32 Burst results for "Hitchens"
The Eric Metaxas Show
'Why So Many Christians Have Left the Faith' With Michael Brown
"Are ate more books. You know, people say that about me and it's like, no, no, no. That's not true of me. But you, there are certain people that I don't know how you do it. But this one, the title, it's very provocative title. And again, brand new book, why so many Christians have left the faith. So let's talk about it. I have my theories. What do you say? First, let's recognize there is a problem. You know, there's some say, well, if the true Christians, they won't leave either way, a lot of people are dropping out. Prominent leaders have dropped out fully apostasized, pastors, worship leaders, cemetery professors, don't believe the Bible anymore. We hear the stats about profession Christians dropping at a rapid rate in America, young people dropping out of church. So there are lots of different reasons. There are some who say, look, look, Eric, Jesus prophesied that there'd be an anti falling away. And this is just the expected falling away. Well, it's a falling away. There's no question that it's happening. But to just say, well, it's the final thing. There's something we can do about it. No, I don't believe that at all. And for sure, there are a number of different factors. And what I do in the book Eric is I try to break down all the different factors because everyone has their own story. Each person has their own story. And I try to shoot why this is happening and then how we can address it. So for example, one of the big issues, you've got a great book about atheism. One of the big issues is that the new atheists that really sprung up about 1516 years ago. Bestselling book, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dunn. What happened was the memes, the quotes, the ideas, the mindset of those books kind of trickled down to the general public. So that 12 year olds are talking about I'm not going to listen to a Bronze Age God and some antiquated book and everyone thinks the Bible is hateful and bigoted and so on. So the sentiments trickled out,
The Eric Metaxas Show
Is the W.E.F. 'Utterly Atheistic'? Larry Taunton Weighs In
"To Larry Taunton. Larry, you are touching on so many important things, right? This globalist agenda, this idea, you said it's assumed that God is not part of the picture. It's a secular view. Their post conversation. I mean, for sure, but I mean, look, the elites have been for decades, but the point is that here they're converging on this place. And what's interesting is when you ask the guy, okay, so you see ethical problems. What do you base that on? Where do you get ethics from? And this is the fundamental question. If you don't believe in the God of the Bible, where are you coming from? And people, what interests me is that people know there's such a thing as right and wrong. They just don't know where they get that from. And they're now willing to probe whether it has any validity. They just will quote that because it's clear. Well, the lord has written his law upon the hearts of men. And my argument for God's existence is not just the design argument, the external argument, but that if you're Stevie Wonder and you can not see a creation, God has not conspired against you because he has written his law up on your heart. That's Romans two 15. That's the argument to the grace effect. That was the whole of my argument with Christopher Hitchens, that let's set aside the design argument. Christopher, you know that God is real. It's why the Bible says that you're a fool to say that there is no God. Says it twice in the psalms. And the reason for that is because it is encoded into you. You have to deny you have to suppress what your whole being is screaming. So it takes someone who is especially smart to construct silly arguments like the string theory and multiverses and this kind of stuff in order to convince themselves that there is no God.
The Eric Metaxas Show
The War Against God, Beauty and Reality
"Realized at the end of the day, all of the grievous things that we're seeing now, it's a war against God. I think Peter Hitchens wrote a book the rage against God. Ultimately, what all of these things are is a war with reality, a war on beauty to say that beauty is ugly or that ugly is beautiful to say that fat is good these preposterous things that have been unleashed on us recently. It's a war against reality itself. It's an attempt to deconstruct reality itself. It's realistic. I would say demonic. It's funny, I had the privilege a couple of months ago of interviewing John Cleese of all people who is an atheist, Trump hater. And yet, like many of the old school comedians, he's outraged by the cancel culture as we are. And we were talking about it about the roots of it in French critical theory. And it's funny to have John Cleese a point to the French because it reminds me of a python skit. But the point is that anyone with eyes to see understands there is something fundamentally wrong with this view.
Counter Apologetics
"hitchens" Discussed on Counter Apologetics
"Had partake in not at all, we're probably rare, but they have a but like, I think that I think there's a rage and he does, you know, yeah, he does, yeah, I think that's plausible. I should say it is really a God of it, even now maybe, right? Like in this debate, we're watching from 2010, right? Like he has I remember, so there's this book. They do these for a bunch of people, but there was one for Hitchens. It's the last interview with other interviews. So it's like just this little collection of interviews that includes the last what he gave before he died. And leading up to that right, there's a profile of him. I do not remember who by. But that was, you know, during, you know, as you said earlier, chrome dome Hitchens era. And it's like a pretty good profile. It's like very well written, the stuff about Hitchens, you know, he's in here, you know, stayed up and watching the sunrise and stuff like that. But the really funny part of it is that the guy brought a bottle of wine with him to the interview because he was like, okay, look, surely his doctor could whisk anymore, but maybe hopefully stuff a glass of wine. And when he got there, hitch and said, oh, great. 'cause I feel bad. I felt bad because I was getting any wine to offer you because I'm out that he pours himself a slug of Johnny Walker black. He's like, wait, you're still doing that? Chemotherapy, all this stuff. And he was like, well, better my doctors told me I had to stop.
Counter Apologetics
"hitchens" Discussed on Counter Apologetics
"So there's not that much to talk about here, but I do maybe before I turn it over to whatever you have. I just want to say, I think that brilliance is kind of tried to have it both ways here because in, you know, I mean, this is his claim, right? If his poisons everything. So what do you mean by that? And in the opening, the first thing he said almost, right? I think maybe after the stuff about how the French Revolution was bad, is, well, religion it's religion may poison somethings. But atheism poisons everything, which certainly sounds like a claim that again, I don't think it's helpful to have this discussion sort of at the same time as the what's actually true discussion. You can keep those separate, but it certainly sounds like his clan is that the consequences of not believing in God or worse. That the consequences of belief in God and if that otherwise I'm not sure how to interpret religion poison some things atheism poisons everything. So it seems like if that's going to be his claim, then would Hitchens brings up all of this stuff about the bad consequences of religion. I mean, that is actually going to be relevant to undermining that clay, but you can't just say, well, hey, I already said that there were some bad stuff about religion. It's like that seems like a little bit try to have it both ways. Yeah, no, he's like, I already said that religion poisoned some things. But it's like, okay, well, I think someone I mean, someone in Hitchens position could grant, well, I will concede that atheism poisons some things for some people, some of the time. I mean, does that invalidate everything that you've said? I don't think it does. You should just, I don't know. Yeah, it does seem like he's being kind of slippery about it.
Counter Apologetics
"hitchens" Discussed on Counter Apologetics
"And yeah, how much more of a problem is it with the animals who have the capacity to suffer, but presumably not really the level of cognitive capacity that you have to reflect on your experience and grow from it? And then when you contemplate, this has been happening for hundreds of millions of years. It's an incredible amount of evidence that's contrary to the idea that there's this unsurpassable great being of perfect love and benevolence who designed ultimately the natural order. But yeah, I really like that argument. I'm glad Hitchens mentioned it at least. Yeah, absolutely. And I should also say that the well, okay. Yeah, I think I agree with pretty much everything that she says that opened its state, but I will say, just for the sake of calling balls and strikes, honestly, that as much as it sort of sounds good as he's saying it, I'm not honestly sure what it means to say that this is a suburb of a not particularly important galaxy. It's like, I don't know what makes some galaxies more important than others. Yeah, now he's definitely a gifted and rhetoric. I mean, this just hot take on my part. Hitchens is a brilliant public speaker. But yeah, I mean, sometimes the substance can get kind of lost in it. But I do really just enjoy listening to him, you know, like it's been a while since I've listened to anything. With him. But yeah, he's was saying, oh, you know, it seems like he's a depleted a little bit. It's like, well, if he does appear to be undergoing chemotherapy, but he's still bringing it, you know, in my mind, at least he seems like he's oh, it looks like we have more technical difficulties here. I'm alone on stream. Yeah, I just have to not touch this computer. For the rest of the night, but as people can no doubt tell with their kid powers of observation, I am not where I normally am when I do this stuff.
The Dinesh D'Souza Podcast
Leftist Writer Sam Harris Admits to Ignoring Hunter Biden Laptop
"I'm not sure if you're familiar with the writer Sam Harris. I first encountered Sam Harris in the early 2000s. Well, no, the I should say around 2007, 2008. Why? Because he was one of the trio of prominent new atheists. The group included Christopher Hitchens, whom I knew well going back to the 1980s and 90s, Richard Dawkins, whom I don't know, but whom I know of, and I was familiar with Dawkins, his work, now having read almost, well, most of it. And Sam Harris was the third of this group. At that time, a student of neuroscience now he's completed his neuroscience degrees. And he has kind of wandered into politics over the past decade or so, and presents himself as this kind of progressive skeptic who is willing to take on some aspects of the left and woke culture, but at the same time firmly on the left. And Sam Harris, I noticed was trending yesterday on Twitter and people were talking about it, and I see a little clip of Sam Harris. And I'm not gonna blame the clip, but this is basically what Sam Harris says. He goes, listen. In the 2020 election, the supreme goal was to get rid of Trump. And then he goes, I really don't care if Hunter Biden was a crook. I really don't care if they suppress the story and censored it. I really don't care if all of it was true. I really don't care if, in fact, if there were dead children lying all around the floor, I'm using actually a Sam Harris's words here. He goes, it was worth it. And the thrust of this argument, which by the way, is not mentioning it in part because it's not Sam Harris alone who thinks this. This is a widespread way of thinking on the left. It's the I called it by any means necessary way of thinking.
