“Sacrifice, patience, understanding, and implacable purpose may be our lot for years to come. … Let’s talk sense to the American people! Let’s tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions.”

Not a quote from Obama in this uncertain economic age, but from 56 years ago, during the prosperous fifties, from Adlai Stevenson.

A political life I find interesting, mostly because he ran for President twice against the same President, Dwight D. Eisenhower.  In both 1952 and 1956, the Democratic Party nominated Adlai Stevenson and both times he lost.  It’s kind of like if John Kerry had ran twice against Bush and lost.

He went on to a career at the U.N., making his famous line ““Don’t wait for the translation, answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’!” during the Cuban missile crisis.

The Illinois native was also the subject of a very catchy Sufjan Stevens song.

And if you haven’t fallen asleep yet from reading this post, you can watch this C-Span discussion on the life of Stevenson.

One really great way to learn about the arguments for Atheism and skepticism is to watch the many debates that are out there on the internets.

Two of my favorite skeptic/atheist debaters are Michael Shermer (of the Skeptics society) and Christopher Hitchens (of course).

Shermer excels at the scientific approach and Hitchens excels at the philosophical.

You can see this played out in their separate debates against Dinesh D’Souza a conservative Roman Catholic and political commentator.

D’Souza’s main point is that without Christianity you couldn’t have morality. A topic in which Shermer has done much scientific research and playfully rebutts D’Souza in the opening of the second video clip, with reference to the large amount of primate research going on.

Hitchens argument to that claim is more philosophical, in that we couldn’t have progressed this far without already having some innate sense of morality.  In either case, the point is the same.  Morality is innate in us, evolved as a way to facilitate cooperation among groups.  

Religion is, once again, a superfluous afterthought.

Shermer vs. D’Souza		Hitchens vs. D’Souza