Best of A.C. Grayling Amazing Arguments And Clever Comebacks Part 1

I see grayling is a professor of philosophy and master of the new College of Humanities in London he is the author of over 20 books which include Liberty in the age of terror the Good Book a secular Bible and of course the God argument he's a regular contributor to The Times Financial Times observer-independent on Sunday economists literary review New Statesman and as well news night and CNN news he's been a paradigm of humanism for many years the vice-president of the British Humanist Society a patron of the UK end of dying with dignity dignity in dying sorry and an honorary associate of the National Secular society yet his abiding success I think we can all agree is in a star that makes philosophy and ethics accessible seeking an active and useful role in broader society would you please welcome AC grayling sorry I'm I mean that there are two things Dinesh was great respect to you you are the most tremendous rewriter of history I've ever come across you don't care you don't seem to be conscious of the fact that when Christianity became dominant in Europe at about the third fourth century AD it had looked at its sundial the parousia the second coming of the Messiah hadn't happened they needed some extra ethics the ethics of the New Testament and the Pauline epistles are very thin they're the stuff I talked about earlier give everything away don't get married go bother about tomorrow where did they get it from they got it from Greek philosophy most of European culture and that means culture of the West is deeply rooted in classical antiquity in the thinking of Socrates and Aristotle and the Stoics that is where our European outlook our cultural outlook comes from conceptions of justice of ethics of democracy they all come from the pre-christian state of Europe your Christianity was an oriental religion that inter erupted into Europe and changed the course of European history and derailed it for over a thousand years people couldn't build a dome like that the Dome of Maxentius in Rome because they'd lost the understanding of simple engineering wasn't until Brunelleschi's dome in Florence in the 15 16th century that that was possible so we're looking at a phenomenon here where religion did to our forefathers did to the history of our culture exactly what Matthew says it's doing again did the prospects for science and programs in our country will do for very good evolutionary reasons children are very gullible very credible very credulous and the things that adults on whom they rely in their immediate circle say about the world are important to children fire burns buses run over you so you must be careful you must do this you mustn't do that these are things that children have to believe they have to be very very accepting of what is offered to them on the authority of the adults in their circle in order for them to survive so they are prepared to believe everything believe in fairies they believed in the tooth fairy for example believe in father Christmas I mean I've been bringing up my youngest child as an atheist my wife says to me that means you're probably you know want to be a mother a best when she's a teenager but we learn the lesson from the religions that if you can indoctrinate them early enough they will always revert to type later so I've been bringing her up to say never to use the word god but always to use the phrase gods and goddesses I'll also point out to you that when people use the word God with a capital G is difficult in a m-- as if it referred to something that she should ask the people who do that to substitute the name Fred because then it shows the vacuity of what they're saying who created the universe Fred so and then you suddenly see that it's actually not explanatory at all or who says that you shouldn't lie or we should be you should honor your mother and your father Fred well once again you see the vacuity of it so I'm gonna torture to say gods and goddesses and she said to me one day when she's about seven or eight said I don't believe in gods and goddesses that I do believe in the tooth fairy and I said well that's actually pretty smart of you because there's much more empirical evidence for the tooth fairy than there is for God there are plenty of non-religious people who are involved in charitable endeavors and they don't stay on afterwards because they don't have an extra agenda and I just want to quote you when you do improvisation yeah and I don't entity can you be explicit about yes I because I didn't think that they staying or haven't got anything to proselytize about they don't want to return for their investment the George Bernard Shaw said in this very very quick quote he said when he gave up religion escaped religion as a teenage he said that moment was the moment when I felt the dawning of moral passion because people who don't take a box out of the frozen-food warehouse of morality you know that there at all is a people you've got to think about their responsibilities and about their relationship to other people they've got to be people who think about the diversity how different people are from one another you know the golden rule do unto others as you would have them do unto you George Bernard Shaw said no under no circumstances should you do with to others what you'd like him to do to you because they may not like it and that's a very good insight it means see them for what they are in their garetty and personality and base your morality on a a genuine understanding of what it is to be human in a human world the great thing about the scientific mindset is its acceptance of open texture of the fact there are lots of things we don't know and understand and we're looking for and trying to understand and we're prepared not to leap to closure to leap to a neat easy story to understand which tells us what the beginning was and what the end is going to be but very often in the case of people who appeal to religions to provide that kind of explanation what they're doing is that they're answering the question why is there a world by saying well because Fred made it as if that answered anything substitute God for Fred there by the way or you know what why are we here because Fred wants us to be you haven't answered anything if you give a super naturalistic answer to it but the fact that there are lots of unanswered questions in science is just the fact about this preparedness the intellectual courage to go on not knowing all the answers but looking for when ask the question why is there something rather than nothing said if there was nothing and still be complaining that there are as many kinds of good and worthwhile lives as there are people to live them a view about the matter utterly different from a view that says there is one a one-size-fits-all answer to how everybody should live what the right answer is and that of course is where all the great ideologies and chief among them the religious ideologies have always claimed there's one right answer one right way and if you don't sign up for it you can be in trouble doesn't matter whether you're Stalin or taqwa murder doesn't matter with your ideology is political or religious they have the same tenor and the tenor is we know the answer this is the truth you must sign up for it too we struck me as being a point of historical importance that people should notice a transition that occurred in the first thousand years of Christian history from the age of the Church Fathers the patristic writers in the 4th 3rd 4th 5th 6th centuries of the Common Era who wrote what was called apologetics that is accounts of justification for the faith trying to persuade