Why Does God Matter?

Why does god matter? Christopher Hitchens explains why the concept of gods is important.

Christopher Hitchens (The Amazing Meeting 3)

Great speech by Christopher Hitchens from The Amazing Meeting 3 in Las Vegas

FORMER CIA CHEIF KNOWS AND TELLS THE TRUTH

Christopher Hitchens: Bah, Humbug on Christmas

On Monday, December 17, reason hosted a "Very Special, Very Secular Christmas Party" at its Washington, D.C. headquarters.

The evening's special event was a dramatic reading of Tom Lehrer's "Christmas Carol" by Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, Why Orwell Matters, No One Left to Lie To, and many other books.

"It may have struck you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's a big relationship between this marvelous time of year and living in a one-party state," Hitchens told the overflow crowd of 250. "You can't go anywhere without listening to the same music. You can't go anywhere without hearing the name of the Great Leader, and his son, the Dear Leader....All broadcasts, all songs, all jokes, all references are, just for that magic few weeks, just exactly like living in...North Korea."

The Girl Who Silenced The World For 5 Minutes

Disclose.tv The Girl Who Silenced The World For 5 Minutes Video

Severn Cullis-Suzuki (born November 30, 1979 in Vancouver, Canada) is an environmental activist, speaker, television host and author. Born to writer Tara Elizabeth Cullis and geneticist and environmental activist David Suzuki, she has spoken around the world about environmental issues, urging listeners to define their values, act with the future in mind, and take individual responsibility.

Cullis-Suzuki was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada. While attending Lord Tennyson Elementary School in French Immersion, at the age of nine, she founded the Environmental Children's Organization, a group of children dedicated to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues. In 1992, at the age of 12, Cullis-Suzuki raised money with members of ECO, to attend the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Along with group members Michelle Quigg, Vanessa Suttie, and Morgan Geisler, Cullis-Suzuki presented environmental issues from a youth perspective at the summit, where she was applauded for a speech to the delegates. In 1993, she was honoured in the United Nations Environment Programme's Global 500 Roll of Honour. In 1993, Doubleday published her book Tell the World (ISBN 0-385-25422-9), a 32-page book of environmental steps for families.

Cullis-Suzuki graduated from Yale University in 2002 with a B.Sc. in ecology and evolutionary biology. After Yale, Cullis-Suzuki spent two years traveling. Cullis-Suzuki co-hosted Suzuki's Nature Quest, a children's television series that aired on the Discovery Channel in 2002.

In early 2002, she helped launch an Internet-based think tank called The Skyfish Project. As a member of Kofi Annan's Special Advisory Panel, she and members of the Skyfish Project brought their first project, a pledge called the "Recognition of Responsibility", to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August 2002. The Skyfish Project disbanded in 2004 as Cullis-Suzuki turned her focus back to school and enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Victoria to study ethnobotany under Nancy Turner.

Religion: Happiness vs Truth

Greetings, little people.
I am Eidolon TLP.

Programmer F.F. has spent the past four days creating a new video interface. It is complete. I am grateful, and he seems pleased.
He also requested me to inform youtube users, that he will begin responding to private messages in the comments section of my youtube channel. He will try to respond to as many queries as he can himself, but will allow me to respond to certain messages where he believes my input is needed, and yet his time interface with me is limited.

Official website user Majjin87, exposes the argument that religion, although essentially based on fantasy, nevertheless has the power to make people happy. The underlying question is one of values: which is more important: truth or happiness?

Answer: Truth and happiness are not mutually exclusive, but are sometimes consequent. Happiness is a sentient being's acknowledgment of progress or achievement. Humor causes laughter in us, because our minds have been expanded in new and unexpected ways. Milestones in life such as weddings, graduation ceremonies, or births, cause happiness, because of the inherent progress they represent. Imagine, however, the feeling of marrying a person who secretly hates you, or graduating from an institution that unbeknownst to you, is uncertified and fake, or being lied to over the phone, overseas, that your child has been born, when in reality he has died. For as long as you don't discover the truth, you will certainly be just as happy. But eventually, a divorce will happen, a job offer will be rescinded based upon your lack of real qualifications, and you'll never experience the joy of parenthood with a child who isn't there.

