Thursday, January 7, 2010

Lewis Wolpert vs. Russell Cowburn: What does science tell us about God?


November 8, 2009 at Gunnersbury Baptist Church
Professor Lewis Wolpert is Emeritus Professor of Biology at University College London. Professor Russell Cowburn is Chair of Nanotechnology at Imperial College.

13 comments:

  1. Sound improves about 2 minutes in.

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  2. Darabos Edvárd KonrádJanuary 7, 2010 at 12:39 PM

    God of the gaps strikes back :)

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  3. Predrag StojadinovićJanuary 7, 2010 at 3:25 PM

    I seriously can't take these uneducated, unable to think, ignorant people! Can someone PLEASE tell this guy to STOP being so disrespectfull to REAL scientists by repeatedly falsly labeling himself as a scientist!!!

    Can someone ALSO tell this moron that Evolution is NOT for him to believe or not! It is a scientific, proven, undeniable FACT!

    And can someone also tell that FREAK that the bible is NOT a historic document!

    MAN! >:o

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  4. I just wanted to point out that if you listen to the beginning of both of these men's opening speech, listen to way they are recieved by the church. The first on everyone seems uptight and they all look annoyed, the second man, in his first sentence recieves a giggle. I highly doubt those people were even listening to the debate. THAT is what's wrong with Christians. The inability to keep an open mind.

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  5. I can't believe I'm watching this entire video. But it shows there are very few decent secular debaters available. Hitchens, Harris and Dennett would have had a field day with Mr. Cowburn. Hell, I could have had a field day with him. What Mr. Cowburn and his sympathizers in the audience fail to realize is that even if there was an original document written by an actual person who spent time with Jesus, that still would not provide evidence for Jesus' divinity since that document still could and obviously would most likely be, a written work of fiction. The fact that the gospels were written decades after Jesus' (supposed) life by men that did not know Jesus, make there veracity infinitely suspect at best. 

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  6. Havent Cowburn thought of Allah? if he read Quran, he would find the same nonsense regarding calling older relgions as  faulty ones. And Quran states that Mohamad is teaching the same religion of Abraham.
    If Cowburn were a real scientist I would pity him, he can't find the contraries and absurdness of the bible because he simply wants to believe, for various of reasons, but he should've stated that in the beginning and that would've saved us time and bandwidth consumption.

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  7. Lewis Wolpert is incredulous of religion (so am I) but doesn't follow thru: he might have pointed out that there were many halfgod/halfman superheroes who came to teach men how to live, died painful lives and were resurrected to live with his father in the sky. The ancient world was full of these mythologies - Christianity/Jesus is just another version. Lewis does mention that these stories are cultural, if you are born in Japan you will speak Japanese, eat Japanese food, have a set of Japanese assumptions and worship a Japanese God, ditto for whichever part of the world you are born in.
    You can always have religion as bad science - it is also bad literature.

    Where I disagree with him is that these are not "nice stories"; if you have faith in faith you are likely to be part of some pretty horrible happenings. If you raise up an altar someone is going to get sacrificed on it sooner or later.

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  8. Preaching Jesus from the old testament ... the old testament points entirely to him. LOL - What Jews about that?
    The guy is full of contradictions. He's really think that the new testament is actually true. Why he belie that? Because he read this book and that seems to be enough evidence for him, it's ridiculous. What a scientist believe in one particle book because it says it's true? "How many big bang do you need?" OMG What a bad comparison. As far as I know we have much more evidence for BB that some 2 thousand years old gospels. One of the worse debate I had seen.
    Sorry for my English :)

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  9. As an imperial college student - i find this pretty embarrassing. But then there seems to be a general problem of compartmentalisation between science and religion here, probably due to the large international contingent.

    Pathetic.

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  10. It is truly demoralizing when an aparently unusually well-educated person resorts to things like the first-cause argument as a proof of god.
    It reveals the futility of using logical argument.

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  11. pooor argument from wolpert....eg thas right 30 years after the world war 2 we stil know its accurate so why not with jesus

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  12. "seems to be fine tuned to create life"
    HAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
    if anything this universe seems to be fine tuned to brutally slay life might it ever pop up... what an idiot.

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  13. I'm all with you "Joe Skeptic". I was waiting for Prof. Wolpert to mention it from the get go.  Even if the NT is written just about 30-50 CE it is just as much evidence of Jesus existance as Stoker's "Dracula" is evidence for the existance of vampires. But I guess some people take it that vampires are real as well ...

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