Stephen Fry on Philosophy and Unbelief

in Comedy, Philosophy, Religion | July 4th, 2011

Come­di­an Stephen Fry has the clas­sic British intel­lec­tu­al voice, much like philoso­pher Bryan McGee. It turns out that he knows some­thing about phi­los­o­phy, and this clip is a short­ened ver­sion of a longer video called “The Impor­tance of Unbe­lief.”

A more gen­tle ver­sion of George Car­lin, Fry’s views appear heart­felt while par­tak­ing of seri­ous irony. He claims that in order to prop­er­ly appre­ci­ate our present lives, “even if it isn’t true, you must absolute­ly assume that there is no after­life.” Choos­ing his posi­tions to argue as much for their rhetor­i­cal audac­i­ty as any­thing else, he argues for poly­the­ism in favor of monothe­ism, and he treats the issue of the divine pres­ence in nature by ref­er­enc­ing the life cycle of a par­a­sitic worm. He seems an apt voice to add to the new athe­ist debates, at least as amus­ing as Dawkins and much more­so than Sam Har­ris. This clip is added to our col­lec­tion of 250 Cul­tur­al Icons.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed about Lan­guage

Mark Lin­sen­may­er runs the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life phi­los­o­phy pod­cast and blog. He also per­forms with the Madi­son, WI band New Peo­ple.

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The “Ask Sam Harris Anything” Hour

in Philosophy, Religion | June 30th, 2011

Sam Har­ris — he wrote the best­sellers The End of Faith and Let­ter to a Chris­t­ian Nation. He’s also one-fourth of the New Athe­ist quar­tet infor­mal­ly called The Four Horse­men (where you’ll also find Richard Dawkins, Christo­pher Hitchens and Daniel Den­nett.) And he has most recent­ly argued that neu­ro­science can even­tu­al­ly answer all moral ques­tions. Sam Har­ris is very much a pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al. He’s out there and in the mix. And he’s now answer­ing ques­tions from Reddit.com users. Give Har­ris 54 min­utes and he’ll tell you how to pro­mote pub­lic ratio­nal­i­ty, why med­i­ta­tion can change your life, and much, much more …

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Hitchens Answers Red­dit User Ques­tions

Richard Dawkins Plays the Piano: “Earth His­to­ry in C Major”

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Leonard Cohen Reads “The Future” (Not Safe for Work)

in Music, Religion, Video - Arts & Culture | March 22nd, 2011

If you’ve been feel­ing the End Times’ icy breath a lit­tle close on your shoul­ders these past few weeks, we rec­om­mend a healthy dose of Leonard Cohen. You can start with this 20-minute inter­view from 1993, con­duct­ed by Bar­bara Gowdy of the Cana­di­an lit­er­ary series, Imprint. And click “play” with cau­tion — it starts with Cohen read­ing the very NSFW poem “The Future,” from his epony­mous 1992 album.

The sec­ond you hear that famous blue bari­tone say “Give me absolute con­trol over every liv­ing soul,” you know the apoc­a­lypse can cer­tain­ly wait till the poem’s over. Or maybe it can’t, but at least you’ll have spent your last few moments lis­ten­ing to Leonard Cohen.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Vari­ety, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Faith: Time-Lapse from Mecca

in Art, Film, Religion | March 16th, 2011

Mec­ca — Muham­mad’s birth­place and the heart of Islam – beau­ti­ful­ly cap­tured by Hosain Hadi, using just his Canon 5D mark ll.

H/T @MatthiasRascher

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mid­dle East­ern His­to­ry: Free Cours­es

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Five Minutes with Richard Dawkins

in Life, Religion, Science | November 22nd, 2010

You’ll get the schtick pret­ty quick­ly. The BBC’s Matthew Stadlen spends five quick min­utes with celebri­ties, thinkers and news­mak­ers. And, above, he gets down to busi­ness with Richard Dawkins, with the con­ver­sa­tion touch­ing on reli­gion, the after­life, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, moral­i­ty, hap­pi­ness, and the whole point of life. Oth­er thinkers fea­tured in the series include Mar­tin Amis, AC Grayling, Alain de Bot­ton, Bri­an Cox, Sir Ter­ry Pratch­ett and oth­ers.

