5/8 Christopher Hitchens vs Robert Wright on Religion

[huwrj]

I hate how Wright just takes something that Hitchens says, and then negates it and asks the opposite back to him. It's really childish.

[entercow]

I find Wright hard to listen too. It sounds like he's yelling everything he says. He needs to tone down his speech patterns a bit.

[senortonyful]

It's so funny how Hitch seems to stop speaking, then he waits til his opponent begins to speak, and as soon as his opponent utters their first syllable Hitch starts right back up again. It seems to really be aggravating Wright. Gotta love the Hitch!

[8644371]

Wright and Hitchens are speaking about Marx in different respects. Wright references Marx in the first or second chapter of his book (as he attempts to reference him here). He was speaking in a humanistic perspective of Marx, or some off like that.

It was such an odd portrayal of Marx that I couldn't completely forget it.

[ramonkhessel]

i think we should start a new movement of non-believers who admit that religions can sometimes be useful and then proceed to beat the religious at their own game and design new and better religions with the maximum number of positive subjective and behavioral outcomes and the minimum number of negative subjective and behavioral outcomes. Use music, metaphor, morality, art, psychology, physics, philosophy, science, sociology, story, etc.

[ramonkhessel]

I just watched the movie Life is Beautiful starring Roberto Benigni and the way he reframes things for his son is the best metaphor that I've come across for what new religions could do to help humankind. This transformation will occur, I just want it to happen sooner rather than later. The sky is the limit... These old religions suck! We can do better!

[ramonkhessel]

BTW new religions will likely be so different from the current ones that some people may not quite recognize them as such.

Think jazz, think progressive rock, think... hip-hop whatever...

it's going to be different in a way that no one has thought of.

[8saturn9]

Wright came from a Southern Baptist background--that explains most everything here.

Fear, fear, and more fear. Poor guy.

[wubbadubdub]

"what choice do we have?" hahahahahaha fuck you wright

[ItsameAlex]

@wubbadubdub

Serously? a ''fuck you'' to the person who wrote ''the moral animal''?

[lesnem]

ha

wright claims in a previous video to be a better marxist than hitchens (and fails), and now claims not to be so "simplistically" marxist after all. He's flailing so badly.

[IanBillings00]

Wright's question is of the ut most stupidity. Any IMmoral action? Are you serious? Hitchens' question holds weight because moral actions have specific guidelines, where as literal any action can be seen as immoral by someone being subjective.

Anyone, who is anyone, can commit any immoral action they like. It is the justification of the morality which makes Hitchens' question relevant, and the lack thereof which makes Wright's question so stupid, and also irrelevant.

[niginit]

People who need an irrational motive to be good are not winning the argument, and are even good people by the standard of the word, as I understand it.

That's like saying, "the only reason I'm being civil to you, is because my horoscope gave me good news today".

It's good to be good and if that isn't the reward you seek, you aren't being good.