Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Holy Crap!
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Animavore
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Re: Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Post by Animavore » Tue Oct 20, 2009 12:18 pm

Smack Down.

(predictably)
I have just witnessed a rout – tonight’s Intelligence Squared debate. It considered the motion “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world”. Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry, opposing the motion, comprehensively trounced Archbishop Onaiyekan (of Abuja, Nigeria) and Ann Widdecombe, who spoke for it. The archbishop in particular was hopeless.

The voting gives a good idea of how it went. Before the debate, for the motion: 678. Against: 1102. Don’t know: 346. This is how it changed after the debate. For: 268. Against: 1876. Don’t know: 34. In other words, after hearing the speakers, the number of people in the audience who opposed the motion increased by 774. My friend Simon, who’s a season ticket holder, said it was the most decisive swing against a motion that he could remember.

The problem (from the Catholic point of view) was that the speakers arguing for the Church as a force for good were hopelessly outclassed by two hugely popular, professional performers. The archbishop had obviously decided that it would work best if he stuck to facts and figures and presented the Church as a sort of vast charitable or “social welfare” organisation. He emphasised how many Catholics there were in the world, and that even included “heads of state”, he said, as if that was a clincher. But he said virtually nothing of a religious or spiritual nature as far as I could tell, and non-Catholics would have been none the wiser about what you might call the transcendent aspects of the Church. Then later when challenged he became painfully hesitant. In the end he mumbled and spluttered and retreated into embarrassing excuses and evasions. He repeatedly got Ann Widdecombe’s name wrong. The hostility of both the audience and his opponents seemed to have discomfited him.

So it was left to Ann Widdecombe to defend the Church single-handedly. She did well, showed a light touch and took Hitchens to task for exaggerations and so on. But in the end Hitchens and Fry were able to persuade decisively by simply listing one after another the wicked things that have been done in the Church’s name over the centuries. More than anything they focused on the “institutionalisation of the rape and torture and maltreatment of children”. That’s what Hitchens called it – that’s pretty much what it was – and Fry returned to it. I don’t blame them for harping on about these unspeakable crimes, because there is no answer to them. Then they talked about the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. When Zeinab Badawi in the chair asked the archbishop whether Christ himself ever actually said anything about homosexuality, he replied by saying “that’s not the point” or words to that effect, and sounded slippery.

Even if you didn’t agree with him you’d have to concede Hitchens especially was spectacular and hyper-articulate. Fry, who is less avuncular somehow now he is so slimline, was visibly nervous and appeared to have a dry mouth. Hitchens drank bottled water mostly, and plenty of it, though from time to time when he was sitting down he raised a glass of amber fluid from out of sight, down on the floor somewhere, and took a slug from that. I don’t know why he kept a drink under the table like that, perhaps because the debate was filmed for broadcast. He sweated profusely and dabbed his shiny forehead, eyes and cheeks with a handkerchief. But his diction was clear and he was in control, like a revivalist tent preacher, building the volume to a crescendo at the end, to applause and roars from the audience.

It was a gripping evening’s entertainment but a little discouraging for those of us who are Catholics. I found myself wishing, one, that the Catholic debaters would for once not content themselves with offering pettifogging excuses but instead actually own up to some of the charges, and, two, I wished that there still existed a great Catholic apologist like Chesterton or Belloc, someone who was not only brave and prepared to square up to the Hitch, but was his intellectual equal. Surely there is someone today who could do that?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andre ... ephen-fry/
Libertarianism: The belief that out of all the terrible things governments can do, helping people is the absolute worst.

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Re: Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Post by charlou » Tue Oct 20, 2009 12:58 pm

*eagerly awaiting video*
no fences

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Re: Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Post by Hermit » Tue Oct 20, 2009 1:01 pm

...or just audio for that matter.

Either will be fine with me.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould

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Re: Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Post by Animavore » Tue Oct 20, 2009 1:06 pm

Seraph wrote:...or just audio for that matter.

