Oh how I wish I could have been at this debate, hopefully there will be a video stream of it at some point. Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry against Ann Widdecombe and Archbishop Onaiyekan, the motion was "The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world".
The numbers paint a picture of a complete rout; before the debate, for the motion: 678. Against: 1102. Don’t know: 346. After the debate: For: 268. Against: 1,876. Don’t know: 34. In other words, after hearing the speakers, the number of people in the audience who opposed the motion increased by 774.
This debate was run by an organisation called Intelligence Squared, I have tickets to see Richard Dawkins debate against the ex-Bishop of Oxford at the end of November which is run by the same people, I'm looking forward to it even more now.
4 comments:
Not that long ago there was an article in that Economist-offshoot magazine "Intelligent Life" (or something like that) where they listed a bunch of places like Intelligence Squared, meaning places where there are debates that are meant to be sort of semi-scholarly.
Anyway, I can't remember any of the others - Steve, do you by chance remember seeing any other places like that.
Lisa, I didn't catch that list although the ones I look out for are,
Humanist Association
Oxford Union
Beyond Belief (more of a conference)
TED (more like lectures)
Hay literary festival
FreedomFest (sometimes)
Royal Institute
That magazine has a WEB site I discovered, it's at www.moreintelligentlife.com
PS. Can you make it to the Dawkins one in November?
Hi Steve,
Sorry, I just remembered I had asked a question - I'm pretty bad about following up on comments.
I will look those places up. And go see if I can dig up the original list on that webby. Thx.
Are there still tix for the Dawkins thing? You know since atheism is the new trendy thing all the riff-raff are joining up and it's hard to get tickets to these things. :-)
Lisa, yes you could be right about that, perhaps it's time for a reformation of Atheism ;)
Don't know about tickets; I got mine from the Wellington College web site.
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