Chevand posted: Last night, in front of a packed house in Toronto, Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens (who is battling esophageal cancer) met for a debate on the question, "Is religion a force for good in the world?" Blair, a Catholic, argued for organized religion, and Hitchens, a notorious atheist, argued against.
More information can be found here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11843586
And the entire debate has been posted in segments on YouTube. The first segment consisted of 14 minutes of introduction, so here is the beginning of the actual debating between Blair and Hitchens:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ3IsS1ZJ-k[/youtube]
Opinions?
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Between the two, I prefer Hitchens (honesty). Blair, a world class politician, is not recognized by the Italian Catholic Church of Rome, Italy to speak for it at all/its many false dogmas (my view). If you look carefully at the Italian Catholic religion, it is based on a (ruthless) dictatorship male only king for life known as the child crime hiding Pope of Rome. Italian Catholicism, Islam, Mormonism, and so on are all extremist religions, that is, they are the world's one and only true religion and every other religion is false. The USA was founded by a non-Catholic, George Washington (and others). The USA would never have been founded by an Italian Catholic due to the known conflict of interest between ruthless Rome and western democracies. Is the foreign Italian Catholic Church which has burned heretics (dissenters) at the stake and actively tried to hide child crimes from the secular police around the world a force for good for evil? In my view, the Italian Catholic Church is, by its actions, a force for evil, not good. The Italian Catholic Church years ago threw God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Bible out the window and replaced them all with phony Italian poetry and false dogma. Rome/the Pope is as bad as the country of China today which represses its citizens (Tiananmen Square). There are many religions in the world, not only one. There should have been representatives of other religions in the debate with Hitchens because that's the real world. The idea that there is only a single religion in the world is 100% nonsense. Barack Obama is a non-Catholic. Are religions/faiths/various denominations forces for good? Why are the writings of various religions/faiths/denominations sometimes refered to as sacred texts? Is the question as worded: Is religion a force for good? a bogus question? Yes. Web definitions for bogus - fraudulent; having a misleading appearance - wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn - Definition in context (Google) - Is Hitchens qualified to speak for all atheists/agnostics/whatever? No. Is Blair qualified to speak for all Italian Catholics? No. Is Blair qualified to speak for Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Lutheranism, Scientology and so on? No. Does it appear that (extremist) Hitchens is trying to cram his religious mindset point-of-view down (extremist) Blair's throat and (extremist) Blair is trying to cram his religious mindset point-of-view down (extremist) Hitchens' throat?
27 Nov 2010, 10:46 pm
