…is actually fantastic. You can watch it here:
And an equally compelling rebuttal:
(Glad to know disagreeing with Rick Warren is grounds for a TED speakership, btw :))
Here’s the entire playlist on spirituality which I am currently enjoying and in which these two talks are found:
http://www.ted.com/playlists/14/are_you_there_god
It seems I’m bound to give a play by play here. Lesley Hazelton’s talk “On Reading the Koran” is especially beautiful.
“…our minds are like sieves. So, religions are cultures of repetition – they circle the great truths again and again and again…” Alain De Botton, Atheism 2.0.
I’ve never heard Billy Graham talk before, but oh my God, how I cried…
So we’ve reached a truly remarkable situation: A grotesque mismatch between the American intelligentsia and the American electorate. A philosophical opinion about the nature of the universe which is held by the vast majority of top American scientists, and probably the majority of the intelligentsia generally, is so abhorrent to the American electorate that no candidate for popular election dare affirm it in public. If I’m right, this means that high office, in the greatest country in the world, is barred to the very people best qualified to hold it – the intelligentsia. Unless they are prepared to lie about their beliefs. To put it bluntly – American political opportunities are heavily loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest.
Dawkins, in his Ted talk, says “I suspect that the word ‘atheist’ itself contains, or remains, a stumbling block far out of proportion to what it actually means, and a stumbling block to people who otherwise might be happy to “out” themselves.” I feel the same way about the word “God” – we invest too much in this word, which is nothing more than a signpost.
