I may have to fire up BitTorrent for this one: Richard Dawkins vs. alternative medicine

The third season of Doctor Who is over. There's nothing on the horizon for many months (such as the return of Doctor Who or Torchwood) that's interesting enough to me coming out of the U.K. that I'd go to the trouble of firing up BitTorrent to check it out, rather than wait until it somehow finds its way to these shores.

Until now.

Yes, it's Richard Dawkins' long-promised investigation of alternative medicine and New Age practitioners, entitled The Enemies of Reason:

Prof Dawkins launches his attack in The Enemies of Reason, to be shown on Channel 4 this month. The professor, the author of many books from The Selfish Gene (1976) to the international best-seller The God Delusion (2006), holds the Charles Simonyi Chair for the public understanding of science at Oxford.

In the two-part television series he challenges practitioners. He asks an "angel therapist" how many angels he (Dawkins) has. The therapist asks him: "Have you asked any angels to come close to you?" Prof Dawkins says he hasn't. "Well you haven't got any then," says the therapist.

That's the probably the only time the "angel therapist" ever got a question like that right. In any case, I can hardly wait.

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Thanks to Blake, I now have The Enemies of Reason, Part 2: My review of this episode is below the fold. I managed to BitTorrent the episode and watch it on my laptop on my flight back from Chicago last night. If you don't want to be influenced by my opinion before watching, watch the episode…

I think Paul Simon said it best:

May twelve angels guard youWhile you sleep.(Maybe that's a waste of angelsI don't know.)

By chaos_engineer (not verified) on 07 Aug 2007 #permalink

Cool. Will check it out.
Oh and wasn't Derek Jacobi totally awesome as The Master?
Wish he stayed on. I loves him.

Every time I think of Dawkins, I remember a bumper sticker that was popular in the 60s, which had the phrase "God is Dead--Neitzche" crossed out and "Neitzche is Dead--God" written over it.

I had been under the assumption that Torchwood wasn't returning for another series. Am I incorrect, then?

[He also meets] a "psychic sister" who talks about Mr Dawkins senior as though he were dead, until Prof Dawkins points out that his father is very much alive.

Classic :D

The picture of the faith-healer woman in that article is frightening.

Dr. Who, Battlestar Galactica, Brit coms, and BBC documentaries like the above are the very things bit.torrent was invented for. I think.

"There's nothing on the horizon for many months (such as the return of Doctor Who or Torchwood) that's interesting enough to me coming out of the U.K. that I'd go to the trouble of firing up BitTorrent to check it out, rather than wait until it somehow finds its way to these shores."

Have you seen The Thick Of It? Funniest thing on British telly since Brass Eye. The Mighty Boosh is an recentish offbeat comedy series likely to have slipped under your radar. See also Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, which even stars a doctor. Journeys Into The Ring Of Fire is a pretty good documentary series on geology.

By Ginger Yellow (not verified) on 09 Aug 2007 #permalink

Gah. Sorry about that. You can find them all at www.tv-links.co.uk if BitTorrent doesn't work.

By Ginger Yellow (not verified) on 09 Aug 2007 #permalink

Well that was better than I had expected. It tried to cover a bit too much ground, but each individual section clearly presented the problems with the woo and the lack of evidence to support it. The double-blind test of dowsing was particularly devastating.

By Ginger Yellow (not verified) on 13 Aug 2007 #permalink