As a programmer and a bayesian I allow myself plenty of room to be wrong but for the longest time I've had a real problem letting other people be wrong. I've recently come to the realization that it isn't my place to tell people they're wrong and that when I do the way I go about it often doesn't really do any good. I look forward to reading Dr Boghossian's book.
GREAT interview! Not only was it a treat to hear Peter Boghossian discuss his book, but it was also valuable to hear Michael Shermer talk about similar problems he's had with his own "impossible conversations".
An embryo is life, but so are bacteria, carrots and mosquitos and we"re fine ending them because they're inconvenient or delicious. Not every living thing needs to be preserved.
Not a great argument. There is a difference between a non human lifeform that may cause damage to us and a potential human. The argument involving it's lack of sentience and pain receptors up to a point is a better one, or the moral discussions about whether it's ok for a human to parasite another human for survival
@@RenegadeContext Not great grammar: the verb form of parasite is parasitize. My argument is better than than the lack of pain receptors etc .. in my opinion, and we're all welcome to opinions on arguments.
We are just airing out more disagreements nowadays i think than before, and inndoing so we are discovering that we believe in widely different things or ideas. the real issue is how we both distance ourselves emotionally from our own beliefs in such a way as to be able to discuss stuff we feel strongly about and counter arguments to our own positions, and how we engage with delivering counter arguments to other people’s beliefs that we think are flawed or incomplete. The trick is to manage it without seeming like an asshole, or stepping on peoples identity, which is more difficult that we imagine, most of us have a kind of limited and narrow perspective on what it is like to be someone else, why they believe what they do, and exactly how much or little malice there is in those worldviews. Someone might believe something i find disgusting for completely innocent reasons, and in that case if they had my perspective on the issue they might see the problem with it, or alternatively if i had theirs i would see how it isn’t disgusting from that perspective even if i still would find it problematic. All kinds of issues arise in these situations but i think thats a sign of barking up the right tree, we need to be our own software developers in a sense if we are to make a better world where tolerance and wide preferences fly with modern technology and increased openness. :) will read the gentleman’s book for sure.
On the contrary; I think people that were centrist are now considered to be lefties. The country has lurched to the right. Now your average right-wingers are actually fascists.
@@JasonLewisjasonlewis The problem is that people who discuss being centrist online can tend to say "wait and see" when it comes to right-wing extremism, downplaying it. That is possibly where this stereotype is formed.
Richard Dawkins book brought many out of Islam. I suspect the more controlling the religion is, the more a rude awakening is needed. A softer approach can be taken with those who are loosely religious.
For Islam, I think the problem is entrenched in the communities because it is a political religion like judaism : theocracy is welcomed. Questioning their beliefs is destroying their identity and their belonging to the Oumma. Certainly this happens for all religions but I think Islam is way more prone to this problem.
There's a high probability apostasy will get you dead in Islamic countries and ostracised from one's family and community in secular societies or societies with other religions.
@@FannyAnzai They mistake faith for fact, which seems to be the intentions of the con artists who started religion in the first place to control and manipulate the masses... remember never take anyone's B-lief S-ystem too seriously.
So what do I mean when I say "I have complete faith that one day the scientific community will discover a cure for this disease". Apply Twains definition and see if the sentence still means what you understand it to mean.
I am about one third through Dr. Boghossian's book. Dr. Boghossian and Dr. Lindsay offer many valuable observations and astute advise for navigating one's way through difficult conversations. When I read the words on page 77, I immediately thought of Dr. Walter Block's book _Defending the Undefendable_ . Dr. Boghossian wrote, “Never defend indefensible behavior.” Since Dr. Boghossian firmly believes that words must be defined prior to engaging in a conversation where those words are an integral part of the discourse, shouldn't the term, “indefensible behavior” also be defined?
On the "space egg" issue, I would have been tempted to tell the woman: "What if you came across a golden egg? You'd want to protect it and the goose that laid it, right? But as for a million plain old white chicken eggs, crack a few, make an omelette and no big deal. There is a difference between finding a space egg on a distant asteroid and a human egg in one of billions of female human beings. Yes, they are both life, but they have differentiated intrinsic value attached." Needless to say, my mind wouldn't be significantly altered in her presented analogy.
Yeah, I think that example was essentially making an equivocation fallacy (though I'm not sure who committed it). There's different ways of talking about "life" and not all imply moral status. If Peter was insisting that the embryo wasn't alive, then it's a good counterpoint. I think it's fairly obvious that an embryo is alive...one could even argue that the sperm or egg alone are alive - the definition of life is pretty fuzzy. The real question is whether the embryo ought to have moral status to the point where you will bias its life sufficiently to overrule the mother's choices with respect to it. While there are some that extend moral status very far to most living things, it seems like the extreme vegan types usually fall on the pro-choice side so you're probably not dealing with someone like that...so they still have all their work ahead of them even if they get you to admit that they're living human cells.
I'm glad I found this discussion, it's fascinating so far! Dr. Shermer, you have indeed been an "asshole" but probably not intentionally. On the Rogan podcast with Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson, although you were very cordial, I thought you were a little too fast to dismiss some of their themes. Either way, it was an awesome podcast and a lot of fun to listen to, so I thank you for your participation in it, and all the other content you create or contribute to.
My favorite debates contain self canceling contradictions that leave the audience clapping and wondering what were they clapping about. If evidence for a powerful, loving, compassionate, wise, god was present everywhere, I would immediately submit. When the religious surrender to god they are surrendering to themselves.
For me my intense passion to argue with anyone about my beliefs is that I am a libertarian. My beliefs do not affect anyone who disagrees with me. If the Left has there way, my life is affected. In a vacuum, I could care less about what others believe, but when those ideas become reality, my life is threatened. I think that the majority of anti-leftists have discovered that ideas matter a lot!!Ideas become laws, ideas can greatly affect your life in a profoundly negative way. Every person that I find myself at odds with are trying their hardest to collectivize me and take my individual liberties. In 2022, you have to fight tooth and nail to save your individualism. If liberty oriented people don’t fight, debate and argue their case, they lose.
The problem is not more people identifying as far left. I used to be on the far left but people were far more willing to discuss. Indeed they were always willing to debate in the hope of winning you over. In those days not even the Stalinists were as Stalinist as these postmodernists who regard words as violence. The problem is the kind of far left and far right we have now and some centrists manage to be as extreme and intolerant of alternative views as well.
Something I've struggled with for a long time is explaining my conclusion about "what happens after we die?" - I've finally arrived at a very concise statement: "The experience of whatever organism happens to be born after I end will be the experience that comes after mine."
@@allentomas3417 All periods of non-experience are simply skipped over, just like when we go unconscious from anesthesia and we "skip" that hour or so...
@@naturalisted1714 Death and Its Aftermath If a person dies, the life force he had is gone and he no longer exists anywhere in any form. He stays dead (figuratively, “asleep”) until he is “awakened” from the dead by the Lord Jesus. All dead Christians will be awakened at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to meet the Church in the air and be judged for rewards. Old Testament and Tribulation believers will be awakened at the coming of the Lord to the earth. Everyone else who has ever lived will be awakened after the Millennial Kingdom and judged for either everlasting life or everlasting death. The only hope for all those who have died is their resurrection from the dead by the Lord Jesus Christ, himself the “firstborn from among the dead” (Col. 1:18).