The Dinesh D'Souza Podcast
Why Dinesh Just Trended on Twitter
"So yesterday I'm scrolling through Twitter and I noticed trending on Twitter. Number one, dinesh. I'm like, could it be a different than that? I'm not aware I've done anything trend worthy. And in fact, I called W I go, hey, listen, I'm trending on Twitter. She goes, oh no. Because usually usually far in some bad side, it means I've gone really close to the line and done something a little bit questionable. Debbie goes, it means you poke the bear, yeah. Evidently, I poke the bear. Well, now obviously I'm really happy when I was trending with the movie. 2000 meals was trending for a while. The national trending, the Souza was trending and all of that, of course, had a kind of purpose to it. But sometimes I'm trending for no evidence purpose. So this was the case yesterday. Well, here's how it started. You have this guy Richard ojeda. And he goes, a few think 2000 meals is valid. You may be part of the poorly educated. So this is kind of what got me and I'm like, well, okay, you know, if you consider the movie to be something that is made by an appealing to the poorly educated, let's compare credentials. So here's my tweet. Let's compare your educational credentials to mine. And now I'm laying it on here, obviously. Ivy League graduate from Dartmouth policy analyst at the Reagan White House, research scholar at AEI and the Hoover institution at Stanford, author of more than a dozen highly acclaimed bestselling books, and then my punchline. Now you go. Let's see how your credentials dead silence from the guy, but evidently it kind of, you know, it poked the bear, the left gets all stirred up and so on and so first of all, well, this is one of the nicer responses, which is hey dinesh, I may disagree with you on many things, but your background is undeniably accomplished. He goes, my issue is never your education. It's rather your slavish commitment to your worldview that ab initio, meaning from the beginning, excludes anything contradictory to your position. So he's implying I'm some sort of a dogmatist who's so close minded. I can't see the other side. Now I think if you listen to this podcast, you can see that first of all, my interests are pretty wide. I'm very often reading ideas at a completely different than mine. Even in my Christian apologetics, I read extensively the atheist. I don't just mean Christopher Hitchens and Dawkins. I read Nietzsche, I had been schopenhauer. I need Hume. And I quote all these guys in my work. So the idea, so I reply to this guy and I say I wish you knew me a little better 'cause I don't do
The Eric Metaxas Show
Eric Chats With Freedom Fest Founder Mark Skousen
"I don't normally debate, but I do a lot of speaking and I'm excited about freedom fest and I'm excited about the fact that I have the founder, the man behind the whole thing, Mark scows and is my guest right now, Mark. Welcome back. Well, thank you. And speaking of this debate that you're having with Michael Shermer, I will tell you, you know, you say you don't like debates and Michael Shermer is actually a true seeker. He is not like Christopher Hitchens and some of these other atheists who are absolutely adamant. This is the way it is. In fact, he's had his own kind of Supernatural experience that I told you about and hopefully you will bring this up in this debate. But he is a truth seeker and I think that's the kind of thing we do at freedom fast. Freedom fest is the world's largest gathering of free minds. So we don't like people who come and have a closed mind on whatever topic it is. We want people to have an open mind. For example, we have every year a mock trial, the mock trial this year is drug legalization on trial. But we put capitalism on trial. We put the Republican Party on trial foreign policy on trial, public union, John trial, and you get both sides of the views. It's a wonderful way to find out, well, what is the truth? So you have it's a mock trial yeah, so we have a judge. We have a could we put could we put Mitch McConnell on trial and have a mock execution? Actually, we'll talk about that
The Eric Metaxas Show
Dinesh D'Souza Debunks "The Most Secure Election in American History"
"My friend dinesh d'souza dinesh welcome. Hey, Eric, how are you? I'm always excited to talk to you because I want to get kind of a fresh update on where things are. There are still people in this country and you know it better than I do who if you talk about the idea that the election was stolen, fraudulent, a mess, a travesty of American liberty. There are people that say, shut up, don't talk about that. Your conspiracy theorists. I mean, people will not stop. And it's a depressing thing when you leave reality and you just have competing narratives. I would at least like to think that my narrative is grounded in reality. But you deal with this all the time. People that simply refuse even to discuss it intelligently. They don't dare to discuss the details. And so where are things right now with regard to the great film 2000 mules that have been seen by so many people? Yeah, Eric, let me offer a comment on what you just said because I remember her years ago in one of my debates with the atheist Christopher Hitchens, he kept saying that there's no evidence for God. And I said, all right, how would you react if such evidence like hit you in the face? So for example, if you were to challenge God and say, you know, tomorrow morning, we print your name on the moon. I am God. If you challenge God to do that, and the next morning you looked outside or the next evening, you looked outside and it said, I am God on the moon. Would you then confess that you've been wrong all your life, admit that there is a God and agree to transform your life in congruence with this new fact? And you could tell it's sort of startled him because he realized that the answer to that question was no. In other words, he realized that he would not admit it. He would then say, well, some aliens obviously did that to confuse me. You know, in other words, he would find his mind as supple enough to look for some other explanation. Why? Because he was emotionally dug in. He couldn't concede that he was wrong, even if reality, as you put it hit him in the face. And I think the election fraud issues like that. A lot of people think their dogmatically committed and they have been since the election. This is the most secure election in history. Well, how do you know that? Have you done a comparison of all the elections to show that this one had less fraud than all the others? No. Well, how can you say it's the most secure election? Well, that's because the guy at cisa, the cybersecurity agency says so, but what evidence is he provided? None. So when I'm getting at is that from the beginning, you have this dogmatic assertion that this was a safe election. You had a regime of censorship to back that up. This has been a problem for the movie. How do we navigate around those walls of censorship? And lots of people are to this day committed to this evidence and no matter what you show them, they're not going to change their
The Dinesh D'Souza Podcast
Dinesh Clarifies a Few Things About '2000 Mules'
"Let's go to our next question, listen. Hey, dinesh, I'm a big fan of yours. I just listened to your episode about responding to Ben Shapiro and while I respect both of you greatly, I noticed you didn't answer two of the questions that he posed and saw recapitulate them and hopefully you can either address them on the podcast by no time is limited or in your upcoming book, but the first is, do you have control states, in other words, did you see this pattern of behavior in states like Mississippi where you wouldn't expect fraud because that may call things into question? I'd be interested to see if you looked at deep blue or deep red states to see if you saw such patterns. And then the other thing is, could you please name these nonprofits where the mules were obtaining the ballots? Those appear to be conspicuously absent from the film. Again, I'm a big fan of yours, particularly your debates with Christopher Hitchens. And look forward to hearing your response. Thank you. Certainly, those are both very good questions. And I will take them in sequence. So let me begin by addressing the issue of the controlled comparison. Now, truth vote did not do that. They did not do, let's say the blue states and the red states. And the reason they didn't is simply because of lack of resources. I mean, this geo tracking data is available, but it's also very expensive. True the vote got a $2 million grant from a big Republican donor, and they were able to deploy most of that money, not all, but most of it, to purchase singing a pretty large ream of data of cell phone data. They picked 5 kind of large urban areas and I think you know the ones that are the swing states. And they're not the whole state. They're the battleground. They're essentially the democratic urban precincts of those states. And their hypothesis, of course, was that was that this is where the fraud is likely to be. If that's going to be fraud. And remember they were responding to a whistleblower in Georgia who came forward and said, I was basically running this kind of a racket in Atlanta. And he described how he was paid. He was described to other people, did it, but he didn't want to give his name. And so the geo tracking was aimed at confirming this larger operation. So you asked the question, why do true the vote focus on these areas? And the answers because these are areas of high suspicion. Now, again, if you have all the resources in the world, then you say, listen, I'm not just going to put my cops outside the bank. I'm going to put cops everywhere in the country. I'm going to run a kind of widespread controlled experiment. And although that's ideal, it's really not necessary for the purposes of what they were trying to do. They were trying to essentially verify whether the whistleblower was right and coordinated fraud operations were being conducted in these inner cities. Now, are there other coordinated fraud operations being run elsewhere? Maybe. But quite frankly, it's not easy to run those kinds of operations outside of the cities because they rely on tight control. They rely on the ability by the way. If you think about the way these stash houses are getting votes, they're getting their fraudulent ballots from nursing homes from campuses from homeless shelters from kind of large apartment buildings where you go door to door, ask people to sign an absentee ballot requests have the absentee ballot then sent to you not to them so you can vote on their behalf. So these are all the ways you can look at this from earlier voter fraud cases. This is basically where the democratic fraud stores get their ballots. They're like experts at this. So the Ben Shapiro point is kind of interesting, but I would say irrelevant now, one thing the truth about did do, I think, a much more intelligent control comparison. And that is that once they found the mules, and they found that, let's say, between October 1 of 2020 and election day, November 3rd, the mules were following this pattern of going to these drop boxes, here's what true the vote did. They bought data in a controlled period for those exact same mules. So in other words, they wanted to see if these meals in their normal life, when it's not election time, do they happen to follow the same pattern of life? Did they, for some unexplained reason, go to those same places, stop by those exact same locations. And the answer is no, they didn't. So, and I think a very creative way true the vote was able to show that even for the mules themselves, this was anomalous behavior in their own pattern of life, a behavior that was limited to the election period. In other words, they were being paid to do something specific in that period. This is not something that they habitually or kind of chronically did
The Dinesh D'Souza Podcast
Actor Kevin Sorbo Talks to Dinesh From Israel About His Movie Projects
