“Dawkins, Dennett, Harris & Hitchens walk into a bar, and…”
Well, actually a comfortable drawing room in front of a fireplace. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens sit down at a table for two hours and discuss religious offense at atheism, the relation of faith and self-deception, and the separation of the numinous from the supernatural. (And that’s just in hour one. Maybe in hour two they come out and say they were just joking about that...)
Hour two: Christopher Hitchens challenges Dennett on his proposition that there may be knowledge we’d be better off without, and Dawkins challenges Hitchens on his proposition that Michaelangelo couldn’t have done such wonderful art without religion. Harris raises the point that criticism of religion should differentiate among the relative evils of religions, while Dawkins and Hitchens insist that it matters more if they are true than if they are evil. And at the end of hour two the discussion turns to the real potential of global war over conflicting religious claims on a small piece of land.
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