Ciudad de las Ideas debate on religion

November 29, 2009 • 9:55 am

If you have 2.25 hours to spare (I don’t today, but I’ll look soon), they’ve posted the Ciudad de las Ideas religion debate, which I missed when I was in Mexico, on YouTube.

Against faith:  Dan Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens

The faithful for faith: Shmuley Boteach, Dinesh D’Souza, Nasim Taleb

The atheist for faith:  Robert Wright.

The sound seems to be a bit muted, but it may be my computer.

11 thoughts on “Ciudad de las Ideas debate on religion”

  2. No – sound is cr*p. I’ve been hoping they’d redo it for quite a while (the spanish version audio is just dandy)

  3. SPOILER ALERT:

    I already watched this a week or so ago. Dennett, Harris and Hitchens far outmaneuvered Boteach and D’Souza. Boteach was offensive. D’Souza spewed his usual lies and garbage. Taleb was off in a private angry world by himself and Wright was irrelevant squared.

  4. Boteach seems like yet another religious idiot who doesn’t realize that he has evolution to thank for his moral sensibility, not an invisible sky daddy.

  5. I’m absolutely shocked at how stupid Taleb is. He was the of the few economists whose view of markets I found superficially plausible.

    What does this say about my understanding of economics, or about economics in general? How was his complete disregard for logic not immediately evident?

    :/

  6. I haven’t watched it yet, but I wonder if Boteach will say that Stephen Jay Gould disproved evolution and replaced it with punctuated equilibrium again.

  7. I think I’ll have to settle for PeeZed’s summary.

    I do loves me some Hitchens, but I D’Souza makes me wanna hurt somebody. I don’t think I can take three of his kind.

  8. For faith and against faith without a clear definition of faith? Since it references the debate regarding atheism vs. fundamentalism, I am guessing atheism is the against faith side and fundamentalism is the faith side. Of course this ignores the majority of faithful who are neither atheist nor fundamentalist.

    Since it is not intuitively obvious which begs the question…

    Can you have your faith and edicts, too?

  9. Well, I made it to 1:10:13. Conclusions:

    1. There’s only so much of this shit you can take;

    2. Jokes don’t travel;

    3. Hitchens was the weakest I’ve ever seen him, but he still put the wingnuts to shame.

    Harris’s comments, as always, stand alone regardless of the context. I’d like to see them presented as individual clips on YouTube; they’d be an excellent educational resource.

    ‘Night, all…

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