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

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

Sorry mate, but this is a dupe:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Michael-Shermer-Why-People-Believe-Weird-Things

>> ^EndAll:
there's a lot more evidence for a conspiracy in witness testimony, evidence already buried, confidential files not yet released, and the like.


If you have any respect for people like James Randi, Michael Shermer, or anyone who uses scientific methods, then you already understand that witness testimony is possibly the most unreliable way of getting at any truth, and more often than not, completely opposite of the truth.

>> ^cybrbeast:
I really like Bill Maher, but I hope he takes his time off to ponder his stance on real medicine and alternative medicine.
Michael Shermer from Skeptic's Magazine wrote an open letter on the subject to Bill Maher. I hope he listens.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,4465,An-O
pen-Letter-to-Bill-Maher-on-Vaccinations,Michael-Shermer


Hear, hear, Bill Maher is batshit crazy when it comes to vaccines and medicine, ranking right up there with the reality-deniers he makes fun of.

PZ Myers:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/bill_maher_still_doesnt_get_it.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/10/another_thing_that_annoyed_me.php

I really like Bill Maher, but I hope he takes his time off to ponder his stance on real medicine and alternative medicine.

Michael Shermer from Skeptic's Magazine wrote an open letter on the subject to Bill Maher. I hope he listens.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,4465,An-Open-Letter-to-Bill-Maher-on-Vaccinations,Michael-Shermer

While there are interesting ideas within Ayn Rand's books, I would highly recommend a small treatise on her, and her "movement" as detailed by Michael Shermer in his book "Why People Believe Weird Things" - Part 2: Pseudoscience and Superstition, Chapter 8: The Unlikeliest Cult: Ayn Rand, Objectivism, and the Cult of Personality.

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

Oh yeah. See, all these movies take place in a
town called Shermer, in Illinois. And there's all
this fine bush running around, and we could kick
all the dudes' asses because they're all whiney
pussies. Except Judd Nelson - he was harsh. But
best of all, there was no one selling weed. So I
says to Silent Bob "Man, we could live phat if we
were the blunt-connection in Shermer, Illinois!"
So we collected some cash we were owed, and caught
a bus. But when we got here, you know what we found
Out? There is no Shermer in Illinois. What kind
of shit is that?! Fucking movies are bullshit!

^ 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.

>> ^choggie:
Aspartame causes this. People making money off shit bad for the body.
Fluoride, the same.
and phenylketoneurics....tell us, what is that??? Harmless huh???
Those above referenced statements sound like yer basic pap from the mind of some party-line insect....no doubt, some "expert"


Chogglestein, I'm not sure what two Psychologists would get out of writing an article for Skeptic magazine, claiming there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism, maybe they're just sick and crazy doctors?

And are you referring to "phenylketonuric/phenylketonuria" which is an inherited genetic disease due to the faulty metabolism of phenylalanine? The latter which is found in most diet drinks? I've been diabetic for more years than I have fingers and toes, and have enjoyed diet Coke and diet Pepsi without incident in these times. Hell, for a year in my first apartment (I know I'm stupid so don't point it out) that's all I drank, between 6-10 a day. Was I addicted? No, I was addicted to alcohol at the time though! Now it's a random one, or two I enjoy a week, and I've yet to suffer ill effects from the phenylalanine or aspartame. And considering my condition, and sweet tooth, I've ingested more than my fair share of aspartame, I'm sure.

On the issue of the Vaccine-Austim hooplah, however, I'll of course concede that, yes, having such a large amount of shots in one day is over the boards, doing so could potentially injure a child. Also, Qruel, I understand the ppb mercury leves you cited, these vaccines, however, are not using methylmercury, they are using ethylmercury, which (I cite Wiki here): "Unlike methylmercury, ethylmercury has not been found to bioaccumulate.[1] The toxicity of ethylmercury is not well studied, but exposure standards based on methylmercury (such as those currently recommended by the EPA) are not demonstrated to be equivalent for ethylmercury. What does that mean? It means it is easily flushed and expelled by the human body. Unless, of course, a particular human body has problems with that. I note here, that we are all not the same 100% biologically, as Lewis Black said: "What's good for you might kill the bastard sitting next to you."

So, even though there is less observable, and confirmed, damage for ethylmercury, it is still treated as if it were as dangerous and bioaccumulated as methymercury.

Here's another article written by Kristina Chew, PhD, about the Vaccine-Autism hoopla, and her own personal experience with it, as her child has autism: http://www.autismvox.com/the-vaccine-autism-urban-myth/

Here's another good artice over at The Skeptic's Dictionary: The Anti-Vaccination Movement (AVM).

What is shown, for the most part, in these Vaccine-Autism cases is a correlative link. "100 of these 200 kids had X Vaccine, and they got Autism, ergo, the vaccine caused it." A few months ago I had a similar discussion with some "Right-to-Lifers" in my town over a billboard they put up outright saying that abortion caused breast cancer. The "evidence" they cited on their website was decades old, and all refuted by modern studies. Not to mention her strongest "evidence" was that in the last ten years in Canada the rate of abortions and breast cancer went up. I told her so did the use of computers in the home, does that cause cancer too? She screamed the same nonsense into me that "You don't think doctor's would lie about this to make money? What about cigarrettes!".

When it is a personal experience, with a lot of emotion involved, IE; parents with their children, you look for a pattern. We are pattern-seeking primates (as Dr. Shermer mentions in the Skeptic Mag article) and as Carl Sagan pointed out in Demon Haunted World, we tend to find lots of pattern where there is none.

As it still stands there is no solid scientific evidence to prove having these vaccines and children getting autism. I will gladly accept that they do when the evidence is presented.

And I'll say what I said to the Right-to-Life lady on the phone:

"Correlation dose not equal causation, you cannot have causation, not yours."

>> ^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