A great time was had by all as Paul, Daniel and Steven discuss shooting escorts, throat cancer for oral sex, apps that warn you if you’re going to crash into something while texting and walking, text operated coffee machines, atheist monuments, being fired for getting pregnant via artificial insemination and much more…
Also, Daniel gets excited about Adam Savage’s Maker Faire speech, and did we mention that prancercising is really hot?
I just stumbled across this wonderful collection of clips where the two halves of Fry and Laurie opine, as only they can, on matters of science and religion.
Lipton: Do you share Houses’s skepticism? Laurie: I do. Big chunks of it, yes. I’m not a religious man. Again, I think this is connected to my father. My father was religious oddly enough, but I nonetheless I suppose was impressed by [and] enamored of his devotion to medical science. I find I am a fan of science. I believe in science. A humility before the facts. I find that a moving and beautiful thing. And belief in the unknown I find less interesting. I find the known and the knowable interesting enough.
It seems to me the whole ‘Thou shalt not take the name of thy lord in vain’ thing could have been worked in somewhere else if the limit was really ten, or is he really so self-absorbed that God cares more about cursing than protecting children?
Alain de Botton suggests a “religion for atheists” in which atheism can learn from the more communal and ritualistic aspects of religion, without adopting any of the mysticism. Atheism 2.0 incorporates religious forms and traditions to satisfy our human need for connection, ritual and transcendence.
What aspects of religion should atheists (respectfully) adopt?
