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Dawkins vs. O'Reilly. Video + Analysis

EGarrett

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E
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I don't know what happened to the other thread.

Video here.

It was a disappointment. Cut short, and by my count...O'Reilly spoke for 3:17 out of the 4:40.

There are several ways to crush what O'Reilly was trying to say. One of which was to point out that science doesn't know everything, which is why it is capable of learning. Religion claims to already know, which makes it stagnant and damaging.

...or you could ask why he would "throw in" with someone who makes up an answer with no backup when the other people back up everything they say and just admit they're still learning about that one thing. There's no logic at all to that.
 
All I know is that those stats on atheism that O'Reilly spouts at the begining made me feel like I live in a cultural backwater. I also thing that pretty much every point he brings up is answered quite well in the book that he calls "facinating" but apparently has not read.
 
Dawkins isn't a great debater in person or a great public speaker for that matter. His book was great, however he's not quite as quick on his feet as he could be. If he were quicker and more eloquent and articulate he would of hammered O'Reilly. However he didn't do terrible. He did a respectable Job in the interview.
 
Quicktime wants to mess up my video programs. So nevermind. If O'Reilly did most of the talking, I'm not missing anything.
 
I saw it last night and it was an utter waste of time. O'Reilly is just unwatchable. Is he capable of not talking over his guests?
 
Dustin Kesselberg said:
Dawkins isn't a great debater in person or a great public speaker for that matter. His book was great, however he's not quite as quick on his feet as he could be. If he were quicker and more eloquent and articulate he would of hammered O'Reilly. However he didn't do terrible. He did a respectable Job in the interview.
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Hum... actually, to have seen him in person, I would say that Dawkins IS a great speaker, eloquent and articulated. The problem is that he's an intellectual, used to good faith and fair play. He has no experience with trash radio. Do you know a lot of persons who "hammered" O'Reilly in his own show? Me neither. Poor Dawkins.
 
Richard and Bill, a Discourse Analysis

EGarrett said:
I don't know what happened to the other thread.

Video here.
Click to expand...


It would be interesting to know more about the source/quality/sample sizes of the studies used for the statistics given in the preamble to the interview.

The Census for England and Wales (by far the largest sampling of the British population) certainly does not correlate with the idea that 44% of Brits do not believe in God. (Even if every man, woman and child in Scotland and Northern Ireland were atheist you still wouldn't get 44%.)

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=1086&Pos=2&ColRank=1&Rank=326

As for Richard's argument, he makes the classic atheist mistake of confusing levels; the question is not about belief in objective reality (and the way objective reality works) versus a subjective belief in God/s, the question is about how that objective reality got there in the first place.

I can forgive Richard for that initial confusion because of the way that Bill O'Reilly opens the interview with a very unclear statement about objective reality. Bill says:

"I think it takes more faith to be like you, an atheist, than like me, a believer. And it's because of nature. You know, I just don't think we could have lucked out to have the tides come in the tides go out, the sun go up the sun go down. I don't think it could have happened."

Richard responds (in the frame of thinking you don't need God/s to know the mechanics of the objective world), by saying:

"We have a very full understand why the tides go in and the tides go out; about why the continents drift about; of why life is there. Science is evermore piling on the evidence, piling on the understanding."

And this is where things get interesting....

O'Reilly attempts to clarify his question by saying:

"But it had to get there. I understand the, you know, the eh... physiology of it.. if you will..."

(Richard very clearly nods at this point - though perhaps just politely as one does in an interview.)

O'Reilly continues:

"But it had to come from somewhere. And that is the leap of fath that you guys make. That it just happened."

(Television interviews are always a little bit stressful and the point O'Reilly is really making either goes completely over Richard's head or he dodges it.)

Richard responds by saying:

"Well, a leap of faith... you don't actually need a leap of faith. You're the one who needs a leap of faith, because you are actually... the onus is on you to say why you believe in something."

This is where I and many others have a hard time respecting materialistic atheists like Richard. Considering the amount of time and energy he puts into atheism it is, quite frankly, inexcusable for him not to understand that materialism is a faith based metaphysic.

