Category: Video Files

In his last Channel 4 series, Root of All Evil?, the evolutionary biologist Professor Richard Dawkins explored how organised faith and primitive religious values blight our lives. But the fault line runs deeper even than religion. There are two ways of looking at the world – through faith and superstition or through the rigours of logic, observation and evidence – in other words, through reason. Reason and a respect for evidence are precious commodities, the source of human progress and our safeguard against fundamentalists and those who profit from obscuring the truth. Yet, today, society appears to be retreating from reason. Apparently harmless but utterly irrational belief systems from astrology to New Age mysticism, clairvoyance to alternative health remedies are booming.

Jesus Camp is a 2006 documentary about a charismatic Christian summer camp for children who spend their summers learning and practicing their “prophetic gifts” and being taught that they can “take back America for Christ.”. According to the distributor, it “doesn’t come with any prepackaged point of view” and tries to be “an honest and impartial depiction of one faction of the evangelical Christian community”.

Christopher Hitchens, who is the author of “God Is Not Great”, debates Al Sharpton at the New York Public Library (NYPL) on May 7 2007. ... all » Debate topics include God, religion, and atheism. Debate moderated by Jacob Weisberg of Slate magazine.

“Taking on possibly the greatest issue of our time - the malignant force of religion in the world - Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion through a close and learned reading of the major religious texts, citing numerous historical instances in which sexual repression and outrageous acts of violence have been committed in the name of God. He argues for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble telescope’s awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.”—from Hitchens’ new book “God Is Not Great - How Religion Poisons Everything”.

The Book of Abraham is probably the most clear and documented evidence that Joseph Smith had no special ability to translate ancient documents. This has left apologists with the mind numbing task of reinventing the Book of Abraham and Joseph’s translation methods. The response from apologists has been that it wasn’t a literal translation, but a “spiritual translation”. This is an ever increasing trick by apologist. When the evidence doesn’t support the claim, just make the claim more and more broad and vague, despite Joseph’s own description of the process. Once you redefine a literal translation into a “spiritual translation,” you’ve effectively made it unfalsafiable. The problem with making a claim unfalsifiable however, is that you’ve effectivly made it unverafiable and completely meritless. This is the same trick apologists have used to redefine the Book of Mormon because of the total lack of evidence to support it.

This is a great documentary that may help increase your perspective on religious leaders and the devotion of their followers. Questions often asked by Mormons are “What if you’re wrong?” and “What about all the witnesses testimonies that they never denied?” After watching this ask yourself how worried you are that you might be wrong about Sathya Sai Baba. Isn’t it easy to see that the testimonies about Sathya Sai Baba aren’t credible despite the sincerity of the believer? There are well educated people that believe him. There are people that have abandoned their devotion for Sai Baba and still profess belief in his mystical abilities. Sathya Sai Baba has millions of followers that believe he’s divine. With perspective it’s quite easy to see he’s a fraud and does cheap parlor tricks to produce “holy ash” and trinkets.

There is one warning about this video though. At about 40 minutes into the program the rationalists challenge a faith healer to heal a snake bite in front of the entire village. They take a dog and have a cobra bite it and the faith healer proceeds to try and heal the dog. The dog slowly dies and the faith healer is forced to admit in front of the entire village that he is unable to heal snake bites.

Here’s Louis Theroux’s Documentary for BBC 2: The Most Hated Family in America. Louis gets to know the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas. This is the Church that has been picketing the funerals of soldiers that have died in Iraq. They believe that the soldiers are burning in hell as punishment for America’s disobedience to God’s laws. The saddest part of this documentary is when one of the kids gets hit with a cup of liquid from someone in a car that speeds past one of their protests. The brand of hate these guys spew is demonstrated in Pastor Phelps’ last online sermon where he says:

“Westboro Baptist Church has been warning America for 16 years that her disobedience to God and her persecution of His church will result in the outpouring of His wrath. Iraq, Katrina, and now the Va Tech massacre are but small foretastes of God’s wrath against a nation that knows Him not and obeys not the gospel. More and worse is coming. America is Doomed!”

This sounds crazy, but isn’t this the exact same thing the bible teaches about Sodom and Gomorrah? Isn’t this what happened to the Nephites? When a nation turns its back on God, he removes his divine protection from it. The Phelps are only practicing what others preach.

Here are two speeches given by Christopher Hitchens. The first is “The Moral Necessity of Atheism” and the second on Free Speech in response to a proposed hate speech bill in Canada.