"Guys, I'm pleased to welcome to the podcast actor director producer Kevin sorbo. You know him for Hercules Andromeda, God's not dead, soul surfer, let there be light. And he's got a whole bunch of projects coming up, which we're gonna talk about Kevin, thanks for joining me. I really appreciate it. You are in Israel. Tell us what you're doing there. I was shooting a documentary, I actually came here about three and a half years ago, I shot a documentary with John Lennox, John Lennox is a retired math professor from Oxford, you know, we as an apologist, he's debated all the great atheists who are like singer and Dawkins and Hitchens and we shot here and it's called against the tie to highly recommend that one. But this time, I'm doing the same type of thing I'm on camera, but I'll be narrating this as well, but it deals with the quest and search for the ark of the covenant. And it's been amazing. I'm working with two gentlemen out here that once worked in an archeological dig right now, which they believe is the site of the Israelites before they lost the Philistines at the site of Shiloh. So they're in an archeological dig in Shiloh right now. And these guys are amazing. I'm really, I'm the audience. I'm the guy that doesn't know most of this stuff, but these guys, I just asked the questions and they just take off. And hopefully it's going to be coming out. Sometime around November. They want to rush and get this thing out there before
AP News Radio
He won a trip to space. Then he gave it away to a friend
"The the the the real real real real winner winner winner winner of of of of a a a a ticket ticket ticket ticket on on on on a a a a SpaceX SpaceX SpaceX SpaceX flight flight flight flight last last last last year year year year has has has has come come come come forward forward forward forward he he he he gave gave gave gave his his his his seat seat seat seat to to to to his his his his college college college college roommate roommate roommate roommate Kyle Kyle Kyle Kyle Hitchin Hitchin Hitchin Hitchin is is is is forty forty forty forty three three three three a a a a Florida Florida Florida Florida based based based based captain captain captain captain for for for for delta's delta's delta's delta's regional regional regional regional carrier carrier carrier carrier endeavor endeavor endeavor endeavor air air air air his his his his dream dream dream dream came came came came true true true true out out out out of of of of the the the the blue blue blue blue tens tens tens tens of of of of thousands thousands thousands thousands of of of of people people people people to to to to buy buy buy buy tickets tickets tickets tickets for for for for this this this this statistically statistically statistically I'm I'm I'm not not not gonna gonna gonna have have have that that that much much much of of of a a a chance chance chance but but but he he he got got got his his his chance chance chance but but but hips hips hips in in in top top top SpaceX SpaceX SpaceX weight weight weight restriction restriction restriction of of of two two two hundred hundred hundred fifty fifty fifty pounds pounds pounds miles miles miles will will will give give give it it it to to to somebody somebody somebody I I I know know know who's who's who's a a a spaceflight spaceflight spaceflight guy guy guy and and and that's that's that's as as as Christopher Christopher Christopher Hitchens Hitchens Hitchens friend friend friend went went went in in in his his his place place place that that that is is is Chris Chris Chris embossed embossed embossed again again again the the the mission mission mission specialists specialists specialists fiction fiction fiction says says says it it it wasn't wasn't wasn't easy easy easy when when when the the the SpaceX SpaceX SpaceX flight flight flight took took took off off off in in in September September September I I I don't don't don't want want want to to to show show show what's what's what's actually actually actually going going going on on on not not not that that that I'm I'm I'm trying trying trying to to to lie lie lie to to to anybody anybody anybody but but but you you you can't can't can't just just just try try try to to to keep keep keep the the the stone stone stone faces faces faces a a a candy candy candy gratitude gratitude gratitude sim sim sim Bronski Bronski Bronski offered offered offered to to to take take take personal personal personal life life life Ms Ms Ms into into into space space space for for for Hitchin Hitchin Hitchin I'm I'm I'm at at at Donahue Donahue Donahue
Thank God I'm Atheist
"hitchens" Discussed on Thank God I'm Atheist
"But but the truth is that insults aside, accent aside, he cut through bullshit. Like nobody else I've ever seen. He just heard like we're all indoctrinated into a whole bunch of bullshit in our societies and not just religious, but like the way we talk about religion and stuff. And religion has benefited from this in the sense that they get away with saying whatever the fuck, like crazy things. And then Christopher Hitchens would come along and just go, oh no, that's a crazy thing. They just said. Yeah. And we all shake our heads and go, wait, what? And then he'd say it back and say, here's what you just said. And then the whole world would go oh shit. Yeah. That's crazy. It was just he had a way about him of just taking things that were supposed to be sacred and saying, why? Why is that sacred? Yeah. And by the way, that's awful what you just said. Yeah. Well, and God is not great. Probably one of the first atheist books. I really read. Yeah, and that was his. Yeah. And I'm rereading it right now. Who are you? Yeah. I should probably do the same, actually. It's just one of those things where it's like, you know, and I'm actually listening to it and he was the one that recorded it really. And so it's like it's got that. I mean, trust me, on the page, you still hear his voice. It doesn't feel, it doesn't feel much different, but yeah. But no, that was a big part of a lot of the deprogramming for me was that book. Yeah, it was kind of just thinking, if I remember correctly, it's broken down into various different topics, and then he goes through and he just kind of dissects it and argues against whatever. Yeah, I mean, and it was just, it was so powerful to hear somebody speak so clearly and so effectively against religion and against God and against belief and just the dogmas and it was huge. Yeah. I mean, I remember watching a video of him in a debate and I think a rabbi was calling him on the carpet for insulting the practice of circumcision. And saying, you know what, this is how dare you take this beautiful thing to us this important sacrament to us and Sully it, you know, this harmless thing that is blah blah blah. And he just not only did he not apologize, he eviscerated the guy. Because obviously it is harmful, and there's a lot of harm that comes from it. And. He, I mean, he went all the way with it. He didn't. He just didn't know how to pull a punch. Right. I called it a monstrous act. Yeah. Yeah, and that was the thing. He went after a lot of the sacred cows. Yeah, the things the things you just can not politely denounce or go after Mother Teresa being one that immediately springs to mind. Absolutely. He was the guy that kind of broke the story that she was actually a monster. Yeah. That she was like, her way of quote unquote, helping. Yeah. Wasn't. Yeah. And, you know, in God is not great. He talks about how she showed up to Ireland because they were trying to make it legal. Was it abortion? No, it was divorced. Anyway, one of these, one of these issues that should be super easy. Right. It might have been divorced or something an issue like that. The Catholics have a position on. It was divorced. And here's what I remember why I remember it now. So she shows up, she denounces the idea that divorce should be made legal in Ireland. Just shit's all over it. And then he points out. A few months later, she taught she publicly expressed his support for her friend Princess Diana, and hopes that she does well. Now that she's free of this uncomfortable marriage. Wow. Really? Huh. Isn't that interesting? Right. Because when it's poor people, it's different than when it's wealthy, important people. Who donate to who donate to her? Yeah. And bring attention to her and that yeah, because one thing she was good at is raising money. Yeah. She did not disperse it among the poor, of course, or, you know, by medicine. Yeah, she didn't give in her comfort and aid to the people claimed. She just let them suffer. And you know, Hitchens was a singular voice in calling that shit out. You know what I mean? Like, the rest of us now we all do it. Now it's hip, you know, all of us. Atheist podcasters are it's easy for us now. He paved that way. Yeah. If you haven't read God's not great, you gotta. And also, just note the subtitle, which is how religion poisons everything. Yeah. And he makes a damned fine argument for it. So golly, well, that's that book is currently boxed up. Somewhere. Yes, yes. You still haven't moved back home from the flood yet. I'm still in temporary housing. As soon as I'm back home, well, I'm gonna have to get that one out. You know, you're driving a lot more now. Dial it up on the old audible. I didn't even know how that works. How do you do this? Is it an app? I'll show them later because it'll be okay. So that goes on to my phone. Yeah. It's like a Twitter. Okay. Do I have to hold the phone up never mind? Yeah, I don't know. I Hitchens was amazing. Go watch some of go grab a whisky in his honor and watch him hitch slap the crap out of somebody on the youtubes. I miss him. I wish we had a voice like that. Yeah. Again, hopefully someone else.
Thank God I'm Atheist
"hitchens" Discussed on Thank God I'm Atheist
"As always, Dan, we have our top donor to thank our lord and savior. Demonia. Thanks guys. There's more show coming up. Dan, yes, Frank. It's an anniversary. Yes. Sorts. Not a fun one. You know, cancer's a bitch. Yeah. And from us, took a delightful voice. Yeah, in the world, one Christopher Hitchens never shied away from speaking his mind. No. It was always clear what he was thinking. And I appreciate that about the man. It was not one to pussyfoot or mask anything. Those of you who know his work can sort of smile along with us. And look, I didn't agree with him about everything. There was stuff that I disagreed with him about. Not to like Dawkins levels, where it's like, you know, he's denying the humanity of entire swaths of people. But, you know, I Hitchens was incisive. In a way that if you haven't seen him, like, if you haven't seen one of his debates on YouTube or whatever, you gotta go look it up. Because it's one of those.
Thank God I'm Atheist
"hitchens" Discussed on Thank God I'm Atheist
"That next Sunday would have been an hour devoted to how God's judgment had come down on that blah, blah, blah. So far he hasn't condemned himself in this manner. But yeah, he's claiming it's at least a $100,000 worth of damage, including big screens and sound equipment and 100,000. That seems like not a lot of damage. Well, it wasn't much. It was a fucking tent. Oh, that's true. Okay. It was just a big top. That's literally the circus. And yeah, I'm very glad that yeah, trust me, our hearts go out to all of our Midwest listeners. Anyone who was affected by these tornadoes, that is obviously a tragedy. Yeah. But there's no tragedy in Greg lock losing his shit. Losing. I mean, I'm sure he's in short, and I'm sure it's going to he's not going to be hurting. He'll be raking in more money. That's how this works. Yeah. Like, he's like, you're right. He's insured. On top of that, they're going to use it as a fundraising opportunity. Absolutely. We have to replace all this stuff. Right, right, yeah, they're going to pretend like they're not insured. We've got to build up stronger than ever. And yeah, and yeah, he has not missed an opportunity to make himself a martyr in all of this. And to show how this is the devil's hand. Right? This one. Yeah. All right, this isn't the lore. Normally, it's amazing how easy it is for them to figure out when it's the lord, and when it's the devil. Yeah. It seems to always line up in a specific way. Yeah. So there you go. I don't know. I took a little delight in that, I must admit. Sorry, greggy. So there you go. Anyway, if you, if you were affected by tornadoes, did you also see the thing? There was another amazing post. I have to I almost went into our next segment, but I'm not ready to stop talking about the tornado thing yet because there was a post that went around on Facebook and other places. There was an image of a church that had the entire like half more than half of the roof ripped right off of it. It was destroyed. And the caption was something about praising God because none of the bibles or hymnals had even been moved. It was like, dude, your church is wrecked. Silver linings, Dan. You don't get to claim triumph over the tornado because the books are there. What are you talking about? In a total loss, he left us the foundation. He couldn't build again. Look at that. Yes, everything else is gone, but the concrete stood. The lord wants us to rebuild. Oh, God. All right. Well, if you have stories.
