51. THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Available Now on DVD!

Comment #98963 by agg on December 15, 2007 at 3:16 am

I'd like to also join the chorus and thank everybody involved in making this possible. The videos are indeed superb and I guess Josh deserves the credit for that.

But I also want to note that these kinds of discussions are a new and very much needed phenomenon! What makes them different is the free-flow format which lets you just sit, relax and immerse into the thought processes of four really smart people without the annoyance of structured exposition or moderators. Whether one likes watching debates with theists or not, I think, we should acknowledge the need for such discussions.

Josh, thank you also for the teaser on what to expect next. In that respect, I would like to suggest that in some of the upcoming events people of some difference of opinion be paired (e.g. Michael Shermer with his more appeasing approach as opposed to say Richard or Sam). I am not advocating another debate --- I simply crave for the intellectual feast that only a free exchange of thoughts and robust but honest exploration of matters in depth can provide (unconstrained by a misdirected pressure to "win" a debate).

As for this discussion, I utterly enjoyed every single minute of it. I am not going to attempt to rank the participants, but Sam pleased me immensely by being proactive and asking many thoughtful and illuminating questions.

Keep them coming!

52. 2007 Audiobook Download of the Year: The God Delusion

Comment #98856 by agg on December 14, 2007 at 6:29 pm

Wow, I am impressed! Congrats, Richard, and keep them coming!

P.S. There is also something to be said about the readers who buy these books. I like the trend!

53. U.S. Congress Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith

Comment #97943 by agg on December 12, 2007 at 9:31 pm

I am confused: Has this resolution been voted on yet, has it been adopted and by whom (House or Senate)?

54. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #94951 by agg on December 7, 2007 at 3:33 am

The analogy is sound. It is to do with situations that have the appearance of being "rigged". It is about things that make you think "that seemed a bit odd!"

I think, I am starting to see what you are saying from what you wrote below, but this does not redeem the analogy. I still see it as flawed, because instead of complete lack of information in it we have a pretty good a priori reason to expect a certain outcome. That's why I think the analogy with the aliens is better, though I see how it can have problems too.

"Appearance" is a subjective assesment. Something may appear odd to some people and perfectly normal to others. Again, it boils down to probability distribution which comes from experience. I don't think it can be used as an argument here, because it will be circular.

No, this is begging the question.

It would be, if I said: "We don't know if these constants can change, therefore, they can't." But, what I said was: "We don't know if these constants can change, therefore we can't use the possibility of change as support for an argument."

Until you have a good reason to say why the constants can't change, you can't put forward them not being able to change as a useful proposition.

I didn't put forward such a proposition. My proposition was, that until we know how much and with what probability these parameters can change, we can't use the fact that they change as support for any argument (one way or the other).

And putting constraints on change is less parsimonious that allowing freedom.

Ah, so you rely on the principle of parsimony here. That's what I was missing. I am not sure if you can use it like this though. I will have to think about this...

I think you are missing the point. I am not saying that the situation necessarily IS odd, just that it LOOKS odd!

Even with the understanding I have about your claim now, I still think this is a flawed analogy and precisely from the same reason as above: 'Looks' is a subjective assesment that is eventually informed by statistical sampling, i.e. probability distribution.

I tried to think of an analogy that could illustrate your point (the way I understand it) better but I don't think it is even possible. It must necessarily include a unique event for which we have no information (which precludes it from being a useful analogy).

This is not necessarily a matter for surprise, but it is certainly a matter for investigation. To claim that it will not turn out to be surprising at this stage is premature.

Completely agreed. In fact, this is what I was saying too.

You see, we have at least some models of how the physical constants might arise, and they suggest a probability distribution. When work started on String Theory, it was hoped by some that this would lead to a fixing of the physical constants to values something like what we see in this universe. Instead, it has led to the 'String Landscape' - a vast number of possible settings for the constants. We have no idea if String Theory is true, but it is a plausible idea.

I agree. However, what you are saying here is: "If we accept the premise of the String Theory", then we have a probability distribution which makes the case that the universe is "fine tuned". Fine with me (nor do I mind) but it includes an additional assumption for which there does not seem to be evidence yet (i.e. weak argument).

Not really, as the "fine tuning of reality" to allow for the assumption of a creator God is vastly more than the "fine tuning" for improbable constants.

I generally agree but with one caveat: God may not be vastly but only slightly more improbable, if you start considering nested universes, in which each inner universe is created by a mere mortal in the outer one and let the outermost universe be created in any way you like.

55. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #94922 by agg on December 7, 2007 at 2:14 am

No, I am afraid I don't. All you have said is that you don't like the form of the analogy, you have come up with no reason as to why it is incorrect.

I am confused here. An analogy is useful when you try to illustrate a proposition in one domain (e.g our universe) with an equivalent model in another domain (e.g. firing squad). The key here is "equivalent". I think I showed that when translating from the domain of our universe to the domain of the firing squad this analogy is not preserving the important relationship between the objects, i.e. is not equivalent. Thefore, any relationships we may determine in the second domain, may or may not be applicable to the original domain. In other words, because the analogy is flawed, it says nothing about the original claim.

The analogy is appropriate because if the constants were the slightly different, there would be no complexity of any kind, let alone life.

But, again: we don't know if these constants can change, by how much and with what probability. What if all the bullets in the guns of the firing squad are blanks? Should you still be surprised to survive? Are you assuming what Dr. Benway suggest that we should take them to be independent and uniformly distributed?

If you see a pencil balanced on its point, that would look odd even if you see only one.

It would only look odd, because we have seen many pencils in many situations and we have a pretty good statistical sample in our heads to know what the probability distribution is and this is the reason we will find this situation very improbable. If we've never seen anything ever remotely resembling a pencil and this is the first and only time we do, then why should we be surprised at its pose? We may be interested in it, but no reason for surprise? Again, false analogy.

I am sorry to keep pressing the point, but the fine tuning issue is considered to be a real one by most cosmologists. I am not putting a personal viewpoint. This is standard physics. What I believe I am seeing here (and I am happy to be proved wrong) is well-intentioned and perhaps even unconscious special pleading. "Let's try and hand-wave the problem away, as it is used (wrongly) by theists", and "We don't know enough, so let's try and claim it is not a matter for debate".

Steve, I am happy that you keep pressing the point because I may be misunderstanding you and there may really be something I am missing in your reasoning. But so far, I can't see the logic: If you have a single sample of an event, and you have no a priori reason to assume any probability distribution, then I think the only logical conclusion is that you can't say anything about how likely this event is.

Also, please, do not misunderstand me: I am not trying to dismiss this argument. In fact, I think it is the best one theists have and, as I posted, I fully agree that this looks interesting and deserves an answer. But before we know more, we can not reasonably use the "fine tuning" as evidence (either for or against) concerning a creator.

It only has the potential to be evidence for god, if we ever find that the these constants are indeed very improbable.

56. Former Evangelical Minister Has a New Message: Jesus Hearts Darwin

Comment #94888 by agg on December 7, 2007 at 12:58 am

Bonzai, exactly what I was going to say: This looks like the god of Spinoza and Einstein and nothing like the Christian god.

I have no problem with this guy preaching his "new revelation". In fact, more power to him! We badly need people like him.

57. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #94879 by agg on December 7, 2007 at 12:08 am

Well, there is an old analogy that is often used here. Suppose you were about to be executed by a vast firing squad. Say, a thousand rifles. And all the rifles either jam or miss you. It would not be a reasonable response to say "well, that was simply an unlikely occurence, nothing more" - you should certainly be suspicious that something else was going on. Same with the finely tuned constants. There must be something else going on. That is not to involve a God; but there is something that needs explaining.

Steve, I was taken aback by this analogy the first time I heard it, but it is not valid. And, since it seems to be popular, I think we should do good to pinpoint the fallacy:

The mere fact that you are standing in front of a firing squad immediately brings to mind a scenario of execution as a punishment (sometimes explicitly stated, as in your case) --- a situation whose sole purpose (ugh!) as an outcome is your death. The firing squad is pictured in your mind as people in military uniform, well trained to kill without hesitation. And while I don't know what the exact probability of a gun misfiring is, we all know that it is incredibly low. This makes your survival extremely unlikely.

I hope you see now that he comparison with the constants in our universe is invalid. As you acknowledged we don't know the probability of these constants, while in the analogy the probability is implicitly set extremely low.

So, let's try to correct the analogy: First, let's strip the firing squad of the uniforms and let them be ordinary people in plain clothes. Next, let them be far away so that the things in their hands only look like some old and rusty things shaped a bit like guns. Furthermore, let them point these things not directly at you but somewhat in your general direction. Oh, and did I mention that the people are only twenty-five (more or less --- the number of fundamental constants), rather than 1000? How does it look like now?

(Initially, I thought of replacing the firing squad with kids, but that would shift the perception towards the other extreme --- certainty of safety, rather than certainty of danger.)

