I love that man.

Kudos for talking about the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.

Can we get more love for tyson with this *related vid?

Oh man, we needed this video so bad. Feel free to share your faith, but just remember that it doesn't have anything to do with science. Word to all your mothers.

Man, he's good.

A simple "no" would also work.
This is all NOMA nonsense. Religion tells me HOW to go to heaven? Really does it now? What heaven? how? Whats religion´s method? if two competing religions has different ways of getting to heaven, or even outright contradictory hows(Such as Islam (No heaven for you if you believe in Jesus) and Christianity (No heaven for you if you dont believe in Jesus)), how the fuck is that a "how" at all? It isnt. Its superstitious bullshit from A to Z.

Religion has never in the history of humanity told anyone anything worthwhile new, or interesting on any subject. Thats because it relies on faith, revelations and dogma. While science does this on a weekly basis because the entire concept relies on rejection of all forms faith, dogma and revelation, in favor of evidence-based reasoning. Thats the truth.

100% agree. Too much pussy footing around ( not accusing Tyson here just in general )
The bullshit fairy tales have got to go
and guess what ? There's no Father Christmas or tooth fairy either.
There is no equivalency in the different sides. One is just plain lies and bullshit. The other is objective truth.
I have never heard a religious person gently explain they a religious and like to tolerate science, they just start screaming 'Praise Jeebus'
For fucks sake, even religious morons use a cell phone, hospital, electricity, cars etc etc So Fucking Dumb

NOMA as in how Dawkins criticises NOMA?

I think there's a subtle distinction between what NDGT is saying and NOMA, which is that i don't think he suggested that any religion should be given the position to present what they know as fact. He seemed to suggest that the American physicists he knows, if they are shall we say 'spiritual' then they are spiritual in a more open sense than being classed as any particular religion. Perhaps in the sense that they see no reason for there NOT to be different realities or even that the universe is not a part of something else. In that way they may be open to spirituality even if just in a general well-being sense, and use religious texts as interesting moralistic tales. If you believe in the possibility of something greater than yourself and that it is abstract and unlike anything we can imagine, then you could use the christian god as a 'good enough' placeholder, even though you believe in the physical universe as being separate to 'god'.

At the end of the day, no matter how cutting Dawkins can be, he himself knows that you can't prove anything about this god or that god, and ultimately anything to do with why there is this reality nor what any alternative might be. He's just a guy with opinions about how this place works too, and he's certainly not the smartest of us to ever have been.

Might you be putting too much focus on the (i think facetious) comment that it teaches how to go to heaven not how the heavens go? I think, or rather hope, that he was trying to say that there's no way to tell one way or the other, but he can understand why people feel comforted by it, why some people are moved by their own unique experiences to feel that way. Also that you can say you subscribe to something even whilst you hold your own completely modified version of it according to what you experience in this reality!

A simple "no" does not allow the man to drop some knowledge though. A simple "no" does not cause anyone to possibly rethink their position.

I don't think NDT thinks he is going to convince anyone that their religion is false. He probably feels his time is better spent trying to get people to stop rejecting science just because it might go against or does not support their religious beliefs and that science does not have to be the enemy of their religion.

He never said "religion tells you how to get to heaven". He used Galileo as an example of how one can keep religion and science separate....how what they believe or are taught "how to go to heaven" vs "how the heavens go".

Yes....it is superstitious bullshit from A to Z. But if the man answers the question with "NO, because its all superstitious bullshit"...the only people listening at that point are the people that already agree with that statement.

Another problem with NDTs words in this video, he tells us that 50% of scientists believe in god/are religious, and this is somehow proof there is no contradiction, or that science does not lead to non-belief. But this is a laughable failure of statistical analysis by NDT. I think the 50% number seems quite high, like he has been using a really bad sift on who qualifies as scientist (is it anyone with a science degree on any level?) But fine, lets make it 50% of scientists in the US. The takeaway from that is that the number of religous is MUCH LOWER than in the general population.
T
he general population is like 85% religious. That means that if 100 people go get a science degree, 85 will be religious, and 35 of them will lose their faith on the way to becoming a scientist. That means that if you study science, and you are religious, theres a 40%
chance youll lose your faith along the way. (This doesnt take into account that many of the 15% non-religious are probably already scientists, so the general population number is probably even higher.)

If you make it all the way to the National Academy of Sciences, a whooping 78 out of the 85 will have lost their faith. Thats about as damning for the no-contradiction/conflict-hypothesis as you can get.

Its like arguing that most drunk drivers never actually crash, therefore alcohol-intake does not influence your driving skills.