Thank God I'm Atheist
"hitchens" Discussed on Thank God I'm Atheist
"Mistreating it. I think having almost anything in a show is mistreating it. I'm just kidding. There was a camel that went off a stage once in 2010. Oh, that's no good. At a nativity play at the first baptist church in West Palm Beach, it literally like slipped off the stage with somebody on it. Gee, and they both went tumbling towards the audience. Everybody was fine. Wow. There was another camel that broke free in 97 that actually got killed in traffic. Do you have any more? No, I think I'm sorry. That one was in Kent island, Maryland. No. Don't put camels in your show everybody. They don't like it. All right. Well Dan, yeah. We have an update about America and the way you said that made it sound like it was in scare quotes or something. No, and the rise of the nuns. The nuns being those who checked the box of basically none of the above for which religion do you belong? No affiliation. No religious affiliation. Thank you. None. None. NES. If you've never heard of it, which you've listened to this show at all, you've heard of it. You know, we ain't talking about Sally Field. Yeah, literally the rise of the at least one none. We're flying none. Yeah, that's pretty good. Reference and thanks everybody. Yeah, that's some comedy for you. A little humor. I'm waving. Anyway, new numbers out from pew. Apparently the nuns of which atheists are apart. Yes. That would include atheist agnostics, nothing in particulars, spiritual, but not religious. Wafflers. Now this group to which we belong now makes up 29% of U.S. adults. 29. 29, that's up from 23% in just 5 years. Yeah. Since 2016, and in 5 years before that, the number was around 19%. You know what? Because you reported on a thing a while back a few months ago, several months ago, that was it seemed to be indicating a slowing of the secularization of America. This doesn't seem to indicate that. That is a dramatic with these numbers. It is quite possible that unaffiliated people, the nuns could quite possibly the largest religious group in the country. But there you go. Unaffiliated people outnumber any affiliate single affiliation. Yeah. Yeah. Well, which is amazing. I think that's unbelievable. Yeah, to me. Anyway, there was another little survey that went out. This was from The Associated Press and RC, norc center, north, everybody knows north. Yeah, I love the north center. The New York center for public affairs research. They kind of did a breakdown of the non religious. And they find that 30% still hold a slight connection to a higher power. With 19% saying that religion is still somewhat important to them despite their own personal beliefs. Which is interesting. I mean, I get it. Especially if you were raised religious, leaving is a process. It's not an absolute thing for a lot of people. Yeah, let's see, nearly 60% of nuns say religion was at least somewhat important to their families when they were growing up. Sure, around 30% of nuns meditate. 26% prey privately, at least a few times a month. Okay. Stop doing that. Cut it out. You can meditate, but we're not going to stand for any of this. Prayer to I don't know who crap no way. And the growth of the nuns. This won't come as a surprise, I don't think. The growth of the nuns has come largely at the expense of the Protestant population. Yeah, I mean, which is the majority of the Christians in America. I read I saw that same poll that pew poll and was equally surprised to learn that the number the diminishing number of people who are self proclaiming themselves Christian. Wow. Because the percent of Christians is down well below 70 now. It's like 63%, I think. Oh, this one doesn't have that. It just talks about protestants being down 40% from 50% a decade ago. Yeah. So 63% that's a quick decline. Yeah, for the protestants. And Christianity. And Christianity as a whole. Well, I mean, I remember growing up, boy, howdy. If you said something like, well, I'm not Christian. It would have been like what? Yeah, then what are you? If you're not Christian. I think our neighbors are damn Muslim. And now I would just as readily say to somebody, I'm not Christian as the reason why you shouldn't say Merry Christmas. Right. As I would be like, oh, I'm atheist. I think it's almost more provocative in a way to be like, I'm not Christian. Because it leaves like this space of like, who are you? What are you? You're one of them. Harry Krishna is what's going on here. Because clearly, if you're not Christian, what are you? What are you? Yeah. Satan worshipper. That's what they think. Uh, yeah. It's a bit nutty. Well, I'm gonna take us to a lawsuit. This is a religious discrimination lawsuit. So, you know, we talk about those kinds of things a lot, but I rarely see it from this angle. A fellow by the name of Brad Amos is suing a former employer for religious discrimination. The former employer is Christian hyper Christian finance guru Dave Ramsey. Really? Who has been a complete nut job throughout this entire pandemic? He's kind of made a name for himself by you know he's got a radio show and he's got all these things and he purports to give sound fundamental financial advice from a Christian perspective, which I don't know, why does it have to be from a Christian person? It doesn't make any sense. Are you money? It's like this is sound cooking advice that takes place at.
Thank God I'm Atheist
"hitchens" Discussed on Thank God I'm Atheist
"Of a Catholic priest. I would never. Especially when it comes to children. Well, speaking of Christmas, I don't know if you can hear those sleigh bells ringling, bringing, tingling to jingling. Any, you know, tis the season for nativities. And you and I have spoken many, many times. Over the years about all of the problematic nativities in the world, all of the people who have, you know, an activity on the courthouse or I don't like those or the state House. Keep them where they belong. Which is nowhere. Don't find their boring. It's so stupid. No, good news. Was it live actors? Yeah. No actors just people standing there. No, no, no, they're actors. It takes actors to pull off a good nativity. Otherwise the expression they're not in the moment. I feel like you're insulting my entire profession. By saying that those people are actors. They're not saying they're good or professional actors, but maybe they're making some money. Maybe I'll tell you, I'll tell you one of the things. So apparently there was a you and I have actually been to bonner springs, Kansas. We stated our Friends. Yes. And bonner springs can. Yes. I won't out who it is because I don't know if you know if he wants people to know that where he lives. Anywho, hi, you know who you are. Anyway, they're in bonner springs. There was a live nativity. Oh. And they didn't want just any old nativity. You got to go all out for it. Otherwise you're insulting baby Jesus. I think we all know that. So, they brought in a camel, among other things. Really? Oh yeah. Here's the thing. Camels don't like to stand. Just in one place necessarily for a long time. And this homeboy baroque loose and just went on a rampage. Not a rampage. A joyride. Just ran away just left. It was just gone. They pursued on foot, but humans are slower than camels. And could not get to him. Apparently he traversed the K 7 highway and was spotted by many drivers, but they couldn't get him. It was not until the next day and apparently it was not unlike a scene out of a goofy movie. I'm sure. Police chasing down this camel, did they taser? No, no. It was eventually just sort of cornered and lassoed. Oh, by an animal by an animal control officer and then the rifle. Well, where was this thing's handler? Did it arrive without a handler? You know what, after seeing two seasons of Tiger king? I am not shocked to learn that someone who owns an animal that does not belong in a place doesn't know shit about how to deal with that animal. Oh, did they involve any other animals? Probably like some donkeys. Yeah, I'm sure they had some donkeys, maybe a cow or two or something like that. But I mean, the camel's the star of the show. That's a special. Where do you get it? How do you even arrange for this? Yeah. Exactly. That's amazing, actually. This is not the first time this has happened. But it's the first time it's happened in bonner springs. It's not the first time it's happened in Kansas. Apparently, in 2019, in Goddard, Kansas, there was a traveling group consisting of a camel a cow and a donkey. And that camel also got away. There must be better camel control. No. No, systems. Short of hiring a Bedouin? I think you're out of luck. It would not ruin the illusion for me for there to be somebody on it. To be mounted, right? On the camel. Yeah, but then a camel just has to stand there with somebody on it. I don't know. That's what they do. The ones that are like, I just think don't involve animals. You know what I mean? Like do what you want to humans, but don't fuck. I object to this as a concept. Let the animals be. They don't want to do your stupid nativity. They don't want to do. They don't. Maybe the camel doesn't, but they don't. They don't even believe in jebus. Well, somebody needs to explain it. And I'm not the only one, of course, PETA objects to. Well, yeah, I mean, but that makes sense. Yeah. But I don't know how the camel's being handled. I don't know anything about it. I just don't think I guarantee you whatever ding dong in Kansas owns these camels. The camels are not treated correctly. Yeah, that's pretty true. Okay, well if that's the case, then yes, I object to. Yeah. I do not. I'm not for the mistreatment. But I don't think just having a camel in a show or something is mistreating it. I think having almost anything in a show is mistreating it. I'm just kidding..
