This is sheer intellectual brilliance from Christopher. He's like Botham in 'Botham's Ashes': "Come on then, if you think you're hard enough; I'll take you all on alone and still beat you." And he did! Fantastic!
@Skipissatan LOL, actually the problem is with the radio isotope dating method. There are many other methods of measuring time which have been overlooked by scientists because it goes against their view of biology and theology. One of these methods is the amount of dust gathered on the moon. What you said is kind of like saying "the atheist has always been prone to make generalizations." FYI I'm 17 y/o and I am taking Calculus 3 at my local community college. :p
The golden rule is not a religious idea. It is simply putting yourself in others shoes before you act, and that is the secularist's morality. That is my "moral compass".
Thank you for your comments. Ayaan Hirsi Ali,is a cultured, elegant , articulate Woman with compassion. Hitchens is an egocentric , self absorbed individual , who bilittles his opnonents to satsify some inner inadequacy of his. He covers his audience with the cloak of condecension only to make him appear supreme, while all the time he is being snide.He will spring to Ayaan's defence only because he admires and agrees with her for what she says, not for what she is.Herein lies his dishonesty.
His assertion that the philosophy 'what I don't want done to me I will not do to others' is superior to 'Love your neighbour as you love yourself' shows his lack of understanding of some fundamental tenets of Christianity. Something I consider perfectly acceptable another person may find totally reprehensible and it is only in love that such a consideration will affect my decisions.
@AtheistMovement True. During the bronze age the moral codes and laws were mixed with religious beliefs. They were written down in religious books instead of special moral- or law books. Morality can, and DOES, exist without religion. Morality is cultural and common sense. A lot of it isn't even written down in the Bible or in law books.
Did anyone else spot C. Hitchens complete contradiction when he states that Truth may be an unattainable goal but we should seek it nevertheless followed by ridiculing the notion that we should always try to love others as ourselves even though it's an unattainable goal? Wow, what hypocrisy!
It is in fact best if children learn morality "on their own." Simply being told does not satisfy the brain's lust for experiential learning. If children practice reciprocal altruism they learn that it is beneficial and will keep doing it.
@tenley1234 I think we all know that there are many more people who tell pollsters they are Christians than there are people who actually believe the primary doctrines taught in the Bible. The former are the type who will have children who turn away from the faith, the latter are those who see children as a blessing, and train them up in the way they should go.
Im sorry if I twisted your statement. By the way though, to answer your question. Christopher Hitchens said in another debate that " I hope I have already shown how ridiculous deism is". My guess is that he is not a closeted deist.
chris' confusion might be sincere but, his arguments are quite simple and easy to refute. he has very valid concerns though: the distortions that human beings have brought upon themselves due to or, on account of religious leanings.
I'll take back it being just one person who perpetuates. Wherever it starts it is usually perpetuated by a smallish group of people at first and through mechanisms easily identified including propaganda and force the rest are inculcated.
What it comes down to is that if he believes you cannot attain truth he should sit down and say, I don't know any of the answers to your questions so I cannot answer them. I shall venture guesses, but yours are as good as mine.
@tenley1234 "I had some good reasons for refusing some of it. My mistake was to dispense with it all, indiscriminately. I hope to show that one of the things I was schooled in was not, in fact, religion, but a strange and vulnerable counterfeit of it -- a counterfeit that can be detected and rejected while yet leaving the genuine truths of Christianity undamaged" (pp. 10-11)." ~Peter Hitchens, the rage against God
@Thehuskarl are you suggesting that we have the rate of decay of Carbon-14 wrong? and do you have any evidence to support this? if so you should probably bring it forward and land yourself a nice physics professorship in the process... why would I conceivably need to know how old you are or what courses you do at college?
What a terrible world we would live in if that was the case. In essence then why is their law? What purpose does it serve other than to educate people on what is right or wrong."Reciprocal Altruism is a social interaction phenomenon where an individual makes sacrifices for another individual in expectation of similar treatment."How long will this take to learn, what terrible consequences there could be if not simply told right from wrong. Now love thy neighbour does the same only without danger.
