Students packed Cabot Auditorium Friday night to hear Tufts philosopher Daniel Dennett and conservative author Dinesh D'Souza duke it out over religion.
Sponsored by the Freethought Society, the debate engaged the resolution: Is God a manmade invention?
Dennett spoke first. His position was that humans created God, but many of his remarks focused on more general aspects of religion.
"I think you should temper your hunch that religions are growing at a great rate," he said, addressing D'Souza. "I think they're growing louder."
He said that Islam is the only major religion that is currently expanding, and argued that the growth had more to do with birthrates than conversions.
Dennett said that some perceive Americans to be more religious than Europeans, but he said they also have higher rates of homicide, STIs, teen pregnancy, and abortion.
"Maybe we're more religious than we have to be because we're such sinners," he said.
These arguments did not directly address the debate's resolution, and they were not the last time that Dennett digressed.
But Dennett said that the resolution as framed was suggested by D'Souza. Dennett then said he would prefer to debate whether or not children should study religion in schools. He suggested that every student should be taught about the non-controversial facts - such as history, creed, music and symbols - of each major world religion.
"This in no way violates freedom of religion," he said.
Dennett, an atheist, believes that this would preserve the best in religion, as "toxic versions" of religion rely on the ignorance of the youth.
"A religion that can survive under this sort of information deserves to survive," he said.
Dennett also discussed the evolution of religion, which he said has changed more in the past 200 years than in the previous 2,000. And he predicted it will change even more in the next 20 years than in the last 200.
"Religions are human inventions," he said. While he argued that they are not an invention like the telephone, they are comparable to music and language in possessing an "evolutionary history."
Speaking in broader terms, Dennett also noted how all living things in the planet have evolved over time into more complex organisms. He said that cities, churches, bridges, systems of law and ideas of morality have also changed.
"They've all evolved, and it's all just wonderful," he said. "I wish there was somebody to whom I could properly express my gratitude, but there isn't."
Similarly, the concept of God has evolved from one modeled on a warlord to one that is the "ground of all being," he said.
"The picture of God has gradually become more and more foggy," Dennett said. "It's lost its detail."
D'Souza took the podium next and began by addressing some of Dennett's remarks. He first argued that Dennett's assertion that religion is not growing is factually incorrect.
D'Souza believes that there is a "rapidly growing religious revival throughout the world," including in India, Africa and South Korea.
He then moved on to Dennett's proposal to teach religion in school, describing it as "dripping with elitist contempt." D'Souza proposed the inclusion of atheism in the curriculum, specifically focusing on the crimes allegedly associated with it.
He described Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot, among others, as "atheist murderers."
There has been "an ocean of blood and a mountain of bodies produced by atheism in recent history," D'Souza said. "We should involve that in the course."
D'Souza then turned to science for support, stating that "there have been startling recent developments that strongly support theism."
For instance, he used the Big Bang theory to argue that God created time and the universe together.
"Once upon a time, there was no time," he said.
He also discussed the laws of the universe and the numerical values, such as the weight of an atom, discovered by science.
"The constants appear to be fine-tuned precisely for us," he said. "Is it even reasonable to suggest that the universe and all its laws created themselves?"
He then drew a line between humans' physical natures and their combined moral and rational natures.
"[People are] the products of nature and of free will," he said. "The dimension of free will would seem to suggest that a part of us can override nature."
While D'Souza conceded that the cultural descriptions of religion are largely manmade, he argued that there can never be decisive empirical evidence either confirming or denying the existence of God.
"What unites [Dennett and me] is we both don't know," D'Souza said. "The decision to embrace God is ... ultimately a matter of choice."
After their opening remarks, both were allowed two rebuttals.
During his first rebuttal, Dennett started by addressing the scientific arguments made by D'Souza. If the universe cannot have created itself, it follows that God cannot have been self-created either.
"The fact that we exist in a fine-tuned universe is not proof of [a creator]," he said.
Dennett also discussed the atheist regimes that D'Souza talked about, describing them as "sort of proto-religions.
"Stalin believed in a God whose will determined what right and wrong was," he said. "[That] God's name was Stalin."
D'Souza, during his rebuttal, also returned to the Big Bang theory. If all of nature came into existence at a single moment, then it could not have been prompted by a natural cause, he argued.
"Everything that has a beginning has a cause," D'Souza said. "The universe has a beginning. The universe has a cause." That cause, he believes, is God.
The laws of nature require some sort of explanation, and he said it is possible that the explanation is divine.
During his second, and final, rebuttal, Dennett said that cosmologists and physicists are trying to find explanations for these laws other than a creator. Otherwise, they would be trying to determine from where the creator came.
Dennett also said it was a mistake to "think that there's no room for morality in atheism." He noted that the definition of morality has changed over time.
"If it helps you to adorn that process with a deity that speaks to you, that's a psychological fact about you, but plays no role in this discussion," he said.
D'Souza touched upon the idea of the toxicity of religion in his second rebuttal. "Religion is greatly blamed for things that have little to do with religion," he said. For instance, Israel and Palestine are actually fighting over land, he argued.
He closed by addressing "atheist bigotry," which he said refuses to take religion seriously, despite legitimate arguments derived from science and history.
