Tuesday, October 23, 2007 | Reason : In the News | print version

FFRF 07 Conference Footage

Wisconsin Eye

UPDATE: Ronan has send in the youtube video links of Hitchens acceptance speech:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvjdJrDPkg
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q62Q7GdTC74
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bYYO4phrI0
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6WByhz44EA
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCxSdNP0zFA
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwDk8LOD5Go
Part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n132y0xu6-Y

Thanks to Steven Mading for posting this in the forum, and thanks to Richard Prins for the tip.

Reposted from:
http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27327

Also see:
http://ffrf.org

Video of this month's Freedom From Religion Foundation conference is now finally available online.

This is coverage from a local cable channel in Wisconsin called "Wisconsin Eye" - it's sort of a local state version of what C-Span is. Now that they've finished the broadcast, they've put the videos in a streaming online format:

The downside is that the streaming video is such that it's hard to fast forward, and there's a lot of lead-in time before the actual speakers start.

--------------------------------------------
10.12.07 | 13th Annual Freedom From Religion Foundation Conference Part 1
Video Link (WMV file)
Audio-only link (WMA file)

Friday night:

7:00 Welcome
Annie Laurie Gaylor & Dan Barker
FFRF Co-Presidents

Music
Susan Hofer
Dan Barker
Raging Grannies

7:30 Katha Pollitt
"Atheist is the New Black"

8:30 Julia Sweeney
"Presenting Julia Sweeney"
--------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------
10.12.07 | 13th Annual Freedom From Religion Foundation Conference Part 2
Video link (WMV file)
Audio-only link (WMA file)

Saturday part1:

9:30 Welcoming remarks
Prof. Robert Kimbrough
Staff

9:45 Ellery Schempp
"Champion of the First Amendment" Award

10:30 Thomas Jefferson Student Activist Award
Matthew LaClair

11:15 "Friend of the First Amendment" Award
Stephanie Salter
Columnist
--------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------
10.12.07 | 13th Annual Freedom From Religion Foundation Conference Part 3
Video link (WMV file)
Audio-only link (WMA file)

Saturday part 2:

2:00 pm "God Is Not Great" ("Emperor Has No Clothes" Award)
Christopher Hitchens
Monona Terrace Convention Center
Author signing

8:00 Drawing for clean, "godless" currency

8:30 Tunes 'N 'Toons Reprise
Steve Benson
Editorial Cartoonist, Arizona Republic
Dan Barker
On the piano
--------------------------------------------

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1. Comment #81024 by Steven Mading on October 23, 2007 at 11:09 pm

OOPS.
I made an error in cutting and pasting those URLS.
The saturday part 1 audio-only link and the saturday part 2 audio-only link both point to the same place.

It should be changed so the saturday part 1 audio-only link is this:
mms://71.87.25.133/evt/evt_071013_ffr_saturday.wma
instead of this:
mms://71.87.25.133/evt/evt_071013_ffr_saturday_2.wma

Other Comments by Steven Mading

2. Comment #81046 by mr-zero on October 24, 2007 at 12:54 am

Has anyone got these as mp3s. I'd like to listen to them on my iPod.
Z

Other Comments by mr-zero

3. Comment #81050 by Theocrapcy on October 24, 2007 at 1:24 am

That first video link is naff as well.

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4. Comment #81064 by Steven Mading on October 24, 2007 at 2:00 am

It seems more than one link got broken when this was copied from my original forum post to this front page. I think Josh (the website admin) had to edit the URLS and accidentally messed a few up. My post in the forum has the correct URLS:

http://www.richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27327

I hope someone can read this and correct the article's URLs. I can't do it myself.

Other Comments by Steven Mading

5. Comment #81105 by cassdenata on October 24, 2007 at 5:50 am

None of these links work for me.

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6. Comment #81107 by JemyM on October 24, 2007 at 6:01 am

Well, I got it running by dragging/dropping the URL into mediaplayer, but the links are annoying. It would have been much better if you could download the files.