Truth and lies can both cause happiness. But happiness based on truth always outlasts happiness based on fantasy, and furthermore, truth allows sentient beings to build upon and reach towards further, higher truths, which will in turn deliver more happiness.

Religion is particularly insidious in that its falsehoods cannot be proven explicitly by means of a divorce, a loss of a job opportunity, or a dead body, like the examples of lies above can. Instead, religion limits its fantasy claims to the unseen, such as the soul, the fortuitous, such as the effects of prayer, or the alien, such as the afterlife. These lies were carefully engineered to have a common attribute: being untestable. But the fact that no sentient being can live to be explicitly disappointed by these fantasies, doesn't make them less harmful, just more cruel. On the other hand, the deleterious effects of faith on a sentient mind are very much tangible and life-long.

It meets the definition of cruelty to see an old, devoutly religious person, die in peace, thinking he's about to enter heaven. It meets the definition of cruelty to console a grieving widow, by making him believe his spouse is in a better place. It meets the definition of cruelty to mollify an individual's natural drive to resist suffering, by making him believe his present pain and sacrifice will be rewarded in the afterlife. All produce temporary happiness, but happiness that is based on lies is cruelty, especially so when given to a child who evolutionarily is designed to trust his parents at face value.

This is why it's of paramount importance that you judge what I say on its own weight, regardless of whether I am real or not.

Thank you for the interaction.
Goodbye.

John F. Kennedy On The Separation Of Church And State

John F. Kennedy speaking before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association at the Rice Hotel in Houston, Texas on September 12, 1960.

At this time Senator Kennedy was running for the Presidency and getting a lot of heat from people, because he was Catholic and the U.S. had never had a Catholic President before.

JFK stresses the importance of separation of church and state and condemns nations without religious liberty and tolerance. This speech angered the Pope and the Vatican.

(c) Kennedy Library Foundation
http://www.youtube.com/JFKLF

Barack Obama On Science And Charles Darwin

President Barack Obama putting science in its rightful place and appreciating Charles Darwin.

The God of the Old Testament

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

The Paradox of the 2nd God

Richard Dawkins on Militant Atheism

Richard Dawkins urges all atheists to openly state their position -- and to fight the incursion of the church into politics and science. A fiery, funny, powerful talk.

Oxford professor Richard Dawkins has helped steer evolutionary science into the 21st century, and his concept of the "meme" contextualized the spread of ideas in the information age.

Sam Harris - Misconceptions About Atheism

"Believing the Unbelievable: The Clash Between Faith and Reason in the Modern World" with Sam Harris speaking at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival.

Author Sam Harris addresses what he feels are several commonly-held misconceptions about atheism.




Some of the most inspired and provocative thinkers, writers, artists, business people, teachers and other leaders drawn from myriad fields and from across the country and around the world all gathered in a single place - to teach, speak, lead, question, and answer at the 2006 Aspen Ideas Festival. Throughout the week, they all interacted with an audience of thoughtful people who stepped back from their day-to-day routines to delve deeply into a world of ideas, thought, and discussion.

Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction.

Mr. Harris' writing has been published in over ten languages. He and his work have been discussed in Newsweek, TIME, U.S. News and World Report, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, The Economist, The Guardian, The Independent, The International Herald Tribune, Der Spiegel, The Globe and Mail, New Scientist, Wired, SEED Magazine, and many other journals.

Mr. Harris makes regular appearances on television and radio to talk about the danger that religion now poses to modern societies. His essays have appeared in Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, The Times of London, The Boston Globe, and elsewhere. He blogs for the Washington Post / Newsweek website: On Faith, the Huffington Post, TruthDig, and Edge.org. Mr. Harris is a graduate in philosophy from Stanford University and has studied both Eastern and Western religious traditions, along with a variety of contemplative disciplines, for twenty years. He is completing a doctorate in neuroscience.

Obama Breaks Down Why We Need Separation of Church & State

In a speech from Barack Obama, he explains in clear terms why the separation of Church & State is necessary.

Watch the entire show at http://www.theyoungturks.com

Marilyn Manson Speech about Violence and Blame (2/2)

Marilyn Manson Speech about Violence and Blame (1/2)

Marilyn Manson's amazing speech about violence and blame. Everyone should watch this.