Atheist debate, part 2

May 10th, 2007 • atheism, christianity, debate, tv

After last night’s sad attempt at showing the debate on Nightline, ABC is airing the rest online today. It was supposed to be on abcnews.com at 1PM EDT although I did not find any direct links. It should be on abcnews.com/abcnewsnow at 2PM EDT. I will post a direct link to the player as soon as I find one.

Although, what was shown on TV was merely about 20 minutes of the 90 minute debate and what’s been shown online so far has been far less than 90 minutes as well. In total, I’ve seen less than an hour of footage so what happened to the other 30 to 40 minutes worth?

Debate footage from abcnews.com

May 9th, 2007 • 2 comments atheism, christianity, debate, tv

Well, I watched the whole thing that was available from ABC and was less than amazed. If you’ve seen the teaser the RRS released, you’ve pretty much seen the whole thing. Both sides didn’t do very well in supporting their claims although, Comfort didn’t even manage to do what he claimed he could do. Cameron sat back most of the time and would chime in every so often but he was there to be exactly what he is: a name to draw people in.

Sapient and Kelly did OK but just as poorly at the same time. Kelly managed to be a better debater than Sapient but she too was offering little to their side. She did clearly get across some points that managed to stump both Comfort and Cameron but I could guess that any other Christian would have been able to spit out something in rebuttal. Sapient did manage to make both Cameron and Comfort speechless a few times with his very direct questioning. Overall, it was more of the same but in a widely accessible public forum for the masses to consume.

What was released today was only half of the debate and the rest should be online tomorrow according to ABC after Nightline airs with the same footage but should hopefully include more insightful clips. Since this was a 90 minute debate, I’m very interested in what we were not yet shown as the teaser from the RRS included segments from everything that was released today.

The debate is now airing

May 9th, 2007 • atheism, christianity, debate, tv

I finally dug up the somewhat buried link that’s directly to the player: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3156022

It’s split up into parts that will be used on Nightline so it makes me wonder just what they edited out.

The ABC debate is streaming soon

May 9th, 2007 • atheism, christianity, debate, tv

Looking around abcnews.com. The direct link should be here. Right now, there is a nearly 7 minute teaser from Nightline that will air later tonight. The full debate should be online shortly. The current teaser is giving a background of Cameron and the evangelism of the Way of The Master that both Cameron and Comfort put on.

I may do a live blogging but this may not occur due to work restraints. It’s funny to hear Comfort start off with his cola can argument that’s completely baseless.

ABC Atheist versus Christian debate teaser

May 9th, 2007 • atheism, christianity, debate, tv

I just watched the teaser video released by the Rational Response Squad, or RRS, over at Pharyngula. It’s 13 minutes of the 90 minutes that should be shown tomorrow on ABC. I’ll have to agree with PZ in the fact that Comfort and Cameron were pretty terrible but then, this is only 13 minutes of video that’s cherry picked from the entire debate making the RRS representatives look good. Although, they weren’t that great either.

A few other blogs have mentioned that they’re reading from prewritten materials so this throws the entire “debate” aspect out the window aside from the times where they’re asking the other side questions — thought it comes across as more of punches than questions. Just from this short video, Comfort did absolutely nothing to prove scientifically that the Christian God exists, he used his age old speech of “This is a painting, it must have a painter” as I wrote about a few days ago. The entire watchmaker theory proves very little of an ethereal guy in the sky. When asked very specific questions, there were times where neither Comfort nor Kirk could actually give an answer and even Martin Bashir was amazed by this, they could not answer simple questions that I’m sure other Christians would have belted out responses to.

I’m not going to entirely say that the Christian side of this was terrible, Sapient did a pretty bad job himself. His credibility goes down immediately since he’s dressed very casually at what is supposed to be a very serious affair but Kelly was looking rather cute in that dress. Aesthetics aside, Sapient fumbled here and there and misquoted some things but overall made valid points as did Kelly. Many of these Comfort and Cameron could not rebut. But Sapient did spend a good portion of the time reading from paper which gave off a monotone, boorish vibe which, to me, does not help his other shortcomings at all. But at least they acknowledge they didn’t do all that great on their own website. This is far more than Comfort did:

Just a quick note to let you know that the debate went wonderfully.