12:00 In other words: If you ask someone for evidence for their beliefs and they give that evidence, then they strengthen the neurological pathways that strengthen their beliefs.
Every time I hear the term "militant atheist" or "militant theist", I always picture a secularist or religionist in guerrilla garb, carrying a gun and forcing people not to have particular thoughts. Those who control the use and the meaning of words, control the discourse. I never use the word "militant" unless there is violence or the threat of violence involved.
People will often use militant to mean incredibly strict and devoid of variation as though they were in a military style boot camp. I personally have never associated it with violence only withe strictness and lack of flexibility of a militia
Interesting hearing Michael Shermer describe the underlying values beneath anti-GMOs / anti-Monsanto views: In my circles, the inability of capitalism/Monsanto to do the right thing with genetic engineering actually is what I would consider the heart of the problem that many of us try to talk about. Sometimes on Quora one person after another is making the same point, but it's nearly impossible to get the conversations off the abstracted "GMOs good vs GMOs bad," pretending what GMOs would be in an abstract economy that doesn't look like our world. You described the actual "I've been trying to tell you" belief as if it was the unspoken belief underneath. Without active listening steps we all just argue right past each other. I wonder how often that is happening in different conversations: views that aren't actually the opposite of each other but get reduced to that.
Martin Gardner was a big influence on me (e. g., Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science), and I was quite shocked to find out he was fideist, which I think hediscussed in The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener.
okay one point... in my opinion, an interviewer's job is to draw out the information and insights of the person being interviewed, NOT use the interview as an excuse to get on their own soap box. In other words, i'm 4.5 minutes into this, and the guy i want to hear is not allowed to talk. Is this how the entire hour is gonna go? Cos I came to hear Boghossian. [EDIT] I just scrolled my cursor over the "line" at the bottom of the video so the entire hour is seen in a few seconds -- and yep, Boghossian's lips aren't moving much at all while the interviewer's lips are moving constantly. I'm out of here and thumbsdown. Hope this feedback is helpful to you for future interviews.]
“The devil arises from an angel foaming at the mouth... The style of the debate is more important than the subject of the debate. Subjects come and go, while style shapes civilization.” (Grigory Pomerants, philosopher)
Just started reading Dr. Boghossian's Manual for Creating Athiests (Its amazing!) Going to be picking this one up next. Congrats on the new book, Peter!
I have had knock down drag out arguments over the state of this country, and our beliefs. After years of this, I stumbled upon 1 thing that shuts people down. I will say that I no problems with anything they believed and that they have every right to believe anything they want. I respect their right to believe what they want. BUT, the reason I get so angry, and passionate, and sound intolerant is because if everything I believe were to become some sort of law, or reality would have no affect on them personally, while EVERYTHING they believe profoundly affects me individually and steals liberty. I have yet to find anyone on the opposite side of liberty and morality who can overcome that. I virtually get no response at all. The argument just ends.
What are the issues that democrats want to make into law that will remove your liberties? I can tell you that Republicans want to make abortion and even birth control illegal. Talk about affecting a private matter!!! Republicans keep trying to put religion into public schools. That's certainly affecting people who are free thinkers and people of non Christian faiths. On the other hand, democrats do want common sense gun laws to try and reduce the number of mass murders. This particular law will not prevent you from getting guns. So, i can't see how this could be an issue. Perhaps you are concerned about limits on social media. If someone is being banned, perhaps there is a reason like lying. Lying cannot be tolerated. Lying is very much like murder. Killing the truth is not victimless. So what is your list?
I'd like to read PB's book. It could definitely offer some practical advice. I've only watched about 45 minutes of this thing so perhaps they address this later, but I feel like it was just a little too easy for them to say "oh, my parents had different political beliefs and were friends with many they disagreed with". My thought is that was a long time ago. From today's perspective Republicans and Democrats in the past don't seem so radically different. Or at least there's a sense that they want the same things but would advocate different ways of getting there. These days the division seems wider. And as another example, I'm reading case after case of Qanon being a HUGE divisive force, with nutty family members routinely ruining family gatherings with screaming matches in front of impressionable kids. It shouldn't be done lightly, but there times when people are just too far gone to subject oneself to.
"From a necessarily agnostic (I DON'T KNOW) POV, the Atheist is a Theorist who is questioning the reasons and rationalization for a belief leading to a posit, hypothesis, theory and implimentation of the original faith and trust in the starting belief positioning. It's always about the navigation, of course, mathematically speaking, because a Theologian says, like a Mathematician speaking about the Origin, "It's always been", empirically/self-defining Eternity-now, here-now-forever. A "sense of proportion" does not exist without some sort of expectations of infinite limit, so any arguments over differences will always be a mismatch. All intentional discussion has to begin from a point of view in balance, the central limit boundary of zero-infinity difference temporarily recognized as .dt infinitesimal. (I "believe" in applying The Calculus of Time Duration-length proportions of potential probabilities in potential possibilities of Timing, integration of CCC) A discussion in Physics (the typical Materialism), is typically based on a "Mezzanine" floor built by Einstein's Relativity => curvature Theories, the extreme difference of complex orthogonality defining Spacetime properties, so an agnostic re-view of the e-Pi-i Singularity-Origin positioning here-now forever asks what Timespace is, because is-ness, WYSIWYG Observations, to be believed by theoretical definition, does not begin with an absolute starting point, logic=connection, or end with a complete proof. "Spacetime is Doomed!" "If God exists", we're "it" (it is-ness) in Actuality, in some proportion and degree, by absolute logic. The history of the material->spiritual derivation of Theological beliefs is reflected in the context of transverse projection/development across QM-TIMESPACE. Theoretically and theologically, good = god, case by case.., "in the Event", of pure relative motion. A good moderation talk.
[03:15] Paradox of disliking/ostracism [06:34] Climate change stance and political party affiliation (correlation) [07:21] The Dunning-Kruger Effect “When you’re so ignorant, you don’t understand your own ignorance.”
People get divorced over small things all the time, they just let them grow into massive problems, the issue is that if you let things simmer and stay inside each skull when its bothering you it starts leaking into the floors supporting every other part of the relationship, Or even just Conversations
Yeah but especially online, online its hard not to seem like an asshole sometimes, i try not to, but i really don’t take it too seriously, i try to at least never be mean.
Glad you mentioned self-segregation and tribalism. Race is just a convenient excuse were multiple races exist together. My hometown was almost entirely "white," but we didn't recognize this commonality. I might prevent us from hating one another for other reasons.
Actually, some philosophically oriented atheists restrict the definition to a belief that a god does not exist. I'm thinking of Julian Baggini and Graham Oppy, among others.
It should probably be made clear that "god" in this context strictly refers to an actually existing agent that interacts with reality in measurable ways (answering prayers for examply). It is only this kind of god that Atheism is unconvinced by. If a person's conception of god is not that, but rather some vague sense of a First Cause, then there isn't necessarily disagreement with atheists. If a god does not interact with our reality in any way, then, from our perspective, it is identical to a god that does not exist.
