Ann Widdecombe Discussing 10 commandments with Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens

[ghostframer]

Once again, a believer calls an atheist "strident." For centuries, believers have tortured and murdered those who didn't believe. Today, in the U.S., atheists are the most hated group. And now believers have the nerve to accuse atheists of being "strident." Well, go fuck yourselves. Is that strident enough for you?

Ann Widdecombe is an idiot. I laughed out loud when she whines that covetous is number 10, as if the commandments are rated. It's not the Top Ten Commandments you stupid Catholic.

[CivilNL]

@ghostframer She was listing them in numerical order, by mentioning it was number 10 she was saying she hadn't gotten there yet. Which Stephen recognized and rightly said it was rude of him to interrupt.

[xarepe1]

Well, let's analyze that woman's arguments about catholicism. "A world without the catholic church would be poorer, hopeless and would be a worse place to live." Well, I don't know about the first. If the pope sold his throne, I'm sure the world would be a lot richer. As for hopeless, if the catholic church didn't exist people would have to find hope in things other than god. as for being a worse place, people would perhaps be more focused on humanity and less focused on pleasing they're god.

[SouthernCross33]

This is what amazes me about religion, you can get a seemingly very intelligent person and they are smart on so many interesting subjects, yet they are believers, i just struggle to understand intelligent ppl being like this

[ghostframer]

@SouthernCross33 Widdecombe is one of those millions of sad people who need the fantasy of a god to make their lives worth something. They are afraid of death, they can't face the fact that they aren't the be all and end all of creation. They need a whole system of religion to tell them what to believe and how to live their lives. It's very, very sad. It's time humans grew up and faced reality. The universe doesn't owe us anything.

[Anglican08]

@ghostframer Funny because I'm reading a book by Soren Kierkegaard, 'Sickness nto Death' which argues the very reverse. He argued atheism is a sort of sickness, or rather we are sick with despair & Christianity is the cure, only by making a personal leap of faith to God can we escape this despair

Atheists like to point out how sad the religious are & the religious say the very opposite "How sad to think you'll live for a bit, have some hardship, have some fun & then your dead...."

[muffin8or]

@Anglican08

Oh yes. I'd much rather believe in a God for whom there is no evidence, whose mind I cannot know but who will judge me and most likely send me to hell for trillions of years or, if I'm lucky, heaven where I'll have to praise him for eternity. I think I'd get bored after the first 5 or 6 trillion years. No, I was, and would be, much sadder with religion. By the way, the cure isn't very good if there are millions of despairing Christians, is it?

[Anglican08]

@muffin8or You'd prefer death to eternal life? Also why did being religious make you sad? Most of the research done seems to show religious people tend to be less stressed and more happy, they're also less likely to suffer from depressive symptoms.

[muffin8or]

@Anglican08

Stop for a moment and think about how long eternity is. Not just for billions or trillions of years. It's forever. Ever heard of boredom? I don't think doing as I please for a even a mere trillion years would keep me entertained. Why was I sad? Because religion made me suppress who I was in favour of a divine dictator whose existence and mind I can never truly know. People kill gays in Uganda in the name of Christianity. Muslims do the same in the middle east. No thanks.

[Anglican08]

@muffin8or But think of life at it's very best, the most wonderful, beautiful parts & think of all these bits brought together to be experienced forever. If you say that you'd prefer death over this then, I think you don't truly value life . You say that you'd grow bored, but I think those who really love life would never tire of it, To me, love,kindness, knowledge, & beauty are not mere negations but could fill life for all eternity.

[muffin8or]

@Anglican08

You obviously don't know the world. What is good is good because of the contrast with bad. Do you honestly think loving someone and being kind and knowing a lot will keep you entertained for trillions upon trillions of years? Perhaps you can't comprehend such a time scale. I value life so much that I don't devalue it by having a baseless fairytale where you can live forever in the presence of the divine thought police. Death is better than eternal deference and servitude.

[ghostframer]

@Anglican08 For me, it beats living a life pretending that there is a reward for all the good little children who obey made up rules.

[SouthernCross33]

Hitchens @!:52 "you're saddled with this savage judaism, it's actually evil"

[muffin8or]

@SouthernCross33

Good isn't it?

[SouthernCross33]

@muffin8or His comment or judaism?

[Alfey]

She looks like a dog licking piss of a nickel!

[Darksabre812]

Fry is still right. He presents a much more intelligent argument. All she has is a code written 3000 years ago. We follow no other document that has that age. And if you read the bible, right after god gives moses the bible, they slaughter 10,000 of their own people because they didn't want to follow the commandments. That's a good morality, don'tcha think?

[veganath]

Thou shalt not KILL - Wonder if she interprets that in the literal sense? If so she ought to be a vegetarian, but I doubt that!!

[johnknoefler]

@veganath Just showing your ignorance of Hebrew? That kind of generalization is expressed in Hebrew through the verb "harag." However, the verb that appears in the Torah's prohibition is a completely different one, " ratsah", which should be rendered "murder." This root refers only to criminal acts of killing.

[veganath]

@johnknoefler So in the future a legislator could get a law passed that would make killing other animals criminal, then I guess she would have to become vegetarian!

My point is that if we believe we shouldn't cause other animals unnecessary suffering. As of 2011 no government or medical institution mandates the consumption of other animals, all discourage it, then our best justification for causing unimaginable suffering to 10s of billion of creature not unlike ourselves is that they taste good

[entwood]

What a thick headed woman. Those guys were kind enough to stay in the same room with her. I would have kept well away after her performance in the debate.

[BoatNectar]

ohhhh hahaha i lost my shit when hitchens scooted out. NICE!