people usually a skeptical educated audience of people why they should accept the doctrines and promises of the faith apologetics is an attempt to persuade people to give them arguments evidence reasons why they should accept the teachings by the time that the church was at the height of its power in the High Middle Ages there was no longer any need for apologetics because it was by then a crime not to believe and if you didn't it wasn't a question of persuasion you just got burned at the stake and this is how things work in this world of ours that when institutions get into positions of power and the church did very early on as you know you were all reading about Constantine in the bath last night so you remember that he said well let Christianity be one among the accepted religions of the Empire and in less than a century it was the only one so when we look at the teachings of the great young religions of the world particularly as I say Christian Islam we see that the premise on which they operate is that they have the answer their story is the right story and all we have to do is to sign up for it and in both those religions and it's again another striking contrast with the humanism tradition is that they ask us not to think remember the great sin in Christianity is pride stand on your own two feet and think for yourself that's a big bad mistake we pray that we not my will be done but thy will be done to die to yourself to submit yourself to God these are things that were regarded as virtues not to think but to submit to accept to believe and to obey these are regarded as virtues the very word Islam means submission submission of the will of submission of the intellect you must just have faith you must just believe we're here to discuss a sociological phenomenon a man-made phenomenon religion you can see the difference you might call in question whether or not there are gods and goddesses but you can't call in question whether or not there is religion is plenty of it history is full of it and it exists around us all the time today and by the way I say that her religion is man-made advisedly there are very few women indeed in the upper half of hierarchies of the world's religions which perhaps has something to do with the point you think of the way history screams at us with gory throats about that the atrocities that have been committed in the name of the faith and you ask yourself isn't it the case that these fake natural very warm feelings that human beings can have for one another when they know one another individually that it becomes impossible to generalize so if you know somebody from another nation or another culture another ethnicity you know somebody well personally it's very very hard to continue to generalize to accept the sorts of divisions that people want to impose because of labels because of the identities that they choose for themselves and you see that they that the deepest division that has existed between people in human history record on human history is the set of religious differences which has been productive of so much conflict and suffering you think of that and you move to the individual sphere you think of the of the teenager who is anxious because his private feelings may be leading him into sin or he's done something that may dam his immortal soul because he's being told that it will if you think about the torment of that so every scale we can think of ways in which religion religious belief religious hegemony religious oppression has stood in the path of the good we know from there from the historical record how organized religious bodies have resisted tooth and nail every inch of progress that's been made in science look at the history of the modern West for example since the Reformation their desire to increase the liberty of the individual against the desire of of religion supporting absolute monarchy to keep control over individuals the idea of the secret policeman who sees what you do in the dark it's a wonderful instrument of control over people's minds and what has been sought in in the period of time that has elapsed since the Reformation has been an increasing margin of discretion for individuals that make their own choices make up their own mind and to live a life which is free of those trammels which their imagination and their will is not loaded down with ancient stories that come from the the infancy of humankind would we be better off without religion so so much better off if only we could breathe the free air of our our personal liberty our choice freedom to love one another as human beings and cooperate with one another not because of labels not because we don't want to go to hell but because we choose to our motion is the world would be better off without religion and here to speak in support of the motion AC grayling philosopher and author of the good book a humanist Bible thank you um it seems very unkind to say this but alas it's just basically true that the religious outlook on the world has its roots its origins in the beliefs the superstitions of illiterate goats who lived up to 3,000 years ago and however much religion reinvents itself and however much it tries to make us forget its history and however much it it obscures the fact that it depends upon proselytizing very small children for its survival despite all that we have an opportunity to think again and afresh and to recognize that in order to live with the kind of hope with the kind of responsibility with the kind of love for our neighbor which is essential for a world of peace we've got to do that hard work of choosing our morality choosing our ethics thinking about the principles on which we live not borrowing it not inheriting it not having to conform to a set of doctrines about these things than a set of rituals which people very very very long time ago depended upon to do their thinking for them but to think of fresh start again and look at this world as a place where reason and human experience have to be our best because they are in fact our only guides thank you AC ghrelin all right so we have the final results we asked you to vote before the debate and once again after the debate on where you stood on this motion and on what team you felt argued their position best and the team whose numbers change the most are our winner the motion is this the world would be better off without religion and here is the result before the debate 52 percent were in support of the motion 26% were against and 22% were undecided after the debate 59% support this motion that's up 7% 31% are against it that's up only 5% and 10% are undecided that's down 12% that means the side arguing for the motion that the world would be better off without religion has carried this debate our congratulations to them thank you for me John Donvan and intelligence squared us we'll see you next time

Channel: Agatan Foundation

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Keywords: Best, Moments, of, arguments, clever, comebacks, part, Delivery, Atheism, Antitheism, Atheist, Religion, Debate, Philosophy, argument, funny, Science, great, nice, cool, Good, Fun, comeback, answer, anti-theist, anti, theist, intelligent, bright, smart, church, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, new, morality, god, islamism, extremism, amazing, Creationism, education, agatan, one, Catholicism, foundation, Secularism, Humanism, radio, thinking atheist, A.C. Grayling

Id: fYzUj0GSPHg

Length: 15min 31sec (931 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 19 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/Existenti4lism]

Anyone know where that first clip comes from ?

[u/[deleted]]

So this isn't AC Grayling...