manicstreetpreacher supplies the video of Sam Harris ending all “scholarly” arguments of the reliability of oral tradition and who-first-started-to-believe-what-when.
I have referred to Sam Harris’ debunking of the reliability of the Gospel’s reports of the miracles of Jesus Christ on several previous posts. This clip is from a debate he participated in with fellow “New Atheists” Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett at La Ciudad de las Ideas in November 2009. Dinesh D’Souza, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Nassim Taleb were speaking for the God-squad. Robert Wright was a neutral agnostic.
The video of the full debate is here:
Tags: bible, christopher hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Dinesh D’Souza, Gospels, jesus christ, La Ciudad de las Ideas, miracles, Nassim Taleb, New Atheists, New Testament, sam harris, Shmuley Boteach
manicstreetpreacher 
20/12/2009 at 19:44 |
I watched this video a while ago. I found it inordinately long (partly because it contains stretches in a language I don’t understand), but it didn’t start well — Boteach set a very low bar for what was to follow. Harris was succinct as usual, Dennett was convincing and actually said some new things. D’Souza also said some things I hadn’t heard before, but they were so ridiculous I couldn’t help laughing (incredibly flawed logic: modern physics speculates about a realm outside of space-time, so that’s obviously where heaven is!).
20/12/2009 at 23:29 |
Yes, the full debate was rather dull. Too many participants and having everything translated into Spanish made it rather laborious. I can only describe Boteach as Judaism’s answer to Falwell in the demagogue stakes. Have you seen his two previous debates against Hitchens? He was well and truly flogged in both of them!
D’Souza did very well against Hitchens in their first debate on religion at the Kings College, New York in 2007, although that was partly due to a few “low blows”. However, every time since then Hitchens has well and truly gelded him! I don’t know why he keeps coming back for more,
MSP