Hitchens vs. D'Souza: those who follow debates about atheism vs. Christianity could appreciate that lineup tonight in Boulder.

In the soldout event, noted atheist Christopher Hitchens took on well-known Christian conservative and author Dinesh D'Souza at Mackey Auditorium.

The debate, "What's So great About God: Atheism vs. Religion," is the fourth time the men have met in various venues around the country to debate the great issues of the day, said the Rev. Kevin Augustyn, director of campus ministry at the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center in Boulder. Its educational outreach arm, the Aquinas Institute for Catholic Thought, sponsored the event.

The 2,000-capacity event proved so popular that overflow seating has been set up to accommodate 500 extra ticketholders, said spokeswoman Megan Dillon.

Both men are known for their intellectual fireworks and prolific writing abilities. D'Souza's latest book is What's So Great About Christianity. Hitchens is the author, most recently, of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Earlier, D'Souza and Hitchens answered three questions posed by the Rocky. Their answers have been printed in full:

ROCKY: What's your opponent's best argument?

HITCHENS: The "fine tuning" of the universe, with its bias (at least in our infinitesimal locality) for human life. A useless argument but a memorable one, and of course impossible to disprove (another symptom of its weakness).

D'SOUZA: I think Christopher's best argument is that the world is so flawed in its design and with all the suffering in it that it doesn't look like there's an intelligent, all-powerful, compassionate designer behind it all.

ROCKY: How do you handle moments of doubt?

HITCHENS: Doubt is one of the foundations of our skeptical method to begin with, so only if I ceased to have moments of same would I feel any concern.

D'SOUZA: To me doubt is intrinsic to religious belief. "Belief" is not the same thing as "knowledge." If I knew for sure, I wouldn't have belief. Belief means trusting in God even when you have doubts. But this in no way shows that belief in unreasonable or irrational.

ROCKY: If your position "won" and became the world's gold standard of behavior, what would the world look like?

HITCHENS: Very much the way it does now, since the way humans behave is in fact determined by the laws of physics and biology and is only to a limited extent affected by theocratic exhortation. Life would and does improve of course, to the extent that theocratic exhortations are outgrown or ignored. In every country and society, the measure of freedom and education and prosperity can be directly correlated to the growth of secularization. (Tunisia vs. Libya, Ireland today vs. Ireland yesterday, Iran vs. Turkey, India vs. Pakistan, Italy and Spain and much of the rest of the Latin and Catholic world since the eclipse of the Vatican's alliance with fascism, the Jewish people once emancipated from the ghetto; numberless other examples.) The gold standard can already can be seen in operation, as can the opposite delights of religious rule and "faith-based" insurgency.

D'SOUZA: Imagine a Christian world in which everyone aspired to live by the commandments to love God and love their neighbor. Imagine a world in which people took seriously Christ's teachings and sought to apply them. Who can deny that such a world would be infinitely better than the one we have now?