@Skipissatan The ONLY reason I brought that up was because you said that "the religious have never been especially gifted mathematically." PS. where did you get the word "gifted" from? Probably religion... :p (yes, that also is a joke...) I am not saying we have the decay rate of carbon -14 wrong, only that there may be other variables which affect it's rate which we haven't discovered yet. Another possibility was that God created carbon-14 with and apparent "age"
What the heck is Peter talking about when he sais it's WORSE for someone's political life to deny global warming than it is to publicly denounce god? How many US senators deny global warming? How many deny God? Is he willfully ignorant or just stupid?
@Thehuskarl but the decay rate is observable, you can prove it by taking objects of known age (like a dated book or tombstone) and examining the C-14 content. No serious physicist thinks that the process is anything other than reliable. This leaves your argument as "maybe got is messing with us". This is both incredibly vain as why would a god care what we think? and bizarre as why would god want to trick us? what kind of god would that be and why would you follow him? it makes no sense.
tbh, I just think Peter Hitchens is a traditional, bland, "the world is falling apart/moral standards are evaporating" conservative, who more than likely lives in a rather nice part of town.
To the question of "is truth real" Dr./Prof Hitchens replies, "it is unattainable"... Am I the only one who sees the irony in this statement? He is stating his decided view of truth that "it is "unattainable" and in so doing states that he has attained it. What he should say is that "It is unattainable, i think"
So you've never heard the term "kin selection?" There is evidence to support it. Look it up. Some people are skeptical of course. But then again some people are skeptical about evolution itself. I would say the debate on whether kin selection in it's current state is true is a good one and should be continued. We shouldn't, due to biases however, say that morality couldn't have come from evolution and kin selection. I'm sorry but we just aren't as special of a species as we think.
Hmm, no, Chris Hitchens was quite clear, so I don't understand why you couldn't follow him. He said not doing to others what you wouldn't want done to you (technically the silver rule, but anyway, he is in favour of the golden rule elsewhere) is moral and doable, but that LOVING YOUR ENEMY is not.Loving one's enemy is not the golden rule. The golden rule is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you".
Irishmauddib, Firstly, what is fatuous is an inability of some to understand semantic rules of speech. The positive and the negative, by definition are not the same anymore than the inverse and converse are the same. If you can't decode something as simple as the difference between two opposing statements, I simply cannot help you. Secondly, what is really fatuous is someone who uses the term "maud dib" when viewing a debate about the Iraq War. Do you know the origin of Herbert's usage?
It is also interesting that those who did clap christopher abort their children, and if they don't they only have one or two kids anyways. While there are many Christian families with over twelve kids. To put it bluntly, once your generation dies out, there won't be many atheists left, when you look at it as a percentage.
It was never a statement. I never presented it as a fact, it was merely speculation based on the fact that he said he WOULDNT go FURTHER then deism, which suggests he COULD ACCEPT deism. If my original comment was intended as a "matter of fact" statement, I wouldnt have ended it with a question mark. You then twisted MY comment.
Christopher misspeaks when he states Hillel wrote the Golden Rule. Hillel's taching was "what is repulsive to do you should no do to another" is not the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule deals in the positive, not the negative. Christopher is shallow and sodden far too much of the time. Imagine if he had not addled his brain with drink.
If only Hitchens was a tad more modest and humble, how much more acceptable would his opinion be? With an ego that cannot be quenched, it is no surprise to me he became an American. No Brit audience would have put up with his arrogance.Americans by and large are sheep. Certainly he was more persuasive than his brother. However, if I were walking down a dark alley and was just mugged, I'd say his brother might stop and offer to help, I doubt Hitchen's ego would permit him. I'd vote for the human.
I know he's a bit arrogant but thats part of his personality. A bit oscar wilde-ish. I love his personality, its adorable even though I don't agree with his stance on the war.
Not true, genocide has occurred primarily because of memes(ideas) of a viral nature perpetuated usually by one person (ie, a dictator like Mugabe, Stalin, or Hitler.) It IS in our DNA to be altruistic especially to kin. Ideas can both hurt and help us. Ideas usually hurt us when they are not challenged regularly and reasonably. Name one genocidal dictatorship today or in the past in which challenging the authority was not actively punished and or suppressed.
Peter's "England not intervening in USA politics since 200 years ago" line wasn't even clever, much less funny, and certainly isn't true. You get the impression that no one would know Peter existed if he weren't the younger sibling of a living lion. He reminds of Christopher Buckley compared to William F. Buckley, Jr.
