Steve No, again, most Christians claim to know. For example the Nicene Creed is a knowledge claim. Your statement on college is a hope statement not a knowledge claim.
@Steve Can you explain what supernatural evidence is specifically? Could you give a specific example of evidence that could prove your beliefs false and/or change your mind? Faith is claiming to know something is true without (reliable) evidence. All supernatural beliefs are faith based beliefs.
I am a retired teacher and had this happen in class one day.A student asked me a question and I was in the process of answering it and he said, "don't confuse me with the facts". Just thought that fit in here someplace.
If you need to be right, you do not need facts. LOL As a longtime educator, I experienced this more with parents than with students. Sadly, students go home to hear their parents harangue on and on about this issue or that issue. A few parents enjoy pitting the teacher against their child (your student). I would suspect that the student who said, "don't confuse me with the facts," was simply repeating something he heard at home. One of the problems with K-12 education is that you are not working with the student in isolation. It is likely that the student tells their parents and other adults the things you say. I think your sharing, rick padgett, fits in quite nicely because it is my thought that people grow up after parroting their parents and often do not see the power of drawing one's own conclusions based on reason and new learning. I love Dr. Boghassian. He is spot on with his approach and is genuinely interested in promoting rational thought without turning it into an argument. We are lucky to have him in our world, as I see things.
My greatest challenge in my life now is to practice pure patience with anyone who defends faith--or any religious belief. And sometimes it is near impossible to do so.
Someone I trusted, who helped me, ended up in a health facility because she believed the dictums of Christian Science and let an infection grow out of control. It was so hard to listen to her admonitions to attend her church.
@@jimrahn5569 -No, I find it difficult to tolerate anyone who defends the use of faith as a reliable pathway to truth. Does that basically mean that I have difficulty tolerating anyone who disagrees with me?
I love how believers always try to defend their beliefs by stating that atheists also believe in their disbelief. This is like saying that not having hobbies is a hobby.
PRAISE YSHUA TIMO ANTILLA, IF YOU BELIEVE THAT BELIVERS ARE NOT RIGHT YOU BELIEVE SOMETHING OR YOU WOULD NOT HAVE MADE YOUR STATEMENT AND THE ONE WHO REPILED TO YOUR ANALOGY BELIEVES THAT IT IS GREAT. SO HOW IS IT THAT YOU AND YOUR COLLEGUE DO NOT BELIEVE. WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE. SHALOM.
@@memeeverson4284 Your poisoned mind can't tell the difference between reasoned belief based on evidence and delusional belief based on faith. Sit your ignorant ass down and stop embarrassing yourself with such idiocy.
Where is those "pass that on to my ethnic brothers of ______" memes when u need one. C'mon!!!! Chinese people, speak up, claim it sounds like a drunk Irish dude or something... lol
I think one of the problems of overcoming the delusions that people have, in regards to trying to have a rational conversation with them, is the fact that, more often than not, people have allowed their personal identities to be tied up with the delusion. So any attempt to talk with them about overcoming irrational beliefs will be seen as a personal attack by them. And once people go on that type of defensive stance, they become so entrenched that no amount of reasoning will shake them from it. They let their religious beliefs come to literally define who they are as people. And thats where I get unsure on how to handle that situation. When people shut down, as they often do, I find it near to impossible to continue the discussion at all, let alone on a rational level.
Really good presentation. For those wanting a summarized version, more or less the ideas are: * Faith based processes are unreliable because they'll decrease the likelihood that one will have true beliefs. * There are ways to solve problems better than others. Ex. The scientific method has proven to provide models closer to reality than other methods like divination and sorcery. * Delusions have 3 criteria: 1-Certainty. Delusional people are completely certain their beliefs are true and unwilling to change their opinions. 2-Encouragibility. Delusional people want others to share their beliefs and are positive about them. 3-Impossibility. They don't match evidence and are usually wild claims. * Rationality and critical thinking are based on testing claims against reality to get closer to the truth. The process is simple and based on: 1) Accepting that we don't know the full truth about anything. Being willing to change our opinions. 2) Testing our beliefs against evidence that is measurable, verifiable and repeatedly gives the same expected results. Looking for evidence that the belief may be false and then going back and testing how well it can answer to critics.
