And so I wrote at once to the Bloggingheads folks and asked if they could arrange a debate. This seemed like someone I wanted to test myself against. Also, it was said by them that Christopher Hitchens should have watched the theist’s earlier debates and been prepared, so I decided not to do that, because I think I should be able to handle damn near anything on the fly, and I desire to learn whether this thought is correct; and I am willing to risk public humiliation to find out.
This really bothers me, because you weren’t just risking your own public humiliation; you were risking our public humiliation. You were endangering an important cause for your personal benefit.
The cause of rationalism does not rise and fall with Eliezer Yudkowsky.
If you fear the consequences of being his partisan, don’t align yourself with his party. If you are willing to associate yourself and your reputation with him, accept the necessary consequences of having done so.
Phil might be wrong to phrase his objection in terms of “our public humiliation”. But its still the case that there are things at stake beyond Eliezer Yudkowsky’s testing himself. And those are things we all care about.
Who is the theist? I’ve actually seen Hitchens preform poorly in a number of debates with theists just because he doesn’t really give a damn about responding to their arguments because he rightly finds them so silly. Plus his focus is really on religion being bad more than religion being false and as such is rarely equipped to answer the more advanced theist arguments (like the say the fine-tunning of physical constants) in the way someone like Dawkins is.
(Edit- forget the question. I just read your reason for not naming him. Fair enough. But if you told someone who it was they could watch the debate and indicate to you whether or not you really ought to be worried. Particularly if you don’t end up debating him, we might get something out of watching him.)
This really bothers me, because you weren’t just risking your own public humiliation; you were risking our public humiliation. You were endangering an important cause for your personal benefit.
The cause of rationalism does not rise and fall with Eliezer Yudkowsky.
If you fear the consequences of being his partisan, don’t align yourself with his party. If you are willing to associate yourself and your reputation with him, accept the necessary consequences of having done so.
Phil might be wrong to phrase his objection in terms of “our public humiliation”. But its still the case that there are things at stake beyond Eliezer Yudkowsky’s testing himself. And those are things we all care about.
I’ve done a service or two to atheism, and will do more services in the future, and those may well depend on this test of calibration.
Who is the theist? I’ve actually seen Hitchens preform poorly in a number of debates with theists just because he doesn’t really give a damn about responding to their arguments because he rightly finds them so silly. Plus his focus is really on religion being bad more than religion being false and as such is rarely equipped to answer the more advanced theist arguments (like the say the fine-tunning of physical constants) in the way someone like Dawkins is.
(Edit- forget the question. I just read your reason for not naming him. Fair enough. But if you told someone who it was they could watch the debate and indicate to you whether or not you really ought to be worried. Particularly if you don’t end up debating him, we might get something out of watching him.)
I realize it is a tradeoff.