Animated: Stephen Fry & Ann Widdecombe Debate the Catholic Church

in Animation, Current Affairs, Religion | August 2nd, 2011 2 Comments

Intel­li­gence Squared (iTunes – Feed – Web Site) brings Oxford-style debat­ing to Amer­i­ca. Each debate fea­tures one motion, one mod­er­a­tor, and three pan­elists argu­ing for a motion, and three argu­ing against. Should Air­ports Use Racial and Reli­gious Pro­fil­ing? Is Islam A Reli­gion Of Peace? Is The Two-Par­ty Sys­tem Mak­ing the U.S. Ungovern­able? These are some of the recent top­ics that have been tack­led.

Now, tak­ing a page out of the RSA play­book, Intel­li­gence Squared has pro­duced a short ani­mat­ed video that gives artis­tic life to a debate held in Octo­ber 2009. The motion — “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world” — was sup­port­ed by Ann Noreen Wid­de­combe, a for­mer British Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty politi­cian turned nov­el­ist. And tak­ing the con­trary posi­tion was pop­u­lar British actor and writer Stephen Fry.

You can watch the ani­mat­ed ver­sion above, and the full debate (which also fea­tured Christo­pher Hitchens) here. More iq2 videos can be found at their Youtube Chan­nel, which oth­er­wise appears in our col­lec­tion of Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels. H/T @joabaldwin

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Fry on Phi­los­o­phy and Unbe­lief

Stephen Fry: What I Wish I Had Known When I Was 18

Stephen Fry Gets Ani­mat­ed about Lan­guage


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  • Rik Van Colen says:
    February 19, 2012 at 4:30 pm

    Love this.
    For those inter­est­ed in the full debate which also fea­tures the late Christo­pher Hitchens and a bish­op: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODfBO-vbn7Y

    Reply
  • plover says:
    February 19, 2012 at 5:23 pm

    The Church sin­gle hand­ed­ly cre­at­ed pover­ty. For any Church to come in a say that they are sav­ing any­one is ludi­crous. I lived in South Amer­i­ca with the Guarani Indi­ans. They had lived very well with farm­ing, hunt­ing and fish­ing until the Span­ish arrived. Their sus­tain­able liv­ing habits were based on deities that over­saw the har­vest and the hunt. Chris­tian­i­ty came along and took that all away, hence cre­at­ing depen­dance on a new god that did not pro­vide for them and taught that the more they suf­fer in this world the more they will be redeemed in that next. All while steal­ing their gold, which they real­ly had no use for because they had no mon­e­tary sys­tem. They just lived, with­out want or need. The Earth gave them every­thing, but white men with a warped God con­cept took it away.

    Reply

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