Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach sign copies of their books after debating the existence of God at the 92nd St. Y Wednesday evening (with moderator Rabbi Neil Gillman between them). GalleyCat correspondent Erin Vollmer reports that the sold-out event still drew as many as 200 people hoping to score last-minute tickets, and that the discussion was also broadcast to eleven other venues across the country.
“Mr. Hitchens, an extremely open atheist, kicked off his opening statement on a light note,” Vollmer emails, “commenting, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to fill 15 minutes… the proof is not with me.’ Hitchens did fill those first 15 minutes, though, and elicited laughs and applause with his usual rhetorical wit and sometimes egotistical banter (but, hey, with a stack of bestselling books and world-renowned erudition, he can get away with it). Rabbi Boteach spent most of his allotted 15 minutes criticizing Hitchens’s latest book, god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything while also promoting his own new release, The Broken American Male: And How to Fix Him. The ‘good stuff’ didn’t really come until the audience Q&A session when the two men argued directly with one another. Ah, good old-fashioned debate drama… gotta love it.”