In philosophy, every proposition has a negational proposition: the negation of “God” is “Not God”. This is useful - in philosophy. However in non-academic dialogue, and in the context of personal beliefs and social interaction, there are many possible reactions to the God proposition. It is in this broader conceptual world where many actual atheists hang their mental hat.
it's bugging me to keep hearing nonbelievers refer to "God", as if there is a certain one. which one? oh, the middle east goat herder god? when we argue with believers about "God", we're already given it too much credit. we're already starting inside their current-era-monotheistic bubble. why that god and no other? let's start there instead of "God" this and "God" that.
Nonbelievers refer to the Abrahamic god mostly because it is the one most commonly believed in. However, we know that a great deal of apologists will argue for a deist god or a generic god and then claim it leads to the Abrahamic god belief. LOL If the majority of believers believed in some other god than the Abrahamic god, then that would be the one most referred to.
For the longest time the atheist "movement" was not a skeptic movement, but a denial movement. The new version being put forward here is much better, with actual open-mindedness replacing the knee-jerk denial in the first version. Still no clear definition of God here though, so more work to do to achieve 3.0.
Yes, the question here is a matter of suffering, not being alive. A single cell (or even a cluster of a few hundred) are not capable of suffering, and so the issue of morality does not apply.
What I always get intrigued with is the mechanism that makes religious people easily gullible without evidences to belief in supernatural things they are not sure of it but so hard to exercise reason and seem to need evidence to disbelief. It's just another dishonest religious double standard.
information and knowledge is not the problem, talking and communicating do not make bad intentions good. this is an ideological war and there are never solutions to those.
42:22 - there is a big difference between a bacterium, whether found on an asteroid/another planet or on earth, and a human female. Just because something is alive doesn’t mean it has rights. Coronavirus is alive, does that mean it has as much right to exist as the sentient hosts it infects ? The abortion debate should not revolve around whether something can be defined as life but whether it has the capacity to suffer. One could argue the fetus suffers while it is being aborted, especially in the third trimester, but how can you compare a procedure which lasts minutes to an ordeal which lasts hours or even days such as it's mothers labor, not to mention the months of discomfort and anguish of her pregnancy? Who suffers the most - the mother who's forced to give birth or the fetus being aborted ? Guess which one I'd sooner be.
Michael ( @Skeptic ) - Determinism is correct because you cannot *decide* to want something, the Want/desire has to precede any "choice"... If it doesn't then you cannot have a motive for making a "choice". and if you think about it enough you'll eventually see that "choice" is a myth.
Empirically untrue that want always has to precede choice. A subject can choose something, be given the other thing "by mistake" (deliberately by the experimenter) and then the subject explains why they wanted that particular thing, unaware that their want has flipped from one thing to another. That shows that want, in some cases, is a result of choice or happenstance, not its cause. There is not a little man behind your eyes composing your wants ex nihilo and driving you like a meat robot. That is a sensation caused by a consciousness whose actual job is to make some kind of useful story out of perception and instinct.
To be honest, if you find sperm in another planet, you can consider that life too. Even a cell would be suficient to know that there is life or life in potential.
Rothbard has a great take on abortion. The right of abortion is a simple consequence of the right of self-ownership of the woman. No person, fetus or otherwise, has the right to enslave another --- and, clearly, a woman carrying a fetus against her will is a slave. Now, if a fetus could be removed intact without the risk of harm to the mother, that would be preferable ... however, this is rarely the case ... and, clearly, the fetus would not survive outside the womb anyway. Rothbard, then, would carry this legal right up until basically the moment of birth. However, that doesn't mean that women shouldn't be socially condemned for extreme cases (many abortions or very late term abortions) ... or even, depending on the community, any abortion at all. Finally, as no doctor should be a slave, no doctor should be forced to perform an abortion that he is not morally okay with. So, a woman can have an absolute legal right to not be prevented from getting an abortion, but no positive right to be provided an abortion by anyone. Further, she has no positive right to be shielded from social criticism ... only from physical violence or threats thereof.
I appreciate you two and what you are doing, but the way you speak about the climate issue suggests that you have not steel-manned the skeptics’ position and have not examined the evidence in full. I don’t expect you to be unbiased. However, I detect quite a lot of bias and certainly. I’d love to use the techniques of the book to open up your minds.
@@patharvard actually I use the phrase 'steel personed' now to avoid being attacked by misogynist claims. It such slimy tatict. Here we are tryiing to do or best in a conversation, extending charity and addressing the strongest part of tbe argument then have the other person claim a completely non related issue like the usage of "Man" to red herring a new argument to invalidate the original one.
*have not examined the evidence in full.* The _evidence_ is overwhelmingly pointing to an accelerated climate change. We can argue all day long whether or not it's caused by man, but right now the evidence overwhelmingly that _man_ can do something about it. I invite you to present an evidence-based reason why man should not try to do something about it.
AGoodBuzz I have no objection to our conducting research to improve alternative energy sources and energy storage. However, just as whale oil replaced tallow candles for indoor lighting, kerosene replaced whale oil, tungsten lightbulbs replaced kerosene, fluorescents replaced tungsten and LEDs have replaced most previous lighting technology, via natural market forces, the government should stand back and allow the most efficient, cost effective and practical energy technologies to develop and find their places. I know of no one who objects to clean, low cost energy. We find the cleanest forms of energy being used in the most highly developed nations. As developing nations, such as China and India rise in wealth, they have begun the evolutionary process of gradually improving their energy and environmental standards. In the US, our extraction and use of natural gas has lowered our national carbon footprint. However, the arguments that CO2 emissions are the sole source or a major source of driving an acceleration of global warming is not, to my mind, compelling. Today’s CO2 levels, of 415 ppm, are 14 times lower than they were during the Permian Era, when CO2 was at 7,000 ppm and Earth saw its greatest profusion of life. Carbonaceous sea creatures such as corals and shell fish arose at this time, putting the lie to the idea that increased atmospheric CO2 will cause the extinction of corals and shellfish. Tropical reefs were common in the shallow seas of this period, formed by tabulate and rugose corals, stromatoporoid organisms, bryozoa and calcareous algae. Trilobites, cephalopods, gastropods, and echinoderms. These Paleoclimate facts suggest that doubling and tripling preindustrial CO2 will nothing to pose an existential threat to humans or the planet. You suggest that we can do something about global warming. I guess this belief presupposes that reducing our use of fossil fuels will accomplish that end. I don’t know of any empirical evidence that demonstrates that the CO2 produced from using fossil fuels is having any negative impact on the planet. With more atmospheric CO2, plants and, animals thrive. Today, due to the undeserved influence of computer modelers, it is difficult to discuss future climate scenarios. Claims of CO2 leading to runaway warming and catastrophic climate change are based on speculative climate models that include additional drivers of warming besides the greenhouse effect. It’s important to keep in mind that these models often contradict each other, both in their assumptions about key elements of climate like cloud formation and the role of aerosols, and in their predictions. Even more important, though, is that the models that include these speculative drivers of warming have a terrible track record when it comes to predicting actual climate trends. Our best long term strategy, for human and planetary survival, I believe, is to get as many humans out of poverty, get them well educated and put our collective energy and brain power toward research and development of all the technologies of the future that will allow us to adapt to climate extremes. We may have centuries more of gradual warming or we may gradually (or suddenly) plunge into another glacial period. Both conditions will test the adaptability of our species. Both are inevitable, over time. During the last glacial period, nearly all of the north and the south were buried under ice sheets two kilometers thick. 13,000 years ago, New York, Chicago and the Great Lakes were buried under mountainous glaciers. We should prepare for all eventualities. Climate variability is only one issue of many that we will face in the millennia to come.