The Thinking Atheist
"hitchens" Discussed on The Thinking Atheist
"Is hard to remember right now four to 5. He asked after the children and my father, Howe's Edwin, tell him I ask. I worry about him, because I love him. I want to hear him. Slightly down the page he wrote what he wanted me to bring him from our guesthouse in Houston. Nietzsche, mencken and Chesterton books, plus all random bits, paper, maybe in one hold all bag, looking the drawers, bedside, et cetera, up and down stairs. That night, a deer family friend arrived from New York and was in the room. When, in one of his nocturnal interludes of wakefulness and energy, Christopher flashed an open, wide smile around the tube still running down his throat, and wrote on his clipboard. I'm staying here in Houston, until I'm cured, and then I'm taking our families on a vacation to Bermuda. The next morning, after they took the tube out, I came into his room to find him smiling his fox like grin at me. Happy anniversary, he called out. A nurse came in with a small, white cake, paper plates, and plastic forks. Another wedding anniversary. We are reading the newspaper on the terrorists and our sweet in a New York hotel. It's a faultless fall day. Our two year old daughter is sitting contentedly beside us drinking a bottle. She climbs off her chair and squats down, inspecting something on the ground. She pulls the bottle out of her mouth, calls to me in points to a large motionless bumblebee. She is alarmed, shaking her head back and forth as if to say, no, no. No. The bee stopped, she says, then she makes a command. Make it start. Back then, she believed I had the power to reanimate the dead. I don't recall what I said to her about the bee, what I do recall are the words make it start. Christopher then lifted her into his lap, and consoled and distracted her with a change of subject and humor. Just as he would, with all of his children, so many years later, when he was ill. I miss his perfect voice. I heard it day and night, night and day. I missed the first happy trills when he woke. The low octaves of his morning voice, as he read me snippets from the newspaper that outraged or amused him. The delighted and irritated, mostly irritated, registers, as I interrupted him while he read. The jazz tone riffs of him talking down the line to a radio station from the kitchen phone as a cooked lunch. His chirping high note greeting when our daughter came home from school, and his last soothing pianissimo chattering on retiring late at night. I miss, as his readers must, his writers voice. His voice on the page, I missed the unpublished hitch, the countless notes he left for me in the entryway on my pillow. The emails he would send while we sat in different rooms in our apartment, or in our place in California, and the emails he sent when he was on the road. And I miss his handwritten communiques, his innumerable letters and postcards. We date back to the time of the epistle, and his faxes, the thrill of receiving Christopher's instant dispatches. As a checked in from a dicey spot on some other continent. The first time Christopher went public and wrote about his illness for Vanity Fair, he was ambivalent about it. He was intent on protecting our family's privacy. He was living the topic, and he didn't want it to become all encompassing. He didn't want to be defined by it. He wanted to think and write in a sphere apart from sickness. He had made a pact with his editor and chum graydon Carter that he would write about anything except sports, and he kept that promise. He had often put himself in the frame, but now he was the ultimate subject of the story. His last words of the unfinished fragmentary jottings at the end of this little book may seem to trail off, but in fact, they were written on his computer in bursts of energy and enthusiasm, as he sat in the hospital using his food tray for a desk. When he was admitted to the hospital for the last time, we thought it would be for a brief stay. He thought we all thought he'd have the chance to write the longer book that was forming in his mind. His intellectual curiosity was sparked by genomics and the cutting edge proton radiation treatments he underwent, and he was encouraged by the prospect that his case could contribute to future medical breakthroughs. He told an editor friend waiting for an article. Sorry for the delay, I'll be back home soon. He told me he couldn't wait to catch up on all the movies he'd missed, and to see the king Tut exhibition in Houston, our temporary residence. The end was unexpected. At home in Washington I pulled books off the shelves, out of the book towers on the floor, off the stacks of volumes on tables. Inside the back covers are notes written in his hand, that he took for reviews and for himself. Piles of his papers and notes lie on surfaces all around the apartment. Some of which were taken from his suitcase that I brought back from Houston. At any time I can peruse our library or his notes and rediscover and recover him. When I do, I hear him, and he has the last word time after time. Christopher has the last word. The words of Christopher Hitchens widow, Carol, blue, written in Washington, D.C., in June of 2012. I can think of no better way to finish the broadcast than to play this clip from the November 18th, 2010 debate that happened at prestonwood baptist church big megachurch in Dallas, Texas. The debate was between Christopher Hitchens and William damsky. This was near the end of the debate, and I just love this segment so much that I actually grabbed a part of it and incorporated it into the now familiar intro for the thinking atheist podcast. Christopher Hitchens, November 18th, 2010. At prestonwood baptist church, the final words of.
The Thinking Atheist
"hitchens" Discussed on The Thinking Atheist
"But suppose that I'm there, maybe one person tribunal, depending on your view of the Trinity. I would say, I hope you noticed that I didn't try and curry favor that I was honestly unable to believe in the claims made by your human spokes persons. Now do I get? Any understanding. And if that doesn't work, well, then I don't know. But I'm not going to try anything servile. I'm resolved on that point. It would be more comforting wouldn't it, and more comfortable. Which the servile? No. To make an accommodation to have some belief in a possibility of this not being the end. Well, as long as I don't have to take the word of other humans. On what are the necessary propitiation and gestures I have to submit myself to. In order to qualify, in other words, there are many, many discrepant religions, all of whom say only if I support them, or endorse them. Will I qualify? Well, now I don't know that there is no such thing as consciousness without the brain, for example, there was no such survival. I'd very much doubt it. But let's say we don't know enough to say it's impossible. I would say what is impossible is that other humans can know what the conditions are, whereby you qualify for survival. That I do know is false. Do you fear death? No, I'm not afraid of being dead, that's to say, there's nothing to be afraid of. I won't know I'm dead. My strong conviction. I won't. And if I find that I'm alive in any way at all, that'll be a pleasant surprise, not quite like surprise. And I was reading the book mortality, this compilation of Vanity Fair essays published the year after hitch's death, I was struck again by his words, and how nobody could string a sentence together like Christopher Hitchens, but I was also struck by the afterward, which was written by Hitchens, widow, Carol, blue, and what a beautiful writer, she is, as well. And in the afterwards she wrote about her husband and here's what she said, she said, on stage, my husband was an impossible act to follow. If you ever saw him at the podium, you may not share Richard Dawkins assessment that he was the greatest orator of our time. But you'll know what I mean, or at least you won't think she would say that. She's his wife. Offstage, my husband was an impossible act to follow. At home at one of the raucous, joyous, impromptu, 8 hour dinners we often found ourselves hosting, where the table was so crammed with ambassadors, hacks, political dissidents, college students, and children that elbows were colliding, and it was hard to find the space to put down a glass of wine. My husband would rise to give a toast that could go on for a stirring, spellbinding hysterically funny 20 minutes of poetry and limerick reciting a call to arms for a cause and jokes. How good it is to be us. He would say in his perfect voice. My husband is an impossible act to follow. And yet now I must follow him. I have been forced to have the last word. It was the sort of early summer evening in New York when all you can think of is living. It was June 8th, 2010 to be exact. The first day of his American book tour. I ran as fast as I could down east 93rd street, suffused with joy and excitement at the sight of him in his white suit. He was dazzling. He was also dying, though we didn't know it yet. And we wouldn't know it for certain until the day of his death. Earlier that day he had taken a detour from his book launch to a hospital because he thought he was having a heart attack. By the time I saw him standing at the stage entrance of the 92nd street why that evening, he and I and we alone knew he might have cancer. We embraced in a shadow that only we saw and chose to defy. We were euphoric, he lifted me up, and we laughed. We went into the theater, where he conquered yet another audience. We managed to get through a jubilant dinner in his honor, and set out on a stroll back to our hotel through the perfect Manhattan night, walking more than 50 blocks. Everything was as it should be. Except that it wasn't. We were living in two worlds, the old one, which never seemed more beautiful, had not yet vanished. And the new one, about which we knew little except a fear it had not yet arrived. The new world lasted 19 months. During this time of what he called living dying Lee, he insisted ferociously on living, and his constitution, physical and philosophical, did all it could to stay alive. Christopher was aiming to be among the 5 to 20% of those who could be cured. The odds depended on what doctor we talked to and how they interpreted the scans. Without ever deceiving himself about his medical condition, and without ever allowing me to entertain illusions about his prospects for survival, he responded to every bit of clinical and statistical good news with a radical childlike hope. His will to keep his existence intact to remain engaged with this preternatural history was spectacular. Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday, and I watched with awe, as he organized, even as he was sick from the effects of the chemotherapy, a grand family gathering in Toronto, with all his children and his father in law, on the eve of an important debate with Tony Blair about religion. This wasn't occasion orchestrated by a man who told me in the hotel suite that night that this would probably be his last Thanksgiving. Not long before, back in Washington, on a bright and balmy Indian summer afternoon. He excitedly summoned his family and visiting friends on an outing to see the origins of man exhibition at the museum of natural history, where I watched him sprint out of a cab and up the granite steps to throw up and a trash can before leading his charges through the galleries and exuberantly impressing us with the attainments of science and reason. Christopher's charisma never left him, not in any realm, not in public, not in private, not even in the hospital. He made a party of it, transforming the sterile Chile, neon lighted, humming and beeping and blinking room into a study and a salon. His artful conversation never ceased. The constant interruptions, the poking and prodding, the sample taking, the breathing treatments, the IV bags being changed. Nothing kept him from holding court, making a point or an argument, or hitting a punchline for his guests. He listened and drew us out and had us all laughing. He was always asking for and commenting on another newspaper. Another magazine, another novel, another review copy. We stood around his bed and reclined on plastic upholstered chairs as he made us into participants in his socratic discourses. One night he was coughing up blood and was wheeled into the ICU for a hastily scheduled bronchoscopy. I alternated between watching over him and sleeping in a convertible chair. We lay side by side in our single beds. At one point we both woke up and started burbling like children at a sleepover party. At the time, this was the best it was going to get. When he came to, following the bronchoscopy, after the doctor told him the trouble in his windpipe was not cancer, but rather pneumonia, he was still intubated, but avidly scribbling notes and questions about every conceivable subject. I saved the pages of paper on which he wrote his side of the conversation. There are sweet nothings, and a picture he drew on the top of the first page, and then pneumonia, what type? Am I cancer free? Pain is hard to remember right now four to 5. He asked after the children and my father, Howe's Edwin, tell him I ask. I.
