Colin Jory has just informed me of a debate on Australian TV between the no-nonsense Cardinal Pell and the all-nonsense Richard Dawkins. It seems that the masculine cardinal put Dawkins in his place. Here’s the text of Colin’s e-mail:
An hour long debate on ABC (Australia) TV between Cardinal George Pell (who was a big boy at St Pat’s Ballarat when I was a small boy there in 1958) and Richard Dawkins has just ended.
By any impartial analysis, Cardinal Pell did Dawkins like a dinner. He was excellent without being perfect — he dodged the question of Original Sin, and fogged the Catholic position on evolution & on damnation, but overwhelmingly he addressed the difficult questions directly and impressively, including those of the Real Presence, the Divinity of Christ, and (to a lesser extent) the problem of suffering. There were pre-arranged questions from the audience and by video link from remote views, and Pell was much the more impressive in his responses. He came across as being the more substantial thinker: Dawkins came across as pretty unsubstantial.
That said, Dawkins also came across as having jet-lag, which I suspect he did have; and Pell came across as having had a couple of sleepless nights as he swotted on the issues which would be raised and how to address them, and thus as being not quite as sharp as he could be.
Pell has the major advantage over most higher clergy of all denominations of being a man’s man, as distinct from a wimp’s wimp. He’s a big, solid, fit-looking chap; he was the champion Australian Rules football player at St Pat’s; and he was recruited for the Richmond AFL team before deciding to enter the priesthood. He subsequently did History at Oxford. He’s combative by personality, and well and truly outdid Dawkins in polemical wit.
When the debate becomes available on-line I’ll send you the link.
The debate is now on YouTube:
http://www.thinveil.net/2012/04/debate-from-down-under-richard-dawkins.html
I just watched the debate on Brandon’s youtube link. I was astonished to see that the debate seemed virtually to *begin* with the how vs why argument that stirred so much disagreement recently on this blog. If it had been allowed to continue, the outcome of the debate might have been different, but it was not allowed to continue. While Dawkins said that “why” is a “meaningless” question, not worthy of consideration, Cardinal Pell said it was “part of being human to ask why,” that it was “what distinguishes humanity from animals.” The fact that (based on Dawkins response, apparently) the question was then disregarded may account for what I saw as a subsequently one-sided debate. In fact, I don’t think I can agree with Colin’s assessment, and according to the “tally” that showed on the screen about two-thirds the way through (Pell 24; Dawkins 76), others would not agree with the assessment either.
However, that question–and what happened to that question–reveals the one-sided structure which followed: Pell was called to “account for” this or that in *scientific* physical terms, while Dawkins dismissed this or that AS *religious* terms; i.e., he was allowed to dismiss; Pell was not. You could say that the structure of the debate allowed an orange to be an orange, while it required an apple to defend itself for not being an orange–and, of course, it could not. The physical demanded of the metaphysical that it explain itself in physical terms. Dawkins was in full supercilious attack mode (I saw no jet-lag, though he claimed it), while Pell was trying to defend his position in terms alien to it. The debate was never allowed to enter philosophical territory. (“Briefly, Cardinal Pell, does the Church accept evolution?” Yes–and a reference to neanderthal ancestors. To which Dawkins mockingly responded by correcting the “line” of evolution Pell referred to.)
It would be interesting to see what might have happened if *why* had not been thrown out as “meaningless.” It leaves me wondering *why* this “debate” was arranged in the first place. A debate must either be centered on a common language or require each side to respond in both languages.
I have to clarify something:
The “why question” (in reference to the cosmos) came from the audience, not from the debaters or the moderator.
“Why” is a meaningless question solely insofar as it implies motive because motive indicates intelligence (or God). For Dawkins, it was therefore “meaningless.”
(One might have interjected at that point an observation that the logical conclusion to Dawkins’ position is that intelligence is meaningless.)
Right, Colin. Having watched the debate on your link, I was horrified to read in the news the next day that Cardinal Pell apologizes to Jews for calling them “intellectually inferior.” Huh? No such thing had happened. What did happen was that Cardinal Pell wanted to point out the uniqueness of ancient Israel, who, contrasted to the great cultural contributions of Egypt, et al, were small, poor, shepherds, whose cultural contribution was inferior (he obviously meant, in secular terms) but who’d been singled out, blessed. Before he could make his point, however, he was jumped on (and that happened a lot) for calling Jews “inferior.” There followed then the comments from Dawkins that dragged Germans into the adventure into nonsense–which allowed another gotcha for Dawkins. It wasn’t enough to get Cardinal Pell on his partial remarks, he had to be gotten for things he’d not said at all.
(By the way, he also had to apologize to shepherding Australians for “saying” that they were “intellectually inferior”)
The whole monumental spin has been decried at
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2012/04/new-stupid-media-trick.html
I must do my own clarifying, Dena.
ABC Australia is a government broadcasting service, radio and TV, which is notoriously a pulpit for everything left-secularist and a pillory for everything authentically human. Thus it’s not surprising that 76% of the viewers of the Pell-Dawkins debate voted for Dawkins; the suprise is that 24% voted the other way — they’d be people who normally don’t watch ABC TV.
Still, it’s to the ABC’s credit and quite a surprise that it staged the debate, which got the program (Q&A) its best-ever ratings. What normally passes for a “balanced” debate on a religious issue on the ABC would be, say, the late Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins in passionate disagreement with each other over whether most Christians are knaves, and the rest fools; or most Christians are fools, and the rest knaves.