When I say “wonderfully” I have to qualify it. It was like an open air with an unreasonable and loud heckler. The “heckler” in this case wasn’t just the two atheists we were there to debate, but the fifty atheists in the audience. As per ABC’s stipulations, the audience was composed half-and-half : fifty Christians and fifty atheists. The Christians were very quiet and polite; the atheists weren’t. It was very apparant [sic] who was who in the audience. It seemed that no matter what we said, it was completely ignored by Brian and Kelly (the atheists) and then followed up with their anger, mockery, and insults. But as with a good open air, the heckler is simply a platform to speak to the crowd who is listening. In this case there is a crowd of millions who will hear clear, concise evidence for the existance [sic] of God. How incredible. So I am delighted, because of what we were able to say.

…

God bless,
Ray Comfort

(from Hemant)

He acts if there were never a moment where he and Cameron did not pulverize anything Brian or Kelly threw at him but the video shows otherwise. Calling the atheists “hecklers” doesn’t help his lacking credibility either.

The video is going to be streamed from ABC tomorrow at 2PM EDT so make sure you take your lunch at work then! I will!

Quick question

May 7th, 2007 • christianity, kenites

I’m busy researching the Kenites due to a discussion sparked on IRC between myself and a member of the Shepherd’s Chapel. If anyone has some information I could glean that’s not from Wikipedia, please comment it or contact me with the information. It seems finding out their origin or primary place of living before being integrated into the tribe of Judah and migrating to Jerusalem is more difficult than I first thought.

Being nude is a loss of dignity?

May 6th, 2007 • 3 comments christianity, confusion, intolerance

As I was reading through my feeds tonight, I saw that Sean Prophet had posted up an interesting piece on a photograph of 18,000 nude participants in Mexico City’s Zocalo Square and how the Church sees it as a loss of human dignity. From a photographic standpoint, getting this many people together for a single shoot is simply amazing. I know from shoots I’ve been on in the past, getting one person (the model) to cooperate is difficult enough let alone another 17,999 people. But this is not what struck me as truly amazing.

Older people and clergymen see it as an offense against the Church itself and a deplorable act for people to be publicly seen nude. Gasp! I then remembered a quote from Genesis:

2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Adam and Eve were not shy about their nudity. It’s not like they were the only ones around either as God had just created beasts of the earth and beasts of the air just before he created Adam. Now, here’s Adam and Eve sitting around, stark naked in front of a whole host of animals and they do not care and I highly doubt the animals cared either. So is the Church saying it’s okay to be nude around animals but not other humans? The Bible is filled with passages of various people being very nude:

1 Samuel 18:1-4
The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. … Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.

Isaiah 20:3-4
And the LORD said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia; So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.

Mark 14:51-52
And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him: And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.

I randomly selected these three passages, there is no rhyme or reason to their order. According to the Bible, it’s quite alright to be naked if you want to be. It does not matter if it’s in front of men, slaves, or even prophets. So how is being nude a loss of dignity in any sense? Biblically, it’s okay. Societally in Mexico, it’s not okay it seems. So if the Bible is the word of God as scribed by men, aren’t the clergymen committing blasphemies by charging people with being less than dignified or ridiculing them by pointing fingers when they see someone naked? When did prudishness become bedfellows with the Church?

Historically, people were not so bothered about being nude around each other. In Rome, it was quite accepted and encouraged. This is true of much of ancient Italy itself from the Romans to the Spartans to the Cretes and Minoans. Native and Meso Americans were frequently nude in public religious rituals and elsewhere. I even think original baptisms as performed by John the Beloved required you to be nude as to cleanse not only the spirit but the entire body of past transgressions. Ben Franklin was even a proud supporter of “air baths” and nudism in general. So when did society deem being nude was deplorable? I have no idea really but I’m sure it had something to do with the Puritans and other fundamentalists.