Whether or not someone believes the Universe spontaneously self-generated or has always existed in one form or another it's still just a belief.

_
HypnoPsi
 
ZouPrime said:
Hum... actually, to have seen him in person, I would say that Dawkins IS a great speaker, eloquent and articulated. The problem is that he's an intellectual, used to good faith and fair play. He has no experience with trash radio. . . . .
Click to expand...

Exactly right. Given the time to speak, Dawkins could have easily answered each point Bill made, but that's not how that show works. It's all loud-mouths and sound bites.
 
HypnoPsi said:
As for Richard's argument, he makes the classic atheist mistake of confusing levels; the question is not about belief in objective reality (and the way objective reality works) versus a subjective belief in God/s, the question is about how that objective reality got there in the first place.

...snip...

Whether or not someone believes the Universe spontaneously self-generated or has always existed in one form or another it's still just a belief.

_
HypnoPsi
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The Universe is here. Atheists and theists overwhelmingly agree to that premise. This leaves two options. The Universe has always been here or the Universe started at some point in the past. Since neither state of affairs has been shown to require a god, postulating one is the needless multiplying of entities. Refusal to believe in a postulated entity because of lack of evidence is hardly on the same footing as the initial postulation.
 
Marquis de Carabas said:
The Universe is here. Atheists and theists overwhelmingly agree to that premise. This leaves two options. The Universe has always been here or the Universe started at some point in the past. Since neither state of affairs has been shown to require a god, postulating one is the needless multiplying of entities. Refusal to believe in a postulated entity because of lack of evidence is hardly on the same footing as the initial postulation.
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My postulate has been bothering me a lot lately. Sign I'm getting old I guess.
 
Bill O'Reily's views are representative of a large number of Americans. Couple his dogmatic opinions with his overbearing and brusque manner and you have an explanation as to why a significant portion of the rest of the world dislikes what they perceive to be America. I viewed this with a sort of awe. Here is a man (O'Reily)--watched, listened to and followed by literally millions of Amercians--who in this short clip proceeds to arrogantly bray every childish reason for the existence of religious belief. I almost laughed when he told Dawkins that he (Dawkins) couldn't prove that a deity doesn't exist. I know Dawkins wants publicity for his book but he really couldn't have expected to have that opportunity on O'Reily's program. Guests are simply foils for O'Reily and serve only as a background for what are essentially monologues to his largely conservative audience. I thought Dawkins held his own, but the venue was beneath him. The whole interview was like watching a parent tiredly suffer the jabbering of an obnoxious and belligerent child. The host knew in advance that he would be debating a highly educated and intelligent guest and he therefore couldn't allow him the chance to expound on anything. Honestly, after seeing Geraldo and O'Reily lovingly spar a week or so ago, I would have thought Dawkins would have cancelled his appearance.
 
TheAntiLuddite said:
Bill O'Reily's views are representative of a large number of Americans. Couple his dogmatic opinions with his overbearing and brusque manner and you have an explanation as to why a significant portion of the rest of the world dislikes what they perceive to be America. I viewed this with a sort of awe. Here is a man (O'Reily)--watched, listened to and followed by literally millions of Amercians--who in this short clip proceeds to arrogantly bray every childish reason for the existence of religious belief. I almost laughed when he told Dawkins that he (Dawkins) couldn't prove that a deity doesn't exist. I know Dawkins wants publicity for his book but he really couldn't have expected to have that opportunity on O'Reily's program. Guests are simply foils for O'Reily and serve only as a background for what are essentially monologues to his largely conservative audience. I thought Dawkins held his own, but the venue was beneath him. The whole interview was like watching a parent tiredly suffer the jabbering of an obnoxious and belligerent child. The host knew in advance that he would be debating a highly educated and intelligent guest and he therefore couldn't allow him the chance to expound on anything. Honestly, after seeing Geraldo and O'Reily lovingly spar a week or so ago, I would have thought Dawkins would have cancelled his appearance.
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Well said . . . . I get the sense sometimes that Dawkins thinks people are having him on when he appears on American TV programs. He often has this look on his face that says, "Are you serious? This is a joke, right?"
 
