own observations of Loftus, which is that Loftus says we can’t look at his initial reasons for becoming an atheist, but that we should only look at a Christian’s original and primitive reasons for becoming a Christian (especially in his unoriginal or incoherent or trivial “outsider test” and anthropological explanations of belief).
Also, unconstrained by intellectual honesty, Loftus has been quoting people with non-substantive criticisms of his debate, and then dismissing them as non-substantive.
I do not look forward to this debate being available online and will not watch it. Loftus is even less impressive, and less coherent, in person than he is in writing. Truly, even without God all things are possible!
I especially liked this:
“Insults. These things are ad hominems and should be ignored, unless one is in an insult contest.”
Also from a different part of his blog:
“Third, most Christians have never met someone whom they know is an atheist in person.”
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/02/atheists-always-win-in-debates.html
His statements all seem to be false or blatantly obvious and nonconstructive.
There is actually a paper that defends ad hominem arguments for real, by a philosopher named Lawrence Hinman. It is called “The Case for Ad Hominem Arguments.” Because I am no longer enveloped in the warm arms of a University, I can’t access it. But I think you can.
I can think of a few cases where it seems to me ad hominems are relevant. For example, there are certain intellectual virtues the absence of which make someone’s arguments (and maybe even philosophical positions) prima facie less likely. Say you read a convincing account, with evidence, of how neuroscience disproves the existence of God, but then discover that the person who constructed the argument and gathered the evidence has an extreme bias, regularly distorts evidence, never addresses opposing arguments at their strongest, etc. I think in this case an ad hominem argument could suffice as a rational rejection of this person’s views.
To extend this to the case of John Loftus: I know that Loftus has been trained by philosophers who view reason as a whore to their preconceptions, I know that he himself has the stated goal of “overwhelming” the believer in an explicit attempt to mirror Christian apologetics, and I further know from his testimony that he understands and sympathizes with his “fundamentalist” opponents at their very intellectual worst. This is plausibly enough grounding to believe, weakly at least, that Loftus’ arguments and conclusions are rotten in some way. Certainly it’s good reason to not seriously consider the book. But sadly I made a commitment.
Here’s another defense of ad hominem arguments I found recently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnXkfs8Zgbo