A YouTuber named Agatan FND has compiled a group of videos with the “best of” quotes of various nonbelievers (the channel is here). Reader “walkingmap” tells me that they added a collection of Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus) clips, and I’ll put that up just because it’s there.
The ones with the big guy looming behind me come from the debate I had with Catholic theologian John Haught at Kentucky, and he was apparently so agitated that he walked back and forth during our exchange. (He later tried, and failed, to get the video taken down.)
But when I look at the clips from the other people (links below, some people have several collections), I realize how ineloquent I am compared to most of the others, especially (of course) Hitchens. I don’t want reassurance of eloquence here, for I have a realistic view of my own abilities. But Jebus, Hitchens once again stands out a the rhetorical giant among nonbelievers. In that, at least, he was irreplaceable. Click on the links below to go to some of the videos:
Christopher Hitchens
Dan Dennett
Penn Jillette
Richard Dawkins
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Sam Harris
Matt Dillahunty
A. C. Grayling
This list by no means exhausts the collection.
Great video. I will add to Feynman’s quote:
“Always train your doubt most strongly on those ideas that you really want to be true.”
Sean Carroll
Possibly the best known advice for humankind.
To me, content is more important then elegance. I certainly don’t mean to take away from Hitchens because he spoke brilliantly.
Without mentioning names, one of the people on the list is often too wordy, another one – I don’t care for the way he presents his material at all. I’m sure we can find fault with anyone’s speeches.
Agree with everything you said!
Elegance isn’t a worthy goal to aspire to, IMO.
Your public statements are calm, thoughtful, well-organized, and spoken with a subtle note of amusement in your voice.
And your performance against Haught was better than any of those giants have produced, because you actually studied his arguments and disassembled them.
Agreed. The debate with Haught was savage and devastating. No wonder Haught wanted it taken down. Jerry made him sound like the intellectual twit that he is.
I’ll my voice to Scott and Rickflick here. In my opinion your (Jerry) strongest quality is that you are very thorough at researching and taking the time to understand the arguments of people you engage with. And then directly addressing those arguments.
This quality is both very respectful of your opponents and at the same time enables you to really engage them very directly, leaves them less room to obfuscate and later pretend that you did not engage their arguments. Unfortunately for some people that means making their arguments look really bad.
I have to disagree with you Scott on elegance, though. I think elegance is a worthy goal. Not at the expense of content, mind you, but definitely a worthy goal for both aesthetic and even practical reasons.
I don’t think Jerry is particularly lacking in the elegance department, I find him pleasant to listen to, but there is always room for improvement (up to him of course). Measuring yourself against someone like Christopher is probably being a little too hard on yourself though.
Eloquence is useful when speaking to true believers, but for skeptics, it comes across as manipulative. And it is.
It certainly can seem to be and almost always is manipulative when used by apologists, preachers, wooists and similar. Also by plenty of bloviating academics. But I would qualify by saying “attempted eloquence” because most who try fail. Much like Christian Rock. Most of it is pretty awful.
But it is no more inherently manipulative than any other style of communication. It depends on the users intent.
Agreed. Jerry’s prose is his great strength, IMO.
I agree. He is a real pleasure to read. The information content per word count is very high and he manages to be very clear and easy to understand at the same time. That is a rare thing in my experience.
And I agree with all this, too. Finding a lot to agree with here and I’ve only just started reading this thread! I love Jerry’s “subtle note of amusement” voice. 😀
I like that several of your clips focused on the supernatural and its relation to science: it isn’t somehow ruled out from scientific methods beforehand, it turned out that the hypothesis was either wrong or worthless. That’s a very important point to make if you’re going to turn rigorous scrutiny on to religion.
Haught didn’t just pace back and forth behind you during your talk, at one point he actually shook his head “no” in rebuttal to one of your arguments. Iirc it was where you said that he believes that God has an effect on the physical world. Haught does indeed believe this. He just wants to pretend that the only thing you could mean by that is the Great Flood or something he doesn’t believe in.
Haught and other such theologians would deny that faith involves confidence. Instead, they’re in love with the idea that a tiny, hesitant little bit of hope that something might be true is the grand and glorious precondition of curiosity, or loving God, or something.
