Great Sift, BicycleRepairMan! I presume this was at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas?

This must be an old talk, a couple of years back they found the use for the appendix, it's a storage cavity for the digestive bacteria we need to survive, if you get super sick and the whole contents of your digestive tract gets ejected it provides the 'seed' bacteria to re-colonize your digestive tract.

^ That's been proposed as a possible function but it's a bit early to say anything definitive. Either way, it's still better at killing us than saving our lives.

Wow, then there is a God!

That was a fun little speech, ta for sharing. Good on the ol abc

*british

Adding video to channels (British) - requested by Zifnab.

Isn't he American now Zif? I think you meant *downunder.

Adding video to channels (Downunder) - requested by BoneyD.

If ever I would need to bookmark a video, now is the time.

I have these thoughts jumbling around my head, but I never find the motivation to write them down. Then Hitchens delivers them superbly. Thank you, sir.

He's wrong on one point. You don't HAVE to believe this if you believe in monotheism. If you wanted to, you could be a complete idiot and think that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.

>> ^xxovercastxx:
^ That's been proposed as a possible function but it's a bit early to say anything definitive. Either way, it's still better at killing us than saving our lives.


QFT, every christian I know has taken the new theory on the function of the appendix as proof of god. But it makes no sense as it hasn't been proven to be true yet and even if it is, far more people are killed by a burst appendix every year than are saved by the proposed 'clean' bacteria it contains.


On topic, fantastic video.

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*doublepromote

Happy birthday, Master Hitchens.

Double-Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 1:52pm PDT - doublepromote requested by radx.

I agree with him in general, but I wish he'd stop bringing up the appendix. They discovered the use for the appendix several years ago. It's a pocket where your body stores the 'good' bacteria you need to digest your food, when your body needs to purge because you're sick it provides the bacteria to re-colonise your digestive tract afterwards.

I used to use a fairly winning counter-argument to the common monotheistic trope, "How can you believe that the complexity of creation could have been created by random chance? It had to have been designed by an intelligent creator." The response went, "How can you believe that the complexity of creation could have been created by just one single God? This kind of complexity would require the expertise of many Gods." It puts them in the position of having to argue as an atheist of polytheism, which is fun.

Well if you didn't think the appendix was dumb, what about tonsils, your adenoids? They screw up ALL the time.

I always love that Mark Twain quote. I swear if there was a time traveler, Twain comes close as his insights are very good. Although, he could be very vitriolic.

*promote

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*promote

Monotheism gets the Hitchslap.
Christopher Hitchens is dead
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/christopher-hitchens/graydon-201112
May he rest in peace.

Self promoting this video back to the front page; last published Wednesday, April 13th, 2011 3:57pm PDT - promote requested by original submitter BicycleRepairMan.

Goodbye Hitchens, and thank you for all the brilliance.

I may have disagreed with a lot of what he said, but the world is a less intelligent place now that he's gone.

Doesn't work for me; *dead

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Awarding enoch with one Power Point for fixing this video's dead embed code.