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.