Debates are mod­ern glad­i­a­tor contests—predicated on the blunt force of the oppo­nents’ foren­sic sta­mi­na, charis­ma, and per­son­al con­vic­tion. Speak­ers lack­ing in per­son­al­i­ty make for tedious debaters, and sub­stance seems to mat­ter lit­tle when par­ti­sans gath­er to cheer on their cham­pi­on. Rarely do rhetor­i­cal spec­ta­cles sway the faith­ful. At least in our time, they tend to seem more like com­pet­ing pep ral­lies. We’ve learned, for exam­ple, that such high pro­file events as U.S. pres­i­den­tial debates have lit­tle effect on the out­come of elec­tions. But ver­bal con­tests over who will make the best Leader of the Free World can seem mod­est next to debates between the­olo­gians and philoso­phers over the exis­tence of God. After all, we’ve heard more or less the same argu­ments for cen­turies now, and no one’s any clos­er to a “proof.” And though I’m not aware of any­one who argues thus, there is no way to dis­prove God’s exis­tence either.

Nonethe­less, with the rise of reli­gious fer­vor world­wide, and rejec­tion of the same by vocif­er­ous sec­u­lars, we’ve seen so-called “New Athe­ists” mount chal­lenge after chal­lenge to the author­i­ty and valid­i­ty of reli­gious institutions—primarily those rep­re­sent­ing the big three monotheisms. The philo­soph­i­cal­ly inclined reli­gious have their heavy­weights as well. Bio­la Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy and evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian William Lane Craig has tak­en on the man­tle of defend­er not only of his par­tic­u­lar brand of faith but of the exis­tence of God gen­er­al­ly. Craig is a skilled orator—his fans like to point out that he “wins” all of his debates, though what exact­ly that means is unclear. His crit­ics call him every­thing from “dis­hon­est” and “sleazy” to an apol­o­gist for geno­cide and reli­gious­ly moti­vat­ed pseu­do­science. What­ev­er you think of Craig, he cer­tain­ly does draw a crowd. But so do his most famous antag­o­nists. Today, we bring you two such exis­tence of God debates: at the top, see Craig debate the unflap­pable Christo­pher Hitchens on his home turf of Bio­la. And direct­ly above, he takes on Sam Har­ris at Notre Dame.

You may be won­der­ing, if you’ve fol­lowed these squab­bles at all, whether the infa­mous evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins has stepped into the ring with Craig. He has. Dawkins appeared with skep­ti­cal authors Michael Sher­mer and Matt Rid­ley in an intel­lec­tu­al wrestle­ma­nia of sorts at a Mex­i­can con­fer­ence called “Ciu­dad de las Ideas” (City of Ideas). On the oth­er side of the stage sat Craig, his col­league Doug Geivett, and rab­bi David Wolpe. You can see the event above—each speak­er gets up and steps into a lit­er­al ring, com­plete with bright red ropes, and the result is less a debate than bewil­der­ing series of meta­phys­i­cal sales pitch­es. Dawkins him­self did not con­sid­er it a debate. Though he’s made plen­ty of ene­mies among athe­ists and believ­ers alike, accused of intol­er­ance, slop­py rea­son­ing, sex­ism, and worse, Dawkins has won adher­ents for declar­ing a prin­ci­pled stand against appear­ing with Craig in a true debate for­mat, cit­ing Craig’s “dark side” as a “deplorable apol­o­gist for geno­cide.” As with all these attacks and ripostes, not to men­tion the uni­verse-sized ques­tions, you’ll sim­ply have to make up your own mind.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens: No Deathbed Con­ver­sion for Me, Thanks, But it was Good of You to Ask

The Unbe­liev­ers, A New Film Star­ring Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Wern­er Her­zog, Woody Allen, & Cor­mac McCarthy