I really like some of Peter's propositions. Regarding the topic of faith, the last guy made an important point that wasn't fully understood, probably because Peter's definition of faith differs from that of the guy asking the question. First of all, there is more than one valid definition for faith, because the word 'faith' is used in different contexts with different meanings. When the last guy presented the airplane example, what he was referring to is to the fact that many (if not all) of the decisions that we make daily are ultimately based on faith, faith understood as belief or trust. The example of the airplane is a good one: even though we might know that the probability of having an accident is incredibly small, we can't know for certain if our plane will crash or not, so we make a decision based on the belief (faith) that nothing bad will happen. This faith, trust or belief is an emotional process, not an intellectual process, but it can be influenced by intellectual processes. For example: if you thought that the probability of dying on an airplane accident was a 1% chance, you would probably never consider taking an airplane (you would have no faith in it). But if you knew that the chance of dying on an airplane crash from a commercial airline was like 1 in 10 million, your sense of safety will most likely increase to the point that you will not even worry about it. On the other hand, some people will still worry and even consider alternative methods of transportation that might even be more dangerous, like a car, a bus or a train. This happens because they are not being rational, only emotional. They prefer to stick to what they already know rather than trying something unknown to them, even though airplanes are demonstrably safer. In short: no matter how much or how little you know about something, your decisions will ultimately be dictated by an emotional process that many identify as faith. Your faith can be influenced by your current knowledge about something or simply by wishful thinking but it is faith nonetheless. PS: Faith should not be confused with hope. You don't take an airplane hoping that it will not crash😂; you take it because you believe (you have faith) everything it's going to be ok.
Thinking is what our brains do 24/7/365.25. Paying attention to our thinking and using this terrific brain power requires tremendous effort and an openness to the idea that we might have understood something incorrectly. I believe that is Peter Boghossian's point throughout all of his lectures. Listening is not common in the USA. I think that might explain how this election cycle seems to be shaping up. Listening is likely the most difficult skill to acquire. It requires suspending one's beliefs to do it well.
I think the questioner (and to an extent, Dr. Boghossian) got it wrong when discussing the analogy of the tiger in the bush. While evolution may have programmed our brains to find false positives, this is still an example of the value of truth. The primate learns that it is TRUE, that the rustling he hears in the bushes COULD be a tiger, and he learns that it is TRUE that there is serious risk to life and limb if he ignores the possibility that the noise could be a tiger. He also learns that it is TRUE that the benefits of investigating to see if the noise is actually caused by a tiger are far exceeded by the risks of doing so. Primates that don't learn these truths are far more likely to wind up as lunch meat. Does the primate ACTUALLY believe there is a tiger there? We don't know, but he has wisely chosen to ACT as if there were a tiger there. If he were a being with language ability, who had to explain to the rest of the troop why he raised the alarm, and interrupted everybody's feeding time, he might tell them that he had SEEN the tiger. He might even convince himself that he had. Perhaps then, he becomes the prophet of the tiger god or something because he saw the tiger that no one else could, and he saved the troop. Perhaps he then begins to make more pronouncements of danger to the troop. He tells them that there will be an earthquake if they don't sacrifice part of their food to the Tiger god (or his designated representative on Earth, the Tiger Prophet). They do so, and there is no earthquake! The Tiger Prophet has saved them AGAIN! Soon, the Tiger Prophet no longer has to hunt and forage with the rest, of the troop. They need him to divine the the ways that they can keep themselves safe from tigers and earthquakes, so they sacrifice part of their food to the church of the Tiger Prophet. And when a tiger does get one of the group, or a natural disaster hits, the Prophet explains that the primates who were killed had displeased the Tiger God, and more faith, dedication and sacrifices are needed if they don't want to end up the same way. Soon, the Tiger Prophet is basically in charge of the troop, living off the hard work of the others, and he designates his first born son to be the next Prophet. And by this time, since his warnings had saved the troop from so many calamities that he had imagined were coming, perhaps even the Prophet himself is convinced of his own abilities, and believes in the Tiger God as devoutly as everyone else... and also gets a very nice living from it. Now religion has come into the world.
I was a Mormon for nearly 25 years. I truly believed in Jesus, God, religion, et cetera. I have a doctorate and although I know that doesn't prove one's intelligence I would like to think that I'm not a complete doofus. Religions can fool you though. I really appreciate the atheist viewpoint now.
Why are you immediately referring to the binary choice? It's not just religion or atheism. You don't need an intermediary, like religion, to understand a superior being.