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7. Comment #81162 by will young on October 24, 2007 at 9:59 am

Just clicking the above mms links won't work for everyone so including the originating HTTP URL would help. I couldn't find any links to the streams on Wisconsin Eye or the Freedom From Religion Foundation Web sites.

On my Mac these Micro$oft mms protocol video streams work fine in VLC, MediaStreamClip, or QuickTime (with the free Flip4Mac plug-in). Depending how they are set up, you may have to copy & paste the mms links into them.

In addition these are really long, the first one is over two hours and has ten seconds of black before it starts

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8. Comment #81224 by TylerJames on October 24, 2007 at 12:58 pm

Oooh... From what I've read on Pharyngula about this conference Hitchens went absolutely looney and pissed everyone off with his anti-Islamic sentiments. I found that quite disappointing since I rather like listening to Hitchens speak.

Here's PZ Myers' take on things here:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/hitchens_at_ffrf.php

Note: There's also some video from Hitchens' speech.

Other Comments by TylerJames

9. Comment #81258 by Zzyx1170 on October 24, 2007 at 1:59 pm

I converted the FFRF-07 talks to mp3 files, and put them in a zip archive file on RapidShare at:
http://rapidshare.com/files/64931053/FFRF-07_Talks.zip

The zip archive contains:
FFRF-07_1_Katha-Pollitt.mp3
FFRF-07_2_Julia-Sweeney.mp3
FFRF-07_3_Prof.-Robert-Kimbrough.mp3
FFRF-07_4_Ellery-Schempp.mp3
FFRF-07_5_Matthew-LaClair.mp3
FFRF-07_6_Stephanie-Salter.mp3
FFRF-07_7_Christopher-Hitchens.mp3

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10. Comment #81304 by jakelovatto on October 24, 2007 at 3:00 pm

It's alarming how misrepresented Hitchens is in the reports on his public speaking. I'm inclined to disbelieve all reports that call him "genocidal", "manacial" etc.
Its akin to the banal, regurgitated platitudes of his book reviews. "Hitchens, who once attacked Mother Teresa and Princess Diana now turns to..."
Hitchens irreverant, bla bla bla, drunk bla bla bla.

I think his foresight on the clash that will take place between Islamic Fascism and Western civilisation is something, as he says we will have to face up to. Complicated by Russias support of Iranian nucleur development one has the ominous feeling its the 1920s.
Blair made a very good speech recently at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. He said:
There is a tendency even now, even in some of our own circles, to believe that they are as they are because we have provoked them and if we left them alone they would leave us alone. I fear this is mistaken. They have no intention of leaving us alone."
Has he been reading Hitchens? I certainly hope so.

I've read critisms of Hitchens, saying hes looking for the next great battle, always looking for defining moments, he wants to emulate orwell and stand on the right side of a great battle. Thats he's hyping the threat of a few desert, cave dwelling fanatics into a great struggle.

I am everyday becoming convinced that Hitchens is on the right side.

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11. Comment #81319 by TheHardProblem on October 24, 2007 at 3:26 pm

I guess if I were a bit more naïve, I would say the following:
Yet still we are talking about _people_ who merely belief a certain proposition.
Can we pull the trigger on someone who's acting on a deluded set of beliefs that are not his own? Something that, intuitivly, can be cured by mere exposure of a fresh breath of rationality and maybe some strong words of the like: "you imbecile, snap out of it!".

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12. Comment #81442 by Steven Mading on October 24, 2007 at 6:11 pm

Thanks for downloading the streams and making them work better. I didn't like the MMS links either, being a linux user, but with a few firefox extensions and an updated Xine player I was able to play the files, but it was a pain.