"What do you do when someone decides to believe something because it improves their life even though they admit that they may be wrong about it (or _could_ be right)?" Response: "Well, you can let someone be wrong." Wow, Peter, this is critical thinking? Agree with Michael that there is nothing more to say about it. The person is talking about their own happiness, not proving anything to you. You may, however, come to the same position!
The fact that the atheist movement was so weak in front of the intersectional ideology just comes to show that societies need religion to work properly past a certain number of members or years. Christianism has existed for 2k years, and what's the best a fully secular society of some thousand members has to show, ten? twenty years?
i think religion is essential for dualism,it certainly has its place in the mechanics of evolution,but i disagree on your comparison of time relative to value,due to the absence of time within reality...imo of course :)
We don't know what would happen in a free society where 100% of the people were 100% atheistic/non-religious/non-spiritual/non-superstitious because that never happened. So it may be more accurate to say that religion is an inevitability in any free society over time. Maybe. Maybe not, only time will tell. As for non-free societies where atheism would be enforced, such a society wouldn't "work properly" anyway just because the amount pressure required to do that would cripple it.
Seems odd to listen to a discussion about rationality and to end with both of you claiming to believe in a conspiracy just because the cameras were not working. That doesn't seem that unusual in a run-down City Jail why do you think you find that so significant that you've changed your mind?
Interesting to be talking about pro-choice and then mention Rawls. If the point is to make the society service the least advantaged and put yourself behind the veil of ignorance then what fetus would choose to be aborted? Don't mind this kind of error in most cases, but coming from a philosopher is pretty jarring. No fan of Rawls here, but the buffer that must exist to use these his theory in this case would have to be pretty thick.
on faith... if you found out tomorrow that you have a terminal brain tumor.. how would you feel/react/think? I'd be so glad.--if it was me I mean, not you.
There's plenty of evidence that God's Kingdom is now ruling. Destruction of false religion still won't change one's belief. God knows people won't change their belief.
At 15:40 Dr Boghossian defines a critical thinker as someone willing to revise his / her beliefs. I find that a bit odd, since in a conversation he had with Richard Dawkins in 2013 (see Richard Dawkins and Peter Beghossian in conversation" ruclips.net/video/RoQurwEZmmQ/видео.html ) he makes no mention of it when Dawkins is unwilling to revise his beliefs! The exchange goes like this (starts at 15:05): PB: ..What would persuade you (that God exists)? RD: Well Im starting to think that nothing would! Which in away goes against the grain, because I‘ve always paid lip-service to the viewthat a scientist shoould change his mind when evidence is forthcoming. The problem is, I cant think what that evidence would look like.“ Im starting to be skeptical of scepticism...
Your getting skeptical of skepticism because one guy made that decision for himself? That he can't even think of what evidence for god would look like. Richard Dawkins is one of the great athiest thinkers of our time, but he is far from infallible. He even admits he is going against normal scientific process by even thinking that way; as a true scientist and true critical thinker MUST be open to changing their conclusions based on new evidence. Dawkins doesn't seem to be going all all in on the absolute that he never would, just that he doesn't know what that evidence would even look like. Personally, I don't either. Unless God popped up right in front of me and said, "I'm real!!" What else is there? And no - Scripture is not an answer.
@@01What10 You‘re quite right, Dawkins is being open and honest about his position, and as a Christian I sincerely appreciate Boghossians promoting civil discourse between the "world view" groups. I just wonder whether this particular aspect of scientific atheism, "doxastic openness" as Dr. B. calls it, is an option that Dawkins is free to choose or reject as it suits him - on the contrary, it is often presented as the heart and soul of scientific atheism (and also Boghossians Street Epistomology movement, if your familiar with it), i.e. the willingness to alter world view pending „new evidence“. And its the one thing that religious types are accused of not having, at least with respect to God. So strictly speaking a theist could say „I can‘t think of a single thing that would compel me to change my mind,“ and cite Prof. Dawkins. I‘m just saying it works both ways.
Though Dr. Boghossian's new book is undoubtedly well worth reading, it should be easy for someone like Dr. Shermer to detect the examples of leftist bias interspersed throughout the book. I am not suggesting these obvious political biases effect the practicality or value of the book's premises and instructional techniques in any way.
Michael Shermer has a guest on to talk about having difficult conversations, yet manages to insult half the country by taking swipes at things they support. Whoosh....
Deepak is not a good one for a science discussion. He doesn't use scientific method to base his opinions on. I just couldn't get through listening to him.
![Method Writing: The First Four Concepts - Jack Grapes [FULL INTERVIEW]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ba9jAVzADY0/mqdefault.jpg)
Shout out to Dr Boghossian. Great speaker. Can't get enough.
you possessed through the gills already though
100% agree
marry him
@@robertaboagyevantrout2215 why?
@@RonnieD1970 "can't get enough"
As a programmer and a bayesian I allow myself plenty of room to be wrong but for the longest time I've had a real problem letting other people be wrong. I've recently come to the realization that it isn't my place to tell people they're wrong and that when I do the way I go about it often doesn't really do any good. I look forward to reading Dr Boghossian's book.
GREAT interview! Not only was it a treat to hear Peter Boghossian discuss his book, but it was also valuable to hear Michael Shermer talk about similar problems he's had with his own "impossible conversations".
An embryo is life, but so are bacteria, carrots and mosquitos and we"re fine ending them because they're inconvenient or delicious. Not every living thing needs to be preserved.
Not a great argument. There is a difference between a non human lifeform that may cause damage to us and a potential human.
The argument involving it's lack of sentience and pain receptors up to a point is a better one, or the moral discussions about whether it's ok for a human to parasite another human for survival
@@RenegadeContext Not great grammar: the verb form of parasite is parasitize.
My argument is better than than the lack of pain receptors etc .. in my opinion, and we're all welcome to opinions on arguments.
We are just airing out more disagreements nowadays i think than before, and inndoing so we are discovering that we believe in widely different things or ideas. the real issue is how we both distance ourselves emotionally from our own beliefs in such a way as to be able to discuss stuff we feel strongly about and counter arguments to our own positions, and how we engage with delivering counter arguments to other people’s beliefs that we think are flawed or incomplete. The trick is to manage it without seeming like an asshole, or stepping on peoples identity, which is more difficult that we imagine, most of us have a kind of limited and narrow perspective on what it is like to be someone else, why they believe what they do, and exactly how much or little malice there is in those worldviews. Someone might believe something i find disgusting for completely innocent reasons, and in that case if they had my perspective on the issue they might see the problem with it, or alternatively if i had theirs i would see how it isn’t disgusting from that perspective even if i still would find it problematic. All kinds of issues arise in these situations but i think thats a sign of barking up the right tree, we need to be our own software developers in a sense if we are to make a better world where tolerance and wide preferences fly with modern technology and increased openness. :) will read the gentleman’s book for sure.
