If you don't know, how would you know what I know?

>> ^Jinx:

We're both ignorant. Only one of us knows it.

How do you drive a group of militant anti-theists further away from God? You either want to know the truth or you're running away from it. That's the only dichotomy in this equation.

I post for a number of reasons, depending on the topic. I generally only post in videos which deal with God, Christianity, or social issues involving biblical morality, because those are the subjects that interest me. Not only am I qualified to comment on these topics, but as these kind of videos generally present an anti-christian worldview, it is only natural for me to respond to the subject matter and present my own viewpoint.

Videos like this don't make me angry. Like I've said before a few times, I used to think this way. I used to be as liberal and skeptical about the supernatural as most of you are. It is no mystery to me why you think the way you do. I am not baffled by your reasoning, nor does it threaten mine. What I felt was sorrow for Richard because he may never have come to know God before he died.

>> ^Quboid

>> ^mentality:
Where are the tales of space Jesus who died for the sins of Omecron Persei 8?
I believe L. Ron Hubbard has some works that may be relevant to this line of inquiry.



As for the other, why wouldn't God's word to the humans be tailored to their perspective? "Chicken Soup for the Terran Soul", right?

>> ^shinyblurry:
To say God couldn't touch this world because the Universe is so big is a false argument. The Universe may be huge to us, but to God it is very small. If God is omnipresent, He is everywhere at the same time. Size and distance mean nothing in that equation.
To say God created the Universe is not the end of inquiry, it is the beginning of true inquiry and true science. How could you understand the creation without understanding the Creator?


Feynman is not saying that god can't touch something on the scale of the universe. Feynman is saying how self centered, naive and provincial your silly little bible is to only focus on our tiny little insignificant corner of the universe.

Where are the tales of space Jesus who died for the sins of Omecron Persei 8?

Also, what I want to know is, what makes your understanding of a creator more correct than other religions? Why not follow Islam? I hear they have the direct word from god himself, far superior than your collection of mere stories.

I'd say the hypothesis "it was all made up" has infinitely more merit than the hypothesis "god is real". The former has actual evidence you can use to prove it. The latter has none.>> ^gwiz665:

The hypothesis "it was all made up" has equal merit, because you can find just as many traces of this than you can of it actually being real.
>> ^shinyblurry:
It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it. To say you prefer uncertainty is to say you enjoy the freedom of imagining that the answer is something else, because you don't like it. We aren't uncertain about everything. We have to be certain of some things, like the fact that we exist. Do we say that those who believe they exist embrace this answer because they are afraid of not existing? Clearly, certainty is useful.
If you want say that theists embrace God because they don't want to die, you could also say that atheists reject God because they don't want Him to exist. Take these scientists, for example:
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the unitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine foot in the door.
Richard Lewontin, Harvard
New York Review of Books 1/9/97
No evidence would be sufficient to create a change in mind; that it is not a commitment to evidence, but a commitment to naturalism. ...Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it.
Steven Pinker MIT
How the mind works p.182
To say God couldn't touch this world because the Universe is so big is a false argument. The Universe may be huge to us, but to God it is very small. If God is omnipresent, He is everywhere at the same time. Size and distance mean nothing in that equation.
To say God created the Universe is not the end of inquiry, it is the beginning of true inquiry and true science. How could you understand the creation without understanding the Creator?

>> ^Jinx:
We're both ignorant. Only one of us knows it.
To me, this is a compelling qualitative argument against most organized religions (though perhaps not against theism explicitly).


"Science" in general is willing to discard and reject what was once believed "true" when presented with consistent contradictory evidence. We know the picture is incomplete, so we're prepared to refine and correct it as we learn.
Most organized religions are predicated on some form of infallibility. Some indisputable, irrefutable, unquestionable "truth". There is no room for new understanding. We are not allowed to refine or correct the message as knowledge is accumulated. (Which is doubly frustrating when in many cases what is and is not a part of that "truth" was established by committee hundreds or thousands of years ago.)

>> ^dannym3141:

>> ^Quboid:
Shiny, why do you post stuff?

I suspect he's been raised or taught by an almost old-fashioned zealot type...


If you believe Shiny, he says he's a self-created "born again." But either way you're right: at least one of his Fathers is an old fashioned type.

>> ^Quboid:

Shiny, why do you post stuff?
If you are posting to try to persuade people that your God is the one true God, you are being counter-productive. You are pushing people away from your belief. Whether or not your posts have any merit, whether or not you are right, people see your posts and think that Christians are a tiresome bunch of self-righteous bores.
It doesn't even come down to how convincing your arguments are any more - you are putting people off God. You are diminishing the sum total of Earth's belief in your God. I imagine you watch videos like this with the same impotent anger that I feel when I watch a video about a "gay" 4 year old being killed but ask yourself - is harming your religion really what you want to be spending your time doing? What will you say to St. Peter at the Gates, "I tried but I actually put people off. Sorry 'bout that."?