Reli­gion: Free Cours­es Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

For some time now, Slavoj Žižek has been show­ing up as an author and edi­tor of the­ol­o­gy texts along­side ortho­dox thinkers whose ideas he thor­ough­ly nat­u­ral­izes and reads through his Marx­ist lens. Take, for exam­ple, an essay titled, after the Catholic G.K. Chester­ton, “The ‘Thrilling Romance of Ortho­doxy’ ” in the 2005 vol­ume, part­ly edit­ed by Žižek, The­ol­o­gy and the Polit­i­cal: The New Debate. In Chesterton’s defense of Chris­t­ian ortho­doxy, Žižek sees “the ele­men­tary matrix of the Hegelian dialec­ti­cal process.” While “the pseu­do-rev­o­lu­tion­ary crit­ics of reli­gion” even­tu­al­ly sac­ri­fice their very free­dom for “the athe­ist rad­i­cal uni­verse, deprived of reli­gious ref­er­ence… the gray uni­verse of egal­i­tar­i­an ter­ror and tyran­ny,” the same para­dox holds for the fun­da­men­tal­ists. Those “fanat­i­cal defend­ers of reli­gion start­ed with fero­cious­ly attack­ing the con­tem­po­rary sec­u­lar cul­ture and end­ed up for­sak­ing reli­gion itself (los­ing any mean­ing­ful reli­gious expe­ri­ence).”

For Žižek, a mid­dle way between these two extremes emerges, but it is not Chester­ton’s way. Through his method of teas­ing para­dox and alle­go­ry from the cul­tur­al arti­facts pro­duced by West­ern reli­gious and sec­u­lar ideologies—supplementing dry Marx­ist analy­sis with the juicy voyeurism of psychoanalysis—Žižek finds that Chris­tian­i­ty sub­verts the very the­ol­o­gy its inter­preters espouse. He draws a con­clu­sion that is very Chester­ton­ian in its iron­i­cal rever­sal: “The only way to be an athe­ist is through Chris­tian­i­ty.” This is the argu­ment Žižek makes in his lat­est film, The Pervert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy. In the clip above, over footage from Scorsese’s The Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ, Žižek claims:

Chris­tian­i­ty is much more athe­ist than the usu­al athe­ism, which can claim there is no God and so on, but nonethe­less it retains a cer­tain trust into the Big Oth­er. This Big Oth­er can be called nat­ur­al neces­si­ty, evo­lu­tion, or what­ev­er. We humans are nonethe­less reduced to a posi­tion with­in the har­mo­nious whole of evo­lu­tion, what­ev­er, but the dif­fi­cult thing to accept is again that there is no Big Oth­er, no point of ref­er­ence which guar­an­tees mean­ing.

The charge that Chris­tian­i­ty is a kind of athe­ism is not new, of course. It was levied against the ear­ly mem­bers of the sect by Romans, who also used the word as a term of abuse for Jews and oth­ers who did not believe their pagan pan­theon. But Žižek means some­thing entire­ly dif­fer­ent. Rather than using athe­ism as a term of abuse or mak­ing a delib­er­ate attempt to shock or inflame, Žižek attempts to show how Chris­tian­i­ty dif­fers from Judaism in its rejec­tion of “the big oth­er God” who hides his true desires and inten­tions, caus­ing immense anx­i­ety among his fol­low­ers (illus­trat­ed, says Žižek, by the book of Job). This is then resolved by Chris­tian­i­ty in an act of love, a “res­o­lu­tion of rad­i­cal anx­i­ety.”

And yet, says Žižek, this act—the crucifixion—does not rein­state the meta­phys­i­cal cer­tain­ties of eth­i­cal monothe­ism or pop­ulist pagan­ism. “The death of Christ,” says Žižek, “is not any kind of redemp­tion… it’s sim­ply the dis­in­te­gra­tion of the God which guar­an­tees the mean­ing of our lives.” It’s a provoca­tive, if not par­tic­u­lar­ly orig­i­nal, argu­ment that many post-Niet­zschean the­olo­gians have arrived at by oth­er means. Žižek’s read­ing of Chris­tian­i­ty in The Pervert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy—along­side his copi­ous writ­ing and lec­tur­ing on the subject—constitutes a chal­lenge not only to tra­di­tion­al the­is­tic ortho­dox­ies but also to sec­u­lar human­ism, with its qua­si-reli­gious faith in progress and empir­i­cal sci­ence. Of course, his cri­tique of the vul­gar cer­tain­ties of ortho­doxy should also apply to ortho­dox Marx­ism, some­thing Žižek’s crit­ics are always quick to point out. Whether or not he’s suf­fi­cient­ly crit­i­cal of his com­mu­nist vision of real­i­ty, or has any­thing coher­ent to say at all, is a point I leave you to debate.

via Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek’s Pervert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy Decodes The Dark Knight and They Live

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’

A Shirt­less Slavoj Žižek Explains the Pur­pose of Phi­los­o­phy from the Com­fort of His Bed

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness