WOTM: Smokescreens and Magic
I'm baffled at how otherwise intelligent, informed people can use an argument they should know to be invalid. Although, I guess I shouldn't be surprised when talking to the religious. Having been outside that faith mindset for nearly 25 years now, I've kinda forgotten how bifurcated the mind of a believer must be to maintain the faith.
Thanks for all your support. I really hope these videos are a resource for you — for both the laughs/entertainment and the insights. B
Comments (5)
Fabulous as usual, thanks Brian. I could swear I heard you say "gay knowledge", but maybe my auditory circuits took a Freudian route. @Steve, I think the unfortunate thing about descriptions of the Big Bang that include such phrases as "the beginning of space and time" make it easy for folks to interpret that as "something from nothing", like I did for the longest time, now I'm more comfortable with uncertainty/wait and see. It's exciting to hope that we may get closer to answering some of these questions within my lifetime ( I'm 54 and I told my 7 yr old I wanna live to at least 200).
Honesty is the primary reason I am not religious myself. It does not take much effort to "understand" (it has nothing to do with "faith" or "belief") the scientific explanations (a.k.a. - "reality") of nature on all scales (Earth, universe, etc.). Keep up the good work Brian! Some of us understand and are listening!
You also run into a lot of circular reasoning with this sort of discussion. Since God is defined as the being who created the universe, created life, established absolute morals, etc., then he is obviously the "best explanation" for these various phenomena since we do not currently have any other explanations. But God is only the "best explanation" for these phenomena because we have defined him to be, not because there is any actual evidence that he is.
Maybe we should we should use their tools to answer their questions. e.g. "Where did all of the matter come from? Did it just come out of nothing?" No, it was hiding outside of time and space ... with Yahweh! <rim shot=""></rim>
Spot on, Brian. You might also mention that their suppositions are usually wrong also. They claim that the universe was created from nothing and that is not a part of any scientific theory at this point. In order to know that, we would have to know the conditions that existed before the Big Bang to claim that and we do not.