The Great (?) Debate

Tonight I went to a "debate" about "God" (really it was about religious belief in God) featuring two celebrated figures. One was Christopher Hitchens, Literary Critic and apologetic atheist, and the other was Dinesh D'Souza, Conservative Catholic apologist. While both of them were fairly masterful orators, and quite convincing, I realized as I was watching them that for one thing, neither one of them actually developed a rational basis to strengthen their points, and for another thing, they weren't even talking about the same issue. Hitchens, for all of his seething and hateful rhetoric, seemed to agree whole-heartedly with the majority of Christian ethics, but just had problems with very specific instances of the practice of religion. D'Souza, on the other hand, with all his witty banter, wanted to show how religion was as plausible an explanation of universal phenomena as scientific theory.
This illustrates, in my opinion, the biggest problem with public discussion of any topic. That is, people generally don't generally come from shared assumptions. Had Hitchens made assertions that all religious people were barbaric (during the debate), it's no doubt that many people would have lost respect for his position. Had D'Souza said science was all a crock of bull, he would have been surely ignored by other scholastics. The actual shared assumptions they had were on issues of what was moral, one example which they gave was giving blood. However, from this shared example, it would only be logical that their discussion and debate could grow out of this shared ideology. For example, they could talk about whether or not religion was the proper place to develop these morals. Of course, if that was the case, we would have had a discussion much more philosophical in scope and likely, less entertaining.
However, how often is this the case in our normal lives? Often times we get into disputes, too hot-headed rushing in, while the entire time we are disputing different things. I don't know how many times I have had "arguments" with people when we really had the same ideas or opinions but didn't voice them in the same way. Often times we come to discussions with different points of view that hinder us from having beneficial discussion.
It's these personal biases and experiences that weigh down our conversations. If we are able to strip ourselves of some of our prejudices, we often find that we agree on more than we are at first aware of. What was interesting at the God Debate was what both Hitchens and D'Souza shared. Hitchens, while being an atheist, was more likely to grant a Christian version of ethics over an atheistic, Nietzschean form of morals. Similarly, D'Souza provided a more strictly, rational and faithless account of God. When it comes down to it, they both agreed on what things were tragedies (though they both incorrectly attributed the cause of any great struggle to anything aside from, as Nietzsche so well puts it, "the will to power"), and for the same reasons.
Here we see the real problem: they both argued from the same premises for different conclusions. Hitchens can be summed in this way: the world is evil, and the only solution is to get rid of God. A theist (though not really D'Souza since this was not his apology) can be summed up thusly: evil exists in the world, and the only solution is to follow the commandments of God. The only thing that I can honestly add to the discussion is that if Hitchens truly understood the nature of evil, he would not assert that God does not exist because of it, but rather could only say that God does not exist because of moral relativism.
To sum up, let me just say that it is the hardest thing in the world to have conclusions that follow logically from everything, or to have everything in your life based on a logical, rational understanding. However, through discussion with other people, and keeping an open mind along with a small dose of skepticism, we can understand what is true and what is not.

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Sorry it's been so long. This isn't going to be a full length piece, just a little blurb. Next year I will be studying theology at Boston College in their School of Theology and Ministry. Also, I am relatively certain some of my research will be published in the periodical Interreligious Insights. I'll put more about that when it comes out.
Lastly, I will be presenting that same research at the end of the month at an undergraduates conference.