The Sleep of Reason
In his new lecture James Randi examines the new monsters brought forth to victimize a credulous public, worldwide. In this hour-long talk, he discusses the major causes of modern irrationality, such as the rise of sensationalist journalism and the decline of responsible investigative reportage; the origins of "complimentary/alternative medicine" and the means by which it edges ever closer to acceptability; and how the outrageous claims of religions and their leaders encourage the public to accept the outrageous claims of secular hucksters.
These forces of irrationality mean to drag us into a new Dark Ages -- and to the extent that religious demagoguery, superstition, and magical thinking succeed in our world, The Enlightenment has failed. Only when we decide to reject belief in demons, gods, prophecy, eternal life and similar nonsense, can we fulfil our historic responsibility and ensure that The Enlightenment and its values endure.
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About James Randi:
James Randi is a former stage magician, author and probably the world's most prominent skeptic.
Randi is perhaps best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudo-science and the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). The JREF sponsors The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge offering a prize of US $1,000,000 to anyone who can demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event, under test conditions agreed to by both parties.
Randi investigates paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims, collectively known as woo-woo. He has written extensively about the paranormal, skepticism, and the history of magic.
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James Randi on the net:
http://www.randi.org
A lecture by Maryam Namazie (http://maryamnamazie.com) held on 27 September 2011 at the DesignMuseeum Denmark in Copenhagen, about opposing Sharia law around the world.
Maryam Namazie is the Spokesperson for "One law for all" (http://www.onelawforall.org.uk/) and for ""Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain" (http://ex-muslim.org.uk/).
The lecture is the first approx. 30 minutes, followed by the question round. The video is the event in it's entirety.
In Matthew's own words:
"Tent Revival For Agnostics, is the greatest story ever told from a secular point of view. Listen carefully to the lyrics and enjoy the metaphor and the musical interpretation of the American slave trade chant, Go Down Moses. This is, Matthew T Taylor, the author's view on Gods and Politics in the 21st Century."
Ateistisk Selskab inviterede i 2008 teologen Sørine Gotfredsen til at holde et foredrag om hendes syn på ateisme og ateister. Her bringes den efterfølgende debat.
The Ethical Aspect of Atheism
There are two different ways in which a non-theistic view of the world has ethical implications. One is that it is a feature of the ethics of rationality that one's outlook should be maximally evidence-based and truth-directed, thus ruling out supernaturalistic explanations or interpretations (as e.g. thinking that there must be tree spirits or Norse gods to take responsibilty for such phenomena as, respectively, the whispering sound of leaves and thunder among the clouds - but in particular ruling out god-of-the-gaps "explanations" and the legitimacy of acts of faith as justifications for belief).
The second is that people require moral and 'spiritual' resources - these jointly constituting the ethical aspect of life - and one reason for the continuation of religious belief is that the religions have successfully hijacked control of these matters. So a humanistic ethics must regain its voice on these dimensions of human life, not least by reminding people of, and promoting, the rich inheritance of thinking about such matters in the long secular tradition since classical antiquity.
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About A.C. Grayling:
Professor Grayling has written and edited over twenty books on philosophy and other subjects; among his most recent are Ideas That Matter, Liberty in the Age of Terror and To Set Prometheus Free.
For several years he wrote for The Guardian and now writes a column for the Times. He is a frequent contributor to among others the Literary Review, the Observer, and the Independent on Sunday and is an equally frequent broadcaster on BBC Radio. He writes the Thinking Read column for the Barnes and Noble Review in New York, is the Editor of Online Review London, and a Contributing Editor of Prospect magazine. In addition he sits on the editorial boards of several academic journals, and for nearly ten years was the Honorary Secretary of the principal British philosophical association, the Aristotelian Society.
He is a past chairman of June Fourth, a human rights group concerned with China, and is a representative to the UN Human Rights Council for the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Grayling was a Fellow of the World Economic Forum for several years, and a member of its C-100 group on relations between the West and the Islamic world. He is a Trustee of the London Library, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2003 he was a Booker Prize judge, and in 2010 is a judge of the Art Fund prize group.
Ken Ramshøj Christensen & Mathias Clasen, fra henholdsvis Institut for kommunikation og kultur & Institut for klinisk medicin, kommer forbi, for at tale om deres kortlægning af danskernes tro og overtro. Resultaterne er meget spændende og overraskende.