This is a blog about one man's quest for discovering the meaning in his life. Discovering who he is, what he wants to do, and facing all of the obstacles that stand in his way as he tries to get there..... Okay, that sounded corney. So really I'm a graduate student in computer engineering and this blog is about surviving my everyday life. Sounds boring I know, but it has its interesting parts.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Short Films on Atheism
I mentioned before that I had collected a series of short films and video clips covering atheism, religion, and science. This post contains the first half of that collection that focus on atheism.
"Might Makes Right" Argument and Personal Experiences
I realized that there were two clips where I appeared on The Atheist Experience that I forgot to share on here. If you recall I shared one clip where I called in back in March. There was a second discussion to that phone call that I neglected to mention, and I also called in a second time a few weeks later to discuss another topic. Those videos are embedded below.
In this video I ask the hosts how Christians can make the claim that their god is always good and always loving when there are so, so many atrocious and vengeful acts in the bible. I think this is really at the core of what really upsets me. How people can say their god is good, and then when I point to some horrible action of their god they don't abandon or question their position, but simply retain this dogmatic mindset and make excuses and special pleading for why it was okay or even correct for their god to do that. The hosts and I have a great discussion on this topic so definitely give this clip a listen.
Here I share a couple of personal experiences I've had that I think a religious person could easily have misinterpreted. Most importantly I demonstrate that the human brain is fallible and often subject to error. Due to an accident I had in the past, I became a lucid dreamer and my dreams can be so real to me that at times I have difficulty distinguishing whether an event happened in real life or happened in a dream.
In the later half of the video I then challenge one of the hosts who said that he thinks personal experience is a good reason to believe in a god. Using my earlier example as support, I disagree with that stance. We have a nice discussion about the subject. It did somewhat upset me at the end of the clip though when the host accused me of being dogmatic and automatically discrediting personal experience. I don't think I am dogmatic about this or anything. If I was, I'd surely change that belief because I hate dogma, as I've expressed here many times before.
Finally, here's a list of all the video clips from the Atheist Experience that I shared on my blog earlier this year (not including the ones where I called in). Remember that when I selected all the videos for this list, my criteria for selection were based on the value it would have for my discussions with my religious friend. They were never intended to convert/de-convert her, but merely to get her to think, to question, and to evaluate her own beliefs. But most importantly, I wanted to have a discussion with her about what was said and analyzed in these videos. Maybe you will be able to make use of this list in the way that I was never able to. I also chose the ordered these clips carefully, saving the more controversial/upsetting clips for last.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-WoKnRqngg Religion Makes This World A Better Place - On the good and evil in people projected through religion, homosexuality issues, thinking and believing for yourself
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7513047079004228304&hl=en (view from 1:14:00-end) Atheist Experience #503: Responding to Christian apologists - On reasoned arguments, God's immorality, old vs new testament, picking and choosing parts of the bible, focusing on only the positive parts of the bible...very similar to our arguments