It is binary. Either there is a god, or there isn't. You've done a bait and switch by calling it a "superior being". Of course you don't need religion to consider the possibility of a superior being. A supernatural being that created the universe, on the other hand, you do... at least, if you are accepting it and not simply entertaining the idea. There's a strong argument that each successive generation of humans are "superior beings" to the previous generations. They are born into a world with greater knowledge than the past, with greater technology, and - at least for most of the last century - are more socially conscious. This is not to say 'all' members of a successive generation are better than previous generations, but that the potential for any given individual within a generation is higher for the "next" generation. Possibly this will plateau, or decline, but that doesn't matter. There's also the argument that a "superior being" could just be any being that is better than another being at a given thing. Usain Bolt is a superior sprinter than me. Mike Tyson a superior boxer. This also applies to other species. Dolphins are better swimmers, bacteria is better at reproducing, birds are better at flying. @@TheZooBrooksAB
The guy who asked the last question is confusing "faith" with "trust". Faith is believing things without evidence. Trust is believing that you can rely on things that have behaved a certain way in the past. They're different in a fundamental way. We _trust_ a jet because we see them successfully delivering people to their destinations in every case (almost). Theists have _faith_ that God exists in spite of the _total lack of evidence_ to support that belief.
If you have Faith evidence is all around you and you cannot help but see it. If you don't have Faith there is no evidence, nor will there ever be any that would be convincing to you. Question atheists invariably ask is "What would it take for me to convince you that you are incorrect about your Faith?" There is no answer to this question. When you ask atheists, "What would it take to convince you that there is a God?" most won't answer, some say a miracle, some say nothing would convince them. The last group is the only honest one. If Jesus appeared to Dr. Boghossian, showed him the nail marks and turned water into wine for him he would not believe. As soon as Jesus left the Free Thinker rationalizes what they heard and perceived. They would convince themselves that it didn't happen.
TheCatholicHeretic So if I have faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster that makes him real? Your comment doesn't make sense. There are hundreds of gods and if faith is all it takes to make them real then they're _ALL_ real.
Warren Harding Thanks for proving my point. You don't get it. You never will. So are you a 7 on the RD scale or a coward like most atheists? I'd be a 1.
TheCatholicHeretic Well if my logic isn't sound that means you didn't explain your idea very well. Because you said "If you have Faith evidence is all around you and you cannot help but see it." But if a Hindu has faith he will see a different god to you and it will be the real God because he has faith. An argument can only be as logical as its premise.
Warren Harding You didn't answer my question. Answer it and I'll continue the discussion. On the RD scale 1's and 7's are the brave people. Anything else is a coward. Which are you?
For the record, my athiest family does Santa and Easter Bunny. It's fun. Maybe I am wrong, but I think it is likely harmless. I do not think religion is harmless however. I know of no adults that believe in the Easter Bunny and plenty who believe in Christ or Allah. It's the memetic defenses of religion that pose risks to critical thinking, not the illogics of childhood.
48:35 Is that guy stoned? Did I just hear him say that science is what you can convince the most people it is? I mean, crap, there's stupid and then there's stoopid. That was stoopid.
Not really. I took a sex ed class. They said that the condom as 80% effective against pregnancy, but totally effective against STDs. They said that they came up with a vaccine for HPV in 2006, but HPV was discovered in 1983. Now, they are saying that the COVID vaccine is effective when according to the January CDC, and Census Bureau only 6% of the population got sick and only 0.1% died.
@@troybody115 your sex Ed class must have taken place some time around the 80’s when there was widespread panic about the AIDS virus, and inaccurate beliefs about HIV being small enough to pass through a condom thus making condom wearing unnecessary, were circulating through the public. It’s understood now that that the ability of condoms to prevent male to female std transmission and pregnancy are about the same. Condoms cannot protect you against Herpes(HPV) and, Syphillis which are contracted through contact with sores. Or syphyllis, HPV and chlamydia infections of the throat which can be transmitted during oral sex. The best way to protect one’s self from HIV is to take Pre Exposure Prophylaxis 4 hours before sexual activity and for 2 days after. This method is ~100% effective as there have only been 3 breakthrough cases of the virus mutating to infect people who’s blood serum levels indicated threshold dose. those cases were involved in outbreak clusters of over 100 persons in one case and 70 in the other. And in each only 1 person contracted a prep resistant hiv strain. Indicating that the mutations necessary to circumvent our best antiviral safeguards fundamentally compromise the biological fitness of the virus.
bg6b7bft It was a bit more complex then that. He was referring to the problem of mostly pseudo academics that have an idea and then only reading books or material that agreed with their opinion. Here's a good example, and I'll use myself because I was guilty of this exact thing for a while. The "Jesus doesn't exist - even as a man" hypothesis. I used to think Jesus was did exist as a regular human. Then I heard a talk by David Fitzgerald and read his book Nailed, and I thought "Oh look, Jesus didn't exist". Then I continued to read more books on the "Jesus doesn't exist" camp. That created a confirmation bias because I wasn't reading books from the other camp. It wasn't until I started reading some of the 'other side', such as Bart D Ehrman, that I started to have at least a more balanced opinion. (I could challenge my confirmation bias). I personally still think that there's not enough evidence to say Jesus did exist, and if I was placing money on it, I'd put it on the "didn't exist" camp, but I also think it's a bit tricky to answer. The point - going back to this talk - is Boghossian is saying a lot of people only do the one side. They get an idea and then read the books that reinforce that one idea (confirmation bias) and he's saying that's he's observed more cases of confirmation bias happening.