The Thinking Atheist
"hitchens" Discussed on The Thinking Atheist
"This is becoming an issue for you, I just think is excessive. What do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? That I'm more personal. Let's bring it on. No, there's no way that you end up there. What I'm saying is sure. You know, I've lived through this personally and you've been fidgeted is what you're saying. I've been what? You've inflicted it or officiated at it is what you're saying, isn't it? Well, officiated yes, inflicted no. A few more clips and I think appropriately, some clips nearing the end of hitch's life as he was speaking more in retrospective, you know, he was getting reflective and kind of looking back on his life and talking about his journey through esophageal cancer in a very candid way, this clip is from BBC's newsnight program hosted by Jeremy paxman, this was about a year before Christopher Hitchens died he'd already been going through chemo. He'd lost all of his hair. He lost quite a bit of weight, but he was being interviewed in his home and asked in this clip about Islam. Conflict is intrinsic to human history. Yes. And there will be some further conflict, many people say it has already begun and it's the conflict between the west and sort of islamo fascism. Do you think that is a conflict which can be lost by the west. Well, first on conflict, you're completely right. It's unavoidable and I'm glad of that because I think it's desirable. Especially in the United States, there's a huge privilege given to the word unity. Or unification. The party because it's a very various and multiface society, it's a big need for good manners. But if you say I'm a unifier, not a divider, you expect and you usually get applause. I'm a divider. I think only division can cause progress. You'll say the politics for division. Politics is division by definition. If there was no disagreement, there was no fight, there had been a politics. So the illusion of unity isn't worth having. And anyways, unattainable. What I do think of as the greatest crisis greatest conflict at present is it's a version of the old conflict, which is between totalitarianism and free thought. Which is in other words between theocracy and the enlightenment and the foreign which this is currently being played out. You could define as the west versus Islam, but it's not quite so, within many Islamic countries there are people who have a greater respect for pluralism and then there are people in Britain who would like to censor me for criticizing as that. For example. But roughly you described the outlines correctly. Yes, I refuse to be told what to think or how let alone what to say, all right, by anybody, but most certainly are not by people who claim the authority of fabricated works of primeval myth and fiction and want me to believe that these are divine. That I won't have. That's the original repudiation. The first rebellion against mental slavery comes from saying this is man-made. It's not divine. And to be clear about what you're talking about here, you're doing that the Bible and the Quran. Yet, we'll add the Torah. Yes. Yeah. All of these are works of fiction. All of these are depraved works of man-made fiction. And in what way does saying that you find the Quran laughable? Laughable in places. In what way does that help the spread of reason? Oh, well, I think mockery of religion is one of the most essential things. Because to demystify supposedly holy texts that are dictated by God and show that they are man-made, what you have to show there internal inconsistencies and absurdities. And one of the beginnings of human Emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority. It's an indispensable thing. People can call it blasphemy if they like, but they, if they call it that, they have to assume that there's something to be blasphemy. Some divine work. Well, I don't accept the premise. Jeremy paxman had another interesting question for hitch about this just in case what if there is actually a God, don't you want to sort of take your poker chips and push him over here on the table just in case. Here's how that went. A lot of people in your position might take Pascal's wager. They might say, I don't know whether I'm right or wrong. Yes. But if I accept the possibility of there being a purpose and a God, I can't lose either way because there isn't I've lost nothing, and if there is, I gain. Yes. Why haven't you done that? Well, I thought about Pascal's wager and wrote about it in my book, long before I became possibly mortally sick. And what I said about it was this. Shall we just quickly state what it says? Yes, please. Well, Pascal was a great mathematician and one of the founders of probability theory actually. I think it's his lowest point is what's called his wage or sometimes his gambit where he says rather like a huckster. What have you got to lose? You win everything if you bet on God. And you've everything to lose if you're wrong. Well, what does this involve? If it's correct. It involves a very cynical God, and a rather stupid one who will say, ah, I noticed you make a profession of faith just there. And I also, because I'm God. I know why you did. Because it was in the hope of winning favor with me. Well, that's fine. You'll therefore get it. That seems to me a rather contemptible thing. And necessarily therefore to entail a rather contemptible human being. He says, I don't really believe this. I have no faith. But what can I lose by pretending to God that I do? I might get a break. I mean, this is pretty low, isn't it? If I'm surprised to find when I pass on from the state of cheers. That I'm facing a tribunal. Which you notice, by the way, you're not allowed to bring a lawyer. There's no jury. There's no appeal. I mean, this is all together unattractive. White people want it to be believed that God is this way. I don't know. But suppose that I'm there, maybe one person tribunal, depending on your view of the Trinity. I would say, I hope you noticed that I didn't try and curry.
The Thinking Atheist
"hitchens" Discussed on The Thinking Atheist
"Near the end of the broadcast I'm going to read for you the afterward in the book mortality that was published a year after we lost hitch. And again, that book features 7 different essays that were originally published in Vanity Fair, but the afterward was written by Carol bleu. The widow of Christopher Hitchens, as she speaks about her husband in her own words. And I was just so moved by what she said. I want to read those words on the broadcast for you in just a few. Here's some typical Hitchens fireworks. This was back from the Connecticut forum in 2009, hitch is on stage with several people, including a rabbi rabbi Harold Kushner, and they got into it on the issue of circumcision. The things that a normal morally normal, even if they morally average or mediocre person, would not unprompted do. For example, hold down their daughter at the age of 6, tear off her underwear and cut her genitalia with a sharp stir. They wouldn't do that if they didn't think God was telling me to do it. All the mullahs or the if it's a boy, the rabbis weren't telling them to do. One of the reasons why I have the lurid subtitle I do, my book, the original is a poison is that it makes ordinary moral people. Compels them. Forces them in some cases orders them to do disgusting wicked, unforgivable things. There's no expiation for the generations of misery and suffering. That religion has inflicted in this way and continues to inflict. And I still haven't heard enough apology for.
The Thinking Atheist
"hitchens" Discussed on The Thinking Atheist
"How much you love God and appreciate true north by holding a knife to your firstborn's throat to prove your devotion can stand up now will be regarded by my brother as someone who's not moral to serious. And now you see the Jeff to which now you see the jet. Now you see the jets into which religion wants to throw you. I don't know if you could really hear it, but Peter Hitchens is on the other side of the stage. He's about to pop an O ring over there, and he was saying the knife wasn't used. Right? I mean, no, of course it wasn't traumatizing to the child that he was almost murdered by his father, of course it's a reasonable request because at the end of the day, the murder was not carried out. This is Peter Hitchens in microcosm, I think. But another clip that I found really interesting Christopher Hitchens during this debate goes even deeper into why the idea of a totalitarian religion a high control authoritarian religion, like Christianity, Islam, et cetera, are such terrible and immoral ideas. Here's what he said. You may wish to be a DS as my heroes Thomas Jefferson and Thomas paine were. And you may not wish to abandon the idea. That there must be some sort of first or proximate cause or prime mover of the known and observable world and universe. But even if you can get yourself to that position, which we, unbelievers maintain is always subject to better and more perfect and more elegant explanations. Even if you can get yourself that position, all your work is still ahead of you. To go from being a deer to a theist, there was from someone.
The Thinking Atheist
"hitchens" Discussed on The Thinking Atheist
"By the Roman pontiff. During the counter reformation, that came in 1995. And for silence during Hitler's final solution or shower. As well as, in 1999, coming in just under the millennium jubilee wire, an apology for the burning alive in the main square of Prague of the great Czech Protestant Jan hus. Since that big fiesta of forgiveness that began in culminated, I might say in 2000. Fiesta forgiveness fiesta of asking for it. The papers is also asked to be forgiven for the sack of Constantinople and the massacre of Byzantine Christianity in April 1204, as part of the fourth crusade. The anathema on all Eastern Orthodox Christians as unbelievers heretics and people dwelling outside the health of the church was lifted only in 1964. I call your attention to that. He also expressed the story about the murder and forced conversion of Serbian Orthodox Christians in the Balkans during the Second World War. And it doesn't end there. There are smaller but significant equally significant avowals of a very bad conscience. These have included regret for the rape and the torture of orphans and other children in church run schools in almost every country on earth from Ireland to Australia. And I'm pleased to see that due reconsideration is now being given and may in fact have been given to the hellish I choose the word carefully, doctrine of limbo, St. Augustine's cruel and stupid disposal problem, solution to a nonexistent problem that is to say the destination of the souls of unbaptized children. Up until now, Catholic parents have been taught that's where they're on baptized children went, a form of torture that's sometimes worse than the physical. Now it seems that this piece of augustinian sadism is undergoing reconsideration as well. But remember, this is from a church that on the whole Canada. We sued wait a more direct admission, for example, I give some suggestions of my own, while we're at it. I would like them to take back the concordat made with Adolf Hitler the first treaty here of a sign, giving the church a monopoly over education in Germany. In exchange for the solution of the Catholic center party to give the Nazi Party a clear run. I'd apologize for the latter and packed with Mussolini myself, also the first treaty of assigned by that fascist dictator. I would also think I'd want to reconsider the fact that father tzo, head of the Nazi puppet stadium Slovakia was a priesthood hurly orders. That the Croatian fascist puppet state the state of anti pavelic was also operating under full clerical protection and disguised as was the regime of general Franco and the dictator Antonio. Salazar and I'd also want I really think I would beg forgiveness for this. I don't think the German church should have asked Hitler's birthday to be celebrated from the pulpit every year until he died. Probably my second favorite debate took place back in 2008 at the hao instain center for presidential studies it was April 3rd 2008 as Christopher Hitchens debated his own brother. English journalist and author Peter Hitchens, who is a political conservative and an evangelical Christian, so these two brothers exist in the same universe and it's kind of awesome, and they're on stage and they're clashing against each other. And I'm going to play a longer sound by here in just a second. But the debate is worth watching if nothing else for the soul exchange where Christopher Hitchens is talking about the obscenity of admiring the biblical Abraham, the blindly obedient servant of God who was prepared to take a knife to his own sons, throat. Let alone to the number of boy children who die every year. Because of the covenant, the hideous governor that's imposed upon them by mosaic law. Which also, I might add, celebrates every year. In all three monotheisms, the decision of a father to put his knife to his son's throat. Because that's how much he loves the dictator. Now, I find this wicked, and I won't have my belief called frivolous. And any one of you.
