Two Comedians

Some hilarious comedy from Ricky Gervais and Richard Dawkins. Unfortunately they don't realise they are being funny.

At one point, the comedian that isn't Richard Dawkins claims that you can't win an argument with a religious believer because their best argument is "it's just faith".

I have never, ever heard a religious believer make this "argument", as far as I can remember-- except today, when I watched a clip from the Bill Maher film Religulous, in which a man dressed as Jesus makes this very claim.

Other highlights:

Richard Dawkins claims that the world is more amazing and wonderful if it is all a meaningless accident.

The two Richards agree that determinism doesn't matter as long as you feel like you have free will. I thought we were the ones who were supposed to believe in comforting illusions?

The comedian that isn't Richard Dawkins, in attempting to rebut the argument that life is too wonderful to be an accident, quotes the famous parable of the atheist wisdom writer Douglas Adams, in which a puddle thinks there must be a deity because he is so snug and happy where he is. But the fact that puddles don't, actually, think anything should tip him off to the fallacy of this argument.

They also agree that Hitler was a Catholic, and that Stalin didn't do the bad things he did because he was an atheist. I'm sorry, boys, but dialectical materialism and its lack of a belief in absolute standards of justice were absolutely based upon atheism. Also, the persecutions of religion in the USSR (funnily enough, Stalin wasn't as bad as Lenin and Kruschev in this regard) entirely flowed from their militant atheism.

It's good to listen to religion-bashers now and again. It buoys up one's faith.