I’d never heard of TED before Saturday night. Carly and I were having dinner with some friends and one of ‘the guys’ had mentioned he’d been watching the TEDTalks videos. I had to go take a peak (like any geek would) – and was really surprised to see that Rick Warren had been invited as a presenter. If anyone doesn’t know who Rick Warren is, he’s the author of The Purpose Driven Life (also known as the best-selling book of all time, second only to the Bible).

I thought his talk was excellent, and I was a little surprised that there was another presenter (Dan Dennett) whose talk was basically an attempt at a rebuttal or a dissection of The Purpose Driven Life (and religion in general). Dennett attempted to sound kind and sincere at the beginning of his presentation, but it went downhill from there with taking things out of context and presenting arguments with little fact, merit or references to back up what he was talking about. The talks are freely available for download (both audio and video formats) from the TED site – give ‘em a watch.

Dennett started his presentation with an idea that it should be all parents moral obligation to teach their children about religion (factually – and not only the religion that you might believe in, but a diverse set of religions), and also went on to say that this should be integrated as part of school curriculum. I think this is one area that I agree with him. I’m a Christian – but I believe that it’s very important to know what others believe, and respect and love people regardless of whatever their beliefs happen to be. So as much as some Christians might want to call me a heretic for speaking such nonsense – I agree with Dennett on this point. When I was growing up, my mom was never afraid of me looking into or researching other religions, and truth be told I’ve read and researched a ton of ‘em. Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Shinto, Mormonism, Latter Day Saints, the ongoing trends of Pantheism, etc.

If we were to label these two talks as a ‘debate’ between a Pastor and an Atheist – I have to say that it was no competition. Warren came into this sincerely, and without an agenda (unfortunately I can’t say the same for Dennett). Warren’s talk was excellent – and I have a lot of respect for his ability to get up and present the content he did to this particular audience. Because you can bet your buttons that there wouldn’t have been many others at a conference like TED who share his Christian beliefs.