Interesting debate. Debate - Hitchens, Harris, Dennett vs Boteach, D'Souza, Taleb.
Posted on: November 18, 2009 - 4:17am
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Interesting debate. Debate - Hitchens, Harris, Dennett vs Boteach, D'Souza, Taleb.
Debate - Hitchens, Harris, Dennett vs Boteach, D'Souza, Taleb.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hnqo4_X7PE
Not so much because of the debate itself but actually the peoples responses. Also watching the theist side get pissed is always amusing. Pretty big event hope there are more like it!
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Looks like a really interesting debate. I'll have to watch it when I have some time.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
When did this take place?
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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Who is the deist seeming guy?
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Think his name is Richard Wright, he never really states his position he just says I don't agree with either side. But he sounds like doesn't know what he is talking about most of the time. It gets good towards the end the rabbi gets pissed at Daniel Dennet for intelectually thrashing him and then proceeds to talk about manners during debate.
Oh man, that rabbi pulled the hitler card. And then he bleats about not getting any respect. And then he runs. ( "I have to catch a plane !" )
*sigh*
Btw, who's the jolly little spanish guy on 1:35:10, and what is he talking about ? At least he seemed get a few laughs.
@Funk- Richard Wright, ok. That Rabbi was a douche. I liked him better than the statistician theist though, he rambled and I honestly don't know what his point was. The problem I had with the Indian guy was his blatant fallacies. I don't mind an occasional straw man, but anyone in a debate of this level really should know better than to use the anti-atheist arguments he was using, it just made him look dishonest.
@Anon- Yea, I wish I had an English transcript, that little guy stood out for me too...he got the biggest reaction from the crowd out of all the speakers and I don't have a clue what he said. I liked the comment the one person at the end made, about how the theists needed to be intellectually honest and fess up to the whackier beliefs or get rid of them, and the atheists needed to at least acknowledge that there is more to theism than just belief (although I imagine most of them would/have).
I thought it was a good debate overall, but I was dissapointed by the theists.
You know, verbal debates are fine but I think I would like to see 1v1 forum style debates done by the guys at this level...5 minutes is nothing, and it is more about winning the crowd than anything else. I want to see them go toe to toe in a 25 round written/online debate with a 2,500 word per post limit. You really see the guts of an argument when you do that, much more so than this type of 'real' debate. You also learn a great deal about the intellectual capacity of the debaters.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I found Richard Wright to be amusingly naive when he summed up his hope as 'the religions finding some common ground....'.
Good luck with that.
How can not believing in something that is backed up with no empirical evidence be less scientific than believing in something that not only has no empirical evidence but actually goes against the laws of the universe and in many cases actually contradicts itself? - Ricky Gervais
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnMYL8sF7bQ&NR=1
Another debate, between Hitchens and the Rabbi. I guess Boteach's style is just to pound on emotion the whole time. He Godwined the debate in his opening statement, lol.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
@ Mellestad.
Yeah the Rabbi basically whines alot and thinks that's going to win over the crowd. It seems like Talebs' contention is just that because he is a specialist in mathematical finance he is always right. Which isn't a very good argument since it doesn't require much math to conclude that religion is bullshit. The guy who really pisses me off always is D'Souza because he always says the same shit, paraphrase: hitler, pol pot, etc where a atheists therefore atheism is morally bankrupt. Which is obviously bullshit...I really wanna slap that guy. I would never be able to participate in these debates someone would end up getting slapped...lol.
As for the short guy with the glasses he actually said something really interesting that I thought about in the past. He basically said as his understanding of science has increased he concluded that atoms cannot be destroyed basically,matter is never created or destroyed and it changes (Law of Conservation of energy) therefore when his friends tell him someone died and that it's the end. He sais "quando uno se muere que pueneta se muere?" Which translates to when we die wtf is really dieing? Pretty cool statement.
Thanks for the translation! Yea, I have thought of that as well, sort of a Bhuddist immortality.
What was Taleb's point though? I honestly did not understand what kind of message he even had, to me he just seemed to randomly say a few things then sit down again.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I don't remember much of what the Rabbi said about science, but Dinesh D'Souza appeared willfully ignorant of science. I couldn't tell if he was really that stupid, or if he was deliberately deceiving the audience. The statistician made irrelevant points about how difficult predicting complex events is. This is why we have statistics and science.
The theists provided zero evidence for god. All they did was point out that scientists haven't figured it all out, and said we should give religion a try at explaining the cosmos. But they didn't provide a method! They provided nothing but grossly exaggerated strawman arguments of the scientific method, appeals to emotion, and arguments from ignorance.
On the other hand, the atheists made excellent points -- especially Harris. Unfortunately, there were too many bad arguments to debunk, and too little time.
P.S. Is D'Souza really that stupid?
Yes, he is. Or he's a deceitful little troll. Either way, he's evidence of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of christianity.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Old, old argument. "Where does the light go when you turn it off?" Answer - no where and everywhere. Where's a quantum physicist when you need one?
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
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