What chills me as I watch the video is Bill Maher's comments about what is to be done with these people. I'm not one to rush to Nazism or any other group that saw a purge as necessary to ensure purity of ideology, but the logical consequence of what he's asking is that we remove from positions of responsibility those people who show such 'mental defects'. An exemplar of the atheistic ideal is Michael Shermer who, in Why People Believe Weird Things, states that any atheist who doesn't embrace Spinoza's Dictum with both hands isn't worth a mote of intellectual salt. Harris and Dawkins both exhibit extreme exasperation at having to prove the same things over and over and over in debate after debate. Their result, thus, is to mock those who could believe such things. Harris goes so far as to accuse more liberal-minded believers of allowing fertile ground for the more dangerous ideologies to take root. When it comes to his arguments about a modern Christian not believing in Zeus or Vishnu, I think he's missing a bigger picture. I don't think a modern Christian would 'believe' in the G-d of the disciples, or the God of Abraham. He might see the clear chain, and assume that he does, but to worship that God was very different from the one he goes to every Sunday (or not). The idea of God has evolved with human culture. At times I fear that the two are inseparable. Had we the capacity to wipe out all religious thought, we would not find ourselves in a Dawkinsian utopia, but in a world oddly devoid of certain stabilizing influences. I do not think we get our moral sense entirely from religion, but it certainly helps.

Put another way--it is often said that over 50% of Americans believe in a 6,000 year old earth. This doesn't trouble me as much as it probably should, but I take great comfort in knowing that if I were to take one of these 50% of Americans to the top of a skyscraper and tell them, "Jump off. The God of Abraham will _totally_ catch you," he'll look at me as if I were insane, ESPECIALLY if I said, "No, seriously. He just told me.*" The great revolution in human culture occurred when we swapped learning things through revelation for learning things through deduction. If something is difficult to deduce, then people will fall back on the 'revealed' which is pretty much anything anecdotal. Put another way, tell someone that there are a billion billion stars in the sky, and he'll believe you. Tell the same person that the paint on a park bench is wet, and he'll have to touch it to be sure. Evolution as a metaconcept is hard to deduce, but people get that bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. Why can't they bridge the distance? If I knew the answer to that, then there wouldn't be a distance.

* And yes, it is possible with the right listener and the right speaker to find someone willing to jump...but we don't want them breeding anyways, do we? Evolution cleans up its own messes.

see Michael Shermer's TEDtalk:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Michael-Shermer-Why-People-Believe-Weird-Things

^ I'd recommend "Why Darwin Matters" by Michael Shermer (yes, founder of Skeptic magazine) as well. A former young-earth creationist and now atheist, he has a lot of interesting ideas and points for people of faith to understand and accept evolution, and why it doesn't contradict their beliefs.

I personally wouldn't call the Pope "a smart dude" though. I mean, he is running an organisation that seems to tolerate pedophiles working closely with children, lying to third world countries by saying condoms actually cause AIDS, etc, etc.

I agree with anything written by Ken Miller as well, he claims to be Catholic, but he has a sensible and reasonable head on his shoulders when it comes to biology and evolution.

The problem us godless atheists mostly have with the idea of "Creation by a God Character" is that it is a far more complex explaination for how life, and indeed, the Universe arose. Why? Because it cannot be explained simply stated. If something created us with intelligence, then something must have created that intelligence, and so on, and so on, ad naseum.

The then often used rebuttal to the previous assertion, "That God has always existed" is an extra and unnecessary step. You could just as easily remove God from the equation and say that "The Universe has always existed". We have evidence for how the Universe formed, but none so far for what it was before the Big Bang, String Theory might change all that.

Now, I'm an atheist agnostic, I'm a skeptic, and a student of science. I do not believe in a Creator, or God because there is no evidence to support it. I also do not believe in the Big Bang, Evolution or Atomic Theory. I accept them as fact because they are supported by observable, testible, and falsifiable evidence. All of this does not mean, however, I don't concede to the idea of a Creator. To deny the existence of something isn't science, and it isn't smart.