But, for the analogy to be true, we have to go even further: Due to lack of much imagination right now, I think the best I can come up with is the following scenario: Imagine you are abducted by aliens and wake up in a strange environment. You see twenty-five of them point something at you and press a button. A brief flash of light comes out as they do. Now, should you be surprised to find yourself alive?

I think Riley and Bonzai are right in this. We can not speak of any probabilities here because we only have a single sample. We have no idea of the probability distribution. If it is uniform over the 25-D space of real numbers, then, yeah, you can talk about fine tuning. In the other extreme, if it is anything like the Dirac's delta function, then there is no fine tuning whatsoever --- it is the only possible outcome. There are infinitely many plausible scenarios in-between (including that these 25 variables are not independent)!

This is why I hate the term "fine tuning". We can not talk about "fine tuning" because we can not show that anything is fine tuned yet!

That said, I agree that this state of affairs is fascinating and still requires an explanation.

I also think that pointing out, as you do, the multitudes of possibilities other than "God did it" is very important in debate with theists, because they typically take "we don't know" as evading an answer we don't like.

58. Bad Faith Awards: Vote for the winner now

Comment #94829 by agg on December 6, 2007 at 6:02 pm

I don't think this competition is fair: most people on the list are professionals. I think they should be excluded.

I would not really vote for D'Souza: I think I have quite a bit to learn from him still about the power of imagination and the countless ways one can commit logical fallacies. I am fascinated by this guy.

So the real contention is between Chuck Norris, Joyce Pratt and Richard Dannatt. What a tough choice!

I have to go with the good general on this --- the implications of what he said are scary. In addition, they brought back unpleasant memories from my service in the army.

59. Highway to hysteria

Comment #94249 by agg on December 5, 2007 at 5:07 am

Yeah, I can recall a few months back when the Almighty sent special blessings to this highway (as only He can):

http://www.salem-news.com/stimg/august032007/bridge_photo_3.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osocGiofdvc

60. Beyond Belief 07: Enlightenment 2.0

Comment #93650 by agg on December 3, 2007 at 8:09 pm

I can't believe this: I finally got around to watching the Beyond Belief videos from last year and they post these too!!!

61. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93362 by agg on December 2, 2007 at 10:10 pm

sent2null: I know about these, and, yes "Nice guys finish first" is superb --- one of my favorites.

When you recommended reading up on game theory and morality, I thought you were talking about a specific publication in applied mathematics circles. I see now that I've misinterpreted your post.

Anyway, one can never recommend watching this video enough. I hope someone else will stumble on it the way I did.

Thanks.

62. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #93115 by agg on December 2, 2007 at 8:36 am

Dr. Benway: fantastic!

63. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93114 by agg on December 2, 2007 at 8:31 am

I would ask, if "god" created time itself, how is it possible that it took "god" no time to engage in this process? It would not have been possible to create time without taking a certain amount (no matter how small) of time to perform the action.

Mike, I think D'Souza alluded to his answer to this when he was answering a "Who created God?" question from the audience. He made an (yet another) analogy comparing this universe with a narrative of a book by Dostoyevsky. The actions of the characters in the narrative can be explained in terms of the narrative but they can not be used as an explanation of anything the author does. In other words: it's outside the universe, we don't know, we may not even have the ability to conceptually understand it.

I think Dennett did quite well in this case to point out that the concept of creation in this analogy also belonged to the narrative itself.

64. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93105 by agg on December 2, 2007 at 7:56 am

sent2null and steve99: thanks for the explanation and the references --- I will add them to my long and rapidly growing list of things to read.

Anyone who'd like to read more about what mathematics has to say about moral decisions should read about Game Theory.

sent2null, what do you mean by that? As a computer scientist, I am familiar with game theory, at least as it relates to computer science, but I don't see a direct link. I am sure it has application in ethics --- I just don't see a direct connection. Perhaps, you were trying to recommend a specific publication on game theory and morality? Also, did you mean moral decisions or behavior?

65. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93035 by agg on December 2, 2007 at 3:24 am

Future observations of the cosmic microwave background may reveal patterns due to gravity waves, and if they do, that has the potential to tell us a lot about the nature of things at the time of the big bang, including several multiverse ideas.

Fascinating stuff. Is there a concrete hypothesis formulated connecting the existence of a multiverse to expected patterns or is it all just a preliminary conjecture? Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.

Well, I think that 'knowing the unknowable' is self-contradictory. And you are certainly doing that if you label the unknowable 'God'.

Ah, but here lies the catch: They don't claim to know it; they only claim to believe it :)

66. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93032 by agg on December 2, 2007 at 3:09 am

Neal: no, not really. Logically, there is nothing wrong with the existence of a god (or any object) which we can't sense. But if this is a god, it is the deist's god. If you claim an interventionist god, then you have a problem.

67. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93031 by agg on December 2, 2007 at 3:03 am

Russell, I find that watching D'Souza is much more tolerable and even fun if you take it as a challenge to understand the art of coming up with logic so twisted.

When I don't know something, I admit that I don't know it. When I am confused, I stop and think. But he's always going on and on whether he has a point or not and some of the stuff he says I couldn't come up with even if my life depended on it.

I find that fascinating. Perhaps I am twisted in that way...

68. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93028 by agg on December 2, 2007 at 2:51 am

Dawkins is not against 'Gods' in principle. What he is against is Gods that have not arisen by evolution.

Steve, I know --- I was simply sharing a funny thought. Besides, as I said, this kind of reasoning would be fallacious because it conflates two different entities (us and out god, if it exists) by calling them both god.

Further, I suspect that invoking Occam's razor may not even be necessary here: As a real scientific hypothesis, the multi-verse hypothesis, should be (is?) actually testable. You seem to dig physics better than I do; perhaps you can shed some light on that.

I am afraid that this is not logically consistent. If something is beyond what we can know, then, by definition, it is unknowable, and so to label it 'God' is absurd.

As far as I know, there is no good, generally agreed upon definition for a god. I think it should be perfectly fine for a theist to define their god for the sake of an argument as they see fit as long as they don't import any of the properties commonly associated with this word.

But regardless of what you call it, even if you define it as the Christian god of the bible, I think it is possible to build a logically consistent worldview around that. It will just involve a lot of special pleading and wish-washy reinterpretation. It may become mind-bogglingly absurd but the only chance you would have to logically disprove such a thing would be for it to be self-contradictory --- and this is where the reinterpretation come into play: to avoid self-contradictions.

You can expose the absurdity of the mental gymnastics required to avoid contradictions and that's a perfectly valid approach. Another approach is to emphasize the burden of proof. I guess some people may be better persuaded by one and some by the other (and some will never be persuaded, no matter what). But what I wanted to say is that even if somebody comes up with a logically consistent bullshit explanation, they would still need to overcome the burden of proof and show some evidence. And that's often forgotten in debates like this.

69. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93018 by agg on December 2, 2007 at 1:29 am

Based on what I've seen here and previously with Schermer and Hitchens, I am really impressed by D'Souza. I think he is a master at these debates, even more so than Hitchens. He's honed his rhetorical skills and behavior and is able to relate his thoughts to the audience very well with analogies and in simple terms making it easy for them to accept the information he's feeding them. When he has a valid point he expertly delivers it and when he does not --- oh boy, he's at his best then swimming in the ocean of obfuscation. He's an excellent performer.

Because that's what these debates are: a performance. A show for the public, in which if you behave like the winner, you very likely will be the one in their eyes. (And while the audience this time looked like a poor choice for D'Souza, remember that this video is going to be on the Internet for all the faithful to see). But, aside from the entertainment factor and perhaps getting to see some of the popular theists, I am left intellectually empty --- longing for an actually honest, open and serious discussion.

This one was a bit of an exception because I'm still fascinated by the rhetorical skills of D'Souza. Not that he made any persuasive argument but the way he made his points (for those of you who may think I am defending his position). For example, the way he handled the question about parsimony (part 14, around 6:50) was brilliant: He "helped" questioner misrepresent the principle and then shot it down even though D'Souza himself used it earlier as an evidence for God over the multiverse hypothesis (as far as I understood).

This lead me to an interesting thought. Using Occam's razor may soon be misinterpreted in a much more subtle way. Basically, in one of his interviews, RD made an argument for the multi-verse hypothesis over God on this principle: the universe exists as an entity, therefore the existence of many universes is more parsimonious than God, because it does not introduce a new entity.

But if we soon happen to reach the point where an intelligent program, operating in its own programmed environment, meets all criteria for life (which don't seem to be well defined), then in essence we'll have created also an entity called God (i.e. us) and then RD's point will seem moot. Now, of course, this is sophism, but I'd love to see what D'Souza would make of this, just for the entertainment value :)

BTW, wouldn't the above imply that a god is not an object but a relationship: an entity (e.g. the programmer) may be a god with respect to some (e.g. the program) and a non-god (e.g. mere mortal) with respect to others? Any philosophers here?

One thing that bothered me about the debate and some of the comments here (because it almost always comes up) is the burden of proof. D'Souza's views may well be logically consistent. At one point he said (and defended this point well) that there are limits to what we know and, I think, he even defined God as the thing beyond what we can know. He clearly realizes that he's basing his theistic worldview on additional beliefs. He even admitted that he's strictly agnostic (wow!), acknowledged that his theism is just a belief, and then he quickly proceeded to misrepresent atheism and attack that popular strawman: that it claims that there is nothing beyond what we can know, effectively trying to shift the burden of proof.

Now, the point I wanted to make here is that it is possible for a person to hold a completely logically consistent theistic worldview. In fact, there are infinite such worldviews, which may include as many gods as you like. This also includes a Christian worldview, as long as you reinterpret it to wash away the apparent contradictions in the Bible. So attacking such a theistic stance by trying to show inconsistencies won't ever work because the theist can always retreat to that safe harbor of things that we can never know. The only way to attack this is to remind the theist of who has the burden of proof and I am sorry Dan did not challenge him on that.

I was very happy, though, to see a member of the audience take him up on the jump from a deist god (which was what D'Souza was defending all the time) to a Christian god. It was fun to watch D'Souza's mental yoga.

70. Banishing the Green-Eyed Monster

Comment #92637 by agg on December 1, 2007 at 2:25 am

Since this has become such an interesting discussion, I would try to contribute.

As Sam Harris said (and I very much agree), a good criterion for morality of an action is the amount of suffering it causes. So I would join the many of you in saying that I don't see anything morally wrong with a polyamorous relationship as long as everybody involved is voluntarily in it.

Interestingly enough, I didn't see anyone here opposing polyamory on moral grounds when practiced by someone else but I also didn't see anyone embracing it for themselves (nothing wrong with that, just an observation).

I know I am certainly capable of loving (in a general sense) more than one person (e.g. my parents, my wife). If I ever have more than one child I can't envision loving one of them more than the other. But the love I feel to each person is different (non-comparable, but different). So perhaps this could apply to romantic love as well?

However, the discussion is more interesting when we are not talking about an individual but the whole society. So a big question is: What would it take to make polyamory practical in a society on a large scale (note: practical not mandatory)?

There was a time when I had 100% of Richard's thoughts on polyamory in my head. I could envision a society (perhaps long in the future) which is based on reason as much as humanly possible (and of course religion is gone --- Utopia, yay!) and was wondering how marriage would look like in it or if such thing would even exist.

Of course, the principle of equality says that if I am allowed to have more than one partner, my partners should too be allowed more than one. Also, as somebody already said in this thread, women by their nature are in a disproportionately unfair position when it comes to raising kids, so men should make sure to take their fare share. This makes the questions of disease spreading, contraception and child rearing a lot more pertinent.

Say this happens far enough in the future, when the problems of STDs and contraception are solved 100%. We are still left with how the children will be raised. You may decide to have children with more than one person, so it's going to get interesting when it's your turn to spend a weekend with two or more of your kids from different partners (and maybe an unrelated to them partner?).

It looks like this will eventually lead to a kind of community where everyone is "kind of" related to a lot of people and, if the community is not too large, it may start making sense for any adult to care for any child. Of course, this would also mean that in addition to sexual jealousy, we'll have to also raise above our natural reluctance to rear others' children as well.

Is this society possible? I don't know --- I wouldn't completely write it off. All I know is that it is not happening anytime soon.

But I'd be interested to hear what other consequences can this lead to.

Also, one other important point: We're all here about the scientific method but I didn't see many here (including me, of course) approach the problem scientifically (with the excellent and much appreciated exception by Dr. Benway).

The first step is to review the relevant published literature. Surely there must have been some research done into polyamory/polygamy. Anyone can contribute with actual scientific findings? (If someone else has already done this, I apologize --- it's been a long thread).

71. 'Teddy' teacher jailed in Sudan

Comment #92089 by agg on November 29, 2007 at 9:25 pm

Wow, first the poor woman in Saudi Arabia and now this... I am afraid they've finally managed to reach past my tipping point. I am usually as socially active as a dead man but this has finally got to me and I gotta do something.

The question is what?

As a first step, I was about to send an extremely angry letter to the ambassador of Sudan but I found out the position in the US is vacant. I will still write one but I'll have to find out whom to send it to.

