Dawkins on the O'Reilly Factor this monday

Flinty

Richard Dawkins will be appearing on O'Reilly's show this Monday 23rd (8pm US). Should be interesting.

I presume it'll be on Youtube come tuesday.

BrianCalgary

I'll be watching, thanks. Also on at 9:00pm Mountain Time (8:00 pacific, 11:00 Eastern)

Tim Robbins

BrianCalgary wrote:

I'll be watching, thanks. Also on at 9:00pm Mountain Time (8:00 pacific, 11:00 Eastern)

Good man Brian, his book is actually way better. I don't think he is the best at interviews myself.

radiospan

8pm Eastern time?

So 4am Tuesday morning here.

Dave!

Woah, lookin forward to this!!! Cheers for the heads up, I'll be checking YouTube

Zillah

Oh God...I've seen that show. This is gonna be messy.


EDIT: It upsets me that there is no comfortable replacement for phrases like "Oh God"...

Flinty

'Oh Golly'??

robindch

"Oh, Buddha...", "Oh, Allah...", "Oh, Dawkins" should cover you...?

Fallen Seraph

Is anyone actually expecting a reasonable discussion? It sounds like something set up because both think they can score points off the other... Although it does sound like it'll be funny at the very least.

Zillah

What in the name of Dawkins is going on here?!

Nah.

My all time favourite of silly Americanism: "By gosh, darn you to heck!

Crucifix

Last time I heard about O'Reilly was when himself and some politician's "discussion" escalated into them literally shouting at each other.
Science H. Logic, this could be painful.

Dades

Just googled the O'Reilly Factor (never heard of him) and watched the Geraldo interview... cool.

I can see Dawkins already getting red in the face and sweating with frustration. Should be an interesting encounter to say the least.

radiospan

The O'Reilly Factor seems to be on here at 1am, 4am and 9am. I thought it used be on at a handier time.

I guess the Dawkins episode will be at one of those times (or all?) on Tuesday. I don't know which of them is the first show, and which are repeats.

Dave!

It'll no doubt be on YouTube within a day, so I wouldn't worry about staying up til 4am!

Zillah

Absolute shite.

It lasted about 2 minutes, O'Reilly threw out the usual nonesense about the design in nature, Stalin being an evil atheist, and that his religion is "true for him". Dawkins got about two words in. It was shameless plug for The God Delusion with a laughably brief "debate" to make it seem like anything other than advertising.

Absolutely useless, don't bother.

Zombrex

Zillah wrote:

Absolute shite.

It lasted about 2 minutes, O'Reilly threw out the usual nonesense about the design in nature, Stalin being an evil atheist, and that his religion is "true for him". Dawkins got about two words in. It was shameless plug for The God Delusion with a laughably brief "debate" to make it seem like anything other than advertising.

Absolutely useless, don't bother.

You were expecting more? This is FOX News here ...

PDN

Given that the Pope wants to redefine hell as something other than a lake of fire, may I offer the following suggestion:

O'Reilly and Dawkins should be locked in a room with each other for all Eternity. Each would suffer the agony of being forever talking but realizing that the other person was not listening to them at all.

Of course for the rest of us the absence of O'Reilly and Dawkins would help make anywhere more like heaven.

This is actually quite Biblical since the New Testament, on one occasion, uses the word tartarus to denote hell. Of course, Tantalus was chained to a rock in the middle of a river in Tartarus with a berry bush hanging just out of reach above his head. Cursed with unquenchable thirst and unending hunger, Tantalus constantly tried to reach the water or food, but each time, the water and berries would recede out of his reach for eternity.

So O'Reilly and Dawkins would suffer a fitting punishment for having 'tantalised' you all with the prospect of a debate that never was.

Dades

That's an interesting bit of trivia, PDN.

Heres a link to the youtube video of Dawkins BTW.

O'Reilly was stating so much stuff as fact, that was either not true or at the very least open for debate.

Funny at one stage they had the caption:

ATHEIST
RICHARD DAWKINS

PDN

The Atheist wrote:

O'Reilly was stating so much stuff as fact, that was either not true or at the very least open for debate.

That's what O'Reilly does on every subject, not just religion.

Tim Robbins

PDN wrote:

O'Reilly and Dawkins should be locked in a room with each other for all Eternity. Each would suffer the agony of being forever talking but realizing that the other person was not listening to them at all.

PDN, name some atheist intellectuals you'd respect or you would find challenging?

Zombrex

PDN wrote:

Of course for the rest of us the absence of O'Reilly and Dawkins would help make anywhere more like heaven.