I don't think he understands that/how he is putting people off. I suspect he's been raised or taught by an almost old-fashioned zealot type; nonbelievers deserve to live in shame and scorn, that kind of thing. I imagine someone who looks like kenneth from 30 rock but instead of being super nice, he's super religious, walking around quoting the bible at people.

"The answer"? Not sure what part of Feynman's interview response you're alluding to or what exactly "the question" was, but the best you personally can say is that you have "an answer", and one which may or may not be true, and which is both unfalsifiable and unprovable. Commenting all over the Sift like you know "the answer" and as if the rest of us are too stupid to just accept it is why people call you arrogant, FYI.>> ^shinyblurry:
It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it.

You make a good point. In our daily life we are certain about a lot of things, or rather we accept things for granted without any thoroughly investigated evidence. We assume that we exist, because that's needed for us to assume it. We assume we have free will, because it feels like we have free will.

I also live as if there is no God, because of the "path of least resistance" - it is easier to assume there is no god, than to assume there is, and since it has no difference to me, the easiest solution is fine. I think for many theists, it least resistance to assume that there is a god, and live as if he exists, be it because of social pressure, mindset or what have you - in any case, their path of least resistance is to assume he exists. If you think about all the shit an outed atheist go through in some states, I can't really blame them for that too much.

It is a different deal when you get into the science of it, because in science we deal with what is real and what is not. The good thing about science is that it doesn't care. It doesn't care about your feelings, it doesn't care that lots of people like a thing, it only exist to show the truth and to show nature for what it really is.

Materialism is absolute in that it's really there, like Feynman says so excellent in his video about the electro-magnetic spectrum. It may not have much of an effect in your everyday life how light moves in waves and how it's similar to how water makes waves, but that doesn't make it any less true. You can assume that they are unrelated if you want, and if that makes you sleep better at night, but it's just not how nature works.

If you take the issue of God under the microscope, you find that there's not much evidence backing it up when you really look. The social pressure is there, and the cultural ramifications are there, but there's no evidence backing up the actual existence. The hypothesis "it was all made up" has equal merit, because you can find just as many traces of this than you can of it actually being real.

>> ^shinyblurry:

It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it. To say you prefer uncertainty is to say you enjoy the freedom of imagining that the answer is something else, because you don't like it. We aren't uncertain about everything. We have to be certain of some things, like the fact that we exist. Do we say that those who believe they exist embrace this answer because they are afraid of not existing? Clearly, certainty is useful.
If you want say that theists embrace God because they don't want to die, you could also say that atheists reject God because they don't want Him to exist. Take these scientists, for example:
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the unitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine foot in the door.
Richard Lewontin, Harvard
New York Review of Books 1/9/97
No evidence would be sufficient to create a change in mind; that it is not a commitment to evidence, but a commitment to naturalism. ...Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it.
Steven Pinker MIT
How the mind works p.182
To say God couldn't touch this world because the Universe is so big is a false argument. The Universe may be huge to us, but to God it is very small. If God is omnipresent, He is everywhere at the same time. Size and distance mean nothing in that equation.
To say God created the Universe is not the end of inquiry, it is the beginning of true inquiry and true science. How could you understand the creation without understanding the Creator?

>> ^shinyblurry:

It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it. To say you prefer uncertainty is to say you enjoy the freedom of imagining that the answer is something else, because you don't like it. We aren't uncertain about everything. We have to be certain of some things, like the fact that we exist. Do we say that those who believe they exist embrace this answer because they are afraid of not existing? Clearly, certainty is useful.
If you want say that theists embrace God because they don't want to die, you could also say that atheists reject God because they don't want Him to exist. Take these scientists, for example:
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the unitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine foot in the door.
Richard Lewontin, Harvard
New York Review of Books 1/9/97
No evidence would be sufficient to create a change in mind; that it is not a commitment to evidence, but a commitment to naturalism. ...Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it.
Steven Pinker MIT
How the mind works p.182
To say God couldn't touch this world because the Universe is so big is a false argument. The Universe may be huge to us, but to God it is very small. If God is omnipresent, He is everywhere at the same time. Size and distance mean nothing in that equation.
To say God created the Universe is not the end of inquiry, it is the beginning of true inquiry and true science. How could you understand the creation without understanding the Creator?

We're both ignorant. Only one of us knows it.

This is actually sorta a dupe of http://videosift.com/video/Richard-Feynman-Human-gods-are-too-provincial, but the one above is longer.

Your video, Richard Feynman on God, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This is why to me Richard Feynman and Neil degrasse Tyson are excellent role models.

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by jonny.