His witty repartee, his ready-access store of historical quotations, his bookish eloquence, his effortless flow of well-formed words, beautifully spoken in that formidable Richard Burton voice (the whole performance not dulled by other equally formidable Richard Burton habits), would threaten your arguments even if you had good ones to deploy. A string of reverends and ?theologians? ruefully discovered this during Hitchens?s barnstorming book tour around the United States.

I really love it when they send the unarmed to a battle of wits. If they hadn’t devolved, there would have been tails literally set firmly between the legs on this one. Keep ‘em running, Hitchens!

Can’t believe the two haven’t met. That really must be remedied, I think.

I love this line by Hitchens, which I put in bold. The rest of the paragraph is for context, in response to the old Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin were atheists meme.

“For hundreds of years, millions of Russians had been told the head of state should be a man close to God, the Czar, who was head of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as absolute despot. If you?re Stalin, you shouldn?t be in the dictatorship business if you can?t exploit the pool of servility and docility that?s ready-made for you. The task of atheists is to raise people above that level of servility and credulity.“

They have met. There is a video discussion between Dawkins,Dennet, Harris, and Hitchens on the Dawkins web site. Look under, The Four Horsemen.

Ack! Thanks. I didn’t even look at the date. And I have seen the 4 Horsemen ads, though I haven’t watched the vid(s?). What can I say? I had an attack of teh stoopid.