Shadowing Practice: God is a Delusion | Oxford Union Speech - Alex O'Connor - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Madame President, it's good to see you again.
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Deesra and I met about a month or so ago on a boat by sheer coincidence on the River Thames somewhere,
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and I was told that there was an upcoming debate at this union
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that Michael Shermer had pulled out of that was on, essentially, the existence of God or whether it was a delusion and that they were in need of a replacement speaker.
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Now, I won't go as far, especially given the circumstances, is to call this providence.
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However, it does leave you with a slight sense
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that there might have been more than chance at play in bringing me to this chamber tonight.
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But it is exactly that kind of thinking, the seeking of agency and design, where there is, in fact, none, that I've traveled here in an attempt to dispel.
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We've heard a lot about arguments.
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But as a psychological phenomenon, I wonder how relevant these really are to God's belief.
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That is, when you hear somebody recounting a conversion story, how often does it really begin with premise one you're more likely to hear a narrative
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or a story some kind of account of an experience indeed
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the most high profile conversion perhaps of this millennium happened just a few weeks ago
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when the fifth horsewoman of new atheism iyan hersey ali announced in a long
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and celebrated essay that she had embraced christianity
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i was far from the first reviewer to notice something rather peculiar about this publication That is,
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its somewhat conspicuous lack of arguments for the existence of God or for the truth of Christianity.
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Instead, she devoted the entire thing to talking about culture.
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She talked about the looming threats of Russia and China, of global Islamism, of wokeism.
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I think that an essay which mentions Osama bin Laden, Vladimir Putin, and indeed Professor Richard Dawkins,
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exactly as many times as it mentions Jesus Christ might tell us
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that we're looking at a conversion
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that is at best insensitive to the truth claims of religious belief and instead an attempt to escape or a result,
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I should say, of a desire to escape certain unfortunate social realities.
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That is where God appeared in a dream to Joseph or to Zachariah.
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It seems that the president of Russia appeared in a nightmare to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and also endowed her with a skill that I'm unable of,
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which is to adopt a belief simply because of its political or existential convenience.
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And again, perhaps my desire for my philosophical convictions to be, you know, true is just too high a margin to demand.
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What I really want to ask is whether this should be any kind of surprise, this approach, I mean.
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There is some recognition, even amongst the religious, that this is at least in part what religion does, what religion is.
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It provides some kind of unifying ethic to suppress the more depraved elements of our human nature.
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Evelyn Waugh was once asked how he reconciled his private hedonism and gluttony.
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He was accused of being rude and self -indulgent, how he reconciles this with his professed Christianity.
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He accepted the charge and simply said, can you imagine how much worse I would be if I wasn't a Catholic.
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Fair enough.
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I think that I'm far from the first to suggest that religion is,
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in essence, nothing more than a mimetic entity that serves some kind of social purpose like this.
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That's what it's for, but isn't actually true.
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And I'm glad to hear that at least one member of the opposition this evening seems to agree with me.
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I'm not sure if you'll see it that way too, ladies and gentlemen.
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But I won't say that I know this is the case, of course, I can't do so.
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I will simply ask a question of you.
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What would you expect to see if God existed?
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And all of this was being supervised.
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What would you expect the world to look like?
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How would you expect life to have evolved?
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And if we assume the alternative hypothesis, that is atheism, materialism, that is
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that the world we find ourselves in is just an amoral
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arena of accidentally existing organisms competing in an endless struggle for survival, what would we expect to find?
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And what do we find?
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A system of natural selection which explains the origin of species on planet Earth
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that does not just cause or bring about but relies upon suffering and death.
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Survival of the fittest is the same thing as the death and destruction of the unfit.
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99 % plus of all of the species, species, let alone animals, that have ever inhabited this planet have been brutally wiped from existence.
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And for what? for our development, it seems that unimaginable, indescribable,
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and seemingly inexplicable suffering is embedded into the very mechanism by which I'm told God decided to create human beings.
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I'm not saying this can't be explained on theism.
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Of course I can't say that.
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You could say that this is all part of some grand plan of Jobian proportion in its unintelligibility.
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Maybe there's some kind of compensation in the afterlife.
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Maybe dogs do go to heaven after all, sure.
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I'm just asking you what you would actually expect to be the case.
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I think that we wouldn't expect to see anything like what I've just described
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if we assume that there is a benevolent invigilator overseeing the process.
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However, if we assume atheism, not only do we come to explain this phenomenon, but in my view, we also come to expect it.
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If I'm wrong, however, if the truth of theism is indeed as plain
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and graspable as many on the opposition would doubtless like to suggest this evening, then I must ask why religious belief has traditionally, if not essentially delusional in essence,
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relied so heavily on, if you like, non -rational modes of convincing.
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A sign as sure as they come of delusional belief is an inability to muster
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and a resistance against rational defense of that belief, especially in the face of challenge and most evidence when the threat
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or enforcement indeed of suppression or physical violence is substituted in its place
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that is the place of rational argument
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and this hardly needs explication just 600 feet from the door
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of this chamber there's an easily missable cross on the floor of Broad Street
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which marks the spot where three bishops of the Church of
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England were burned at the stake not even for being the wrong religion
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but so close the wrong denomination the wrong interpretation of the words doctrinal disputes like this have a long
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and violent history within the religious tradition
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and I think it's worth asking why that's the case oh you think
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that the Sun you think that the Sun proceeds from the father alone not the father
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and the Holy Spirit oh you're about to find out as
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you meet your maker wherever religious authorities have had the political power to do
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so I would say
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and found the threat of otherworldly hell fire to have somewhat lost its efficacy on certain people then it provides
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or they provide shall we say a corporeal simulacrum of this
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bringing the flames into our own veil of tears providing a
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very worldly inferno to ready the heretic for the inferno that's
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to come in Hades reducing heretics to literal ashes in the
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full view of anybody else who might have the temerity to question or to challenge the authority and compassion of the church.
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Why might a religious tradition, which I'm told is balanced upon reason and provability, evolve such a knee -jerk mortal resistance to freedom of thought?
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Of course, in our modern age, where the state is no longer the principal auxiliary of religious violence, I of course understand that that's the case.
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This is something that happened hundreds of years ago.
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Now that That ignoble mantle is taken up instead by individual religious fanatics who cannot
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and will not be deterred by the morality of their fellow creatures
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or indeed by the laws of their country
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because there is no legislation written by any person of any time
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that could even count one iota against the dictates of the supernatural creator of the universe.
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Access to whose precise and exacting will is of course only a delusion when it's somebody else's God, when it's the wrong God.
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If that's not the case, then not only is this belief in God and access to his will not delusionary, but now, I'm told, is actually a prerequisite for reason,
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for science, for morality, all of the noble pursuits that humanity entertains.
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This despite the fact
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that most of the important developments historically in all of these
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areas have regularly been made by dissidents who subverted the clerical authoritarianism of the very religious traditions
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that now wish to claim these developments as their own.
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Touch scandalous, I think you'll agree.
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I hope you'll agree, I should say.
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Again, I can simply ask you what best explains this psychological condition.
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Might this suppressive and sensorial historical attitude, which seems essentially tied to the history of religious thought,
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be compatible with the truth of religious claims? Of course.
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Absolutely.
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Is it better explained by an inability to provide serious and conclusive rational defenses of those beliefs?
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Maybe.
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Might this also explain the characteristic taboo on the criticism of people's religious belief
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that survives with us in many ways to this day?
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Perhaps also, I'm not sure.
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Might this also explain why faith, as we've already heard, that is belief without evidence, reflect on that for a moment.
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The one I'd also explain why this is proposed as a virtue
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and indeed the foundation of belief in God blessed after all are those who believe without saying without seeing I don't know.
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It's not really for someone like myself who strictly speaking is an agnostic.
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It's not really for me to say
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but I can only leave it with you and I suppose the remainder of the opposition.
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Thank you.
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El escenario: Un debate sobre la creencia en Dios
En este video, Alex O'Connor participa en un debate de la Oxford Union sobre si la creencia en Dios es un engaño. A través de su discurso, analiza cómo las personas a menudo adoptan creencias religiosas por razones culturales, políticas o emocionales, más que por argumentos filosóficos. Este contexto te permite practicar inglés hablado con un lenguaje formal, persuasivo y lleno de expresiones coloquiales, ideal para mejorar tu comprensión y pronunciación.
Trozos útiles y colocaciones para memorizar
- "Sheer coincidence": pura coincidencia. Ejemplo: "Nos conocimos por sheer coincidence en un barco".
- "Conspicuous lack of": notable ausencia de. Ejemplo: "Su ensayo tiene un conspicuous lack of argumentos sólidos".
- "Endowed with a skill": dotado/a de una habilidad. Ejemplo: "Él está endowed with a skill para resolver problemas rápidamente".
- "Mimetic entity": entidad mimética (que imita o se replica). Ejemplo: "La religión a veces actúa como un mimetic entity en las sociedades".
- "Endless struggle for survival": lucha interminable por la supervivencia. Ejemplo: "Los animales enfrentan un endless struggle for survival en la selva".
Tu reto de shadowing: Repite y emula
Para mejorar la pronunciación en inglés y practicar el shadowspeak, elige un fragmento de 30 segundos del video (por ejemplo, desde "What I really want to ask..." hasta "...what do we find?"). Reproduce el audio, deténlo y repite cada frase imitando la entonación, el ritmo y la énfasis de O'Connor. Hazlo 5 veces seguidas. Luego, graba tu propia voz y compárala con el original. Notarás cómo mejoras la fluidez y la naturalidad en poco tiempo. ¡Esta es una forma efectiva de aprender inglés con videos y avanzar en tu práctica de inglés hablado!
Gramática en este vídeo
Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:
| Estructura | En el vídeo |
|---|---|
| Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace | was told · was accused · being supervised |
| Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora | I've traveled · We've heard · have ever inhabited |
¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.