Pilot did stay for an answer. Jesus didn't answer it. What is truth? It is that which is the case. Everyone knows that. Maybe if he would have asked what is the truth, he would have gotten an answer.
I'm in general agreement with Christopher on religion-but he's full of shit on his comments on the green movement. The green movement is backed up and informed by science-the exact opposite of religion.
@Thehuskarl if that were true the number of atheists would be decreasing, it isn't. Then the religious have never been especially gifted mathematically; their inability to see the problem with 1 000 000 year old fossils and a 10 000 yr old biblical world being a classic example,
5:57 " Barack Obama senator Obama has been caught in some big mouth sinister wind bag rock n roll horror show church on the south side" Christopher Hitchens. HA HA have to agree with him there a lot of churches are becoming a rock n roll freak show
Thank you for posting this, HauensteinCenter.
This is sheer intellectual brilliance from Christopher. He's like Botham in 'Botham's Ashes': "Come on then, if you think you're hard enough; I'll take you all on alone and still beat you." And he did! Fantastic!
@aweiss
In the case of this debate, your comment is spot on!
@Skipissatan LOL, actually the problem is with the radio isotope dating method. There are many other methods of measuring time which have been overlooked by scientists because it goes against their view of biology and theology. One of these methods is the amount of dust gathered on the moon.
What you said is kind of like saying "the atheist has always been prone to make generalizations."
FYI I'm 17 y/o and I am taking Calculus 3 at my local community college. :p
The golden rule is not a religious idea. It is simply putting yourself in others shoes before you act, and that is the secularist's morality. That is my "moral compass".
Thank you for your comments. Ayaan Hirsi Ali,is a cultured, elegant , articulate Woman with compassion. Hitchens is an egocentric , self absorbed individual , who bilittles his opnonents to satsify some inner inadequacy of his. He covers his audience with the cloak of condecension only to make him appear supreme, while all the time he is being snide.He will spring to Ayaan's defence only because he admires and agrees with her for what she says, not for what she is.Herein lies his dishonesty.
His assertion that the philosophy 'what I don't want done to me I will not do to others' is superior to 'Love your neighbour as you love yourself' shows his lack of understanding of some fundamental tenets of Christianity. Something I consider perfectly acceptable another person may find totally reprehensible and it is only in love that such a consideration will affect my decisions.
@AtheistMovement
True. During the bronze age the moral codes and laws were mixed with religious beliefs. They were written down in religious books instead of special moral- or law books. Morality can, and DOES, exist without religion.
Morality is cultural and common sense. A lot of it isn't even written down in the Bible or in law books.
Did anyone else spot C. Hitchens complete contradiction when he states that Truth may be an unattainable goal but we should seek it nevertheless followed by ridiculing the notion that we should always try to love others as ourselves even though it's an unattainable goal? Wow, what hypocrisy!
It is in fact best if children learn morality "on their own." Simply being told does not satisfy the brain's lust for experiential learning. If children practice reciprocal altruism they learn that it is beneficial and will keep doing it.
@tenley1234 I think we all know that there are many more people who tell pollsters they are Christians than there are people who actually believe the primary doctrines taught in the Bible. The former are the type who will have children who turn away from the faith, the latter are those who see children as a blessing, and train them up in the way they should go.
Im sorry if I twisted your statement. By the way though, to answer your question. Christopher Hitchens said in another debate that " I hope I have already shown how ridiculous deism is". My guess is that he is not a closeted deist.
chris' confusion might be sincere but, his arguments are quite simple and easy to refute. he has very valid concerns though: the distortions that human beings have brought upon themselves due to or, on account of religious leanings.
The Golden Rule is unattainable? According to St. Christopher of the Hitchens?
@TheWorldsStage I think you could confidently speak for most of the planet with that statement.
3:16 CH actually gives a cue for the audience to applaud him, and they do.
I'll take back it being just one person who perpetuates. Wherever it starts it is usually perpetuated by a smallish group of people at first and through mechanisms easily identified including propaganda and force the rest are inculcated.
What it comes down to is that if he believes you cannot attain truth he should sit down and say, I don't know any of the answers to your questions so I cannot answer them. I shall venture guesses, but yours are as good as mine.
What's funny about this is that Peter pointed out that atheists borrow from theists. At 2:30, Christopher did exactly that by borrowing from Hillel.
