Honest Debate: Religion, Good and Bad

Valerie Tarico tackles the intersection between
religious belief, psychology, and politics.

Atheists love to talk about religion, usually to criticize it. Here are two atheists, Valerie Tarico and me, debating whether religion is mostly good or mostly bad. The debate is the fifth in our series, using a format that prevents the debaters from talking past each other. The debaters also field a question from Daniel Dennett.

Podcast (iTunes)

http://bit.ly/podcastReligionTaricoTweet

After the debate, an atheist from the audience asked me if I really believed the positive things I was saying about religion. He also told me that I had made him think. He told me that twice. The debate format is designed to circumvent the human predisposition to block out what “the enemy” is saying. Most debates make people feel more sure of their own position, and we’re trying to do better than that. 

The moderator and I also run moderated one-on-one dialogs between people who disagree on political issues. The dialog uses the same “summarize in a sentence” structure that you see in this debate. 

I’d love to get feedback on the debate, especially the format, but also the content.

Valerie’s blog post

Valerie talks about how she “played the gender card” in our debate, as part of her blog post about #MeToo. Link to her post, January 15, 2018.

Participants (besides me)

“Bad” Side: Valerie Tarico, a psychologist and writer.

Moderator: Brandon Hendrickson, an educator and school founder.

Guest Interrogator: Miles Greb, a comic publisher.

Guest Interrogator: Jeff Haley, co-author of Sharing Reality: How to Bring Secularism and Science to an Evolving Religious World.

Guest Interrogator (via email): Daniel Dennett, who promotes the discussion techniques that these debates are based on. 

MC: George Juillerat