Closing statements of the debate

Man has replaced god

I read God Delusion first. Climbing Mount Improbable second, Greatest Show on Earth, Unweaving the Rainbow, Selfish gene, and Magic of Reality last. Leaving aside Magic of Reality, I found TGSOE most readable. I had to reread the selfish gene a few times to grasp some concepts, but TGSOE was knife through butter.

Book reading by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward. This was before the Q and A session on Comment number 1.

Edited version of the debate.

Man has replaced god: debate (edited)

Motion was later changed to "does god exist?". Atheists won :).

Nilas, thanks for noticing that. Will try to fix that from the next video.

Youtube links with the annoying A/V sync problem fixed.

Q and A of Session 1

In support of Salman Rushdie

More youtube links coming soon. Watch this space. The final day debate has some speakers speaking in Hindi. A few of us are subtitling them in English. Will upload them once done.

to Mods.... video of Dawkins' book reading available here http://jaipurliteraturefestival.org/program-2011/23-jan-2012-program/ albeit with a video audio mismatch.

A tragic loss to the freethought movement in India. He gave a platform for atheists and humanists from around India to voice their opinions freely both online and on-ground. We need to continue the amazing work he has been doing.

thanks Calvinchan

Hitch, Salman and Voltaire together! Would love to see that photograph!

Comment 21 by rocket888

Isn't the "Blinn shader" in Maya named after James Blinn of Cosmos fame?

Today Tonight? seriously? What next Glen Beck's Anti-Muslim rant?

“For an ordinary believer, it’s just faith,” Meera Nanda told me. “They don’t need to explain it. But there’s a certain class of people coming up that need to justify their faith, who need to somehow intellectually put into words why they believe. It’s more of a disease of educated people.” In other words, the same graduates who seem to be turning to religion in their droves are the ones who are trying to rationalise it. These educated Hindus aren’t just religious; they’re desperately religious.

Worrying and true. And this isn't just educated young people trying to reconcile their religion with science. Right wing Hindu academics even tried to fake archeological evidence in order to prove Hinduism predates the Indus Valley civilisation. ('Horseplay in Harappa', Frontline, 17 (13 Oct, 2000)).

We mustn't forget that vast majority of the country is too poor and hungry to give a damn, and it's the fundies who are on the ground helping them in places where the government is nowhere to be seen, as evidenced during the recent floods. But the fundies of course hold the food ransom for their loyalty which they can exploit during times like these.

Considering the last minister was shot by his own security, I can understand when Mr.Bhatti said

"I cannot trust on security."*

But then he goes onto saying

"I believe that protection can come only from heaven, so these bodyguards can’t save you.".*

Well, neither did heaven.

*from this article.

"This is concerted campaign to slaughter every liberal, progressive and humanist voice in Pakistan. The time has come for the federal government and provincial governments to speak out and to take a strong stand against these murderers to save the very essence of Pakistan." - Farahnaz Ispahani, President's Aide.

Too little too late Mam. I say gather all those liberal humanist voices you say exist and march the hell into Islamabad Karachi and Lahore and demand the blasphemy law be struck down.

"Yeah but a dog's got personality!"

I expect you are waiting for me to buy one now...

haha not really. I'll send you the original design and u can get it printed urself.

I want that T-shirt

like this?

^ All the more reason for events like Yukti 2011.

Even the "hero" of this story has bought into this ancient, tribal, religious, nonsense

one step at a time. Frying an islamic cleric on tv in Pakistan is leap enough for now, considering her life is probably in danger now.

Is it wrong to hope that violence would be adopted so we could retaliate and eliminate this type of threat once and for all?

Yes.

ancient river valley civilizations clues at the Egypt Nile river valley, Mesopotamia, Hwang Ho yellow river China and another one which remained nameless in the plain of indus Asia

You mean Harappa? But these are all quite recent compared to the timescales involved.

Anyway, are fossils the only way of telling where we came from? Or does genes have any clue in them?

hope they didn't leave out Peter Singer.

Atheist Cartoons

GuruJay's Psychedelic revelations

continue reading...

Once again people forget to put things in context. An all caps rant on a blog Vs the very concept of hellfire. Apathy towards religion is no longer the status quo. Ophelia nails it in the last paragraph.

Thanks for resisting the temptation to add music.

@HazratNaKhuda

Thanks for joining the discussion Hazrat. on behalf of the Indian Atheists facebook group... bravo!

Their own ancestors, before invasion, would most likely have been Hindus.

True as this maybe, I doubt very much this has anything to do with their decision to shun Islam. If anything the Mughal invaders would be held as heroes who 'civilised' the Hindus over there (the famous mountain range is called Hindukush (killer of Hindus) for a reason). Even in Hindu majority India, the topic of Mughal invasion is handled with kid gloves in school textbooks so as not to offend the minority.

I heard about this group a while ago. They indeed are quite brave to come out from a country like Pakistan. As hard as it may seem to believe today, Pakistan used to have a wonderful secular tradition (being found by an atheist). There are sane voices still today within Pakistan but, as seen in the last section of this video, it's quite easy for the establishment to silence them.