People who were once Centrist are now considered to the right.
I know people who try to assert that there's no difference between centrists and far right extremists. That's how deluded some people are becoming.
On the contrary; I think people that were centrist are now considered to be lefties. The country has lurched to the right. Now your average right-wingers are actually fascists.
You’re all right 😋
Look at the 1956 Republican Platform. Just enter that in the www...
@@JasonLewisjasonlewis The problem is that people who discuss being centrist online can tend to say "wait and see" when it comes to right-wing extremism, downplaying it. That is possibly where this stereotype is formed.
Richard Dawkins book brought many out of Islam. I suspect the more controlling the religion is, the more a rude awakening is needed.
A softer approach can be taken with those who are loosely religious.
For Islam, I think the problem is entrenched in the communities because it is a political religion like judaism : theocracy is welcomed. Questioning their beliefs is destroying their identity and their belonging to the Oumma. Certainly this happens for all religions but I think Islam is way more prone to this problem.
@@salimalloun6413 that's why beleifs themselves are bad just have ideas
There's a high probability apostasy will get you dead in Islamic countries and ostracised from one's family and community in secular societies or societies with other religions.
“Faith is believing what you know ain't so.” *Mark Twain*
Fair but, why so many religious people approach others saying they know the truth and they will show the others the right pathway?..
@@FannyAnzai They mistake faith for fact, which seems to be the intentions of the con artists who started religion in the first place to control and manipulate the masses... remember never take anyone's B-lief S-ystem too seriously.
*"i don't believe, i know."*
So what do I mean when I say "I have complete faith that one day the scientific community will discover a cure for this disease". Apply Twains definition and see if the sentence still means what you understand it to mean.
Loved the discussion. Will buy the book!
I am about one third through Dr. Boghossian's book. Dr. Boghossian and Dr. Lindsay offer many valuable observations and astute advise for navigating one's way through difficult conversations.
When I read the words on page 77, I immediately thought of Dr. Walter Block's book
_Defending the Undefendable_ . Dr. Boghossian wrote, “Never defend indefensible behavior.” Since Dr. Boghossian firmly believes that words must be defined prior to engaging in a conversation where those words are an integral part of the discourse, shouldn't the term, “indefensible behavior” also be defined?
On the "space egg" issue, I would have been tempted to tell the woman: "What if you came across a golden egg? You'd want to protect it and the goose that laid it, right? But as for a million plain old white chicken eggs, crack a few, make an omelette and no big deal. There is a difference between finding a space egg on a distant asteroid and a human egg in one of billions of female human beings. Yes, they are both life, but they have differentiated intrinsic value attached." Needless to say, my mind wouldn't be significantly altered in her presented analogy.
Yeah, I think that example was essentially making an equivocation fallacy (though I'm not sure who committed it). There's different ways of talking about "life" and not all imply moral status. If Peter was insisting that the embryo wasn't alive, then it's a good counterpoint. I think it's fairly obvious that an embryo is alive...one could even argue that the sperm or egg alone are alive - the definition of life is pretty fuzzy. The real question is whether the embryo ought to have moral status to the point where you will bias its life sufficiently to overrule the mother's choices with respect to it. While there are some that extend moral status very far to most living things, it seems like the extreme vegan types usually fall on the pro-choice side so you're probably not dealing with someone like that...so they still have all their work ahead of them even if they get you to admit that they're living human cells.
@@ericpatterson8794 Agreed
Thank you, Dr., keep doing what you are doing.
Who the hell would give this a thumbs down?
God and feminists.
How to listen to impossible conversations?
I'm glad I found this discussion, it's fascinating so far! Dr. Shermer, you have indeed been an "asshole" but probably not intentionally. On the Rogan podcast with Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson, although you were very cordial, I thought you were a little too fast to dismiss some of their themes. Either way, it was an awesome podcast and a lot of fun to listen to, so I thank you for your participation in it, and all the other content you create or contribute to.
My favorite debates contain self canceling contradictions that leave the audience clapping and wondering what were they clapping about.
If evidence for a powerful, loving, compassionate, wise, god was present everywhere, I would immediately submit.
When the religious surrender to god they are surrendering to themselves.
Excellent..congrats Dr.Boghossian..👍👍👍
For me my intense passion to argue with anyone about my beliefs is that I am a libertarian. My beliefs do not affect anyone who disagrees with me. If the Left has there way, my life is affected. In a vacuum, I could care less about what others believe, but when those ideas become reality, my life is threatened. I think that the majority of anti-leftists have discovered that ideas matter a lot!!Ideas become laws, ideas can greatly affect your life in a profoundly negative way. Every person that I find myself at odds with are trying their hardest to collectivize me and take my individual liberties. In 2022, you have to fight tooth and nail to save your individualism. If liberty oriented people don’t fight, debate and argue their case, they lose.
The problem is not more people identifying as far left. I used to be on the far left but people were far more willing to discuss. Indeed they were always willing to debate in the hope of winning you over. In those days not even the Stalinists were as Stalinist as these postmodernists who regard words as violence. The problem is the kind of far left and far right we have now and some centrists manage to be as extreme and intolerant of alternative views as well.
Something I've struggled with for a long time is explaining my conclusion about "what happens after we die?" - I've finally arrived at a very concise statement:
"The experience of whatever organism happens to be born after I end will be the experience that comes after mine."
stay there before it grows, sure
@@allentomas3417 Huh?
@@naturalisted1714 before the follow-up grows, whatever that would be
@@allentomas3417 All periods of non-experience are simply skipped over, just like when we go unconscious from anesthesia and we "skip" that hour or so...
@@naturalisted1714
Death and Its Aftermath
If a person dies, the life force he had is gone and he no longer exists anywhere in any form. He stays dead (figuratively, “asleep”) until he is “awakened” from the dead by the Lord Jesus. All dead Christians will be awakened at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to meet the Church in the air and be judged for rewards. Old Testament and Tribulation believers will be awakened at the coming of the Lord to the earth. Everyone else who has ever lived will be awakened after the Millennial Kingdom and judged for either everlasting life or everlasting death. The only hope for all those who have died is their resurrection from the dead by the Lord Jesus Christ, himself the “firstborn from among the dead” (Col. 1:18).
12:00 In other words: If you ask someone for evidence for their beliefs and they give that evidence, then they strengthen the neurological pathways that strengthen their beliefs.
Every time I hear the term "militant atheist" or "militant theist", I always picture a secularist or religionist in guerrilla garb, carrying a gun and forcing people not to have particular thoughts. Those who control the use and the meaning of words, control the discourse. I never use the word "militant" unless there is violence or the threat of violence involved.
People will often use militant to mean incredibly strict and devoid of variation as though they were in a military style boot camp. I personally have never associated it with violence only withe strictness and lack of flexibility of a militia
@@RenegadeContext
The more precise description, "vociferously opinionated" will suffice.
@@jeffersonianideal I like that, think you could make it stick?