Must…resist…failing…to resist…
It’s not that those of us who think “supernatural” is a synonym for “impossible” want to rule out any specific phenomenon without investigation; it’s just that if science investigated and found that the phenomenon is real, why would we continue to call it supernatural?
Why wouldn’t we? The term already has a basic accepted meaning and provenance.
Doing anything else just looks contorted, as if we’re just trying to prove we can’t be wrong by definition.
I do see what you’re saying (and have said, many other times), from a tactical perspective.
I will argue, however, that although “supernatural” has a history of being a comply used term, I don’t think it’s meaning and provenance is well-accepted. Or at least well-defined. I think it’s a pretty vague term and people constantly stretch it or shrink it depending on this, that, or the other. Or don’t even really think about specific criteria that a phenomenon needs to meet to be considered “supernatural”.
Ye gods. Comply = commonly
Also no apostrophe in “its”
Generally speaking, the people who stretch and shrink the meaning of “supernatural” do so in order to protect it from being disproven or discarded. That shouldn’t be our tactic; we don’t need to adopt the strategy.
But ultimately it’s not about tactics, but clarity and meaning. The “supernatural” should mean the same thing it means when believers describe it and provide persuasive evidence to each other, that it does when they turn around and defend it from criticism.
what a great collection!
Professor, please make a bookshelf tour video of your books! Not that hard and good for us fans!
Now on thanks!
PS: At least half hour long…
Self promotion links to promoting 8 other people.
PCC(E) needz dikshunery!
Come on Jerry, where’s your click bait headline? You should have written “naked self promotion”! 😀
It’s a nice compilation and you explain things clearly and intelligently. That’s what we need for science promotion.
I was a little disappointed that the video didn’t include my own favorite Jerry Coyne quote. It was during a debate about whether science and religion are compatible, and it went something like this:
“Saying that science and religion are compatible because some scientists are religious is like saying that Catholicism and pedophilia are compatible because some Catholic priests are pedophiles.”
The above video is part 1. I assume this quote will be in parts 2…
Agatan FND’s compilations are pretty great. PCCE is seriously big time now.
That was great! I can’t wait for Part 2! 🙂
Jerry, it depends on what you mean by eloquent (being a non-native speaker, such concepts are always a bit difficult to grasp for me). You are more matter-of-fact, and less interested in rhetoric – which I like. It’s not that you had any choice in the matter anyway (/overused joke). Your 2012 talk on “Why Evolution is True and Why Many People Still Don’t Believe it” is still my go-to video for that subject, great for people who want a more detailled explanations and wouldn’t be satisfied with the short animated clips.
But going forward, if you wanted to do more rhetoric, perhaps you need to give it some room and prepare for it. All of the people thought up their routine and made sure there’s a quote here and there, a witty remark, or a fun digression. Someone like Hitchens, I strongly suspect, was a social person who “rehearsed” his routine over so many evenings with friends and wine that he could assemble a speech on the fly.
I went and watched the debate between Jerry Coyne and John Haught. I don’t think it was even close.
The only thing I would say about it is Jerry is speaking just a little too fast. I realize there is a lot of information to get through in a limited amount of time, but I think the speed takes away from the importance of what you are saying. I would suggest (not that my suggestions are worth much or you really need them) that you try to speak just a touch slower, and/or emphasize the most important points by saying them again but slower with a slightly different cadence.
I think I would definitely emphasize the point that religions (or the religious) tend to think their religion is the right one with the right answers, but they all have different answers, and no evidence to point to that they are right. If Mr Haught’s “other way of knowing” actually worked all those religions would have the same answers. They don’t. I think that sums up the entire problem.
I thought it was a good debate on Jerry Coyne’s side. I can’t tell from the video, I wonder if anyone said it changed their mind? I wouldn’t expect them to right away, but I would hope they would think about Jerry’s arguments, because in the end I don’t think they can get around them except via cognitive dissonance and hand waving.
Anyways, great debate Jerry, much better than anything I could do. I find my public speaking to be rather hit and miss. Sometimes I have no problems, sometimes I can barely string two words together. I suppose all those years of giving lectures takes care of any public speaking phobias.
I wonder if it was John Haught’s comment “you got to get out more” that caused him to want to take down the video. I thought that made him look haughty.
This debate certainly brought home Jerry’s often made point on sophisticated theologians trying to represent religion as something very different than what the majority actually believe.