1. Pat Condell: Anthology DVD available now!

Comment #172475 by McLir on April 29, 2008 at 3:38 pm

If George Carlin and James Burke intelligently designed a baby...

2. Special Guest: Richard Dawkins

Comment #142465 by McLir on March 12, 2008 at 2:25 pm

This is a very good interview. Most Dawkins interviews sound fairly similar. Even on the better journalistic shows, the interviewer seems to feel obliged to raise the old familiar arguments.

Hearing Dawkins interviewed by a sympathetic show was much better. Plus, they are able to cover more ideas. I'm glad they spent the time with the concept of "Mount Improbable."

I've been a fan of Freethought Radio for a good while. I think this might be their best show.

3. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #92956 by McLir on December 1, 2007 at 8:23 pm

I expected Dennett to shred D'Souza and it didn't happen.

D'Souza's first argument ignored Dennett's resolution re: religious education. Instead, D'Souza launched a bunch of fragmentation grenades to divide Dennett's attention. Lion tamers use chairs because the four legs of the chair divide the lions attention -- it works in debate also. The trick is for the lion to get back to the main point. That didn't happen here.

BTW, I've noticed many American conservative commentators who are very skilled at this technique. Why it is American conservatives who do this so well is an open question. A high premium on winning -- over other values -- is surely a factor.

When D'Souza brought up Pascal's wager, that sealed it for me. While it might work as a cute bit of sophistry, it is a disingenuous argument and I don't know anyone who believes in God because of it. (On the other hand, I have heard many times the adjacent argument that I'll go to Hell for my disbelief. But any God who would set up such a brutal system of enforcing beliefs is not worthy of worship.)

Perhaps Dennett didn't feel especially compelled to combat D'Souza because D'Souza made recognizably bad arguments. (Plus D'Souza's shrill tone did not help his case either.)

On the talking point of Stalin and Pol Pot being murderous atheists, I think this is an issue worth fleshing out. Totalitarian state communism resembles theocracy in some important ways. There might be some other useful analogies between religious zealotry and certain kinds of secular zealotry -- neo-conservatism and market fundamentalism come to mind. The dangers of these come from valuing ideological systems over actual humans. Perhaps a generalized definition of toxic zealotry could be very useful.

Dennett's resolution sounds like an extremely good idea. If any schools adopt it, I will be very interested to see the results.

4. All the mistakes of the godly are merely metaphor

Comment #57462 by McLir on July 19, 2007 at 12:29 pm

I came out to my dad as an atheist back in '87 -- we had a serious meeting at the nearby Elias Big Boy. He kept saying "I don't want to argue with you, but..." and then he would launch a counter-argument against atheism. And I did my best to answer his arguments without trying to launch into a full debate.

One of his last statements really threw me. "Do you think Christians are stupid?" I can still feel the HUH? on my face. I just said, "No. Do you think Buddhists are stupid?"