{"id":1601,"date":"2011-11-15T03:23:57","date_gmt":"2011-11-15T08:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/faithmediaandculture\/?p=1601"},"modified":"2011-11-15T03:34:06","modified_gmt":"2011-11-15T08:34:06","slug":"would-the-world-be-better-off-without-religion-author-dinish-dsouza-talks-about-making-the-pro-faith-argument-in-tonights-debate-on-the-issue-watch-the-event-live-right-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/faithmediaandculture\/2011\/11\/would-the-world-be-better-off-without-religion-author-dinish-dsouza-talks-about-making-the-pro-faith-argument-in-tonights-debate-on-the-issue-watch-the-event-live-right-here.html","title":{"rendered":"Would the world be better off without religion? Author Dinish D’Souza talks about making the pro-faith argument in tonight’s debate on the issue + Watch the event live right here"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s today’s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture.<\/p>\n

The Second Biggest Question.\u00a0 <\/strong>Behind, of course, whether or not God exists is whether belief in Him actually benefits the world. I use a capital “H” in “Him” because I believe in Him.\u00a0 I’m also among those who believe that putting one’s faith in a loving Higher Power offers a whole lot more hope than putting one’s faith in the benevolence of human beings who don’t believe they only have to answer to the rules of the world.<\/p>\n

Tonight from 6:45 PM to 8:30 PM (ET) at NYU\u2019s Skirball Center in New York City. Intelligence Squared U.S. (IQ2US)<\/em> is sponsoring a debate tackling\u00a0 the proposition that \u201cThe World Would Be Better Off Without Religion.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em>Journalist John Donvan of ABC News Nightline<\/em> will moderate.<\/p>\n

Arguing in favor of the motion are author\/filmmaker and Science Debate President Matthew Chapman and noted atheist and author A.C. Grayling.<\/p>\n

Arguing the opposite view are King\u2019s College President Dinesh D\u2019Souza (author of What\u2019s So Great About Christianity<\/em><\/a>) and Rabbi David Wolpe who, in 2008, was declared by Newsweek to be the \u201c#1 Pulpit Rabbi in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Members of the studio audience will vote on which team they believe makes the better case. Tickets are going for $40 ($12 for students w\/ID). To purchase, visit www.iq2us.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Till then, here’s my interview with Dr. D’Souza (whose new book is titled\u00a0The Roots of Obama’s Rage<\/em><\/a>) about his views regarding the value of religious faith and his participation in tonight’s event. You can read the highlights of our conversation and be sure to return here tonight to watch the debate live.<\/p>\n

A conversation with Dinesh D’Souza<\/strong><\/p>\n

JWK: <\/strong>Can you tell me about your religious background?<\/p>\n

DR. D’SOUZA:<\/strong>\u00a0 I grew up Catholic in India. I came to America at the age of 17. I sort of rediscovered my Christianity in adult life. I\u2019ve been mainly a secular writer for twenty years. I\u2019ve written on a number of subjects, mainly political. My latest book is about Obama but I have in the last three years put one foot of my career in the God debate…<\/em>I have a book coming out early next hear called Godforsaken<\/em> and it’s about God and suffering. And I\u2019m a writer, speaker, and President of The Kings College in NYC.<\/p>\n

JWK: <\/strong>Why have you put one foot in the religion debate?<\/p>\n

DR. D’SOUZA:<\/strong> I started out writing about money and about politics and foreign policy. Then I began to write a little bit more about the so-called values issues<\/em> and I think those alerted me to the fact that\u00a0 underneath the political debate is a moral debate and underneath the moral debate is the prime question of belief or unbelief. In other words, is there a kind of transcendent base or root to our values or not?<\/p>\n

And so I began to rethink in adult life some of the things I\u2019d obviously been taught in a simple way to answer as a child…Crayon Christianity has to give way to a kind of adult or mature Christianity.<\/p>\n

JWK:<\/strong> What is the difference?<\/p>\n

DR. D’SOUZA:<\/strong> Part of the difference is that you realize as an adult a lot of things you didn\u2019t know as a child. First of all, as a child you basically get your values from your parents. It\u2019s really their values, not yours, and you take them on faith. As you’re an adult…you know more about the world. You\u2019re exposed, certainly in school and college, to a secular way of thinking so you recognize that as a real alternative. \u00a0You are also exposed to people from other beliefs and faiths.<\/p>\n

