zidouta.com

Link: sevenload.com

Edge 235, Life a Gene-Centric View. Craig Venter & Richard Dawkins: A Conversation in Munich:

“It’s not everyday you have Richard Dawkins and Craig Venter on a stage talking for an hour about “Life: A Gene-Centric View”. That it occured in Germany, where the culture has been resistant to open discussion of genetics, and at DLD, the Digital, Life, Design conference organized by Hubert Burda Media in Munich, a high-level event for the digital elite — the movers and shakers of the Internet — was particularly interesting. This event was a continuation of the Edge “Life: What a Concept!” meeting in August, 2008.”

The Four Horsemen - Hour 1

The Four Horsemen - Hour 2

RichardDawkins.net, The Four Horsemen: on Christmas:

“All four authors have recently received a large amount of media attention for their writings against religion - some positive, and some negative. In this conversation the group trades stories of the public’s reaction to their recent books, their unexpected successes, criticisms and common misrepresentations. They discuss the tough questions about religion that face to world today, and propose new strategies for going forward.”

Richard Dawkins reviewing Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great in the Times Literary Supplement. Bible belter:

“If you are a religious apologist invited to debate with Christopher Hitchens, decline. His witty repartee, his ready-access store of historical quotations, his bookish eloquence, his effortless flow of well-formed words, beautifully spoken in that formidable Richard Burton voice (the whole performance not dulled by other equally formidable Richard Burton habits), would threaten your arguments even if you had good ones to deploy.”

Volkskrant: “Tarotkaarten, horoscopen en zelfontwikkelingscursussen. In de zoektocht naar werk zijn al deze instrumenten – op kosten van uitkeringsinstantie UWV – geoorloofd.” (…) “Zot, vinden de SP, het CDA en de ChristenUnie.” (sic!)

Richard Dawkins, The Enemies Of Reason, Part 1 - Slaves To Superstition
Channel 4: Enemies of Reason

While Dawkins makes a strong case for why one doesn’t require a thorough grounding in theology to refute religious certainties (you don’t need to be an expert in fairyology to dispute the existence of fairies), and Hitchens draws on his acute observational skills and tireless globetrotting to report on the way “religion poisons everything” – from “Belfast to Beirut to Baghdad, and that’s without leaving the B’s”– Onfray takes another tack entirely. As befits his role as “France’s most popular philosopher” (is there another country in the world where these two words go together?), Onfray delves deep into the internal logic of the three monotheisms, performing what he calls “a pitiless historical reading of the three so-called holy books”. Nor is he alone in his battle: he enters the field backed by a gang of thinkers as bizarrely incongruous as the Dirty Dozen – Epicurus, Nietzsche, Georges Bataille and Jean Meslier, Baron d’Holbach and Michel Foucault, Jeremy Bentham and Freud.

Caspar Melvill: Atheism à la mode