The Atheism Tapes - Conversations With Scientists, Philosophers and Playwrights of a World Without God

The Atheism Tapes

Audio Books : Misc. Educational : MP3/64Kbps : English


WHAT

" In the summer of 2003 i began filming the series "Atheism, a Rough History of Disbelief". As part of the process, i've talked to a number of writers, scientist, historians and philosophers.

Having secured their cooperation, i was very embarrased to find that a large proportion of what went on, ended up on the cutting floor, simply because the series would have lasted 24 hours, otherwise.

But as it happens, the BBC agreed with me that the conversations were too interesting to be junked, and with these six supplementary programs, they have made the extremely unusual decision to go back to the original material and to broadcast, at length, some of the conversations which i had.

Conversations with people, such as the english biologist, Richard Dawkins, the american philosopher, Daniel Dennett, the Cambridge theologian, Denys Turner, the american playwright, Arthur Miller, the english philosopher, Colin McGinn and the american Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Steven Weinberg. "


HOW

All six programmes were conducted in the form of interviews, Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller, a British physician, theatre and opera director and a television presenter, asking most of the questions.

BEFORE WE DIVE IN

"Hey, i thought this is avi only?"
Well yes, IT WAS. Demonoid currently has a 1.51 GB avi rip of the conversations. Now ponder this for a second, 1.51 GB for six times 30 minutes of TALK. Philosophers don't tend to move around much so, transferring it to audio, you lose NOTHING. Except perhaps a chance to gawk at Dawkins, that is.

This is a straight 64kbps stereo rip. The sound, if i may say so, is excellent. (If you think speech should be better encoded, feel free to disappear.)


WHAT

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."


TOPICS IN SHORT

1.COLIN MCGINN
Jonathan Miller talks to the philosopher Colin McGinn about atheism and anti-Theism.


2.STEVEN WEINBERG
The Nobel Prize-winning physicist discusses the role of science in the erosion of religious belief.


3.ARTHUR MILLER
Playwright Arthur Miller and Jonathan Miller talk about disbelief and their experiences of anti-Semitism.


4.RICHARD DAWKINS
Biologist Richard Dawkins talks to Jonathan Miller about his implacable opposition to all religion.


5.DENYS TURNER
Christian theologian Denys Turner defends the case for God as the answer to the most important questions.


6.DANIEL DENNETT
Philosopher Daniel Dennett talks to Jonathan Miller about why people still believe in God.


WHO


COLIN MCGINN,
a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami. McGinn has also held major teaching positions at Oxford University and Rutgers University. McGinn is best known for his work in the philosophy of mind, though he has written on topics across the breadth of modern philosophy.

Although McGinn has written dozens of articles in philosophical logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language, he is best known for his work in the philosophy of mind. In his 1989 article "Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?", McGinn speculates that the human mind is innately incapable of comprehending itself entirely, and that this incapacity spawns the puzzles of consciousness that have preoccupied Western philosophy since Descartes. Thus, McGinn's answer to the hard problem of consciousness is that humans cannot find the answer. This position has been nicknamed the "New Mysterianism".


STEVEN WEINBERG,
an American physicist. He was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for combining electromagnetism and the weak force into the electroweak force.

Besides his scientific research, Steven Weinberg has been a prominent public spokesman for science, testifying before Congress in support of the Superconducting Super Collider, writing articles for the New York Review of Books, and giving various lectures on the larger meaning of science. His books on science written for the public combine the typical scientific popularization with what is traditionally considered history and philosophy of science and atheism.

His views on religion were expressed in a speech from 1999 in Washington, D.C.:

"Religion is an insult to human dignity. Without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."


ARTHUR MILLER,
was an American playwright, essayist. He was a prominent figure in American literature and cinema for over 61 years, writing a wide variety of plays, including timeless classics such as The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, All My Sons, and Death of a Salesman, which are still studied[1] and performed[2] worldwide. Miller was often in the public eye, most famously for refusing to give evidence before the House Un-American Activities Committee, being the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama among other awards, and because of his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. At the time of his death, Miller was considered one of the greatest American playwrights.


RICHARD DAWKINS,
a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist, popular science writer and advocate of atheism who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme into the lexicon, helping found memetics. In 1982, he made a widely cited contribution to the science of evolution with the theory, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that phenotypic effects are not limited to an organism's body but can stretch far into the environment, including into the bodies of other organisms. He has since written several best-selling popular books, and appeared in a number of television and radio programmes, concerning evolutionary biology, creationism, and religion.

Dawkins is an outspoken atheist, secular humanist, and sceptic, and is a prominent member of the Brights movement. In a play on Thomas Huxley's epithet "Darwin's bulldog", Dawkins' impassioned defence of evolution has earned him the appellation "Darwin's rottweiler".


DENYS TURNER,
a British academic in the field of philosophy and theology. He is currently Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology at Yale University having been appointed in 2005, previously having been Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University.

He has written widely on political theory and social theory in relation to Christian theology, as well as on Medieval thought, in particular, mystical theology.


DANIEL DENNETT,
a prominent American philosopher and atheist advocate.[1] Dennett's research centers on philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.

"[Others] note that my 'avoidance of the standard philosophical terminology for discussing such matters' often creates problems for me; philosophers have a hard time figuring out what I am saying and what I am denying. My refusal to play ball with my colleagues is deliberate, of course, since I view the standard philosophical terminology as worse than useless — a major obstacle to progress since it consists of so many errors."

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Thanks to user vivianwilde on Demonoid for this.. I'm just cross-posting the torrent here.