@@RenegadeContext
Depends upon whom I am attempting to influence.
Interesting hearing Michael Shermer describe the underlying values beneath anti-GMOs / anti-Monsanto views:
In my circles, the inability of capitalism/Monsanto to do the right thing with genetic engineering actually is what I would consider the heart of the problem that many of us try to talk about. Sometimes on Quora one person after another is making the same point, but it's nearly impossible to get the conversations off the abstracted "GMOs good vs GMOs bad," pretending what GMOs would be in an abstract economy that doesn't look like our world. You described the actual "I've been trying to tell you" belief as if it was the unspoken belief underneath. Without active listening steps we all just argue right past each other.
I wonder how often that is happening in different conversations: views that aren't actually the opposite of each other but get reduced to that.
Martin Gardner was a big influence on me (e. g., Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science), and I was quite shocked to find out he was fideist, which I think hediscussed in The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener.
many a soul hath raved about "fiddler on the roof', too
okay one point... in my opinion, an interviewer's job is to draw out the information and insights of the person being interviewed, NOT use the interview as an excuse to get on their own soap box. In other words, i'm 4.5 minutes into this, and the guy i want to hear is not allowed to talk. Is this how the entire hour is gonna go? Cos I came to hear Boghossian. [EDIT] I just scrolled my cursor over the "line" at the bottom of the video so the entire hour is seen in a few seconds -- and yep, Boghossian's lips aren't moving much at all while the interviewer's lips are moving constantly. I'm out of here and thumbsdown. Hope this feedback is helpful to you for future interviews.]
“The devil arises from an angel foaming at the mouth... The style of the debate is more important than the subject of the debate. Subjects come and go, while style shapes civilization.” (Grigory Pomerants, philosopher)
brilliant
Great to hear Peter. Would have been a better conversation if Michael spoke less and made more room for Peter.
Just started reading Dr. Boghossian's Manual for Creating Athiests (Its amazing!) Going to be picking this one up next. Congrats on the new book, Peter!
I have had knock down drag out arguments over the state of this country, and our beliefs. After years of this, I stumbled upon 1 thing that shuts people down. I will say that I no problems with anything they believed and that they have every right to believe anything they want. I respect their right to believe what they want. BUT, the reason I get so angry, and passionate, and sound intolerant is because if everything I believe were to become some sort of law, or reality would have no affect on them personally, while EVERYTHING they believe profoundly affects me individually and steals liberty. I have yet to find anyone on the opposite side of liberty and morality who can overcome that. I virtually get no response at all. The argument just ends.
What are the issues that democrats want to make into law that will remove your liberties?
I can tell you that Republicans want to make abortion and even birth control illegal. Talk about affecting a private matter!!! Republicans keep trying to put religion into public schools. That's certainly affecting people who are free thinkers and people of non Christian faiths.
On the other hand, democrats do want common sense gun laws to try and reduce the number of mass murders. This particular law will not prevent you from getting guns. So, i can't see how this could be an issue. Perhaps you are concerned about limits on social media. If someone is being banned, perhaps there is a reason like lying. Lying cannot be tolerated. Lying is very much like murder. Killing the truth is not victimless.
So what is your list?
The last time I talked to my brother was when trump was running in 2016. My brother died in 2019.
Does anyone know what is the pen and teller hamburger story?
I'd like to read PB's book. It could definitely offer some practical advice. I've only watched about 45 minutes of this thing so perhaps they address this later, but I feel like it was just a little too easy for them to say "oh, my parents had different political beliefs and were friends with many they disagreed with". My thought is that was a long time ago. From today's perspective Republicans and Democrats in the past don't seem so radically different. Or at least there's a sense that they want the same things but would advocate different ways of getting there. These days the division seems wider.
And as another example, I'm reading case after case of Qanon being a HUGE divisive force, with nutty family members routinely ruining family gatherings with screaming matches in front of impressionable kids. It shouldn't be done lightly, but there times when people are just too far gone to subject oneself to.
Nice Book, congratulations
thank you for a highly interesting conversation
Does anyone have a link to the Jeff Miller conversation with an Antifa member that they mention? Can't seem to find it. Thanks :)
"From a necessarily agnostic (I DON'T KNOW) POV, the Atheist is a Theorist who is questioning the reasons and rationalization for a belief leading to a posit, hypothesis, theory and implimentation of the original faith and trust in the starting belief positioning.
It's always about the navigation, of course, mathematically speaking, because a Theologian says, like a Mathematician speaking about the Origin, "It's always been", empirically/self-defining Eternity-now, here-now-forever.
A "sense of proportion" does not exist without some sort of expectations of infinite limit, so any arguments over differences will always be a mismatch. All intentional discussion has to begin from a point of view in balance, the central limit boundary of zero-infinity difference temporarily recognized as .dt infinitesimal. (I "believe" in applying The Calculus of Time Duration-length proportions of potential probabilities in potential possibilities of Timing, integration of CCC)
A discussion in Physics (the typical Materialism), is typically based on a "Mezzanine" floor built by Einstein's Relativity => curvature Theories, the extreme difference of complex orthogonality defining Spacetime properties, so an agnostic re-view of the e-Pi-i Singularity-Origin positioning here-now forever asks what Timespace is, because is-ness, WYSIWYG Observations, to be believed by theoretical definition, does not begin with an absolute starting point, logic=connection, or end with a complete proof. "Spacetime is Doomed!"
"If God exists", we're "it" (it is-ness) in Actuality, in some proportion and degree, by absolute logic. The history of the material->spiritual derivation of Theological beliefs is reflected in the context of transverse projection/development across QM-TIMESPACE.
Theoretically and theologically, good = god, case by case.., "in the Event", of pure relative motion.
A good moderation talk.
23:18- Absolutely true !. This is what’s happening to the atheist movement right now. We’re ripping each other apart from within.
[03:15] Paradox of disliking/ostracism
[06:34] Climate change stance and political party affiliation (correlation)
[07:21] The Dunning-Kruger Effect
“When you’re so ignorant, you don’t understand your own ignorance.”
The states should cover the cost of political campains.It would solve a number of problems.
Great book so far! I’ve noticed he made a mistake with the weight of the soul :)
ruclips.net/video/nHdKxRAVrHA/видео.html
People get divorced over small things all the time, they just let them grow into massive problems, the issue is that if you let things simmer and stay inside each skull when its bothering you it starts leaking into the floors supporting every other part of the relationship, Or even just Conversations
Does anyone know what the supposed relationship between boghossian & stephan moleynox?
Did he offer flattering blurbs for stephans book?
yup
Yeah but especially online, online its hard not to seem like an asshole sometimes, i try not to, but i really don’t take it too seriously, i try to at least never be mean.
Glad you mentioned self-segregation and tribalism. Race is just a convenient excuse were multiple races exist together. My hometown was almost entirely "white," but we didn't recognize this commonality. I might prevent us from hating one another for other reasons.
Actually, some philosophically oriented atheists restrict the definition to a belief that a god does not exist. I'm thinking of Julian Baggini and Graham Oppy, among others.
