toomanytribbles: February 2011

click image to view debate at source
on the panel: sam harris, christopher hitchens, david wolpe and bradley artson.

i've just started listening to this and the first argument from the first speaker, david wolpe, has started with a dull thud.

to the question, if he expects to go to heaven, he argues that part of the problem of the idea of an afterlife is that we take it more literally than it needs to be and that makes it ridiculous. he says that before we entered this world, we could not have imagined mountains and tunafish and teeth and ideas -- of course not. it is unimaginable. but we expect to be able to imagine the other world, reducing it to nonsense.

except that i didn't exist before being born, therefore i don't remember trying to imagine any of it. if i existed, i have no recollection of it at all, and it has no discernible effect on my present life... so it's completely irrelevant. and why, if there's so much talk about an afterlife, is there no curiosity about a prelife? this is nonsense.

i sincerely hope i hear something interesting from the theists by the time this finishes.

EDIT: harris started of well. relaying his fear that this debate would bore the audience, he quoted his wife as saying, 'nothing hitchens does is ever boring'.
EDIT again: hitchens can quote literature and scripture too -- specifically, star wars.
EDIT yet again: very enjoyable... great points from all around.