geez, were you continually hitting refresh until it popped up?! its barely been HOURS.

heh, no it got sent to me.

thanks for this. was better than the first part

Dawkins states that once society (all of us?) exalted scientists as heroes, but now society turns to superstition. Hasn't it always been a mix between beliefs and hard science?

Also, how would he explain scientists like Stephen Hawking that hold on to their faith.

I'm an atheist myself..

I saw Stephen Hawking speak in Boston MA a few years ago. From his humorous/sarcastic anti-religious comments during that speech, I highly doubt he 'holds' onto faith at all. If anything, he may join with other logical thinkers and acknowledge that religious belief in of itself is a farce. Being nothing more than human invented superstitious notions to explain the unexplainable in complete absence of evidence.

With no evidence proving or disproving the evidence of some omnipotent 'creator' or consciousness (from our limited perspective), one cannot prove, nor can one disprove the existence of such a so-called 'being'. As for myself, I may lean more towards agnosticism, though I highly doubt any so-called 'creator' in a sense would possibly have any 'personal' interest in the evolution or well being of humanity. Humanity is after all just another life form on this planet. Not unlike a bacterium or virus. We spread. We multiply. We thrive. We have just adapted to our environment in a different manner through the mechanics of evolutionary change.

Evolution is just a theory. But so too is Gravity. Both are explanations of phenomena through the perspective of human understanding, which of course is far from complete. Those who do claim to know the universe through a perspective of 'absolutes' and 'certainty' based off of nothing but faith and the text of a pre-modern era are stuck in the middle ages. Not unlike those from the future will likely view us 1000 or 2000 years from now.

That is ... assuming our own ignorance doesn't lead to the destruction of our species. Unfortunately chances for such an end are uncomfortably high.

ok discard*

Read up on homeopathy and understand what its all about. Any sane person would conclude it is total BS.

In summary.. take substance X, which may have some curative effect for some symptom/disease. Dilute substance X by 50%. Rinse and repeat numerous times until substance X is virtually undetectable in solution, if detectable at all. i.e. 0.00001%. Put straight, the substance is so minute in quantity it would be a serious stretch to even consider it a 'trace' amount in the solution.

Give the solution to patient. Consider them 'fixed'.

The concept is that the so-called 'energy' or 'presence' of the atoms from the original substance are retained in the diluted solution even though there is practically no detectable amount of the substance remaining. This so-called 'energy', according to homeopathy, has the 'SAME' curative effects as a full dose of substance X.

Now how sane is homeopathy? If you had a serious illness, which would you trust? Some kook's glass of water? Or your doctor's advice?

Don't follow your doctor? Thats ok. Join the ranks of all the rest who have been caught by natural selection.

From early in the video - the reason superstition is gaining ground is because:

A) It's easy to understand and therefore to believe in. Things like "I Know that I Know that I Know" and stuff about angels and supernatural realms are easy to grasp.

and

B) Science is becoming Damn Hard to grasp even for educated laymen who bother to make the effort.

I mean who the phuk actually understands carbon nanotubes, or electron/hole flow, or genetics, or quantum physics, or the rings of Uranus or damn near anything that crosses the Science News wire these days. Even Applied Science has advanced so far beyond the =capability= of the ordinary guy to understand that many people have simply given up trying.

edit: oh and i recall seeing a tv special on Hawking years ago where he was asked "do you believe in god", after a bit of cosmological hemming and hawing he finally said no.

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