Now, for me, this happened from a young age because I grew up in a Hindu country with a lot of Muslims.\u00a0 So, it\u2019s not like that was a discovery for me but the fact is when you\u2019re an adult you begin to process all this and you begin to say \u201cWell, look, how do we know there’s a God? He\u2019s invisible! How do we know it’s this God and not that one? And how do we know it\u2019s this holy book and not that one.”\u00a0 So, that\u2019s what I mean. As an adult you have to think anew. You have to ask…if your parents beliefs are beliefs that you\u2019re willing to affirm or reject.<\/p>\n

JWK: <\/strong>Why is religion positive in your view?<\/p>\n

DR. D’SOUZA: <\/strong>It\u2019s positive because, first, it offers us a hope of a life after death. Now, none of us knows what\u2019s coming after death…Death is something we have to face in any case. So, we can face it despairingly \u2013 looking, you might say, into the abyss \u2013 or we can face it hopefully with the expectation that something better is going to come at the end of it. Now, obviously, the people who are in the second camp are going to be happier and death is going to be easier for them.<\/p>\n

And, so putting side whether there is life after death, it\u2019s simply a fact that it\u2019s more consoling to believe in life after death than it isn’t.<\/p>\n

So, right there, the first benefit of religion is giving hundreds of millions of people hope that is not available to those who don\u2019t believe in life after death.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s number one. Number two is…life, after you overcome necessity, which is to say you have enough food to eat and a roof over your head, is about a search for the sublime \u2013 something that\u2019s truly great, truly wonderful, something that raises you above the pedestrian everyday level of life.\u00a0 In ordinary secular life the experience of the sublime is quite rare.\u00a0 It may occur in a great film, or watching a great piece of art. It may occur in the throes of sexual excitement. But, the truth of it is, it\u2019s very transitory.\u00a0 It comes and, basically, no sooner than it comes, it\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n

I do think that, for people who are seriously religious, the experience of the sublime is a part of everyday life.\u00a0 And that is a truly great feeling because it situates your life within a cosmic drama. You\u2019re not an insignificant nothing in the middle of nowhere. Your life is meaningful, purposeful and it\u2019s connected to the great events of the universe.<\/p>\n

JWK: <\/strong>What do you say to people who say religion divides the world rather than unifying it?<\/p>\n

DR. D’SOUZA:<\/strong> I say that we are all at the foot of a mountain, we human beings.\u00a0 And the…truth is at the summit and none of us can see the summit\u00a0 but there are many rivers coming down the mountain. Those are the different religions. They’re all human attempts to reach the summit. To me they\u2019re all flowing in the right direction and they\u2019re all coming from the same source. Some may go higher than others…My point is that because these are human efforts to apprehend the divine, they make mistakes. They have disagreements. They\u2019re ultimately trying to capture something that\u2019s not visible to us…There are differences among religions. They are important but, on the fundamental issues of the existence of God, life after death and, also, morality, most of the religions of the world are in a high degree of agreement.<\/p>\n

JWK: <\/strong>But how about all the wars fought over religious differences?<\/p>\n

DR. D’SOUZA:<\/strong> Religion goes to the core of human identity.\u00a0 In that sense it\u2019s a little bit like nationality, tribe, even race sometimes.\u00a0 So, when something is really at the core of your being, it appeals to the best and the worst of human nature…I think patriotism is a good feeling but people, in the name of country, have done some terrible things. Similarly, the belief in God is a great thing but wrongly used it can be a pretext or an excuse for persecution, lording it over other people or conflict.\u00a0 Now, that being said – and this is a theme I intend to stress in the debate – the crimes of religious regimes have been infinitesimal in comparison to the crimes of atheist regimes.<\/p>\n

So, in the world, it\u2019s a matter of religion or no religion. You always have to measure something against the alternative.<\/p>\n

JWK:<\/strong> What do you say to people who equate the Nazis with Christians?<\/p>\n

DR. D’SOUZA:<\/strong> The Nazis were neither Christians nor atheists. They were a weird hybrid. Basically, in the early thirties, Hitler tried to win over the churches. He knew that he was in a largely Christian country. He tried to win over the Catholics in Bavaria and the Lutherans in the rest of Germany…In Mein Kampf he as a line about doing the Lord’s work, so he kind of hoping that the churches would go for his view….When Hitler discovered that the churches were not going to go on his side he turned against them.<\/p>\n

