Given the religiously themed title of this post, I have to say, hooray for humanism, and our ability to forgive and treat one another with compassion. and point out that this is NOT something we get from religion, but something religion steals from us. Had this nice man been a believing Christian, for example, he would probably attribute, wrongly, his act of kindness as something he picked up from the emphasis on forgiveness in the new testament. But even though Islamic scripture, to my knowledge, does not emphasize the "turn the other cheek" mentality like Jesus occasionally did, it is pretty safe to assume that this noble behavior by this man was not, as the robberer assumed, because he was religious, but rather despite it.

Steven Weinberg once said: With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.

With this video, and perhaps Daniel Dennetts excellent near-death article in mind, one could perhaps reverse the slogan, and simply say "With or without religion, for people to do good things - that takes Goodness."

>> ^gwiz665:
"There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear."
- Daniel Dennett.

Nietzsche wrote something similar in "Die fröhliche Wissenschaft" (Gay Science):

"The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments."


And since most of the comments before me were written on a computer, I feel obliged to add a quote of Alan Turing:

"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."

1. Like my brother Ornthoron did, I study physics.

2. I get really good grades.

3. Like my brother Haldaug, I play the jazz saxophone. As he actually studies music, I can't really compare myself to him.

4. I also play the clarinet and the piano.

5. I got much better grades in nynorsk than bokmål, even though bokmål is the language I use.

6. I've had socialist democrat leanings for most of my life (gasp!)

7. I'm being torn in a liberal direction by my brothers and a persuasive right-wing extremist friend (by Norwegian standards).

8. Hanging on videosift doesn't help.

9. While i've never really believed in any god, I didn't call myself an atheist until about a year ago.

10. Despite this I was baptized and confirmed a Lutheran Christian. Hey, it's a cultural thing!

11. I read a lot of popular science, and like to pretend I know something just because i've read a book about it.

12. At around 8 years of age, I had a philosophy discussion club with two friends.

13. My favourite philosopher is Daniel Dennett.

14. I learned programming in High School on a Casio 9850GC+ calculator. Among the programs I wrote was a drawing program and a Mandelbrot fractal generator (which used over an hour to draw a single frame!)

15. Since that i've learned real computer languages, but have never really finished a programming project.

16. Since I moved out, I've usually gone to bed two o'clock in the morning.

17. I still do not drink that much coffee...

18. I own a Flower Stick (a kind of Devil Stick for newbs). I am good enough at it to impress people who have never seen one before.
People who have seen one is another matter...

19. Despite my grass pollen allergy, I haven't taken more than about three packs of antihistamines in my life.

20. I am a slow writer. I'll be back with a few more!

"There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear."
- Daniel Dennett.

It cracks me up when the camera pans to the audience and at least one person is either picking their nose, yawning, sleeping or staring off into space.

This one is even better for this phenomenon: http://www.videosift.com/video/Daniel-Dennett-Is-Science-Showing-We-Don-t-Have-Free-Will

Dan Dennett is a true genius. It's too bad he isn't as flashy as Dawkins, as his ideas and the manner in which he communicates them would be much more palatable to religious conservatives.

Thanks

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
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Dennett's article about his near-death experience is a MUST-READ, and can be found in Christopher Hitchens book "The Portable Atheist" and also online here

My poodle LOVES its little skirt!

I've actually only read excerpts from the God Delusion, but I have it lying around on e-book. The parts I've read have all been excellent. Dawkins is good at keeping his tone pretty calm and scientific even as he eviscerates the different God theories. If you like his writing, I also recommend reading some of Daniel Dennett's books, which are all super. I like Consciousness Explained and the Intentional Stance, but they are more about philosophy and cognitive theory.

In reply to this comment by yourhydra:
i bet u dress up your poodle in pink fluffy skirts

ps. have you read the God Delusion? (Dawkins) I think you would rather enjoy it. I know I did

>> ^bobknight33:
Darwin is dead and so is his theory. Find a better argument to kill religion into the ground.


I suggest next time you watch and comprehend the main idea of the video before posting. Or amuse others with weak comments, up to you.

My example of religion was obviously not as clear as I had hoped.

krelokk, it seems to me you completely missed the point I was trying to make. Of course, humans are not completely removed from other animals, because we are related to all of them. My point is quite simply that even though different animals my act like they have "feelings", it does not follow that they have feelings the way we do.

Morality implies reasoning, or an instinct that defines that morality - the latter may be true, but the former is not, not yet anyway. The type of reasoning a dog has, for instance, is quite simple and cannot handle complex abstracts like morality (music, mathematics etc. etc.)

Recent studies have shown that basic morality exist in some animals. Animals feeling unjustly treated, behaving angrily when other animals in a group receive treats and they do not. WTF would it do that for if it was biological robot? Since that is what people who argue against emotions are essentially saying animals are in the end. Why would it get 'angry' or create an illusion for the outside world to see so they can perceive it as 'angry'? Our morals and emotions most likely started out this way as well. Basic and simple.

No one can prove that others humans aside from themselves truly have sentience, but they'd be a damned idiot if you seriously tried to. This is the same thing in my mind.

I am indeed arguing that animals probably are biological robots, but so are humans. There is no "æther", we are what exists in the world. The closest thing to an ethereal realm is the electrical state that our nervous system and brain exists in at any given moment - and that is still in the physical world. Emotions and morality are defined by our biological base and our taught knowledge (nature/nurture) - some emotions are more hard-wired than others, such as the fear of loud noises or attraction, while others are completely soft-wired, some times learned from traumatic experiences.

Your last line is the excellent P-zombie argument, which I agree with to a certain point - I cannot prove that I am not a complete material copy of myself without a "soul", like I can't do that with you - but there is a big flaw in that argument, in that it implies and indeed requires a dualistic universe. If I am a complete copy, identical in every physical parameter, then I AM myself. In the same manner I can analyze your material body and find that you indeed are a human and extrapolating from myself, I can deduce that you indeed have "sentience".

Sentience is a tricky subject, because a possible reason for why it's so hard to prove - we can't really do it yet, because we have inferior brain models - is that it may not exist at all. Just because we think we have it, doesn't mean we actually do. There is a Daniel Dennett video on the sift about that somewhere, I'll see if I can find it. Good stuff.

Mauz15:
Occam's Razor as far as my memory goes is "All other things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one" Agreed?

My point was merely that all other things are rarely actually equal, because of people. I'm a subjectivist that way.

*dupeof=http://www.videosift.com/video/Dan-Dennett-Religion-as-a-Natural-Phenomenon

This video has been declared a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof declared by mauz15.

cool. another one of my favorite clips this week was tyson.

when one of the existing 4 croak, ndt gets my vote for next horseman.

i suspect it'll be dennett, but don't underestimate hitchens on a bender.

His series found on Videosift:

A Brief History of Disbelief
Part 1
http://www.videosift.com/video/Atheism-A-Brief-History-Of-Disbelief-BBC-documentary-59m
Part 2
http://www.videosift.com/video/Atheism-A-Brief-History-Of-Disbelief-Part-2
Part 3
http://www.videosift.com/video/Atheism-A-Brief-History-of-Disbelief-The-Final-Hour-33

The Atheism Tapes
Daniel Dennett
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Atheism-Tapes-Interview-with-Philosopher-Daniel-Dennett
Denys Turner
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Atheism-Tapes-Denys-Turner
Richard Dawkins
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Atheism-Tapes-Richard-Dawkins
Colin McGinn
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Atheism-Tapes-Colin-McGinn
Steven Weinberg
http://www.videosift.com/video/Atheism-Tapes-Steven-Weinberg