Posts tagged: rhetoric
D’Sousa Is Being Honest For A Change
In his new Townhall.com article, Dinesh D’Souza has done something very unusual… He’s told the truth for a change.
In my debate with atheist Christopher Hitchens in New York last October he raised a point that I did not know how to answer. So I employed an old debating strategy: I ignored it and answered other issues.
Now, to be truthful, Dinesh D’Souza is a very intelligent individual. His rhetoric is fantastic and the intensity he applies to his arguments bring a breath of life into the Creationist fold. However, at the core, his actual arguments generally fall short.
As noted above from his own mouth, Dinesh likes to employ the “redefine the subject” tactic to debating. This tactic is to simply redefine and shift the point of the argument into something that he can argue against. Indeed, D’Souza does this on the larger scale as well, employing this method to generate new reincarnations of old arguments. Lately, D’Souza has taken a fancy to the classic “fine-tuned universe” argument which is nothing but the “Argument from Design” shifted from the biological to the cosmic scale. Basically, Since creationists can’t show that life forms on Earth are intelligently designed (indeed, they appear to be more un-intelligently than intelligently designed), they step back and say that it’s the universe itself that is intelligently designed. This makes one ask in exactly what other kind of universe would we be around to pose that question in the first place? We, as humans, apply numeric values to the ‘fine tuning’ variables of the universe. Who’s to say that these values aren’t the only way there is? Is it not possible that, like the speed of light, these values simply don’t have the luxury of fluctuating?
Back to the linked article above, D’Souza simply runs and hides behind the semantics of linguistics and redefinitions of the core argument yet again.
Via: Townhall.com