So, the truth of Hitler was that he was trying to revive some ancient Germanic religion that was essentially pagan but would substitute for Christianity in people’s loyalty. He realized that people need deep foundational beliefs and even myths and so he was into the occult though this kind of ancient paganism. So, bottom line of it is, I wouldn\u2019t call Hitler a straight out atheist. He certainly wasn’t. But he was also a hater of Christianity.<\/p>\n

JWK:<\/strong> Do you feel atheists have become more aggressive in recent years and, if so, why?<\/p>\n

DR. D’SOUZA:<\/strong> My own view is that there have been a couple of….events that have given a boost to modern atheism and one of them, of course, is 9\/11. The fact that the radical Muslims do bad things in the name of God allows the atheists to erroneously try to smear all the other religions as being in the same boat.<\/p>\n

So, you have a lot of efforts to say, well, (the radical Muslims) flew the planes into the buildings after reading a holy book. But that\u2019s exactly what the Christians think and so on.\u00a0 Even though you can\u2019t find a Christian bin Laden or a Christian al-Qaeda or even a Christian country like post-Khomeini Iran today.\u00a0 So, that’s one fact that I think has boosted the New Atheism is this whole phenomenon\u00a0 of Islamic terrorism.<\/p>\n

But I think the other fact – and this is a broader fact – is that the atheists in the ’60’s, ’70’s and even early 1980\u2019s\u00a0 were kind of hoping that the world would become less religious anyway.\u00a0 And this was thought in every college and university. The basic premise was secularization — – that as countries became more educated, more wealthy they automatically become more secular. They look, after all, at Europe. Now, this\u00a0 prediction of sociality in the last generation has turned out to be false.\u00a0 Europe is an anomaly. No other country in the world is going the way of Europe. Even America isn\u2019t…A Hindu PhD\u00a0 is no less religious than a Hindu janitor.\u00a0 Similarly in Islam,\u00a0\u00a0 a professional Muslim is not less likely to go to the mosque or to Mecca than a Muslim servant.<\/p>\n

So, the point I\u2019m trying to make is that you\u2019re actually seeing a revival of religiosity in much of the world. And I think this has panicked the atheists who thought they were winning by default…So, they\u2019re getting more bellicose and more aggressive\u00a0 and they\u2019re using their strengths which are often in education and in the sort of high-brow media to make their case.\u00a0 So, I welcome it. I think it\u2019s a great challenge and I love debating these guys.<\/p>\n

ABOUT INTELLIGENCE SQUARED<\/em> DEBATES (IQ2US)
\nBased on the highly successful Intelligent Squared debate program in London, Intelligence Squared U.S.<\/em> has presented over 50 debates on a wide range of provocative and timely topics. From global warming and the financial crisis, to Afghanistan\/Pakistan and the death of mainstream media, Intelligence Squared U.S. brings together the world\u2019s leading authorities on the day\u2019s most important issues.<\/p>\n

Encourage one another and build each other up \u2013 1 Thessalonians 5:11<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s today’s dispatch from the crossroads of faith, media and culture. The Second Biggest Question.\u00a0 Behind, of course, whether or not God exists is whether belief in Him actually benefits the world. 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Kennedy is the founder and Dir. of Development of The Creative Universe Entertainment\u2122, a media consultation and development company focusing on the creation, development and support of high-quality mainstream entertainment that upholds positive timeless values, including trust in God. Current projects include \"Bryant Park\" (an uplifting romantic-comedy) and \"Photo Finish\" (an award-winning sci-fi TV pilot). He has written over 100 children's novels based on episodes of the Cartoon Network series \"Ben 10\", \"Ben 10: Alien Force\", \"Ben 10: Ultimate Alien\", \"Ben 10: Omniverse\" and \"Generator Rex\" among others. He also writes Beliefnet\u2019s \"Faith, Media & Culture\" blog. Previously, he has produced successful news and talk programming for CNN, Fox News, Pax TV and SiriusXM. Specialties: Script Writing, Movie\/TV Novelizations & Adaptations, TV Content Creation and Development, Creative Consultation, Producing and Booking News and Talk shows. 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