Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Colbert Report - Stephen Prothero

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Stephen Prothero
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Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorFox News
June 14, 2010 on The Colbert Report
According to Stephen Prothero, pretending all religions are the same doesn't serve to understand the world.
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God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter 

9 comments:

  1. If Confusianism is a religion, then so is every secular philosophy as well.

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  2. I found that just horribly irritating.  Colbert trying to be funny and Prothero trying to say something meaningful.  In the end all we got was blabbering.

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  3. He calls himself a "confused Christian" irony?

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  4. hahaha colbert is a legend he couldn't let "smith" get serious- but yes i agree religions are not all the same and i don't think atheists are stupid enough to think so either! although we do generalise...

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  5. Prothero says atheists are claiming all religions are the same and equally bad? I don't recall this from any of the four horseman books or interviews, debates and speeches I've seen.

    I certainly don't agree with that statement, each religion has features which seperate them from one another and make them 'special'. But given they all make theological claims for beings, entities and realms I am unconvinced exists (and sometimes very confident do not exist) they are all wrong or irrelevant in their own special way.

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  6. lasers for eyes jacksonJune 17, 2010 at 9:45 AM

    I'm going to write some medeocre book stating the obvious too. You don't have to do much apperently. Working idea "cultures are different." Taa daaa

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  7. His idea that atheists don't already know there's a difference between religions is wrong, of course (usually it's the "all the religions are wonderful and good" people who take that stance.)  Even though we call all religion worthless and bullshit doesn't mean we don't realize that the exact shape that bullshit takes is different from one religion to the next.  

    It's a special case a very common fallacy when arguing against atheists - the fallacy of confusing cultural acceptance for truthfulness.  "Lots of people have different beliefs and therefore you can't dismiss them" is a case of this.  Just because we claim the religions are all wrongheaded for the same reason (that depending on using faith is not an honest way to come to conclusions) doesn't mean we claim they all are making identical claims.  It's just that the flaw we are pointing out happens to be one of the few exceptions - a property that all religions do actually share - the property of faith.

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  8. Wait someone said all religions are the same?  I doubt that.  They are the same in terms of being BS cults, thats about it.

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  9. I disagree..... religions are all the same.... i.e. baseless and a huge waste of time and effort.

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