Thoughts on the ABC debate from last night

May 6th, 2007 • atheism, christianity, debate

I culled this first from Pharyngula and then from digg to get a rounded idea of other people’s thoughts.

What comes from the Dawkins forums is of no surprise but reading the comments from Pharyngula were interesting. Myself, like many others, think that Comfort’s argument is completely bizarre. In the banana video, Comfort goes on record to state that during the big bang, there was a bubbly fizzy brown liquid “created” and it just sat there…assumptively in the same spot. Then after millions of years, aluminum gathers around the fizzy brown liquid and somehow magically takes the form of our well known soda can. And if by “duh” moment, that can was then topped with a top and given a tab. Comfort then goes on to babble about how paint magically fell from the sky on to the can — and only the can — to paint it in now familiar colours. So is he saying that Coke and Pepsi have been around since the dawn of time? I’m flabbergasted. But no, this is his argument about atheists being “dumb” and non-intellectuals.

Comfort espouses that everything must have been created by someone — gee, that’s a deep statement. Buildings have builders (but not architects?), soda cans have soda can makers (does he know that robots make these cans?), paintings have painters, and so on and so forth. So during the debate when audience questions were fielded, I wonder why no one asked “If everything has a creator, does the Creator too have a Creator?”. I know I would have and would have gotten a great chuckle out of his rebuttal.

This is what is so many Christians think and they call non-theists crazy but I wonder if they will ever look in the mirror.

ABC Atheist debate update!

May 3rd, 2007 • 3 comments atheism, christianity, debate, tv

Remember my post a few days ago about the death match between Atheists and Christians? Well, I just got word about the debate between the blasphemychallenge.com guys and Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron. Here’s the official word from Mark Spence:

Thank you for requesting more information about the Atheist Debate
between “The Way of the Master ” co-hosts Kirk Cameron & Ray Comfort and
the www.blasphemychallenge.com founders/representatives.

ABC just confirmed that the debate is going to be at Calvary Baptist
Church in New York City on Saturday, May 5, 2007 @ 7:30pm (EST).

The full debate will air on www.abcnews.com on Wednesday, May 9, 2007 @
2:00pm (EST).
The Nightline piece will air that same night at 11:35 p.m. (your local
time)

For more information please go to:
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=3130360&page=1

Most Commonly asked questions:
1. Is it open to the public? No. ABC was very strict about this.
Sorry, no exceptions.
2. How does one get a Media Pass? Contact Andr...@abc.com
3. Is it ok to show up outside the church to support? Yes.

**Please note the preceding information may change without notice by
ABC.

Woohoo!! Now I know when to set my DVR to record. I can imagine that abcnews.com will be getting a bit more traffic than normal on Wednesday.

PBS to air three part documentary about Atheism

May 2nd, 2007 • 1 comment atheism, christianity, education, tv

My girlfriend linked me to an article about PBS airing a three-part Atheist documentary that’s being lambasted by America’s right wing. This is no surprise considering the documentary was very well received in England, whose non-theistic population is growing by the year. While not specifically an Atheist myself, I’m looking forward to this documentary produced by the BBC.

You can read the article for specifics so I don’t have to duplicate something I’ve already linked to. But I do love the following quote from some crazy fundie:

Janice Crouse, director of the Beverly LaHaye Institute for the conservative group Concerned Women for America, told Cybercast News Service that “airing the program gives credibility and cohesiveness to individuals who seek to undermine the beliefs and values on which democracy and the American dream are founded.”

Democracy is founded on monotheism and subserviency? I thought its foundation was laid in a polytheistic society that promoted social discussion and interaction versus that of bowing down to a sole leader, looking to them for all the answers. Man, I guess history has it all wrong! The “rule of the people, by the people” was really envisioned as “rule of the people, by a person”. I like the fact that this short documentary is “propaganistic” according to Crouse yet the numerous Christian-based television stations and radio shows aren’t even though they get to preach shove their views into your face without anyone saying a word.

Set your DVRs — or VCRs if you’re still using one — to record according to your local PBS schedule.