Next is a long-overdue donation to the RDF with the hope that it has some impact on getting some people to see reason when it hits them on their head.

But that seems too little and frankly not very helpful to the poor teacher in jail. Any suggestions about what one can do to help her in a more direct way?

Also, any chance we can at least try to keep this in the news for a while?

This is insult to humanity and I refuse to share even a single bit of DNA with those malignant molecular conglomerates.

72. Bankrolling Ali's Asylum

Comment #90993 by agg on November 26, 2007 at 10:25 pm

mejdrich, thanks for the reply. So it is as I suspected but I'm still a bit perplexed at the strong reaction (not from you but from others in this thread).

First, the article clearly states that Sam was joking. That this is no way to measure morality (on which we obviously agree) should be painfully obvious to anyone who is actually willing to think.

Second, Christians have been claiming to be morally superior for quite some time now; it does not look like they are waiting for the outcome of this donation campaign.

Third, as I suggested, I don't think it very likely that a breakdown of donations by donor's religion be possible so that a final result emerges. Furthermore, Sam (if anyone), should be in the best position to know what the actual situation is.

So, while I can not completely discount the possibility that this comment will come back to hunt him (us), I really think this is a remote chance and in any event will not represent any valid criticism of atheism.

And in case it looks like I am acting apologetically for Sam: I will confess that I still don't know what to make of his donation campaign.

Janus (comment 50): I am not sure if I was included in any of two categories, however I agree that there seems to be a healthy mix of opinions here and am also quite happy about this state of affairs. I appreciated your first and subsequent sceptical comments on the Urgent Appeal thread -- I had the exact same thoughts in my head.

73. 'Muhammad' teddy teacher arrested

Comment #90957 by agg on November 26, 2007 at 7:50 pm

Haste, thanks for giving us your perspective. I have been wondering for a while if there is a selective bias in the information we tend to receive in the news these days about Islam, so I'd like to hear personal accounts as well.

Is it possible, though, that the people you grew up with subscribe to a particular version of Islam that is more moderate and therefore your view of this religion is shaped by a small (not representative?) sample?

74. Bankrolling Ali's Asylum

Comment #90952 by agg on November 26, 2007 at 7:20 pm

I've been reading and re-reading the article to make sure that I am not missing the context but, for the life of me, I can't seem to see how Sam's comment is even the slightest bit negative or offensive to atheists (or gives ammunition to the Christian right).

Can anyone who objected please explain what they see as objectionable in it?

The only thing I could remotely come up with is a perceived implication that morality and social engagement can be measured by the amount of money contributed to a specific cause (but that assumes that Sam was half-way serious saying this and that he has the means to know how much of the contributions he gets are from christians and how much from atheists)?

75. Enemies of Reason

Comment #65060 by agg on August 22, 2007 at 7:11 pm

Hi, everybody. This is my first post here and I want to start by thanking the person who uploaded the videos for those of us around the globe who don't have access to Channel 4. I just hope there aren't any copyright issues with this.

About the episodes: I must say I am a little disappointed. The point is sorely needed to be made, but I expected a bit more rigorous an approach to debunking these weird claims. Some of the things (e.g. dowsing, cold reading, homeopathy) were subjected to evidential treatment but for many (e.g. the scene with the angels or the chakras) it came out as Prof. Dawkins' word against the practitioners'.

Perhaps, RD meant to let them do the talking, assuming that the audience will see for themselves how ridiculous they sound. But that's not a good example for science (which is what's most needed by the people we expect to benefit from these episodes). I am also not sure if it would work -- Unfortunately, I know more than enough people who would actually find (some of) the interviewees perfectly reasonable (You don't have any angels around you? That's because you haven't invited any!) and fail to see why Prof. Dawkins is saying that they're wrong.

So I can see a large part of the audience agreeing with the videos (but who would have agreed even beforehand) and another large part remaining utterly unconvinced. I am not sure if there will be a significant third part who would actually change their opinion (or even think about that for a while). I must say I am not sure exactly what the target audience for these episodes is and I hope I am wrong about this.

I understand that it is not up to Prof. Dawkins to disprove every weird claim but up to those who make the claim to present the evidence for it. I guess my point is that perhaps Prof. Dawkins could have been more insistent on evidence for each grotesque claim and let the person who touts it show that there isn't any.

Oh, well. I should not complain too much. There is only this much one can cram in two hours and it is still a lot better than I would have done...

Anyone else felt the same way?