The Reed Secular Alliance is pleased to announce that we acquired DVDs of 75% of our old lectures. First of all, we had to show our most important and well-attended lecture, Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon book tour appearance.
In the coming days, the RSA will make available a number of old talks in video format, including Chris Mooney, Austin Dacey, and Lori Lipman Brown. For your listening pleasure, we will also have an audio file of David Detmer’s Challenging Postmodernism lecture. Thanks for checking these files out.
Daniel Dennett for the win.
Religion for the fail!
Please ditch the backwards baseball cap. Like Dawkins, I find it offebnsive.
On page 81 of Breaking The Spell, Mr Dennett makes a specific reference in his chapter of “why good things happen”, during his section on memes to wearing a “cap backwards”. I can’t say for sure that the young lady was inspired by this, but you could take it into account.
Also it is considered disrespectful for men to wear hats indoors not women.
ciao for now
Neil,
Seriously? Out of a whole video about secularism and religion, of all things, you criticize my backwards baseball cap? We are in a world beset by war, dictatorship, and famine, yet a baseball cap is all you care to focus on?
Can you give me a link for where Dawkins finds it offensive? He didn’t say anything about it when I met him – http://reedsecular.org/2006/10/28/rsa-meets-dawkins/ – just unbelievable.
It must be a sorry life indeed to be so bothered by something as trivial as how I wear my Astros cap.
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
Isn’t it considered a sign of disrespect to wear a hat indoors in other people’s company anyway? I would be appalled to learn that you wore your hat like that without removing it when meeting Mr. Dawkins let alone in front of a group speaking…
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
Now that we got off on the wrong foot, I had to say you do a great service to your school, students and yourself!! Keep up the good work!! We need many more people like you willing to do the hard work to get the word out. Keep it up!! Great job!!
After doing my due diligence in making sure the title of a book I wanted to publish hadn’t been used before I came across Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett. By doing research for my own book, The Spell of Religion and the Battle Over Gay Marriage (which is also now available on-line) I’ve come to appreciate the philosophy of Atheists and those who do not adhere to any religious dogma. I was trapped under the spell of religion for many years, and having broken free, the liberation is almost intoxicating. I look forward to becoming more familiar with Professor Dennet’s work.
Regards,
Sheri Lawson
I find it mind boggling to realize, that all the pioneers from various fields sort of talk of the same “stuff” – objectivity, “make the familiar strange”,…
The way I understand this beautiful speech Daniel also threw a new light on McKennas “novelty theory” for me.
Glad to have came across this.
Cheers to wild memes! ;>
Jaka
Rsasecular,
Prof. Dennett makes the point that it is interesting that the Hagia Sophia is now a museum.
Made me think of the amount of churches/temples in the Soviet Union / China that were closed/destroyed by anti-theist communists, and have since been rebuilt/reopened.
Despite anti-theists attempts to stamp out Christianity in the Soviet Union, Communism ended with Christianity flourishing (compared, at least, to Christianity in Western Europe, for example, with it’s legacy of freedom of worship).
And despite anti-theists attempts to stamp out religious practice in China (and, in particular, I think of Tibet), they failed, to an important degree (although 1.3 billion people are still denied full freedom of religious practice in this part of the world).
Great to be able to hear from Mr. Dennett from over sees
Pat, “anti-theists didn’t try to stamp out religion, Stalin and Mao did. They simply wanted the people to worship them not god.