It should probably be made clear that "god" in this context strictly refers to an actually existing agent that interacts with reality in measurable ways (answering prayers for examply). It is only this kind of god that Atheism is unconvinced by. If a person's conception of god is not that, but rather some vague sense of a First Cause, then there isn't necessarily disagreement with atheists.
If a god does not interact with our reality in any way, then, from our perspective, it is identical to a god that does not exist.
In philosophy, every proposition has a negational proposition: the negation of “God” is “Not God”. This is useful - in philosophy. However in non-academic dialogue, and in the context of personal beliefs and social interaction, there are many possible reactions to the God proposition. It is in this broader conceptual world where many actual atheists hang their mental hat.
it's bugging me to keep hearing nonbelievers refer to "God", as if there is a certain one. which one? oh, the middle east goat herder god? when we argue with believers about "God", we're already given it too much credit. we're already starting inside their current-era-monotheistic bubble. why that god and no other? let's start there instead of "God" this and "God" that.
Nonbelievers refer to the Abrahamic god mostly because it is the one most commonly believed in. However, we know that a great deal of apologists will argue for a deist god or a generic god and then claim it leads to the Abrahamic god belief. LOL
If the majority of believers believed in some other god than the Abrahamic god, then that would be the one most referred to.
For the longest time the atheist "movement" was not a skeptic movement, but a denial movement. The new version being put forward here is much better, with actual open-mindedness replacing the knee-jerk denial in the first version. Still no clear definition of God here though, so more work to do to achieve 3.0.
With respect to the alien life argument: a skin cell is alive, but a skin cell is not a human life; and neither is a sperm or egg.
Yes, the question here is a matter of suffering, not being alive. A single cell (or even a cluster of a few hundred) are not capable of suffering, and so the issue of morality does not apply.
What I always get intrigued with is the mechanism that makes religious people easily gullible without evidences to belief in supernatural things they are not sure of it but so hard to exercise reason and seem to need evidence to disbelief. It's just another dishonest religious double standard.
information and knowledge is not the problem, talking and communicating do not make bad intentions good. this is an ideological war and there are never solutions to those.
one thing I do not understand--WHY? why do you need to get people to give up their faith or to believe in evolution, etc.. What's the motivation?
If God doesn't exist then how come you're able to talk to Pete Boghossian, checkmate Dr. Shermer
42:22 - there is a big difference between a bacterium, whether found on an asteroid/another planet or on earth, and a human female.
Just because something is alive doesn’t mean it has rights. Coronavirus is alive, does that mean it has as much right to exist as the sentient hosts it infects ?
The abortion debate should not revolve around whether something can be defined as life but whether it has the capacity to suffer.
One could argue the fetus suffers while it is being aborted, especially in the third trimester, but how can you compare a procedure which lasts minutes to an ordeal which lasts hours or even days such as it's mothers labor, not to mention the months of discomfort and anguish of her pregnancy?
Who suffers the most - the mother who's forced to give birth or the fetus being aborted ? Guess which one I'd sooner be.
Michael ( @Skeptic ) - Determinism is correct because you cannot *decide* to want something, the Want/desire has to precede any "choice"... If it doesn't then you cannot have a motive for making a "choice". and if you think about it enough you'll eventually see that "choice" is a myth.
and you calls your selft an pillhoposer
Libertarian Free Will is an illusion. I'm happy to explain why I think this is true.
@@pooounderscoreman I agree.
Empirically untrue that want always has to precede choice. A subject can choose something, be given the other thing "by mistake" (deliberately by the experimenter) and then the subject explains why they wanted that particular thing, unaware that their want has flipped from one thing to another. That shows that want, in some cases, is a result of choice or happenstance, not its cause.
There is not a little man behind your eyes composing your wants ex nihilo and driving you like a meat robot. That is a sensation caused by a consciousness whose actual job is to make some kind of useful story out of perception and instinct.
@@LughSummerson Every time options are presented to us we must first want one option over the others before we can pick anything.
To be honest, if you find sperm in another planet, you can consider that life too. Even a cell would be suficient to know that there is life or life in potential.
24:00 The god I don't believe in now, is very different from the god I didn't believe in 20 years ago.
Reminds me of techniques used with The Metaphor. Project. Check it out!
27:30 to 28:08. Shermer's last law
42:13. ??
Rothbard has a great take on abortion. The right of abortion is a simple consequence of the right of self-ownership of the woman. No person, fetus or otherwise, has the right to enslave another --- and, clearly, a woman carrying a fetus against her will is a slave. Now, if a fetus could be removed intact without the risk of harm to the mother, that would be preferable ... however, this is rarely the case ... and, clearly, the fetus would not survive outside the womb anyway. Rothbard, then, would carry this legal right up until basically the moment of birth.
However, that doesn't mean that women shouldn't be socially condemned for extreme cases (many abortions or very late term abortions) ... or even, depending on the community, any abortion at all.
Finally, as no doctor should be a slave, no doctor should be forced to perform an abortion that he is not morally okay with.
So, a woman can have an absolute legal right to not be prevented from getting an abortion, but no positive right to be provided an abortion by anyone. Further, she has no positive right to be shielded from social criticism ... only from physical violence or threats thereof.
No, it's a shallow argument. Her actions brought the baby on board. Also, the father and mother are just as enslaved for years after the baby is born.
Watched all of it 1:15:02
I appreciate you two and what you are doing, but the way you speak about the climate issue suggests that you have not steel-manned the skeptics’ position and have not examined the evidence in full.
I don’t expect you to be unbiased. However, I detect quite a lot of bias and certainly. I’d love to use the techniques of the book to open up your minds.
Iron manned or STEEL manned? Never heard it called Iron manned but I LIKE IT!
@@RonnieD1970 yes thanks, steel-manned
@@patharvard actually I use the phrase 'steel personed' now to avoid being attacked by misogynist claims.
It such slimy tatict. Here we are tryiing to do or best in a conversation, extending charity and addressing the strongest part of tbe argument then have the other person claim a completely non related issue like the usage of "Man" to red herring a new argument to invalidate the original one.
*have not examined the evidence in full.*
The _evidence_ is overwhelmingly pointing to an accelerated climate change. We can argue all day long whether or not it's caused by man, but right now the evidence overwhelmingly that _man_ can do something about it. I invite you to present an evidence-based reason why man should not try to do something about it.
AGoodBuzz I have no objection to our conducting research to improve alternative energy sources and energy storage. However, just as whale oil replaced tallow candles for indoor lighting, kerosene replaced whale oil, tungsten lightbulbs replaced kerosene, fluorescents replaced tungsten and LEDs have replaced most previous lighting technology, via natural market forces, the government should stand back and allow the most efficient, cost effective and practical energy technologies to develop and find their places. I know of no one who objects to clean, low cost energy.
We find the cleanest forms of energy being used in the most highly developed nations. As developing nations, such as China and India rise in wealth, they have begun the evolutionary process of gradually improving their energy and environmental standards.
In the US, our extraction and use of natural gas has lowered our national carbon footprint.
However, the arguments that CO2 emissions are the sole source or a major source of driving an acceleration of global warming is not, to my mind, compelling.