TheAntiLuddite said:
Bill O'Reily's views are representative of a large number of Americans. Couple his dogmatic opinions with his overbearing and brusque manner and you have an explanation as to why a significant portion of the rest of the world dislikes what they perceive to be America.
Click to expand...
Not really. Every country has irritating people in it. The reason they dislike America is because it is prominent and successful, and tearing down and insulting anything or anyone that is viewed as successful is the natural behavior of the Bad Liberal. (see my thread on Good Liberalism vs. Bad Liberalism)

HypnoPsi said:
This is where I and many others have a hard time respecting materialistic atheists like Richard. Considering the amount of time and energy he puts into atheism it is, quite frankly, inexcusable for him not to understand that materialism is a faith based metaphysic.

Whether or not someone believes the Universe spontaneously self-generated or has always existed in one form or another it's still just a belief.
Click to expand...
There is a HUGE difference between saying "The Universe just appeared" and "We don't know how the Universe may have appeared. Not yet."

The first one is what religious people WANT scientists to be saying, because it's foolish. The second is what scientists actually say, because it's the opposite of foolish. It's truthful, and helpful, because admitting we don't know something is the first step to learning about it.

Religion can't take that step, because they say "We DO already know how the univese got here, it was magic, and you BETTER NOT ask for any proof, because it is a matter of faith." That is nothing but poison. Poison to the mind, and poison to the learning process that has been responsible for every scrap of knowledge and technology that humanity has ever created.
 
Marquis de Carabas said:
The Universe is here. Atheists and theists overwhelmingly agree to that premise. This leaves two options. The Universe has always been here or the Universe started at some point in the past. Since neither state of affairs has been shown to require a god, postulating one is the needless multiplying of entities. Refusal to believe in a postulated entity because of lack of evidence is hardly on the same footing as the initial postulation.
Click to expand...


Believing that the Universe is either an infinite series of Big Bangs and Big Crunches or an endless stream of multiverses and baby universes is also a needless multiplying of entities.

Materialistic atheism is just about replacing an unkown God with some unknown magic substance behind the whole shebang that has the ability to self-generate and/or be infinate/eternal - just like God is claimed to be by non-materialists.

_
HypnoPsi
 
HypnoPsi said:
Believing that the Universe is either an infinite series of Big Bangs and Big Crunches or an endless stream of multiverses and baby universes is also a needless multiplying of entities.
Click to expand...
Of course, materialistic atheism requires belief in neither, so this is what is technically known as completely beside the point.

Materialistic atheism is just about replacing an unkown God with some unknown magic substance behind the whole shebang that has the ability to self-generate and/or be infinate/eternal - just like God is claimed to be by non-materialists.

_
HypnoPsi
Click to expand...
No. It's about saying we'll believe in your God when you prove it.
 
Dustin Kesselberg said:
Dawkins isn't a great debater in person or a great public speaker for that matter.
Click to expand...

It's true. In that video in his "God Delusion" TV miniseries, he confronts that preacher who was later exposed as paying for gay prostitutes. The preacher responds, loudly, how arrogant he and his position are, and Dawkins looks like a deer caught in headlights. He really needs to prep some arguments and comebacks to likely attack paths.

It's not scientifically sound, but if you want to fight literally on the front lines of rhetoric like that, you can't go in with a mind fine-tuned to a slow, rational response typed out days or weeks later.
 
Wait, I'm having trouble processing something that happened.

At one point, O'Reilly criticises science because it doesn't have all the answers, whereas, he asserts, his religion does. Dawkins then says that the amount of knowledge added to science each century is "stupendous" and that even though we have to humble about what we don't know - At this point O'Reilly interpupts him, waves a finger in the air and says, "Humility is a Christian virtue."

Did O'Reilly actually suggest that he is humble?

:id:
 
Bill's other point..."I'm throwing in with Jesus because he answers the question and you don't," is equally faulty.

All Bill O'Reilly is saying in that statement is that he'd rather make up an answer then learn about something. Obviously, that's patently idiotic.
 
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