Intelligence Squared (iTunes – Feed – Web Site) brings Oxford-style debating to America. Each debate features one motion, one moderator, and three panelists arguing for a motion, and three arguing against. Should Airports Use Racial and Religious Profiling? Is Islam A Religion Of Peace? Is The Two-Party System Making the U.S. Ungovernable? These are some of the recent topics that have been tackled.
Now, taking a page out of the RSA playbook, Intelligence Squared has produced a short animated video that gives artistic life to a debate held in October 2009. The motion — “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world” — was supported by Ann Noreen Widdecombe, a former British Conservative Party politician turned novelist. And taking the contrary position was popular British actor and writer Stephen Fry.
You can watch the animated version above, and the full debate (which also featured Christopher Hitchens) here. More iq2 videos can be found at their Youtube Channel, which otherwise appears in our collection of Intelligent YouTube Channels. H/T @joabaldwin
Related Content:
Stephen Fry on Philosophy and Unbelief
Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18
Stephen Fry Gets Animated about Language
Love this.
For those interested in the full debate which also features the late Christopher Hitchens and a bishop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODfBO-vbn7Y
The Church single handedly created poverty. For any Church to come in a say that they are saving anyone is ludicrous. I lived in South America with the Guarani Indians. They had lived very well with farming, hunting and fishing until the Spanish arrived. Their sustainable living habits were based on deities that oversaw the harvest and the hunt. Christianity came along and took that all away, hence creating dependance on a new god that did not provide for them and taught that the more they suffer in this world the more they will be redeemed in that next. All while stealing their gold, which they really had no use for because they had no monetary system. They just lived, without want or need. The Earth gave them everything, but white men with a warped God concept took it away.