@tenley1234 "I had some good reasons for refusing some of it. My mistake was to dispense with it all, indiscriminately. I hope to show that one of the things I was schooled in was not, in fact, religion, but a strange and vulnerable counterfeit of it -- a counterfeit that can be detected and rejected while yet leaving the genuine truths of Christianity undamaged" (pp. 10-11)." ~Peter Hitchens, the rage against God
Christopher Hitchens is pulling a Snake Plissken here. "Call me Snake."
"The name's Plissken."
@Thehuskarl are you suggesting that we have the rate of decay of Carbon-14 wrong? and do you have any evidence to support this? if so you should probably bring it forward and land yourself a nice physics professorship in the process... why would I conceivably need to know how old you are or what courses you do at college?
Twisting his statement was not my intent, it was just speculation based on what he said. Sorry if it caused any offence.
What a terrible world we would live in if that was the case. In essence then why is their law? What purpose does it serve other than to educate people on what is right or wrong."Reciprocal Altruism is a social interaction phenomenon where an individual makes sacrifices for another individual in expectation of similar treatment."How long will this take to learn, what terrible consequences there could be if not simply told right from wrong. Now love thy neighbour does the same only without danger.
@Skipissatan The ONLY reason I brought that up was because you said that "the religious have never been especially gifted mathematically." PS. where did you get the word "gifted" from? Probably religion... :p (yes, that also is a joke...)
I am not saying we have the decay rate of carbon -14 wrong, only that there may be other variables which affect it's rate which we haven't discovered yet. Another possibility was that God created carbon-14 with and apparent "age"
What are you talking about?
He gets laughs here and there in this debate.
i agree with Hitchens---enlightenment is the ability to openly pusue truth----rather than being a grail of knowledge that is to be attained
Its getting intense!
@TheWorldsStage He's probably more eloquent when he's drunk than he is sober too
What the heck is Peter talking about when he sais it's WORSE for someone's political life to deny global warming than it is to publicly denounce god? How many US senators deny global warming? How many deny God? Is he willfully ignorant or just stupid?
@Thehuskarl but the decay rate is observable, you can prove it by taking objects of known age (like a dated book or tombstone) and examining the C-14 content. No serious physicist thinks that the process is anything other than reliable. This leaves your argument as "maybe got is messing with us". This is both incredibly vain as why would a god care what we think? and bizarre as why would god want to trick us? what kind of god would that be and why would you follow him? it makes no sense.
"I've warned you before about this clapping business" LOL
tbh, I just think Peter Hitchens is a traditional, bland, "the world is falling apart/moral standards are evaporating" conservative, who more than likely lives in a rather nice part of town.
Not sure you got the question. Was actually decent, although way beyond the scope of the discussion, I thought.
@NOMADdaf Do you know of a single scientific body or academy of national or international standing that has maintained a dissenting opinion?
To the question of "is truth real" Dr./Prof Hitchens replies, "it is unattainable"... Am I the only one who sees the irony in this statement?
He is stating his decided view of truth that "it is "unattainable" and in so doing states that he has attained it. What he should say is that "It is unattainable, i think"
@AtheistMovement That wasn't my impression at all.
He I think Hitchens would in fact help if he was able.
So you've never heard the term "kin selection?" There is evidence to support it. Look it up. Some people are skeptical of course. But then again some people are skeptical about evolution itself. I would say the debate on whether kin selection in it's current state is true is a good one and should be continued. We shouldn't, due to biases however, say that morality couldn't have come from evolution and kin selection. I'm sorry but we just aren't as special of a species as we think.
Sorry, not seen any of the evidence of which you speak, and I have been looking hard for it.
Hmm, no, Chris Hitchens was quite clear, so I don't understand why you couldn't follow him. He said not doing to others what you wouldn't want done to you (technically the silver rule, but anyway, he is in favour of the golden rule elsewhere) is moral and doable, but that LOVING YOUR ENEMY is not.Loving one's enemy is not the golden rule. The golden rule is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you".
Irishmauddib,
Firstly, what is fatuous is an inability of some to understand semantic rules of speech. The positive and the negative, by definition are not the same anymore than the inverse and converse are the same.
If you can't decode something as simple as the difference between two opposing statements, I simply cannot help you.