I am an atheist because I don't believe in any Gods or Godesses, and I'm an agnostic because I don't know whether any exist or not.

And now I apologise for making another long-winded post, I'll just go back to my reading and vector calculus.

>> ^E_Nygma:
i'll be honest, when i clicked on the link at first, i was wondering what language it was.

i'll be equally honest: i knew what it was, without a moment's doubt.
but this had me completely fooled, the first time.

it's one of those left-brained, right-brained things.

that's a good idea. i looked into it, but it seems the original version is still working, and i can't locate the clip from michael shermer's ted talk. thanks for the idea though!

In reply to this comment by fissionchips:
Maybe you can repair a dead version. For some reason the clip creator is hawkish about their copyright claim over it, so it gets pulled again and again.

I wonder what would happen if more music was played backwards. I do think it's weird that so many of the same words will be interpretted to be different words in different sentences (that make sense?).

Related: http://www.videosift.com/video/Michael-Shermer-Why-People-Believ
e-Weird-Things

Congrats! CP, you know I enjoy your contributions to this site, so I'm happy you've made the big 100! And, jimnms, I, too, enjoy your reason-laden videos, especially those with Michael Shermer. Congrats to the both of you.

Thanks very much.

In reply to this comment by BicycleRepairMan:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Michael-Shermer-Why-People-Believe-Weird-Things

In reply to this comment by rembar:
We used to have a brilliant TED talk edited down by Farhad on here that included similiar footage used in the original visual cognition experiment that discovered this phenomenon. Wish I could find it right about now.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Michael-Shermer-Why-People-Believe-Weird-Things

In reply to this comment by rembar:
We used to have a brilliant TED talk edited down by Farhad on here that included similiar footage used in the original visual cognition experiment that discovered this phenomenon. Wish I could find it right about now.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Michael-Shermer-Why-People-Believe-Weird-Things
This is the TED talk in question, one of Michael Shermers best moments IMO.

please read my coment about the coal walker post.


In reply to your comment:
“Beyond science? What is beyond science is whatever you WANT to believe, whatever you NEED to believe.

Let's not move on. Michael Shermer is wrong about so many things? Least you can do is provide just a few examples.”

Michael Shermer work on acupuncture has been belligerent. in general he uses science as a way to vent his frustrations. he seems up tight and kind of a know it all. i know some one who sent him an e mail. this guy pointed how flawed and outdated Shermer views on acupuncture were. kind of funny ...

first science is a vague word. i think political science is important. and i like when nome chomsky backs up what he says with facts. sure other types of science can be useful.


"nothing in science is absolute". this is the rule that every one forgets when so involved in there studies to "save man kind." it gets old.
dont tell drug companies that there drugs are less then perfect because that will fuck up sales. if nothing is perfect, why do i have to use gold standard to justify everything. science has saved lives and it also kills people. the american medical association is second only the Catholic church in the bigest corporation ever.
if it doesn't sell it wont get funded . this is a big flaw. so i look else were. they can do as they wish but i will not worship there theories on what is right and wrong.

and the state of science seems to be lame in that new=radical views that DO follows scientific method are considered a joke because of big bucks. if people stand up challenge something it could be they get the ax at the job. everyone in the end has to follow what the man tells you or you are out = no work. in other words i see a dogma here.

another reason why i think its good to go beyond science you can be as logical as you want just remember some things are never absolute. like on star trek where science have given them so much ability . is it usually human nature that saves the day?

Beyond science? What is beyond science is whatever you WANT to believe, whatever you NEED to believe.

Let's not move on. Michael Shermer is wrong about so many things? Least you can do is provide just a few examples.

we know what science can tell us but what is beyond science? thats where real knowledge lies. well Michael Shermer is wrong about so many things lets just move on.

Melua's rerecording of this is mentioned/played at the end of Michael Shermer's TEDTalk. Apparently Simon Singh was upset with the inaccurate measurements she used in the song.