The Thinking Atheist
"hitchens" Discussed on The Thinking Atheist
"It sounds like you're intelligent to really believe that literally. I understand your faith, but that animals, all those animals were on the boat. Come on. Come on. We're in work. We're animals. And we are primates. And we talk. Yeah. By the way, by the way, that's also where presbyterianism used to be. They used to say we want it. Now we know everyone agrees we are. No, I would want to agree we evolved. Never want to agree that the cosmos is created by an explosion. Probably without us in mind. And we're very likely not the object for divine design. Okay. You might be more modest to think that we are. All right. One of the things I would want to maintain is that Christians aren't going to make any headway by trying to split the difference between faith and unbelief. If you have unbelief and faith and you split the difference, you just get a muddled form of faith or muddled form of unbelief. I'm not interested in trying to dilute the Bible to make it acceptable to people. So if I'm a Christian, then I do a Jesus, believe what he taught. And that sort of thing that's what a Christian should what about this idea of Jesus, Christopher, you don't buy it at all, I take it. Well, I don't think he was the son of God. You don't. No, I don't think his mother's. I don't think his mother was a virgin and I don't think he died and was resurrected or revived or resuscitated. None of that. None of that. And even if he was, by the way, any of those things he would only have that in common version of birth, miraculous circumstances, mysterious death, with many, many other mythological figures, it wouldn't prove even if it could be proved, wouldn't prove his doctrines were true or moral or ethical, which I don't think they are. Does it surprise you to know that Einstein probably believed in God? That's pretty simple. I absolutely know that the contrary is true. Well, I sound very, very clearly. He was a pantheist or possibly a deist, he did not believe in a personal God a God of religion. He didn't believe in a God who could intervene in human affairs, would not suppress, would take side in the war. Would care what you ate. Now you and I both heard it, right? Pastor Wilson is making a faith claim saying that well you can't water down faith. You have to believe on faith. Because if it's halfway, then it's not really faith. So I believe because it's true and it's true because I believe it, but he would never not once allow in Islamist or a Hindu or somebody of another faith to use the same standard. They believe by faith, it's true because I believe it. I just know it in my heart. Pastor Wilson would not accept that, but he will accept it and stand on it for his own religion of Christianity. It's typical. Christopher Hitchens was not a fan of Mother Teresa. This was a change of perception in my own life. I actually was encouraged after I heard Hitchens, criticizer, I was encouraged to go do my own digging on the subject. And I realized I was one of those people. One of those people who would rush to defend the character and reputation of Mother Teresa without knowing anything about her. I couldn't tell you anything, except she was Catholic, and she was born in Calcutta, and that's all I knew. Christopher Hitchens was asked about it back in March of 2011, this was 9 months before his death he was interviewed by Steve kroft of 60 minutes. Well, you called Mother Teresa, a fanatical fundamental fundamentalist fanatic in the fraud. A fanatical Albanian dwarf lying thieving already lying thieving Albanian dwarf. That was I admit. An exercise of seeing how far I could go. But why did you want to do it? It was about celebrity culture. Now, Mother Teresa started with a reputation of being a saint and therefore everything she did had to be reported essentially. Thus the fact that she took money from the duvalier family dictatorship in Haiti. Who must have oppressed the poor more than any other dynasty in history. Somehow wasn't a fact because it couldn't be true because the saint wouldn't do that. What about Princess Diana? Well, with Princess Diana trying to remember what she said about Princess Diana. Well, I compared to a landmine. Well, there's a horrible joke about a landmark yesterday. Yes. She was in Angola on her landmine campaign. And there was a hushed reverend BBC commentator who said, think about minefields is that they're very easy to lay. But they're very difficult and dangerous. And even expensive to get rid of. Now, the perfect description of. Prince Charles first wife. You wrote it. And it was printed. You're young. Now I think the lady Diana thing is another example of where Christopher Hitchens and I part ways. I know that she was far from a saint, there are many criticisms about the monarchy, which are hugely relevant and valid, but you know, I see her story is one that deserves our sympathy and say what you will about her, but she used her celebrity and influence to genuinely try to alleviate suffering, removing the land mines that entire campaign being just one example. And I think that as merit in it deserves our sympathies. I don't think her tragic story belongs in the same conversation or at least in the same context of a Mother Teresa, someone who constantly spoke about the beauty of poverty while jet setting on junk bond money and living like a rockstar while within her houses of the dying there were people handcuffed to beds and being given medications with syringes washed and tap water. I don't think that those two examples exist in the same universe. I'm just saying. Mother Teresa's flagship institution is her home for the dying. A hospice which purportedly sweetens the last moments of otherwise destitute lives. My initial impression was of all the photographs and footage I've ever seen of belson and places like that because all the patients had shaved heads. There are no chairs anywhere. They're just these stretcher beds. And they're like First World War stretcher beds. There's no garden, no yard, even or nothing. And I thought what is this? This is two rooms with 50 to 60 men in one 50 to 60 women and another. They're dying. They're not being given a great deal of medical care. They're not being given painkillers really beyond aspirin and maybe if you're lucky some brutal or something for them for the sort of pain that goes with terminal cancer and the things that they were dying of, and I thought, what's the.
Beyond Atheism
"hitchens" Discussed on Beyond Atheism
"It is available for pre order, it officially it officially comes out on New Year's Eve. So if so, you know, you can't you can't wrap it up and put it under the tree for you. But you can pre order it and print out your receipt and use it as a stocking stuffer. That would actually shows up on New Year's Eve you can take a look at the nice cover art that had to drew at that go out and celebrate New Year's Eve and then with your and then when you're like kind of sluggish, should hug over the next day. Right? Yeah. Anything else you want to plug aside from your book? No, no, I think that's, I think that's good. So yeah, I think you mentioned GTA and ejaculate and all that at the beginning. I don't know, watch the Charlie Kirk to bed it's fun. Right. Yes, all right. All right. Yeah, thanks again for coming on, Ben. Yeah, thank you, good friend. Well, that was fantastic. That was doctor Ben Burgess. Nathan, what's your takeaway from Ben Burgess? Yeah, many things, I guess. Just to sort of pick up on the cancel culture thing we were talking about at the end. But I appreciate his perspective sort of acknowledging this is like a real phenomenon. And it is harmful. But at the same time not remaining on the left about it and not kind of descending into right-wing lunacy or whatever. Yeah, sort of exaggerating how widespread this isn't so on and yeah. So I think that was valuable. Yeah, he had a lot of nuance to it. A lot of the pieces connecting technology to attitudes to working conditions and how all these things are the factor into it. So it's not just. And there's multiple layers, wow, that was that it came on Fast & Furious like most of what he does. What was your takeaway from the Hitchens book? And his discussion of it. I think the really useful thing. I mean, in addition to being a good overview of Hitchens career and stuff, it's also just a good introduction in general to many other topics like one thing I learned more about is sort of the difference between Trotsky eats. Which hitched in the sort of claim to be and stalinists. Which this division goes back to the start of the Soviet Union. And yeah, I think and other things like he said in our conversation about religion and morality and stuff and there's a part about reparations reparations. Just the clintons. Because obviously Hitchens wrote about that. So it's about many of the topics like Hitchens touches on. But then you actually get a sort of introduction to all these different topics as well. Because even in the discussion, we barely touched on Hitchens atheism, which is intense in its long and it's throughout his at least 40 years.
Beyond Atheism
"hitchens" Discussed on Beyond Atheism
"But it does seem to be that even with humans that there's a difference between an atheist today agnostic and maybe there's even a difference between an agnostic and somebody who's just like, I don't know, live their entire life in a cave and they've just never heard the suggestion that there's a God, right? So the definitions that make sense to be or to say that agnostic as somebody who reserves judgment about whether or not there's a God who sought beta conscious decision to say, you know, I'm neutral about that. I'm not sure, you know, and then at the end of atheist is somebody who holds the position that there are to the gods. So that's what makes sense to me at least. But I think that one thing that the new atheist movement did a lot to sort of muddy the waters on is the difference between holding the metaphysical position that there aren't any gods. That would be atheism and having this kind of moral crusade against religion. That would be anti theism. And to the and there is some ambiguity here, because just focusing on Hitchens, which obviously is the one I'm most familiar with. Because I mean, probably leave it before, but certainly this, but last year writing this book, but also because I think you did a lot to contribute to what I'm talking about here. That Hitchens sometimes talks in a way, such that his only real beef with religion like the only sort of sense in which he feels any sort of moral compulsion is what I just said, right? That he doesn't want people to impose religion on him or he doesn't want people sort of imputing the morality of atheists. And to the extent that's all he was saying, I agree. But it seems to me that there are a lot of places where he goes further than that..
The Eric Metaxas Show
Eric Describes Favorite Part of His New Book 'Is Atheism Dead?'
"Okay, what was your favorite part of the book to write and why? I think the last third, I mean, honestly, I know I'm a broken record, but I'm more excited about this book than I've ever been about any book because there's stuff in here that I think it's going to shock people. Like information that they're going to say where in the world have I been that I missed this. And that's how I felt when I discovered it. But the most fun part to write, the last third of the book. And I actually tell people, you may want to read the last third of the book first. Because these are essays on atheism where I take Hitchens and Dawkins in particular to task. Because they've gotten away with murder, they have gotten away with the murder of God. Whom you can't kill, but they don't know that. And those I think some of it is funny, some of it is entertaining. I mean, I really had some fun with it. So those chapters were the most fun to write. For
The Bible Says What!?
