[Update added below. Further update: here’s the video.]
I’m participating this afternoon in an intriguing event here at Caltech:
Affirming the proposition will be Skeptics Society president Michael Shermer and myself, while negating it will be conservative author Dinesh D’Souza and MIT nuclear engineer Ian Hutchinson. We’ll go back and forth for about two hours, after which Sam Harris will give a talk about his most recent book, Free Will.
Festivities begin at 2pm Pacific time (5pm Eastern). I hadn’t previously mentioned the debate here on the blog, because tickets sold out pretty quickly, and it didn’t seem right to taunt people by mentioning an event they couldn’t come see. But the Skeptics folks have been working hard to set up live-streaming video of the event, and it looks like they’ve succeeded! So you should be able to watch all the fun live on YouTube — and feel free to leave comments here.
[Live-streaming didn’t work, but here’s the video.]
I’ll come back when it’s all over and add some post-debate thoughts.
Update after the debate: first off, very sorry that the live stream didn’t seem to work for many people. (Although the YouTube comments are occasionally funny.) That’s just what sometimes unfortunately happens when you try something new. Pretty sure that video will eventually be available, I’ll link when it appears.
Also I deleted a bunch of comments about string theory from people who don’t take instructions well.
As for the debate, it’s very hard to judge when up on the stage, but I hope there were some enlightening moments. I’m not sure it worked well as a “debate.” I tried to engage a bit with what Ian and Dinesh were saying, but I didn’t feel that they reciprocated — although they might make the same claim about our side. I’m thinking that four people is just too much to have in a debate; it could have been more direct confrontation if there had only been two, with twice as much time for each little speech.
I don’t think I did a very good job in the cross-examinations, but hopefully the actual speeches came across clearly.
The audience was pretty clearly biased toward us from the beginning. Which is great in some sense (go forces of reason!) but I’d actually like to do something similar before an audience that was tilted the other way, or (best of all) completely uncommitted at the start. Preaching to the choir is fun, but doesn’t really change the world.
We had a great crowd, and I very much appreciate everyone who braved the not-that-great-by-Southern-California-standards weather. Would love to hear reactions from people who were actually there.
Has anybody else noticed the likeness between Dinesh D’Souza and Mr Bean http://perezhilton.com/2010-10-11-mr-bean-is-sick#.T29UNVRa5lc
Religion never produced any good arguments to refute in the first place…
Really looking forward to the tag team of Shermer and Carroll to kick butt. The likeness is amazing.
Isn’t this like art teachers debating evolution? Sean, your interests seem to have spilled over some into philosophy, so I suspect you’re by far the most read on these issues… but I still don’t think anyone in the group has done any real work in Phil. of Religion (that very busy but poorly named branch of philosophy which concerns itself with arguments for/against God’s existence.)
Really missing the Hitch…
What about string theory? Has science refuted string theory? Isn’t science the practice of formulated hypotheses that attempt to explain your observations, and the ability to test those hypotheses through experimentation? Something which string theory is incapable of? So if science has refuted religion, it has also refuted string theory. Correct?
Looking forward to this one. How can science NOT have refuted religion? But come on, Sean, “myself”? No, no, you mean “Affirming the proposition will be Skeptics Society president Michael Shermer and ME.” Go at ’em!
Why does Dinesh continue to be invited to these debates?
Everything he says is total nonsense and easily seen as such.
I already anticipate a winner…but let me also be frank the debate is a wonderful free will expression of noble of the intelligence community coming together. No one really loses…here both win the appreciation of the audience. and the respect both fields deserve, looking forward to the debate.
Phil, no – you’re incorrect.
Don– not sure what came over me there. I always write “me,” and make fun of people who write “myself.” That’s what I get for blogging pre-coffee. But I’ll leave it up there as self-punishment.
ugh, anyone but Dinesh
@Phil – That’s not really true. I imagine the arguments against religion will involve evidence that directly contradicts religion, not just the lack of evidence for it. Also, from looking at the Wikipedia page, it looks like there are several proposed tests that would at least help the case for string theory, if not confirm it. I don’t think it’s accurate to say string theory is incapable of forming hypotheses at this point.
Phil,
I think I understand what you are trying to say but the “String Theory” began because properties of the strong nuclear force are perfectly described by the Euler beta-function, a formula devised for purely mathematical reasons two hundred years earlier by Leonhard Euler.
Religious dogma insists that someone’s campfire story from the ancient past explains everything without any empirical evidence or mathematical formulation, only extraordinary claims. If one were to select an ancient theory or philosophy from the thousands available,, at least pick one with modern empirical evidence. Example: Darwin’s evidence supports Anaximander’s philosophy (over 5 centuries B.C.) that man evolved from water.
This isn’t the place to debate string theory, folks.
Wow, nothing like listening to a debate with an open mind. Does this mean that you all are familiar with all the philosophies of ALL the religions or are you relying on that course of Comparative Religions you took oh so long ago. Or just thinking about the major three and the guy with the long white beard?
Not all religions believe in a creator god or any kind of god.
I’m assuming its going to be more of a debate over the existence of the supernatural, rather than cult specifics.
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Apparently God doesn’t want us to watch this 🙂
The link seems to be error-ing out, so I’m hoping that it will be posted up on youtube after the fact?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH2RbXaEDQE&context=C45e2df1ADvjVQa1PpcFPhU4nemRWWaOYJ0gCLPsI2P_tN9S_4g8I%3D
Sean Carroll: Since the video stream is broken/server overload, and you are the apparent moderator; care to chat about the direction of time instead of string theory that you object to?
Agreed then, there is no God/Allah/Being, and no “afterlife”. And if there is…let’s agree to cause a lot of trouble when we get there. Every aspect, every part of this, has been rigged, unjust, and revolting. Except Life and Death — they were magnificent! The Living and Dying part has been great fun.
“What’s wrong with believing in some sort of afterlife? What’s wrong with believing that after death, you don’t “experience” pure nothingness associated with the lack of a living earthly body?”
The best examples today of what is wrong with it come from the doctrine of martyrdom. Luckily Christianity grew out of its “kill people who don’t believe” phase, so Christianity is fairly innocuous these days, but the willingness to believe in nonsense because it makes you happy is the direct cause of a lot of misery in the world – “I will go to paradise, rather than ‘experience’ pure nothingness, so I should kill people to get there”.
Believing things are true because we want them to be true rather than because we have reason to believe they are true is what is wrong with it, and that is what makes it worth rejecting as a basis for thinking we know something.
BTW, your String Theory analogy is pretty dumb.
Don and Sean, it really should be “I”—“Affirming the proposition will be Skeptics Society president Michael Shermer and *I*” (since “Michael Shermer and I” is the subject of the sentence).