I recently got a chance to see a pair of DVDs called /The Atheism Tapes/, because the nice people at Alive Mind sent me a copy as part of a Memorial Day promotion/fund raiser supporting the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a very important organization that works to protect people in the military from having Evangelical Christianity forced on them. (You can find an interview with founder Mikey Weinstein here.) I hope the promo is still going on; it took me awhile to find time to watch the tapes so I could review them.

What are the tapes? They originated from a documentary series by Jonathan Miller called “A Brief History of Disbelief.” When the documentary was done and aired, there was footage that Miller thought was good stuff, but he just hadn’t been able to work in. /The Atheism Tapes/ presents substantial, uninterrupted portions of these interviews for public viewing. The interviewees are: Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett of “Four Horsemen of Atheism” fame, philosopher Colin McGinn, Nobel laureate in physics Steven Weinberg, playwright Arthur Miller (think “Death of a Salesman” and “The Crucible”) and theologian Denys Turner. The first two interviewees expand on things they discussed in their recent best-sellers, and will be enjoyed by complete junkies of their work. Colin McGinn I like seeing as another public face of academic philosophy. Steven Weinberg discusses the relationship between science and religion, especially why physicists are less inclined to vocally criticize religion and whether he’s spent too much time on religion. The last two interviewees were more unusual choices: Arther Miller provides an interesting discussion of antisemitism in the middle of the last century, while Denys Turner discusses some rather odd ideas about negative theology and such. Turner’s interview was probably the least enlightening–I guess it’s worth paying some attention to what academic theologians are saying, but I don’t have a good feel for how prominent Turner is within his circle, so I don’t know how representative or influential his views are.

The only other minor gripe I have is that the visuals play little role in the tapes, so they could have easily been presented in audio format, which would have increased the range of portable devices they can be put on. I much prefer to listen to interviews while I walk than sitting down, but as far as I could tell there was no way to do that.