Over the weekend, I had the chance opportunity to watch a nationally televised
debate of David vs Goliath proportion. This was not the politicians running for
President. Rather it was a debate at Kings College in New York City between
Goenkar Dinesh D Souza and British-American Christopher Hitchens. They are
both political conservatives (including being anti-Clinton and pro-Iraq war).
But their similarities end here. They were on opposite sides of the debate on
the existence of God and value of religion. Christopher Hitchens is the author
of the book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." While Dinesh D
Souza is the author of the book "What's so great about Christianity".
Dinesh was the David compared to the Goliath Christopher - half the size in
height, breath and weight. Yet Dinesh was twice the size in terms of debating
skills, knowledge of the subject, including theories and arguments of the
atheists. Dinesh enthralled the otherwise liberal crowd of college students who
naturally tended to be inclined to the 'ills of religion' and the atheistic
views of Christopher. Yet Dinesh got a big applause when he characterized
Christopher's points to his experience visiting a rodeo - "a point here and a
point there with a lot of bull in-between."
I liked Dinesh's analysis of isolated societies with no religion and their
social behavior - akin to Darwin's analysis of the Galapagos.
Goans interested in this subject and specially those who sound intellectual by
regurgitating the atheistic theories of well known authors, should read
Dinesh's book. The least of which reason is he is another acclaimed Goan. My
only complaint about Dinesh, was he repeated his father account of the Goan
inquisition which is similar to those I read on Goanet - "the Inquisition was
introduced to convert Hindus to Christianity."
Below I have reproduced one of the reviews of Dinesh's book.
Kind Regards, GL
"What's so great about Christianity" by Dinesh D Souza.
Review By K. HERFURTH:
Dinesh's Polemic against Atheists' Polemics, October 17, 2007
Well known political conservative and Hoover Institute Fellow at Stanford,
Dinesh D Souza, has written a well reason rebuttal to the string of recent
Atheists polemics by Dawkins, Harris, and most recently HITCHENS. While one
reviewer called this book "typical hyperbole", one, it is not completely
accurate and second, that does not necessarily makes this book a poor
presentation of Dinesh's thesis.
The book is first, a popular rebuttal to popular works by renown atheists
Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens and Dennett (as well as some others, but they are the
majority cast). His book succeeds in that it works as a popular rebuttal that
anyone can read, understand, and grapple with. Also, he bolsters his work with
the proper research and presents well reasoned arguments showing that the new
band of secular atheists ultimately falters. Yes, some of these chapters alone
could be an entire book to better handle the complexities and nuances, but then
it would not be a popular work, but a treaties requiring many more pages and
therefore, the people he seeks to inform, would be lost.
Dinesh does a very good job of handling Immanuel Kant (who, my guess, he enjoys
reading, a sense of enthusiasm begins in his writing style). He also does a
very good job in showing that atheists also cannot coherently live out the
scientific worldview they claim to completely rely on. He shows it also is a
"faith" in that many propositions and assumptions by these modern atheists are
based, not on empirical evidence, but statements of faith.
If Dinesh could have done one thing differently, is make this a trilogy; but,
I'm afraid, he would then lose the very audience he so avidly wants to
communicate with. A much needed read for popular consumption. He accomplishes
what the purpose of the book is meant to do, show the sheer folly of the
over-the-Top rhetoric of Harris, Dawkins, and Hitchens.
