Pretty much sums up my night in the title, with the addition of pajamas and the faint smell of tobacco from my roommate's most recent creation. I've just returned to the university from my spring break over the last week which turned out to be long and very relaxing. It was a much needed vacation, although now there is much work to be done.
However, before I begin any of this important work, I've decided to pass the time before I decide to sleep with some Youtube videos and I came across an interesting debate between Matt Dillahunty, former president of the Atheist Community of Austin and a popular public speaker/debater over religious topics, and Father Hans Jacobse, an Orthodox Priest who also speaks and debates religious affairs as well as edits the website
Orthodoxy Today. The two discussed morality and whether or not God was a key component when considering moral choices and lifestyles, with Dillahunty arguing that He is not and Jacobse arguing that he is. I've been following Dillahunty for the past few months over YouTube mainly and I've ultimately agreed with many of his expressed opinions, and the same can be said for his position in this debate. However, one thing that caught me off guard was Jacobse's position, who seemed to formulate the argument around the stance that the bible as a work of fiction told more truth that if it was taken literally. This means he was not a biblical literalist, yet he still believed that God was the creator of the universe and human morality. The fact that he wasn't a literalist yet still a believer isn't what threw me off, however. There are plenty of Christians who recognize the bible as fictitious yet still believe in a deity. What really caught my interest was the formulation of his arguments. He seemed to heavily imply that it was purely the beauty of the bible's stories that offered even more truth than any non-fiction story due to its affect on your inner self or something like that. I worry that I'm butchering his arguments, but at the same time I'm not even sure if he fully comprehends what he's talking about. He was also convinced that this post-modernist age was in a war with "competing moral visions," which I believe I agree with, but then at around an hour or so into the debate he makes a large claim that secularist lifestyles lead only towards bloodshed and Holocausts. Unfortunately for him, this didn't please the audience very well and he quickly fell into a hole.
By talking about Father Jacobse on here, my goal is not to poke fun at him, but instead just to share this very vague yet interesting standpoint on the issue of morality. I've never really seen anything like it, and by the end he tried to twist it into a message involving pornography and music. I tended to find his positions less frustrating and more comical yet very intruiging and I thought I'd share it here. However, what did frustrate me was his blatant misunderstanding and misrepresentation of atheism, which is all too common in these sorts of formal debates. I felt Dillahunty handled it well though, and while it wasn't one of his most exciting debates, Father Jacobse definitely made the experience unique and entertaining. If you have two hours to spare and feel like watching formal religious debates, I highly recommend this particular one.
The full debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJl1mpTqj-o
