Thursday, October 26, 2023

My atheist friends love to cite Immanuel Kant, David Hume and Voltaire as leading thinkers who opened new horizons for humanity, freeing it from the religious prejudices that had enslaved it for centuries. But things were very different, and the writings of these three influential thinkers provided a framework that supported the slavery and exploitation of non-European races more than anyone else. We examine the great ambiguities of the Enlightenment and the main myths of atheism, such as The Myth of Progress, The Myth of Human Rationality and The Myth of Human Goodness, with a discussion of Steven Pinker's "Enlightenment Now".

Credits: Programme written, presented and produced by Gabriel Porras, professional voice actor (gabrielvoice.com).

Cover design: Ricardo Gil (ricardo@scrav.com).

Music: "Joking Together", by Michele Nobler/Memory Tapes @artlist.io - "Alive and Well", by Campagna/Hello Love @artlist.io

The inspiration for this programme comes from a debate between Steven Pinker and Nick Spencer, titled "Have science, reason and humanism replaced faith?", available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ssf5XN5o9q4?feature=shared Nick Spencer published a well-argued article entitled "Atheist

Fairy Tales: exposing secularism's major myths" on Premier Unbelievable: https://www.premierunbelievable.com/topics/atheist-fairytales-exposing-secularisms-major-myths/12200.article 

Francis Collins, the director of the Human Genome Project, published a book entitled "The Language of God", in which he makes a strong case for the existence of God.