Secondly, what is really fatuous is someone who uses the term "maud dib" when viewing a debate about the Iraq War.
Do you know the origin of Herbert's usage?
Interesting that most of the people who dont clap christopher are really old and, to put it bluntly, closer to death.
@hugoegbert79 Thats not the point he was makeing...............at all.
@TheWorldsStage Agreed.
how do you disagree with him on religion just wondering
It is also interesting that those who did clap christopher abort their children, and if they don't they only have one or two kids anyways. While there are many Christian families with over twelve kids. To put it bluntly, once your generation dies out, there won't be many atheists left, when you look at it as a percentage.
It was never a statement. I never presented it as a fact, it was merely speculation based on the fact that he said he WOULDNT go FURTHER then deism, which suggests he COULD ACCEPT deism. If my original comment was intended as a "matter of fact" statement, I wouldnt have ended it with a question mark. You then twisted MY comment.
I got goose bumps watching this video this christopher hitchens Is a brillant man. Tax the churches to extiction I say.
"Passionately agnostic"- best credo, evangelizing always leads to violence
Peter sounds very much like Christopher Lee. That's who it was.
Christopher misspeaks when he states Hillel wrote the Golden Rule. Hillel's taching was "what is repulsive to do you should no do to another" is not the Golden Rule.
The Golden Rule deals in the positive, not the negative.
Christopher is shallow and sodden far too much of the time. Imagine if he had not addled his brain with drink.
If only Hitchens was a tad more modest and humble, how much more acceptable would his opinion be? With an ego that cannot be quenched, it is no surprise to me he became an American. No Brit audience would have put up with his arrogance.Americans by and large are sheep. Certainly he was more persuasive than his brother. However, if I were walking down a dark alley and was just mugged, I'd say his brother might stop and offer to help, I doubt Hitchen's ego would permit him. I'd vote for the human.
George Galloway is our version of Comical Ali.
Stevo6452
Dont twist people's statements. He said he wouldnt possibly go further than deism.
I know he's a bit arrogant but thats part of his personality. A bit oscar wilde-ish. I love his personality, its adorable even though I don't agree with his stance on the war.
Not true, genocide has occurred primarily because of memes(ideas) of a viral nature perpetuated usually by one person (ie, a dictator like Mugabe, Stalin, or Hitler.) It IS in our DNA to be altruistic especially to kin. Ideas can both hurt and help us. Ideas usually hurt us when they are not challenged regularly and reasonably. Name one genocidal dictatorship today or in the past in which challenging the authority was not actively punished and or suppressed.
Peter's "England not intervening in USA politics since 200 years ago" line wasn't even clever, much less funny, and certainly isn't true. You get the impression that no one would know Peter existed if he weren't the younger sibling of a living lion. He reminds of Christopher Buckley compared to William F. Buckley, Jr.
Umm..What empirical observations are you talking about?..Logic and reason fly in the face of religion 90+% of the time
Religious men = Religion ?
Its a pity christopher cant run for presidency.
Wow
That guy is beyond smart. (the one on the left)
Theres a redhead that would get it at 6:06. She looks a bit bored mind...
fucking love christopher
you might want to go back and read before making a statement like that, but to suggest so would, I suppose label me a "zionist Neocon crusader"
Pilot did stay for an answer. Jesus didn't answer it. What is truth? It is that which is the case. Everyone knows that. Maybe if he would have asked what is the truth, he would have gotten an answer.
No offense taken. I just thought it was an untrue statement so i replied. Its fine though
I'm in general agreement with Christopher on religion-but he's full of shit on his comments on the green movement. The green movement is backed up and informed by science-the exact opposite of religion.
6:00-6:35 FUCK YEA!!!
Christopher is smarter and funnier
@Thehuskarl if that were true the number of atheists would be decreasing, it isn't. Then the religious have never been especially gifted mathematically; their inability to see the problem with 1 000 000 year old fossils and a 10 000 yr old biblical world being a classic example,
Christopher Hitchens rules!
LOL!!!
Is Chris Hitchens a closet deist? 4:39
5:57 " Barack Obama senator Obama has been caught in some big mouth sinister wind bag rock n roll horror show church on the south side" Christopher Hitchens. HA HA have to agree with him there a lot of churches are becoming a rock n roll freak show
Christopher hitchens has some rather lame arguments here.
Peter is such a cad lmao