Today’s CO2 levels, of 415 ppm, are 14 times lower than they were during the Permian Era, when CO2 was at 7,000 ppm and Earth saw its greatest profusion of life. Carbonaceous sea creatures such as corals and shell fish arose at this time, putting the lie to the idea that increased atmospheric CO2 will cause the extinction of corals and shellfish.
Tropical reefs were common in the shallow seas of this period, formed by tabulate and rugose corals, stromatoporoid organisms, bryozoa and calcareous algae. Trilobites, cephalopods, gastropods, and echinoderms.
These Paleoclimate facts suggest that doubling and tripling preindustrial CO2 will nothing to pose an existential threat to humans or the planet.
You suggest that we can do something about global warming.
I guess this belief presupposes that reducing our use of fossil fuels will accomplish that end.
I don’t know of any empirical evidence that demonstrates that the CO2 produced from using fossil fuels is having any negative impact on the planet. With more atmospheric CO2, plants and, animals thrive.
Today, due to the undeserved influence of computer modelers, it is difficult to discuss future climate scenarios. Claims of CO2 leading to runaway warming and catastrophic climate change are based on speculative climate models that include additional drivers of warming besides the greenhouse effect.
It’s important to keep in mind that these models often contradict each other, both in their assumptions about key elements of climate like cloud formation and the role of aerosols, and in their predictions.
Even more important, though, is that the models that include these speculative drivers of warming have a terrible track record when it comes to predicting actual climate trends.
Our best long term strategy, for human and planetary survival, I believe, is to get as many humans out of poverty, get them well educated and put our collective energy and brain power toward research and development of all the technologies of the future that will allow us to adapt to climate extremes.
We may have centuries more of gradual warming or we may gradually (or suddenly) plunge into another glacial period.
Both conditions will test the adaptability of our species. Both are inevitable, over time.
During the last glacial period, nearly all of the north and the south were buried under ice sheets two kilometers thick. 13,000 years ago, New York, Chicago and the Great Lakes were buried under mountainous glaciers.
We should prepare for all eventualities. Climate variability is only one issue of many that we will face in the millennia to come.
"What do you do when someone decides to believe something because it improves their life even though they admit that they may be wrong about it (or _could_ be right)?" Response: "Well, you can let someone be wrong." Wow, Peter, this is critical thinking? Agree with Michael that there is nothing more to say about it. The person is talking about their own happiness, not proving anything to you. You may, however, come to the same position!
The fact that the atheist movement was so weak in front of the intersectional ideology just comes to show that societies need religion to work properly past a certain number of members or years. Christianism has existed for 2k years, and what's the best a fully secular society of some thousand members has to show, ten? twenty years?
i think religion is essential for dualism,it certainly has its place in the mechanics of evolution,but i disagree on your comparison of time relative to value,due to the absence of time within reality...imo of course :)
We don't know what would happen in a free society where 100% of the people were 100% atheistic/non-religious/non-spiritual/non-superstitious because that never happened. So it may be more accurate to say that religion is an inevitability in any free society over time. Maybe. Maybe not, only time will tell. As for non-free societies where atheism would be enforced, such a society wouldn't "work properly" anyway just because the amount pressure required to do that would cripple it.
Seems odd to listen to a discussion about rationality and to end with both of you claiming to believe in a conspiracy just because the cameras were not working. That doesn't seem that unusual in a run-down City Jail why do you think you find that so significant that you've changed your mind?
Interesting to be talking about pro-choice and then mention Rawls. If the point is to make the society service the least advantaged and put yourself behind the veil of ignorance then what fetus would choose to be aborted? Don't mind this kind of error in most cases, but coming from a philosopher is pretty jarring. No fan of Rawls here, but the buffer that must exist to use these his theory in this case would have to be pretty thick.
True communication is impossible. Impossible to get empirical understanding of any message delivered
Peter started the Street Epistemology movement (atheism).
on faith... if you found out tomorrow that you have a terminal brain tumor.. how would you feel/react/think? I'd be so glad.--if it was me I mean, not you.
@10:01 -- NAFTRA?
8 minutes into it very little information, next to none, other than three Slams on it service. No thanks.
There's plenty of evidence that God's Kingdom is now ruling. Destruction of false religion still won't change one's belief.
God knows people won't change their belief.
What is that evidence?
It doesn’t matter what you believe; all that matters is why you believe it, and how accurate you can show your beliefs to be.
At 15:40 Dr Boghossian defines a critical thinker as someone willing to revise his / her beliefs. I find that a bit odd, since in a conversation he had with Richard Dawkins in 2013 (see Richard Dawkins and Peter Beghossian in conversation" ruclips.net/video/RoQurwEZmmQ/видео.html ) he makes no mention of it when Dawkins is unwilling to revise his beliefs! The exchange goes like this (starts at 15:05):
PB: ..What would persuade you (that God exists)?
RD: Well Im starting to think that nothing would! Which in away goes against the grain, because I‘ve always paid lip-service to the viewthat a scientist shoould change his mind when evidence is forthcoming. The problem is, I cant think what that evidence would look like.“
Im starting to be skeptical of scepticism...
Your getting skeptical of skepticism because one guy made that decision for himself? That he can't even think of what evidence for god would look like.
Richard Dawkins is one of the great athiest thinkers of our time, but he is far from infallible.
He even admits he is going against normal scientific process by even thinking that way; as a true scientist and true critical thinker MUST be open to changing their conclusions based on new evidence.
Dawkins doesn't seem to be going all all in on the absolute that he never would, just that he doesn't know what that evidence would even look like.
Personally, I don't either. Unless God popped up right in front of me and said, "I'm real!!" What else is there? And no - Scripture is not an answer.
@@01What10 You‘re quite right, Dawkins is being open and honest about his position, and as a Christian I sincerely appreciate Boghossians promoting civil discourse between the "world view" groups. I just wonder whether this particular aspect of scientific atheism, "doxastic openness" as Dr. B. calls it, is an option that Dawkins is free to choose or reject as it suits him - on the contrary, it is often presented as the heart and soul of scientific atheism (and also Boghossians Street Epistomology movement, if your familiar with it), i.e. the willingness to alter world view pending „new evidence“. And its the one thing that religious types are accused of not having, at least with respect to God. So strictly speaking a theist could say „I can‘t think of a single thing that would compel me to change my mind,“ and cite Prof. Dawkins. I‘m just saying it works both ways.
Though Dr. Boghossian's new book is undoubtedly well worth reading, it should be easy for someone like Dr. Shermer to detect the examples of leftist bias interspersed throughout the book. I am not suggesting these obvious political biases effect the practicality or value of the book's premises and instructional techniques in any way.
No wonder people who adhere to conspiracy theories and historical/science denialism don’t like these guys
So it doesn't matter if my spouse is a nazi? you know, hitler was a politician; sometimes politics is grounds for a divorce
you nazi too?
Michael Shermer has a guest on to talk about having difficult conversations, yet manages to insult half the country by taking swipes at things they support. Whoosh....
Deepak is not a good one for a science discussion. He doesn't use scientific method to base his opinions on. I just couldn't get through listening to him.
I suggest refraining from using the terms "pro-life" and "pro-abortion".
2:48
What does one call the process by which a couple divorces over a Trump presidency?
Trump Dissolution Syndrome.