@BicycleRepairMan
i do not understand what you are arguing against.
you could have stuck with "no" and that would have sufficed,but you went off on a tirade about religion that had very little to do with what NDT was attempting to convey.

simply put:keep science and religion distinctively separate.that you could BE a scientist and still be a religious person.

he didnt get into the details because (and i am assuming here) he is full aware of the complexities of ones personal beliefs,religion being only a single facet.

to say religion has not produced a single novel or new idea,totally ignores the massive contributions in regards to:philosophy,math,astrology,physics.the list is pretty extensive.

you appear,and please correct me if i am wrong,to pigeon hole anybody who claims a religion as being a fundamentalist.this is not only staggeringly inaccurate but reveals a massive lack of understanding.

which is why NDT didnt even mention the fundamentalist,because the chances of a fundamentalist being a scientist hovers around 0%.

so why are you making an argument against fundamentalism when NDT did not even proceed from that assertion?

why do you care if a scientist also happens to hold a religious or spiritual philosophy?
are you suggesting that a scientist who DOES hold to these philosophies can no longer function properly as a scientist?

has it ever occurred to you that an intelligent person may hold a religious philosophy and keep that philosophy separate from their work?

or considered that a religious person may actually view their work as the continuing study of god/creator/universal consciousness? that by unraveling the mysteries of the known physical universe is their way of revealing god?there is a certain poetry to seeking and attempting to understand the mysteries of the universe.

i am totally with you in regards to fundamentalism,which brings a stagnation to the inquisitive mind and hampers the desire to know and seek those answers.the fundamentalist externalizes those questions in the form of scripture and in the process..stops asking the questions.

but to suggest that anybody who adheres to a religious or spiritual philosophy is somehow a fundamentalist,and therefore unworthy of consideration,is just plain inaccurate.

Scientism:

"Scientism is belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints."

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-folly-of-scientism

http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/sciism-body.html

The idea that science has all the answers is a particular faith of some atheists and agnostics, with no evidence actually supporting the claim. The problem of induction alone throws that idea out of the window. I love science and I amazed by what we are able to do, technologically. I've studied astronomy quite a bit in my lifetime. Just because I love science does not mean that I must bow before any theory because it is accepted by the mainstream scientific community as being the current idea of what is true and real.

If you look through history you will see many of these ideas held to be truth by the scientific community turned out to be half-baked ideas based on pure speculation. Somehow, people think we have it so nailed down now that the major ideas we have about the cosmos have to be true. It's pure hubris; our knowledge about how the Universe actually works or how it got here is infinitesimal compared to what there actually is to know.

Draw a circle on a piece of paper and say that represents all of the knowledge it is possible to know. What percentage of it could you claim that you knew? If you're honest, it isn't much. Do you think that knowledge of God and the supernatural could be in that 99 percent of things you don't know? If you really think about this you will see that to rule these things out based on limited and potentially faulty information is prideful and it blinds you to true understanding.

scientism is really like truthieness. It's a made up word, with a made up definition, that has no bearing on, or connection to reality.
Science is not about belief.
If data 'proves' that science can't ever answer any question about reality (not about human insanity, although it already goes a long way towards explaining that too), scientists would concede instantly. If it were a belief, they could never change it based on evidence, but science does change.

No one is asking you to 'bow' to any 'theory'. They are simply the 'rules' that 'science' has produced to explain how the world/universe works. They work just fine without your 'belief' in them or knowledge of them. That's just one thing they have over the supernatural.

Please give an example or two of scientific 'truths' that were half baked ideas. I think if you look throughout history, carefully, you will see the scientific method was developed mostly around the 12th century as explained here:

Amongst the array of great scholars, al-Haytham is regarded as the architect of the scientific method. His scientific method involved the following stages:1.Observation of the natural world
2.Stating a definite problem
3.Formulating a robust hypothesis
4.Test the hypothesis through experimentation
5.Assess and analyze the results
6.Interpret the data and draw conclusions
7.Publish the findings

but it's widely held that it was not solidified to the modern scientific method (eliminating guessing and 'induction' and requiring repeatable experimentation) until Newton. That means any example you might give should come after 1660 or so at the earliest, or you aren't talking about the same "science" that the rest of us are.

I think most scientist would say it is 'possible' that supernatural events happen, but incredibly unlikely, and constantly less so the more we know about the world and it's rules. It's just as likely that if I only eat the right color yellow foods I'll eventually 'magically' crap gold. I can't prove it won't happen (because I'll never know if I ate the 'right' color foods, if I ever tried), but I can use science to show it's absolutely unlikely to a NEAR certainty (no matter how one misunderstands quantum physics).
The supernatural is right there with my golden poops....and I can't tell which smells worse.

"you appear,and please correct me if i am wrong,to pigeon hole anybody who claims a religion as being a fundamentalist"

I hereby correct you, I did no such thing, and did not mention fundamentalism.

"to say religion has not produced a single novel or new idea,totally ignores the massive contributions in regards to:philosophy,math,astrology,physics.the list is pretty extensive."

Extensive, huh? I'd like to see that list, in fact, enlighten me, and mention just ONE idea that was actually helped along by religion? Do you mean any idea that comes from a person defined as religious in any way? Can you show, in no uncertain terms, that it was the persons religious beliefs that helped solve a particular problem?

The closest I can think of is someone like Mendel, a monk, because his monastary allowed him to spend lots of time growing and studying pea-plants. But you can hardly call it a result of religious studies. If anything, Mendel must have skipped some biblereading to count all his peas.

What I'm talking about is when a proper good idea or concept has emerged from studying or following religious scripture or teaching.