Rabbi Boteach will have explain his understanding of “soul” and humans being “created” if he doesn’t want to be embarassed on Wednesday.  I’m afraid this may be another instance of two people talking passed each other, but we’ll find out.  And if anyone “squanders their lives on ephemeral pursuits” it’s Mr. Boteach with his articles on Britney Spears’ parenting skills and D-level TV shows.

Shmuley Boteach claims to be an Orthodox Rabbi, but REAL Orthodox Rabbis do not willingly participate in public religious debates.

In the Middle Ages, Rabbis debated with Christians only because the were forced into it.

A real Orthodox Rabbi accepts guidance from another Rabbi who is greater than him. The only Rabbi that Shmuley Boteach listens to is Shmuley Boteach.  He claims to follow Orthodox Judaism, but in reality he does whatever he pleases.

He may follow the rituals of Orthodox Judaism, but his religious philosophy is not Orthodox Judaism.

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Handbook of
Jewish Thought, Volume 2 of 2, page 7:

1:24 ...religious debates can undermine
ones faith and should generally be avoided,
as scripture warns: << Do not answer a fool
according to his folly, lest you become
like him ourself. >> (Proverbs 26:4)

Wow. Could the rabbi be any more offensive? My lack of belief in being created for a transcendental purpose is what allows me to appreciate life for what it is. Is there anything more amazing than realizing what an insignificant role you play in the greater picture. Personally, I squander my time teaching adult literacy and working for other non-profits.
Loving life,
Your friendly neighborhood atheist.

As the evening progressed I contemplated asking for 1/2 of my $5 contribution to be returned, since it seemed only one of the panelists was engaged in a debate, while the other was off on frolics of his own.  On the other hand there was the evidentiary spectacle of the imperfection inherent in the evolution of Rabbi Boteach’s brain, not to mention the entertainment value and suspense of waiting for Mr. Hitchens’ inevitable and quite justified outburst of aggrieved indignation at the behavior of his adversary.

My only quibble is with Mr. Hitchens’ placement of the Creation Museum in Ohio--it is in northern Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati.  That may well be just a different subdivision of “fly-over land”, but facts are facts.  I would recommend Mr. Hitchens to look up Professor Arnold Miller, head of the geology department at the University of Cincinnati, who has written about the so-called Museum, which is in actuality a church and fund-raising operation.

Note also that the most reasonable question of the evening came from Cincinnati (from which I viewed the proceedings, not to say “debate").  So the inference that we are overrun with William Jennings Bryans out here should be resisted.

I fully agree with the comment about Gould’s excellent Burgess Shale book.  Everyone should read it, not least for the biographical sketch of Walcott, a man of his times.

This event unfortunately reinforced in me the fear that, ultimately, rational debate will have less and less of a place in the world.

The Rabbi either completely missunderstands Hitchens point, or is setting up a classic straw man falacy. He writes “For Hitchens, the fact that saintly individuals exhibit serious flaws is proof that we are all nothing but unimpressive orangutans.” That is simply not true.  Hitchens demonstrates that these “saintly” individuals are not simply flawed, they consistently exhibit serious immoral behavior. What is flawed is a system of belief that holds these individuals in such high esteem. Nowhere does this imply that all humans are orangutans.

I think it was very fitting when, entirely non-maliciously, Dr. Gillman blew his nose into the microphone while Boteach was ranting about some historical point totally unrelated to the debate.  It certainly made the point we were all thinking.

A very entertaining evening to say the least, definitely worth the 26 bucks.

Hitchens was very persuasive in his arguments and very funny at times, but when push came to shove, Hitchens’ arguments and observations were razor sharp and on point. Boteach’s arguments and reactions were indecisive, scattered and were filled more with emotion than with reasoning or fact. Boteach at times drifted into side stories and lost my attention.

For instance, Boteach claims that evolution cannot explain the process of humanity and its intelligence because it simply takes too much time and the chance that a mutation could create such intelligence is too great to fathom.

He simply demonstrates tremendous lack of knowledge and understanding when it comes to the evolutionary process, since mutation isn’t the only process by which bio organisms change. Theres genetic drift, variation, natural selection, adaptation and other variables. He also said that evolution is always a progressive, upward movement within species, which is clearly untrue.