As far as Hitchens goes, my concern with him is that he jumps from the reasonable stance that Military action against an ideology that wants to enslave the world should not be viewed as an evil thing it's a good idea, over to the stance that therefore anyone who does not support Bush's war is being stupid and naive. When he does this he glosses over the fact that Bush's war is actually fighting TO SUPPORT AN IRAQI GOVERNMENT THAT IS AN ISLAMIC THEOCRACY. Characterizing it as if if was a fight of secularism versus the humanity-enslaving concept of Islamic theocracy is a lie. It's exactly like when Bush lies by claiming the war has something to do with 9/11. If he actually cared about 9/11 he'd have spent all the effort on Afganistan instead of sending a token force there while selling the US on their OLD Iraq plan they had all along even before 9/11.

When Hitchens tries to portray it as "You must either support this war or surrender to islamic theocracy" he excludes the existence of any sort of middle ground between those two insane viewpoints. It's the same sort of "lets pretend this issue is simpler than it is and speak like children" trick that Bush himself does when selling the war.

Other Comments by Steven Mading

13. Comment #81457 by Sam Slater on October 24, 2007 at 7:00 pm

What's with the songs? Holy crap!

I feel sick here.

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14. Comment #81755 by cassdenata on October 25, 2007 at 6:15 am

While I definitely respect some of the nuanced points of Hitchen's defense of the Iraq war, I have heard him say 1) that Saddam actually had weapons of mass destruction, 2) that Saddam did have ties to Al-Qaeda and 3) that Saddam was a religious fanatic. All three of these points have been thoroughly debunked. It is hard for me to take the rest of his critique so seriously when he keeps believing these points.

Secondly, you can't win by declaring war on an entire religion or race in this day and age. Hell, we can't even stabilize Iraq. What do you think is going to happen when we try to declare war on the theocracies in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and much more all at the same time. Previously apathetic individuals in those countries will now become violent enemies of our state and we will be fighting an even bigger battle.

At the end of the day, there are some goals that we can expect to achieve militarily and other goals to be achieved by other means (diplomacy, education, sanctions) but you gotta hope that modernity catches up with these people.

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15. Comment #81798 by JemyM on October 25, 2007 at 7:43 am

I am convinced that we cannot beat Islam and keep Christianity. Our universal respect for religion must be abolished for us to even begin to deal with the worlds remaining theocracies. Islam is founded on the Old Testament and Abraham. As long as the western world supports the existence of Abraham, we support the foundation for their beliefs.

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16. Comment #81902 by Steven Mading on October 25, 2007 at 11:27 am

I may be in the minority here, but I believe that the US attacking Iran would be morally justifiable even though the Iraq war was not (although I'd be insane if I thought the US was capable of doing it at the moment given how large a percentage of the troops are already committed. Note I'm just talking about moral acceptability here, not about whether current deployments make it feasible.) Iran actually IS a theocracy. Iran actually does state their intent to drive out Israel. Iran actually does threaten the US in speeches. I think one of the biggest terrible effects of the Bush administration is the "boy who cried wolf" problem. By being so very very wrong before, and lying about causes for war before, now nobody will believe it when a REAL cause for war comes along.

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17. Comment #82308 by kizumoto on October 26, 2007 at 3:14 am

Yeah the songs.
Dan Barker loves to write and sing those not so funny songs making fun of religion.
Forgive him! His organization has done so much for the Church-state separation cause, he deserves his little eccentricity.
And he brought Hitchens to speak, fully aware that his audience would attac; the speaker on his position on Iraq, and that unpleasant things would be said. That's gutsy. He was willling to risk the cordial atmosphere for a genuine argument over an important issue. Forums like this should not be mutual admiration societies; leave that for mega-churches.
Same applies to Sam Harris and his critics at the other conference.

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18. Comment #82382 by Riley on October 26, 2007 at 7:58 am

I drive by that "Beware of Dogma" billboard you see at http://ffrf.org five times a week.

It's nice to see.

.

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19. Comment #82545 by bluebird on October 26, 2007 at 4:52 pm

Riley, thanks for that link.

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20. Comment #82698 by Geoff on October 27, 2007 at 9:00 am

Although of course I agree with the sentiments expressed, am I the only one (apart from Sam Slater, above) who thinks the whole presentation is sick-making? It came across like the worst kind of self-congratulatory, twee, religious program - complete with hymns.

