Fry and Hitchens Discussion 10/10 (Sound Fixed)

Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens debate blasphemy at the Guardian Hay Festival in 2005.

*I have fixed various sound issues with the original recording.
*Now available as MP3 (80mins, 64mb) from here:
http://tinyurl.com/3levuy

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Christopher
• Hitchens
• Stephen
• Fry
• religion
• atheism
• blasphemy

[turbozed]

These videos leave out a joke at the end of debate by Hitchens. After Fry talks about Prometheus having his liver constantly regenerate to be eaten by vultures, Hitchens quips that he'd really benefit from that liver regeneration ability.

I haven't heard this debate since 2005 or so but I remember that part distinctly

[PointlessCamel]

@turbozed Haha, thanks for sharing that. ;)

[willisverynice]

The last question is the best question ever.

[IVlatty]

@MrLincolnj It might be nonsense to you.

[kingpharaohtsar]

@MrLincolnj fair enuff but who doznt look bad compeared to stephen fry

[MrLincolnj]

The more I listen to Hitchens in debates and interviews, the more convinced I become that, although he is a great voice for reason and opposition to religious pretensions and opportunism, there's a huge component of wind-baggery to his method. He constantly interposes some grand-sounding observation that has nothing whatever to do with the point being discussed - I suspect only in order to try to impress his hearers. His contributions are often full of non sequiters and nonsense. Disappointing.

[insideous57]

1 hour 20 minutes of potential sleep before a lecture; worth every caffeine-flooded Atheist minute :)

[CarlosCMTF]

The reason we supposedly "lack imagination" is because we live in the XXIth century, not in the XVIth!

We shouldn't expect the same literary impact the King James Bible or Shakespeare had because we have a multitude of media and of information nowadays! Even if there were brilliant artists and novelists as there were in those days they would be by and large ignored because everyone would be too busy watching TV or on the Internet, or distracted by Ipods or Football!

[sulljoh1]

look up Stephen Fry Molly Lewis

[16randomcharacters]

@greenrate No, he relies on data collected by others to support that claim. Again, by your logic, every religious person has no standing to claim the incorrectness of any other religious person's religion, even if the 2 are by definition mutually exclusive. 1 does not have to personally test every hypothesis to verify its untruth. I assert the world is round based upon observable evidence even though I have never been to the moon to personally observe a rotation.

[greenrate]

@16randomcharacters

Your characterization of my logic is self-serving.

No one would reasonably claim that crimes and diseases are objectively unverifiable phenomenon.

Hitchens, on the other hand, IS claiming that all religious experiences are objectively unverifiable phenomenon. Even though . . . he hasn't TRIED to objectively verify them himself.

Just show me where Hitchens has ever tried. It's merely his personal and dogmatic OPINION that such experience is unverifiable . . .

[16randomcharacters]

@greenrate That's ridiculous. By your logic, no judge can rightly sit in judgement of anyone who has committed a crime he has not, no doctor can treat a patient with a disease the doctor has not had, and on and on. One can study and understand a phenomenon, and in particular a class of phenomena (religion, for instance) without actually experiencing them. Religions are human constructs that leverage supernormal stimuli of our imperfect brain. That's what Hitchens and the others say.