This man is on the level of true reality and pure common sense, reasoning and understanding in what is the truth of here and now. I just cannot come to grips with how delusional and out of touch with reality that I really was at one time in my life, then to hear these other people that are still falling for and "believing" what is not true just makes me cringe, just to think that I was like them at one time. What it really all comes down to in the end is if we choose to not want to understand what is real, from ignorance and foolishness. I am more than thankful to be in reality today, and I am still learning new things because I am human, and I have to let my own pride down to gain more knowledge in this one life that I do have.
"Conviction is evidence of nothing but, conviction. One's conviction is evidence for the strength of the delusion, and not evidence for the truth of the delusion. Confidence does not map on to accuracy." Excellent counter-apologetics point. I must remember this.
A reliable process produces a reliable result, always and independent of time, place and personal opinion. Given that faith produces different results for different peoples in different places at different times, faith is clearly unreliable.
As I just told a friend of mine who I forwarded the link to, this is without a doubt one of the most calmly, intelligently reasoned presentations of this topic I've ever seen. And he does an excellent job of fielding questions from the audience in the latter part. Just brilliant!
"Santa is a gateway to atheism." I agree with this. It teaches you to not take, ahem, _as gospel,_ what some authority has told you. If they lied about Santa, they probably lied about Jesus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.
A 12 month old uses cognitive thinking processes to discover reality. When they begin to walk and crawl they learn through experience what is true about reality. That the floor exists for example and that walking into the wall causes pain.
15 signs of how most religions are abusive relationships: 1. Quick involvement. He comes on strong, claiming, You get pressured for an exclusive commitment almost immediately. 2. There is jealousy. Your Deity is excessively possesive. 3. He is controlling. Insists you ask for permission to go anywhere or do anything. 4. He has very unrealistic expectations (in writing). He expects you to be the perfect person and blames you if you aren't. 5. There is isolation. He tries to cut you off from friends if they hold other opinions. 6. He blames others for his own mistakes (in writing). It's always someone else's fault if anything goes wrong. 7. He makes everyone else responsibile for their feelings. he claims (in writing), "You make me angry" instead of "I'm angry." "I wouldn't get so pissed off if you wouldn't... 8. There is hypersensitivity. He Is easily insulted and will often rant and rave about injustices that are just part of life (in writing). 9. He is cruel to animals and children. He kills or punishes animals brutally. He also may expect children to do things beyond their ability (in writing). 10. His "playful" with your life. He enjoys throwing you down or holding you down against your will. Intimidates, manipulates, or forces you to engage in unwanted acts. 11. There is verbal abuse (in writing). He constantly criticizes you or says cruel things; degrades, curses, calls you ugly names. He will use vulnerable points about your past/life against you. 12. There are rigid gender roles. He Expects you to serve and obey. 13. He has sudden mood swings. He switches from loving to angry in a matter of minutes. 14. He has a past of battering. He admits to hitting women in the past, but states that they or the situation brought it on. 15. There are threats of violence. He makes statements such as, "I'll damn you forever," for the most minor faux pas. Abusive behavior can be a generational dysfunction and abused only begotten sons have a great chance of becoming abusers. Entities who abuse strangers are much more likely to abuse followers also. How to Leave an Abusive Relationship with god Method 1 of 2: Emotional Overview End a Controlling or Manipulative Relationship 1 Realize that those first few hours will be treacherous. You have left your abuser but your abuser is more than that. Often times, our abusers are people that we have some fond memories of. The fear will subside. 2 Abuse is still a taboo subject. People continue to blame the victim. There may be comforting friends and family around, but it is going to be hard for them to understand. This is your battle and you are going to have to be stronger than any one person should have to be. 3 Most of the scars will heal. But the scars will remain in your mind. Just when you think you are totally over it all, a shadow will slip into your dreams. Conquer the abuse and destroy your abuser. 4 The first thing you should do if you have been abused is accept the abuse as something that happened. It is not your fault. It is nothing to be ashamed of and you can, and will, go on to lead a productive life. But you have to recognize and accept the abuse as being part of your story. Method 2 of 2: Action Steps 1 Let go of who you think they are. It is not usually the loss that hurts the most but the loss of who you imagined or wished them to be. 2 Tell someone what is happening to you. Break the silence so that others can help you with your situation. When others know what we are going through it challenges us. 3 Change your routines, cell numbers and in severe cases you may want to consider changing your place of employment. Leave no word with any mutual friends as to your whereabouts. It is best if you can leave town altogether in some situations. 4 Get to know yourself. Spend some time in meditation and let go of any thoughts of inadequacy, fears or any other things that keep you in fear. The abuser within is sometimes the worst abuser of all. Be kind to yourself and become your own best friend. Seek counselling and support from others who have come through similar situations. 5 Take some time before you begin searching. You really want to find out who you are first and love that person before you seek another lifestyle. Do not ever give another person the power to give and take away love from you. Anyone who does not love the real you is not worthy of your attention anyway. Surround yourself with a loving network of caring friends. Center yourself.