Separation and Harmony With Garrett Vandenberg pt3
"They special guest is returning guests. Garrett vandenburg welcome back to the show. It's could be back man. I'm happy to be chatting here again. Absolutely it's great having to back good seeing hope. Everything's been all right today. We just kind of want to start off with. Let's describe the the dvd that garrett believes it the deity that i believe. Well i mean so we. We use the word god to talk about to talk about something but i think the problem is i a lot of people. Get kind of when they think problems. A lot of people can get into when when the the atheist christian dialogue about this is that usually like i look at the conversation that sam harris or look at any of those guys in kind of the the. There's like a great four horsemen of the apocalypse. Right there was docking hitchens harris and lawrence. Krauss i think guys. It's always the case that the god that they're arguing doesn't exist doesn't exist like i usually agree with these guys when they disproved the existence of particular. God that's because they're they're quantifying a particular thing they're saying. Well you know if these are the features of our of god exactly then well that that's not real. Yeah there's there's something i mean. This this is a problem is a really philosophical problem though. Because as soon as i described the very specific features of you more me you can push that description to a limit and then you can say not see that that person you're talking about they don't really exist because you just described them wrong. That's that that there's there's a logical contradiction in what the way in thing you just described
CBS Sports Radio
Key Super Bowl Matchups: The Case for the Kansas City Chiefs & Tampa Bay Buccaneers Winning Sunday
"The Kansas City Chiefs versus the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The long road that led us here with many unique twists and turns is a story unto itself. Now, in about 3.5 hours, the game which promises history, the chief's looking to become the ninth team with back to back titles. The Bucks hoping to put 1/7 Super Bowl ring on Tom Brady's hand. I'm Scott Graham. Happy to be back with your four Super Bowl Sunday, and my co host is a man who won two Super Bowls back to back, including an M V P honor for Super Bowl 32. He's an NFL network in Westwood, one analyst, the Hall of Famer, and he's been with us each week on this program all season long. Well, Davis. Welcome aboard. Scott. Man, It is eyes exciting and getting ready for this big game. A man I'll tell you what. When you look at how this one is going to play out, everybody is focusing on the quarterback's rightfully so. But when you start looking at a couple of the individual matchups in this game, there is a lot that ends up coming into play. And one of the things that everybody's been focusing on all week is the fact that the chief's dinged up on the offensive line going with backups there against a really strong past Russian. It Defense for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That seems at least right now to be one that's playing at its peak. Is that the key matchup in your mind? Well, that is one of them. I mean, we look at the Bucks defense and we've seen what they looked like the last couple of weeks and listen. Todd Bowles, Their defensive coordinator, has really got them dialed in. They've gotten after, and Rogers drew Brees and, you know, I think this defense is going to be, you know, formidable when it comes to getting after Patrick Mahomes, but You know, he's such a great quarterback. He's such a guy that can get out of situations that you don't think he could get out off s. Oh, that's gonna be a challenge for this team as well. When you look at it, and from your perspective, especially, I mean a running back a hall of Fame running back and very rarely these days is anybody say, Well, the running game is going to be a really big part of this. It seems like that's becoming an antiquated idea. Can the running game for the chief's help in some way, take away some of the aggressiveness of the Tampa Bay defense? Yeah, I believe so, Scott, because you know all the focus of this game really is gonna be on the chief's weapons, right? You know, you got obviously Tyree Kill Travis Kelsey. Then you have the other guys out there to me, Cole Harmon. And then you have Clyde. That was the lair who last year was an El s. You had a phenomenal national championship game, and I think a game like this is going to bode well for him, because if you're tired of those, you can't double team everybody. Somebody's got to have one on ones. And if you're the bucks, you've got to put more people in coverage. So that's gonna leave a light box for Clyde Edwards. He layer not only running but the short passing game, and I think that Eric the enemy, and Anne Rie will find a way to make this young man have an impact in a game like this. On the other side. Everybody, of course, is focusing on Tom Brady. I mean, he got them here, and he is once again right in the middle of the possibility of winning a super books. 10th visited pressure absurd, absurd. When you look at this team, they've got a whole bunch of weapons as well. Is there one that you focus on the offensive side of the ball for Tampa Bay? That you think might have a bigger impact in this game than another? I do. I think it's actually Leonard for net and not necessarily in the running game. But little has been Really good and their passing game, And I think that kind of matchup between Leonard for Net and the linebacker Damian Will Wilson and Anthony Hitchens from the chief's, because when you start doing that thing where they played in week, 12 Barnett had a decent game, but Ronald Jones caught the ball in the flat and was able to have a long touchdown score from that ball that was thrown into the flat. So no one is talking about that. But I think that again, Hitchens and Wilson is gonna have to have a really good game and not again. It's not with him running with the football. He's been a threat as a receiver, which is something that his game is never had. So I think, you know, Of course. Tom Brady likes to get his backs involved in games like this member James White. He had a phenomenal Super Bowl. So I think later for now is gonna be a guy that's gonna have to have a huge impact. Last thing for this segment does the first meeting have any impact on what we're about to see in a few hours here or is that just research? Yeah, I think you could take some things. Most coaches look at the game and they kind of take The things that sort of worked, you know, everything goes. She kind of just you pick things of a game and say Okay, well, we have success against his team before. You know, we'll try to do it again this time, but maybe we're gonna disguise it a little differently, but run the same kind of plays. So, yeah, I think you there's things that each team can take from that meeting. But, you know, I think it's about who can make those adjustments and going into this game. I think ultimately it's going to be the team that comes out
Inside VOICE
Educating Developers About Actions on Google with Yksel Tolun, Google Developer Expert
"I know that you're a lawyer during the day so I'm curious. What got you interested in technology and specifically voice technology enough to pursue this on the side as well. I have been interested in programming or all my life. I have met programming by ten and ever since then I haven't interested in bed. I wanted to build things that many of us that got me into building web applications and then Iran's low school by Jack pursuing it. I always had this interest. Bod Bonding one. Good thing about not thinking about making money from development is that you get to pursue feels that are experimental that other developers might see non-profitable islands. One of those people lucky enough to have the time and the energy to proceed. These deals and none of them was check box. I read an article about chat bots on how Baber the feature of technology interfaces and I was eager to try Giant learn how to build one that got me into API and then it became glow. Got Into Google assistant and how I ended up before a psychology but when I made my first force application it literally spoke to me. I said this is what I WANNA do. This is what I actually looking for. You know ever since I started programming and hooked ever since I heard most hitchens in Bombay I love that. I loved it that passion has been there for so long one of the things you've mentioned before that's important to you is the ability to translate emotions and feelings of voice go from one language to another. Why is it something that needs to be thought about? And how do you suggest it be done? This is something I always but might ultimately shops because I actually talked to a group that is probably going to translate once chiller experienced. Run up there so this is really important to talk about. I've actually talked about this in another interview languages. Have you know small nuances? That can change. The entire experience was or changed the meaning so we need to think about these bad translating inexperienced. Because sometimes I translate inaction or experience or conversation and I think the centers. It's dramatic incorrect of that sad puppies. That's not how we say it. We should think about rewriting a novel. And you're trying impress the reader we should think about the person or the user is going to feel when they drafted this user experience. So it's really important or developers from station designers to take into account what's appropriate to say while language or some of the little idioms or maybe Faysal orbs. Y'All should really think about the conversational nuances before. Translating is skill or voice experience as really important. I'd actually off the boss Harry Potter on this subject before I'm GonNa do again airport Translation is one of the best translations. In my opinion I read in both languages and I'm really happy that I read it in Turkish because translators took the time so make the spells or made up. came up with sound like Turkish. They translated That makes sense both as Orban told towards usually they are and in a way that sound structure. That is a medically glocer. What I'm used to hearing it was really important for me as a child with a bellevue. things that sound but sounds like us and uses the voice of US bench Experience we should take into account and no of do our research before using Google translate or any other atomic transition dollars. That is a great point and I love to hear that Harry Potter translated so well. I'm sure that's a really interesting to read into different languages. It is. Yeah now you have done a lot of experience in organizing in mentoring workshops and hack Athans about actions on Google and evacuate done over thirty four events in two countries eighteen cities and that was just for two thousand nineteen. What got you started in hosting these events. And how do you usually run them? Walk me started is actually a GDP do not Jewish community is right. There will developer communities on the world and I was a part of Gijon Kara and at that point I was only the developing chat bots with API or other Alex Lowe with the names but stable like trying to host a Google Assistant Event. Just didn't have anyone to talk about. Who LOSES THEM OR D platform? So I checked out the platform and soul of that. I read the new technology behind it and I told them I could do this. Dan I did and they really liked it and they shared that I knew the stop other Jewish communities some of them called me and then after I realized people want to hear what I say. I applied a couple events and one another. I started doing this and I really liked the fact that finally I could give back to the community that has been giving to me our show long because I have learned a lot from developer my past and I really like the idea of being able to share my knowledge at passionate so this is what started however actually run them right now it depends on which event. I'm running if I'm running the workshop. I tried to keep the number of attendees in twenty to forty because after forty really yes crowded and I can't answer every question and I may miss some errors or others abuts between these numbers. It's really productive and I tried to start with talk immediate talk of because even though of you're doing a workshop people still need learn about voice. Revolution the actually able to appreciate the workshop itself vice stocked with mental. I talk about the whole human to machines reactions changing and then ice. Some statistics for people like numbers. I show them how the industry is growing and Ben actually talk about how many Turkish actions are there and why is such a big deal. Torreon developers to a field and get used to it or get good at it because afterwards start the workshop. I have a sector right now. I usually with one action. That can take one input and Ben repeated and then you take a step. Further in the next art buyer. Easy Take that. Inputs and do something programmatic in the fulfillment and afterwards they all try on their devices. That are it's android are and they're to go. That's the workshops that I hold for beginners and if I'm running more invest like for example with Jimmy did programming skills. I usually go one step forward and have visual opponents. Shown to them how you'd slide cards. Why you should can use our cells and such and such but sometimes we hold these special events very take the whole day and start with. Diallo Design Conversation Design To The programing part. So it really depends on what kind of man running. It's usually focused on getting the developers started. Because it's such a new field in my talks. I like to focus on many different voice expenses that you can bill not just. The voice skills are voice actions on the Google about smart home actions or other experiences that they can build in talks. I chunk of folks a number in workshops. I usually focused on the programming side or actress on Google.
Woody and Company
Cleveland Browns, Dayton And Odell Beckham discussed on Woody and Company
"And well camp is under way isn't it after the Cleveland Browns they had their first day of practice today in Berea training camps gonna get going by this Sunday all thirty two NFL teams are gonna have there's under way at least one or two practices out for the bangles have an open camp Saturday in Dayton gonna do a free practice open to the public back to the Cleveland Browns today all eyes were on Odell Beckham junior I mean this is first training camp with the first day of training camp with the Cleveland Browns and you know these teams do eleven on eleven drills it's best on best in for the Cleveland Browns on defense tends award out of Ohio state it is probably the best cover corner in so they were they were battling all day today and the cool thing that Dobbs a lot of these teams do on social media as they show plays from the eleven on eleven is just a for on there you know at Cleveland Browns had a couple of them and Denso ward was holding his own against arguably one of the best receivers in the league and so after today's practice which won a little long in free kids like look I'm gonna practice these guys until we get things right now he Jackson was always about let them off early and let them kinda do whatever and that's probably kind of where they went on sixteen but probably Hitchens was asking about the match up that everybody's good looking to see a practice this week and for throughout camp and that's ward versus BJ I thank them because I want to hear that and I think that one of your day on the look for certain that bottle that's what training camp is all about so you guys can be seen guys who's gone wilt under pressure who's going to wilt under just come and so every day