Either will be fine with me.
Ask and thou shall receive. Audio
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Re: Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Post by Thinking Aloud » Tue Oct 20, 2009 1:07 pm

I wished that there still existed a great Catholic apologist like Chesterton or Belloc, someone who was not only brave and prepared to square up to the Hitch, but was his intellectual equal. Surely there is someone today who could do that?
Nope. They've all realised it's a bunch of indefensible nonsense and jumped ship.

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Re: Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Post by klr » Tue Oct 20, 2009 1:08 pm

Animavore wrote:
Seraph wrote:...or just audio for that matter.

Either will be fine with me.
Ask and thou shall receive. Audio
WTF? Rick Astley????? :shock:
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:mob: :comp: :mob:

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Re: Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Post by charlou » Tue Oct 20, 2009 1:13 pm

^^^ *points and laughs*







:shifty:






:oops:





:pardon:





:leave:
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Re: Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Post by Trolldor » Tue Oct 20, 2009 1:25 pm

Old meme is old.

I was about to click, but scrolled down one comment just to make sure.

And lo, victory was had by all.
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Catholics humiliated by Stephen Fry and the hitch

Post by Chauncey Gardner » Tue Oct 20, 2009 4:38 pm

Catholics humiliated by Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry
By Andrew M Brown
Daily Telegraph
October 19th, 2009

I have just witnessed a rout – tonight’s Intelligence Squared debate. It considered the motion “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world”. Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry, opposing the motion, comprehensively trounced Archbishop Onaiyekan (of Abuja, Nigeria) and Ann Widdecombe, who spoke for it. The archbishop in particular was hopeless.

The voting gives a good idea of how it went. Before the debate, for the motion: 678. Against: 1102. Don’t know: 346. This is how it changed after the debate. For: 268. Against: 1876. Don’t know: 34. In other words, after hearing the speakers, the number of people in the audience who opposed the motion increased by 774. My friend Simon, who’s a season ticket holder, said it was the most decisive swing against a motion that he could remember.
Full article: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andre ... ephen-fry/

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Re: Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Post by Chauncey Gardner » Tue Oct 20, 2009 4:42 pm

AUDIO ilnked from the comments on this post: http://richarddawkins.net/articleCommen ... 1#comments

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Re: Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Post by Rum » Tue Oct 20, 2009 4:45 pm

Chauncey Gardner wrote:AUDIO ilnked from the comments on this post: http://richarddawkins.net/articleCommen ... 1#comments
Was it recorded? Love to hear or watch it!

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Re: Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Post by Chauncey Gardner » Tue Oct 20, 2009 4:48 pm

Rumertron wrote:
Chauncey Gardner wrote:AUDIO ilnked from the comments on this post: http://richarddawkins.net/articleCommen ... 1#comments
Was it recorded? Love to hear or watch it!
in the link i posted, there is a link in the first page of comments to the audio downloads.

The BBC recorded the video it and it will be broadcast on BBC WORLD in november..I think the 7th or 8th.

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Re: Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Post by Animavore » Tue Oct 20, 2009 11:20 pm

Audio of a particularly low quality. Think he recorded it with his phone. Couldn't listen to more than 10 seconds.
Libertarianism: The belief that out of all the terrible things governments can do, helping people is the absolute worst.

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Re: Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Post by Chauncey Gardner » Thu Oct 22, 2009 9:10 am

Animavore wrote:Audio of a particularly low quality. Think he recorded it with his phone. Couldn't listen to more than 10 seconds.

you're right..it's so bad, you could be forgiven for thinking that someone really did send in the pigeons amongst the cat. hopefully someone will upload a decent version soon. Apparantly the BBC filmed it and are broadcasting it in november...on bbc world if I'm not mistaken..

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Re: Like sending the pidgeons among the cat.

Post by Animavore » Sun Nov 08, 2009 10:09 am

Owned :funny:









Libertarianism: The belief that out of all the terrible things governments can do, helping people is the absolute worst.

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