Regardless, a very entertaining event and I hope Hitchens can have more speaking engagements in New York. Agree with him or not, he is a skilled and entertaining debater.

ps- I hope someone has the video to last night’s event, I’d love to rewatch it.

while I will agree that, as far as the debating aspect went, Hitchens blew Boteach out of the water. Boteach, as much as I agreed with some of his points, went off on hysteria induced tangents which would automatically discredit any valid argument he may have had.

But I must agree strongly with him on one point, that in his book God Is Not Great, Hitchens does in fact validate anti-semitism stemming from the notion or rather misconception by non-Jews that Jews announce to the world they are the “chosen people”, thereby implying everyone else is inferior.

This is a complete falsehood and the Rabbi explains what it really means and that no matter how one may interpret that for themselves, it’s not right to hate and furthermore, KILL people based on this.

I myself have heard this mantra from many people besides Hitchens and frankly, it kind of worries me.

History has shown that there has always been and always will be a “new reason to hate Jews”. We are the world’s perfect scapegoat.

Hitchens brought his A game to these proceedings, which I was happy to witness. Sometimes in his debates about religion he lacks sharpness; almost like he’s been drinking!  (Even in his cups, though, he always eviscerates his adversaries.)
Last night he was totally on.  He didn’t say anything I hadn’t heard him say before, but he was more pungent and witty than I had ever seen him before.  He must have felt completely at ease since he knew his opponent (from a previous debate) and knew he had nothing to worry about.  Boteach was, at best, way out of his intellectual depth, no matter how many times he proclaimed that he and Richard Dawkins were “dear friends”.  It seems one does not have to be much of a critical thinker to be a religious talk show host, as Boteach is.  He screamed a lot, and gesticulated wildly, but never got any traction with anything close to a reasoned argument.  In fact, he said some outrageous things for no apparent reason.
Among Boteach’s biggest groaners was the blasphemous pronouncement that Stephen Jay Gould was not an evolutionist!  He said that more than once, and each time it made me wonder if I had fallen down a worm hole.  Gould was, in fact, “America’s unofficial evolutionist laureate” (Wikipedia), a scholar of tremendous influence and popularity, who spent his whole life teaching and writing on evolutionary biology. 
The debate was in the auditorium of The 92nd St. Y, which is an old, established and much respected Jewish institution for cultural, athletic and artistic events.  The moderator was a rabbi, and presumably the sold out auditorium included a fair share of practicing faithful, whether Jewish or otherwise.  But clearly most of the audience was much more receptive to Hitchens than to Rabbi Boteach.  It was a shame that Hitchens had to stick to the very stingy time limits which would always intervene while he was on a roll, the audience enthralled. 
Perhaps the most telling part of the 2 hours was the fact that Shmuley never tried to argue the affirmative (Does God Exist? was the debate topic).  Instead he attacked Hitchens’ book “God Is Not Great” on a variety of points, none of which had anything to do with supporting or denying the existence of God.  He wasn’t nearly as articulate as, for example, Dinesh D’Souza always seems to be (even though when you think about what he said later you realize he didn’t say much) and for that the debate was a very uneven entertainment.  Not only does Boteach clearly not have a clue about evolution (maybe he should have asked his dear friend Dawkins to give him 20 minutes on it when he had the chance!), but he is utterly incapable of explaining why he believes in God.  As I heard one audience member say to his wife as we were all leaving “He didn’t make one argument for the existence of God.  Maybe that’s because there aren’t any?”

Regarding Greg Lauren’s comment about the Hitchen’s comment on Jews as the “chosen people"… Have you read the Torah, sir? 

Deuteronomy 14:2, “For you are a holy people to YHWH your God, and God has chosen you to be his treasured people from all the nations that are on the face of the earth.”

Hitchen’s point is that the exclusivity of “chosenness” has created a degree of animosity amongst non-Jews.  He certainly never suggested it was right therefore to KILL people for such an arrogant view - only that understanding it has explanatory value.

Yours, and Boteach’s defense of “chosenness” is somewhat disingenuous in that you are trying to say that the idea of “chosenness” cannot be perceived legitimately as an arrogant position.  Looking at the original scriptural text that serves as the source of this nutty belief it can only be viewed as such.