You don't like Dawkins?

bonkey

PDN wrote:

This is actually quite Biblical since the New Testament, on one occasion, uses the word tartarus to denote hell.

Wouldn't that make it quite classical / mythological Greek, rather than biblical?

The bible would appear to have taken the Tartarus reference from earlier sources. (Homer mentions it in the Illiad, for example).

So O'Reilly and Dawkins would suffer a fitting punishment for having 'tantalised' you all with the prospect of a debate that never was.

If Dawkin's was denied the opportunity to represent himself as he intended to, surely it would be capricious to blame him.

O'Reilly on the other hand....with you there, all the way.

PDN

Tim Robbins wrote:

PDN, name some atheist intellectuals you'd respect or you would find challenging?

I'm not quite sure of the relevance of your question given that it appears to be in response to my finding an atheist and a theist equally charmless, opinionated and irritating. However, being an obliging Christian I will attempt to answer.

While I have respect for a large number of intellectuals, I have no idea whether most of them are theists or atheists. I tend to assess people more by the quality of their thinking, or by their character, rather than by their religious affiliation or non-affiliation.

InFront

I've never understood why atheists gravitate so much towards men like Richard Dawkins, who imho has got nothing on genuine philosophers, particularly of the genius of Bertrand Russell, whose metaphors and viewpoints Dawkins himself borrows wholesale.

Dave!

O'Reilly understands the "physiology" of the tides going in and out... I see

Nice job he did of side-stepping the points about not being able to disprove Apollo and Zeus. "I saw Apollo down there, and he's not looking good." Genius.

Same crap that's been put to Dawkins repeatedly (Stalin, Hitler, etc), at least he seems to be able to respond to it now without going berserk!

Dades

InFront wrote:

I've never understood why atheists gravitate so much towards men like Richard Dawkins.

It's not that anyone gravitates toward him, its just that rightly or wrongly he is the most prominent atheist on the block. His endless book promotions have thrust him into the limelight, and with a subject that lives in the shadows like atheism it's refreshing to see at least some open debate.

Personally I'm not a huge fan. Carl Sagan was my man.

Zombrex

InFront wrote:

I've never understood why atheists gravitate so much towards men like Richard Dawkins, who imho has got nothing on genuine philosophers, particularly of the genius of Bertrand Russell, whose metaphors and viewpoints Dawkins himself borrows wholesale.

You seem to be implying Dawkin's is ripping off Russell, when in fact he openly mentions which ideas originated with Russell with detectable admiration.

In fact one thing you notice about the "The God Delusion" is how open Dawkins is about where all these atheists ideas and arguments are coming from. Dawkins acts more as a collector who sums things up, that someone who pretends to pass these ideas off as his own.

robindch

InFront wrote:

I've never understood why atheists gravitate so much towards men like Richard Dawkins, who imho has got nothing on genuine philosophers

Can't say I've ever met anybody who's ever "gravitated" to Dawkins. All he's doing is a bit of high-profile public thinking about religion and how it operates. Neither am I aware of anybody who claims he's a philosopher -- he's an evolutionary biologist who's looking at religion from two points of view: explaining why it happens, and explaining why it's dangerous.

lostexpectation

InFront wrote:

I've never understood why atheists gravitate so much towards men like Richard Dawkins, who imho has got nothing on genuine philosophers, particularly of the genius of Bertrand Russell, whose metaphors and viewpoints Dawkins himself borrows wholesale.

he's alive... and active currently...


so why did bill not attack him he didn't even do the whole there commies thing very much?

karen3212

I think Dawkins did very well with O'Reilly, I was actually amazed that O'Reilly didn't start ranting as he often does with people who are opposed to his own view. I suspect O'Reilly is really an irish-american catholic atheist??????

Tim Robbins

PDN wrote:

I'm not quite sure of the relevance of your question given that it appears to be in response to my finding an atheist and a theist equally charmless, opinionated and irritating. However, being an obliging Christian I will attempt to answer.

While I have respect for a large number of intellectuals, I have no idea whether most of them are theists or atheists. I tend to assess people more by the quality of their thinking, or by their character, rather than by their religious affiliation or non-affiliation.

I would agree would that, but I also have no problem I have respect for some Christian intellectuals more than others. For example, I would respect John Houghton more than Lee Strobel or CS Lewis for example. A lot Christians would respect Bertran Russsell more than Dawkins.
Colin McGinn would be my favourite atheist intellectual, I think Dawkins can be a bit arrogant sometimes but he is very good.