Hello every one. I’m Mary and i’m from America. But now i live and work in Viet Nam. Nice to meet you!
Hello Mary, I’m Daisymoore I’m from America. My job location was at Alaska!
Hello contributors, I’m Michael. I was introduced to CFI through Richard Dawkins Foundation, I live and work in England.
The forum archive link is broken so it is not clear what is under discussion currently. I am writing on the subject of Augustinian Christian belief and the influence that the doctrine of Original sin might have on clerical child abuse. Any thoughts?
That’s definitely a relevant topic Michael.
I have been reading reviews on The Four Horsemen’, I watched the celebrated video but have not yet read the book. From what I read it is essentially a transcription of the original film. That is a pity. We must keep discussion alive but the debate should be moving on.
The intellectual arguments are interesting, what about the corrosive effects of religious indoctrination? This is where it all started, following 9/11 and Sam Harris’s The End of Faith. Mr Dawkins famously pronounced religion evil, but in the film he says he is “concerned not so much with the evil of religion as whether it is true.”
Have our three star authors lost their way? If Hirsi Ali had joined them in the writing, as expected, we might have seen a different book.
There is a recent gathering with Ali, Harris, Dawkins and I think Dennett is there. I would say, yes the conversation has moved on. The work of Harris and Nawaz is important. And there are many others.
How do you see the conversation moving on?
It’s not as though the arguments from the Four Horsemen days are irrelevant or that there are new ones to make. Atheists are basically forced to continually repeat the same core message forever until people understand it.
As far as I can tell, unless religion changes, our response to it can’t change. There’s a reason the arguments have been almost the same since the first discussion on this topic between an atheist and a theist.
Response need not mean argument. Perhaps the trick is to point, not to the essence of religious belief itself, but to its effect on the world view of believers. Belief in falsehood has consequences.
It was and still is such a joy to watch Hitchens in debates. He would sit there fairly bored at first, giving the standard answers, then they’d come up with something about the “ground of being” or “god that can’t be disproved”, phrased in some unique fashion, and he would perk up as he destroyed their semantic tricks and put them back in the dust bin that they came from.
Agreed, sheer joy. Hitchens often appears to be bored or even distracted by something off camera. He turns to face the discussion and contributes straight off the cuff with a pithy comment or put-down. How sad that he is lost to us.
I have no problem substituting ‘response’ for ‘argument’, because my point that there is nowhere else to go with the discussion, still stands. We can have new people say the same old things in new ways, but that’s about as much ‘moving on’ as is possible.
And I loved Hitch as much as anyone. He was, and still is, the king of words.
- Dawkins is just about as good with words, but his delivery is basically a repellent to anyone who doesn't already believe what he's saying.
- Harris is also just about as good with words. He's a close second to Hitch (I love his calm destruction of the other side.)
- Dennet is... Dennet- a smart guy who just isn't in the same league as the others when it comes to talking.
- Dillahunty is the newest name I've grown to like a lot. He isn't quite on the level of Hitch or Harris, but he's brilliant and fun to listen to.
Thanks for the name. Just watched Matt Dillahunty and Braxton Hunter debate ‘Does God exist’ Great stuff. Texas Baptists, surprisingly sensible questions from the floor at end.
Just go on YouTube and search for ‘atheist experience matt’. You’ll have many hours of educational entertainment.