via Metafil­ter

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Ayn Rand Argues That Believing in God Is an Insult to Reason on The Phil Donahue Show (Circa 1979)

in Philosophy, Politics, Religion | November 19th, 2010

Ayn Rand — she’s often con­sid­ered the intel­lec­tu­al dar­ling of Amer­i­ca’s polit­i­cal right. Rand’s free mar­ket think­ing rubbed off on Alan Greenspan in a big way. At the Cato Insti­tute, Stephen Moore writes, “Being con­ver­sant in Ayn Rand’s clas­sic nov­el about the eco­nom­ic car­nage caused by big gov­ern­ment run amok [Atlas Shrugged] was prac­ti­cal­ly a job require­ment.” Supreme Court Jus­tice Clarence Thomas acknowl­edges a deep debt to The Foun­tain­head, Rand’s cel­e­bra­tion of the indi­vid­ual, and makes his law clerks watch the 1949 film adap­ta­tion of the nov­el. Rand Paul, the new Tea Par­ty sen­a­tor, calls him­self a fan of both books. And Ayn Rand book sales surged once Oba­ma came into office. You get the pic­ture.

Giv­en this love affair, it’s a lit­tle incon­gru­ous to redis­cov­er old footage (cir­ca 1979) that fea­tures Rand com­ing out “against God,” call­ing faith an abdi­ca­tion of indi­vid­ual respon­si­bil­i­ty (so impor­tant to her phi­los­o­phy), an insult to the human intel­lect, and a sign of psy­cho­log­i­cal weak­ness. If she were alive today, Rand would eas­i­ly give the “new athe­ists” (Richard Dawkins, Christo­pher Hitchens, Daniel Den­nett, etc.) a very good run for their mon­ey. It’s not exact­ly the stuff that tra­di­tion­al­ly makes you a con­ser­v­a­tive saint, but stranger things have hap­pened. Maybe.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Athe­ism: A Rough His­to­ry of Dis­be­lief, with Jonathan Miller

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Why He’s Uncom­fort­able Being Labeled an ‘Athe­ist’

Athe­ist Ira Glass Believes Chris­tians Get the Short End of the Media Stick

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Do Physicists Believe in God?

in Physics, Religion, Science | November 8th, 2010

Every day, physi­cists and astronomers con­front the won­ders of the uni­verse. But does star­ing into the sub­lime abyss incline them toward a belief in God? Not if you ask the physi­cists at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham School of Physics and Astron­o­my, who answer big ques­tions on YouTube and Six­ty Sym­bols, includ­ing “What hap­pens if you stick your hand inside the Large Hadron Col­lid­er, the world’s largest par­ti­cle accel­er­a­tor?

The Not­ting­ham physi­cists are in some good com­pa­ny. Accord­ing to a well-known 1997 study pub­lished in Nature, biol­o­gists with­in the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences reject­ed God and immor­tal­i­ty at rates of 65.2% and 69.0%. Mean­while, when phys­i­cal sci­en­tists were polled, the num­bers rose to 79.0% and 76.3%. The sum­ma­ry orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished by Nature now appears here.

via PourMe­Cof­fee

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The Dalai Lama on the Neuroscience of Compassion

in Politics, Psychology, Religion, Science | October 21st, 2010

Last week, the Dalai Lama spent sev­er­al days at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, where he made com­pas­sion his focus. He laid the foun­da­tion with a large pub­lic address before an audi­ence of 7,000. (Watch an excerpt above or the full talk below.) Then things got more focused when the spir­i­tu­al leader of Tibet par­tic­i­pat­ed in a day­long con­fer­ence about the neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of com­pas­sion. Host­ed by Stan­ford’s Cen­ter for Com­pas­sion and Altru­ism Research and Edu­ca­tion, the con­fer­ence brought togeth­er impor­tant sci­en­tists from many dis­ci­plines – psy­chol­o­gy, neu­ro­science, med­i­cine, and eco­nom­ics. You can watch a record­ing of the con­fer­ence here. It’s all in video and ready to go.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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