Archive for the 'lectures'

We haven’t had a show since before the holidays, so maybe everyone’s ready for a little dose of video atheism. I gave this lecture Sunday as part of the Atheist Community of Austin Lecture Series. In the lecture, I explore what religious evil is, where it comes from, and how it can be mitigated. Please feel free to critique the lecture with your comments. I promise to read everything and use it to improve the lecture in future versions. If lectures are not your cup of tea, The Atheist Experience will be back on the air Sunday, January 9th at the usual time. Read more

Since some people may be missing The Atheist Experience this week, I’m posting the video from a recent ACA Lecture Series lecture. Fred Edwords from the United Coalition of Reason on “Sailing the Rising Tide of Reason”. Over the past few years, with the rise of the “New Atheism,” interest in Freethought and humanism is growing. And the more recent billboard and bus campaigns have stoked the fires of enthusiasm. How can Freethought and humanist groups benefit from this secular “coming out”? How can they capture this interest to help their memberships grow? Fred Edwords, a former executive director of the American Humanist Association, is now the national director of the United Coalition of Reason. Over his thirty-year career as a humanist leader he has lectured, debated, and taught on humanist philosophical issues and effective outreach techniques. He has appeared on national and local television in the United States and Canada, has been interviewed on radio and for newspapers around the world, and has lectured in North America, Europe, and India. “Sailing the Rising Tide of Reason” Read more

As promised, I attended a lecture by E. J. Dionne, Washington Post columnist, at a Baptist church tonight. Dionne was there under the auspices of the Texas Freedom Network, promoting his new book, Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right. Here’s what the incredibly gaudy church background looked like. Everything Else Atheist was also with me, and she might write up her own reactions later. The lecture was about what I expected, which is to say, promising but ultimately disappointing. Dionne believes that religion has a solid place in public discourse, and it has been shanghai’d by the religious right unfairly. He told a joke in which a Republican asks a Democrat what the Democrat would do if Jesus ran as a Republican. The Democrat replies “Why would Jesus change his affiliation after all these years?” Dionne was full of praise for the importance of religion in people’s lives, saying that religion grapples with mysteries that science and politics cannot address. (Well yes, in the first place, many of those issues are addressed by science and politics; in the second place, just because religion grapples with them does not mean that it successfully addresses any of them.) He also leveled a great deal of criticism against what he perceives as the unfairly dismissive attitude toward religion by many liberals, saying liberals assume that all religious people are “busybodies obsessed with sex” based on the prevailing opposition to gay marriage and abortion. Dionne did make a good point about the way that “moral values” tend to be framed in politics. He cited a clearly slanted 2004 exit poll which asked voters what issues most strongly influenced their vote. The options included such things as “moral values,” “education,” “the Iraq war,” etc. Dionne rightly pointed out that if you describe either of the latter two as your most important...
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The Everything Else Atheist (disclosure: friend of mine, loyal AE viewer, and newbie blogger) just spent an evening tormenting herself by attending a lecture by “Director of Christian Apologetics” Craig J. Hazen. The talk turned out to be as awful as you could hope, but it wasn’t a total loss, as we get to enjoy the recap and take-down. Excerpt: He then told a story about giving evidence for the resurrection to medical students (notice his subtle transition from faith to christianity?). He told them that “Jesus was alive at point A, dead at point B, and alive at point C” and was excited to tell us that their jaws just dropped. I can tell you why their jaws dropped, it’s a stupid claim which you given no reasonable evidence for.

I repaired the earlier post with the video, but I figured I might as well repost it. This is the full 82 minute version.