Vi offriamo uno spettacolo che vi lascerà incollati allo schermo: Doug Stanhope – il nostro comico preferito – delira sul palco vomitandovi addosso il suo odio e la sua brutale intelligenza. Da non perdere!

Mercoledì sera, strade deserte, i bar che chiudono presto e nessuno in giro. In tv non c’è niente, se non i soliti programmi demenziali da decerebrati, e voi siete a casa e state facendo la muffa davanti al pc.
Ma l’Osservatore Bipolare vi vuole bene e pensa sempre a come rendere le vostre giornate migliori, per cui è lieto di offrirvi un’ora e mezza di spumeggiante e volgarissimo intrattenimento.
Il tizio del video che pubblichiamo si chiama Doug Stanhope ed è il mio cabarettista preferito, anche se definirlo cabarettista è decisamente riduttivo.

Doug Stanhope beve e fuma per tutto il tempo mentre fa a pezzi i luoghi comuni sulla libertà, sulla famiglia, sul sesso, sulla droga, su tutto ciò in cui dite di credere semplicemente perchè ve l’hanno detto e non vi siete mai presi la briga di pensarci su più di tanto. E lo fa con le armi affilatissime del cinismo, della rabbia, della misantropia e della più brutale e sboccata volgarità.

Lo spettacolo che vi proponiamo – in inglese ma con ottimi sottotitoli in italiano – risale a qualche anno fa, poco dopo la seconda rielezione di George Bush, ma quello che Doug Stanhope dice è ancora attuale, spaziando da un argomento all’altro e facendoci inorridire, ridere e sopratutto riflettere. Da guardare assolutamente.

PRO Doug Stanhope: perversamente meraviglioso
CONTRO Doug Stanhope: non adatto a marmocchi e vecchi bacucchi benpensanti

Ps: L’Osservatore Bipolare ha finito la birra. E voi lo sapete che lui ama bere quasi quanto il nostro amico Doug. Se volete offrirgli una birra, ormai sapete come si fa… mettere mi piace alla pagina fb 😉

One Response

  1. Thank you for your reflective conmemts. If I may, I’d like to say a few things in response. First, you say Your exercises in building straw men are exasperating. to which I have to reply that I was in any case not intending to exasperate you, nor to obscure the issue or create any kind of straw-man. Rather, I was simply demonstrating (or attempting to) that if we did define demonstration as applying only to truth, we would run into some trouble. Moreover, your conmemts in the following three paragraphs are well taken, and I would just implore you to read the literature the arguments for the existence of God are better than almost any other philosophical arguments for almost anything. Surely, if that gives us the right to teach science it gives us the right to teach Theism’. Now I note that Theism doesn’t entail religion, but it isn’t a far stretch once one allows for the logical possibility of revelation. Demonstrations of the proposition God Exists can be found more readily than just about any other arguments in the enterprise of philosophy. Consider Leibnizian Cosmological arguments, or Thomistic cosmological arguments, or Modal Ontological arguments, or the argument from reason, Teleological arguments. Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli count something like 25 arguments for the existence of God in the third chapter of their book, which is a good introduction to them regardless of whether people agree or disagree with any particular argument presented (the authors don’t even agree with all the arguments presented, but they presented them anyways simply as an exercise in intellectual honesty). You can also look to the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology for some of the best arguments for the existence of God, a sampling of which you might find in reading the first chapter by Pruss: Moreover, it seems to me as a matter of philosophy, science itself cannot demonstrate that science is true, and though this may seem like a philosopher’s trick, it’s actually an important point, since it implies that first philosophy’ must provide us with the necessary metaphysical commitments which will allow us to do science. What presuppositions undergird science? Historically the presuppositions have been explicitly Theistic, and the alternative is not scientific realism, but something like Stephen Hawking’s model dependent realism (which isn’t realism at all).Finally, it seems to me that you may not be appreciating how tentative science is almost everything we believe scientifically is, given its track record, more than likely to be overturned and superseded in the future, and therefore we are almost positive that very little of what we today call science is also true. Now, I am not intending to attack science here I think its our best shot at certain kinds of truth, and therefore we should teach it as such. However, I see no reason why religion, which has just as many good reasons for accepting it, must be treated differently. Let me say that if you do not understand the significance of this point, it may not be worth while to continue going back and forth with all respect. It seems to me that if one isn’t willing to recognize that science is tenuous and religious is equally tenuous, that demonstrations exist both for scientific theories as well as religious propositions, and that reasonable people dissent in both arenas, then it seems to me there is a gap between us, since I take it that any well read educated philosopher (even an amateur) will be able to appreciate this point. At very least I suppose you would agree provisionally that IF I could provide demonstrations of some religious proposition such as the soul exists’ or Jesus rose from the dead’ and the arguments were as strong as accepted scientific demonstrations, for instance that light is the speed than which nothing faster can travel relative to other objects in the same space-time , then you would accept that I would have a moral right, if not a duty, to teach my children both science and religion. In my submission, religious arguments can logically be as strong (or are as strong in some logically possible world) and also are sometimes as strong (are in the actual world).