I've only watched the Friday segment so far, might just watch the Hitchens part of the rest.

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21. Comment #83646 by yyuryyub on October 30, 2007 at 7:19 pm

Just like to say I think Hitchens was totally misrepresented by this blog of Myers (a man I'm disliking more and more). If you listen to the links to the whole speech, he actually gives quite a good account of "why it's wrong to compromise" using East Timor as a very convincing example. Here in Australia East Timor was a huge deal as it was mostly our soldiers who went in and 'eyeballed' the Indonesians. I don't always agree with Hitchens but we must critisize him for what he actually says, not just what PZ thinks he heard.

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22. Comment #85236 by Steven Mading on November 5, 2007 at 10:46 am

My complaint about Hitchens' speech is that he used the exact same tactic Bush uses to scare people into agreement - to tell the lie that your only options are to totally support the current war or to let the terrorists have free reign. That's it. Only those two options exist. No other - as far as Hitchens would have us believe that's all there is to it. This is lying, plain and simple, and he deserves to be treated as a liar for putting forth that position. He leaves no room for the nuanced view that perhaps what we're doing is INSTALLING a theocracy in Iraq (read the new Iraqi constitution - It mandates that Iraq be an Islamic country with laws in alignment with Islam.), and that isn't much better. He ignores the fact that the bigger problem was in Afghanastan and we are only putting in a puny token effort there and the Taleban is coming back into power there BECAUSE we're wasting resources in Iraq instead.

His notion that we must either be supporting Bush's stupid military actions, or else supporting a totally pacifistic lack of miltary actions at all, is totally lying bullshit. He ignores the existence of the option of supporting DIFFERENT military actions.

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23. Comment #87371 by reckoner on November 12, 2007 at 1:55 am

I didn't know that hitchens gave his specific thoughts on what particular military action we should be taking. when and how did he address this particular issue?

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24. Comment #88569 by njwong on November 17, 2007 at 9:36 pm

Sam Slater in comment 13:

13. Comment #81457 by Sam Slater on October 24, 2007 at 7:00 pm

What's with the songs? Holy crap!

I feel sick here...

Kizumoto in comment 17:

17. Comment #82308 by kizumoto on October 26, 2007 at 3:14 am

Yeah the songs.

Dan Barker loves to write and sing those not so funny songs making fun of religion.

Forgive him! His organization has done so much for the Church-state separation cause, he deserves his little eccentricity....

It was thanks to the article "Fox News Attacks 'Godless' Free Thought Radio" (http://richarddawkins.net/article,1741,Fox-News-Attacks-Godless-Free-Thought-Radio,Media-Matters) that I learnt about the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and heard some of Dan Barker's beautiful atheistic songs.

I read Dan Barker's writings at:

http://ffrf.org/about/bybarker/

and was most impressed to learn that he was a fundamentalist Christian minister for 19 years before he became an atheist in 1984.

He has been doing debates with theologians for the past 20 years. In fact, he argued most of the same debate points that are now being rehashed with the recent debates against the new atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris etc):

This is a transcript of a debate Dan Barker held in January 2003 against a Muslim cleric:

http://ffrf.org/about/bybarker/barker_rajabali03.php

If you read this, you will see that Dan Barker is a brilliant debater in the same intellectual league as the "New Atheists" (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris et al). And Barker, because he was a fundamentalist evangelical Christian minister for 19 years before his deconversion, has a winning argument that none of the "New Atheists" can use:

...If you can give me evidence for a god, I will change my mind...

I've done it before and I will do it again. And I would like to hear you say the same thing: that you would change your mind, if the evidence warrants it.

NJ

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25. Comment #90304 by cmahoney on November 24, 2007 at 6:46 am

Haven't seen any comment on this yet, doesn't anybody think its strange that Hitchens AND Pat Robertson are both endorsing Rudy Giuliani?? That would make quite a photo op having Giuliani on stage with both of them!

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