I personally find it pretty painful and embarrassing to listen to D’Sousa talk. At least Wright takes the stance that it could be some mysterious force out there in the Universe that directs evolution (it’s stupid, but lots of really smart people believe in this bullshit). D’Sousa, on the other hand, tries to make the claim that Christianity is the most scientific of all faiths, despite the obvious fact that his system of belief discourages skepticism and relies on a rigid and nonsensical dogma. I guess he’s got to defend what he believes, but it doesn’t stop his ramblings from being painful to hear. Luckily, he gets spanked by the Horsemen.
You might need to turn up the volume. For some reason it’s crazy quiet. Props to Sam Harris for posting this up on his blog.
November 16th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Odd – Robert Wright is a self-proclaimed agnostic. His book The Moral Animal is an excellent primer on reciprocal morality being hard-wired into us. I suspect he takes Christianity literally out of intellectual honesty more than any article of faith (though I can’t watch it yet, so I could be wrong).
November 16th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Oh geez, Harris is the painful one to listen to. He actually questions a supernatural God’s ability to modify nature, a nature that God himself created. As if a man is incapable of cutting his own hair. I have never heard such delusional drivel in my life. At least Hitchens reasons like a rational human being.
November 16th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
I would rather headbutt a knife than listen to Shmuley Boteach.
Its painful to hear so many logical fallacies and willfully ignorant statements be spewed out in only the opening 10 minutes of a debate, and in so rude of a manner. At least the other two Christians were showing some sort of class…
November 16th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
^ Scott, I messed up which guy I was talking about. I’ve made the correction. Thanks.
November 16th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
The rabbi stated it best: people want to toss God out but keep morality. It’s all quite comical really, isn’t it?
November 16th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Are you really going to stick with the argument that we need a god for morality? It’s such a weak argument. The only comical bit is that you think you have a convincing argument.
I was at a friend’s hockey game this weekend. The final score was 18-1. It was sad to watch, because the losing team just had no chance of matching the other team, you almost feel bad for the losing team because the winning team is just so much better.
That’s how i feel when watching debates like this. Hitchens, Harris and Dennett are just so much better at this, it’s sad to see the other side debate against them, they just don’t have a chance. They bring up the same, tired, arguments, they bring nothing worth while to the table.
Wright is the least painful of the speakers on the religious side to listen too, but his points are still very weak. He’s more articulate then the other two by far, but that isn’t saying much.
November 16th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Mark you irrate the shit out of me. Why are you coming on an Athiest blog and making comments as if its fact.
“He actually questions a supernatural God’s ability to modify nature, a nature that God himself created. ”
This is not a fact, and just because you repeat it over and over and over and over and over doesnt make it any more true. You want to convince people, rational people…. evidence and facts. Seriously in the last 2 weeks you must have posted on 10 different threads and never once made a rational coherent argument for your sky fairy. You want credibility, start presenting facts.
November 17th, 2009 at 1:26 am
I think the left channel is weird on this video for some reason, if you just watch it with a right earphone in your ear at full volume, it’s pretty listenable.
Wright is just a downright mess, plain and simple. He has a problem with “fundamentalism” as he puts it, but he just spends all his time dithering to the point that I’m not sure exactly what he’s trying to get at. It just seems that he’s annoyed at Sam Harris et al. for being better debaters and/or holding more tenable and defendable positions than he does. As for the other debaters on the pro-religion side, I was just confused as hell the whole time they were speaking, as their “arguments” were highly suspect and riddled with holes.