Stanford Debate: Jay Richards vs. Chris Hitchens - not the usual piffle

I never got a chance to say much about the debate the other day between Jay "Privileged Planet" Richards and Christopher "god is not great" Hitchens, sponsored by the Stanford IDEA Club and a few other groups, and moderated by Expelled's Ben Stein: "Atheism vs. Theism and the Scientific Evidence of Intelligent Design."

One friend notes that from this account in the Stanford rag, you would hardly know that the two men were in the same room together. (I wasn't there. You decide.)

The universe is clearly fine-tuned for life, and - as I like to say - if God didn't do it, his replacement from the celestial temp agency is pretty Good. If Richards made that clear, it is a nice change from the "no-conflict-between-science-and-religion" piffle we so often hear.

Piffle? Yes, because ,as another friend notes, in much of academic life today the terms are decided in advance by functional atheists - you know, facts support atheism but feelings support theism, and we all respect each other's feelings ... UNTIL any theist actually cites facts that support his view. Then watch the temperature drop 50 degrees Celsius in, like, a second..

Here are Tom Magnuson's thoughts, over at Access Research Network.