This video is posted everywhere. In case you haven't watched it before you should do so right now. It's brilliant.
Imagine that you're at a dinner party and someone announces that all knowledge is relative, alternative medicine is better than real medicine, and science relies on faith—just like religion. That's the situation Tim Minchin found himself in. Here's how he struggled to keep quiet but eventually .....
8 comments :
Funny thing is, if Christians could even pull of a Horton Hears a who with their god, it'd at least have a basis to take their assertions seriously.
Actually Michael you wouldn't believe in God himself appeared in front of you. Ad mit it. The biggest lie of the century is atheism because everyone has a god including atheists. However they just pick a human god or gods rather like primitive tribes instead of the true and living God.
This video demonstrates precisely how people justify their dislike of skeptics. While I think both Storm and Tim both behaved atrociously is their respective manners, it was interesting that the hosts didn't try to steer the conversation back to something less controversial.
That was sublime.
@Anonymous person who said I wouldn't believe in God if appeared in front of me. Well first, which god? Second, I'd be inclined to believe if I saw something that would fit whatever description I'd agree upon as a god, but I would still ask for some outside input to help rule out insanity, side effects from medication and what not.
Also err, atheism=lack of belief in gods. So not sure how atheist could have one and still qualify as you know, atheist. I have yet to see why one imaginary friend is more real than any other. I suspect that post to be a poe/troll.
@imaginary anonymous troll you wouldn't believe in God himself appeared in front of you
And you believe when he doesn't.
Religion and Man:
Every organizim on earth is a product of it's environment.
Humans are nothing more then an organizim.
Any belief in a religion and it's hierarchical structure is a result of our environment.
Change our environment and you will change our needs.
People cling to religion because currently our environment presents this need.
No amount of argument will change this fact.
@Anonymous
Not many would argue against religion having some sort of evolutionary explanation.
Richard Dawkins: Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-produce is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses. For excellent reasons related to Darwinian survival, child brains need to trust parents and elders whom parents tell them to trust. An automatic consequence is that the truster has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad. The child cannot know that "Don't paddle in the crocodile-infested Limpopo" is good advice but "You must sacrifice a goat at the time of the full moon, otherwise the rains will fail" is at best a waste of time and goats. Both admonitions sound equally trustworthy. Both come from a respected source and are delivered with a solemn earnestness that commands respect and demands obedience.
The same case might be made for xenophobia, rape and genocide.
Hopefully evolution seems to have given us brains big enough (with a few notable exceptions) that we can take conscious control over our lives and not be prisoners to some of the traits that made our ancestors so successful.
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