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dinesh makes me wanna bang my head against the table

D'Souza's "three basic faith-based principles upon which science is suspended" are utter fucking nonsense. Each one boils down to a logical fallacy, first and foremost being the straw man... I don't think any prominent thinkers are putting forth the idea that the universe is conscious, and I don't think anyone with intelligence is even able to confuse the laws of physics with the laws of man.

He's just a FUCK. ARRGH I CANT STAND THE BULLSHIT.

Anything with D'Souza is not a debate. Kudos to anyone capable of withstanding 129 minutes of this guy talking Bullshit.

>> ^budzos:
D'Souza's "three basic faith-based principles upon which science is suspended" are utter fucking nonsense. Each one boils down to a logical fallacy, first and foremost being the straw man... I don't think any prominent thinkers are putting forth the idea that the universe is conscious, and I don't think anyone with intelligence is even able to confuse the laws of physics with the laws of man.
He's just a FUCK. ARRGH I CANT STAND THE BULLSHIT.


He does not say that the universe is conscious. He says it is rational. That is, it can be measured, chopped up conceptually into discrete chunks, bits of it can be mathematically compared to other bits, it shows order, and so on. The universe need not be conscious to be rational.

The three "faith-based principles" he mentions are indeed fundamental requirements for science as we know it. (Sort of. The third is only essential for the most popular notions about science, not for doing science itself.) However, the principles are not Christian in origin. They are Greek, from Athens rather than Jerusalem. The the universe is rational, and that the mind corresponds to it, can be found in Plato and Aristotle. That it shows a uniquely mathematical order can be found in Pythagoras.

The principles made their way into modern science through the Renaissance. The creators of modern science, men like Galileo and Kepler, were profoundly interested in Pythagorean theories of the universe.

That said, Hitchens doesn't seem to have brought his A game to this debate. I suspect he may have been a bit drunk.

Yeah I know those are the facts, and you know the facts because you have taken the time to learn them. But if you aren't clear on that, and you don't listen to D'Souza carefully, as is the case I suspect with many non-scientists, you could easily be misled. He twists it as if the scientific community is actually operating under a literal interpretation. "The universe does not have a brain" etc. I really dislike that rhetorical style. Get to the fucking point and tell me what you're saying rather than the preamble all about the different misconceptions, designed to fog people's mind much like all religious text.

^ I need to stop throwing around the logical fallacy thing. What I meant to say is his rhetorical style is to obfuscate and misconstrue, and is directed not at his opponent but at any soft minds that might be listening.

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