For most people, it's difficult to speak in front of a large group of people you don't know if you haven't had practice at it. Don't mistake public speaking difficulty with actually being unable to articulate privately.
@Steve You really believe such fables? Do you know Solomon also talked with ants according to the Quran? Or Mohammed rode on a flying horse? If you can't believe any of that, then apply same logic to talking snake and donkey, or chariot of fire, or sun standing still(the earth actually revolves not the sun) in the Bible.. You really need to see books removed from the Geneva and KJV 1611 Bibles.
@Steve They're all the same thing, made up stories and traditions.. Islam is just the religion of the Arabs, the Hebrew had theirs, ancient Khemet, Babylon, Greece, Rome etc Everyone thinks they have the truth and the rest are false.. No book dropped down from heaven, people made up stuff and claimed they received it from heaven. The earth isn't flat, upper sky isn't made of glass, what did all the carnivores eat on board the ark for 12 months, and also when they got off since all life had died??? You believe languages came from the tower of Babel?? what of the new languages of few centuries?
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” Steven Weinberg
I wish he would have asked the guy who was saying that reasoning is unreliable, what method of thought by which he arrived at that conclusion other than REASON. I'm not the first person to say it here, but here it goes: He's cutting off the very branch upon which he rests his argument.
Pat Brennan What kind of stupid assumptions are you making about me? I don't even own a TV, I've never watched the Kardashians and I don't know how you arrived at such an embarrassingly wrong conclusion about me. Is there a joke somewhere that I'm missing? If you disagree with me, how about you actually address my point if you are able.
You raise an excellent point, Geoff. It is popular to just shoot off a remark like, "you should get back to keeping up with the Kardashians now......." Inevitably, that remark suggests that there really is nowhere to go since as you point out, Pat Brennan does not know you (and neither do I). I do wish Pat would have addressed your point. Of course, the argument made by the "questioner" falls flat with the notion that "reasoning is unreliable." He did not seem rational to me.
In an attempt to provide a constructive criticism; I believe what was meant is that our reasoning is not infallible and can be wrong, hence, unreliable. Banana fits in hand = god = unreliable reasoning.
Biogeography, the entirety of the fossil record, all of genetics, morphological similarities between animals, embryology, phylogeny, vestigial organs, chemical similarities between animals and observed instances both in small scale lab experiments and in nature. That's the 'incredibly huge amount' he was talking about.
I just don't understand why some of these people had the questions they did. It seems as if they either just didn't get it or they willingly refused to get it. He made his points extremely clear
These are bad and dumb questions, but that one guy argues that reason is a bad way of coming to the truth, but assuming that a conclusion is true is a good way of coming to the truth? That has to be one of the dumber arguments I've ever heard from a theist, and he doesn't sound like a dumb person. Sometimes I wish I could understand the delusion that leads people to these bizarre conclusions, other times I think I'm better off not knowing.
Dieter Gribnitz All smart people believe stupid things. Newton believed in alchemy, including the nutty spiritual teachings of alchemy. Newton also believed he could predict the second coming of Christ using Bible codes. Einstein embarrassed himself publicly by clinging to scientific determinism and the idea of a static universe. Plato gave us Platonism. Pythagoras believed that beans are evil. If the smartest men in history could believe in things that dumb, we have to assume that the rest of us are more wrong about more things.
I agree that smart people can start from faulty premises or have incorrect information leading them to erroneous conclusions. I am sure that my assumptions on a vast array of subjects are fractally wrong due to my lack of knowledge on a subject. ( The speculation on this guy's intellect might be one of them ) That being said, this does not mean that being well educated guarantees that you are smart. The difference between being educated and being intelligent is your ability to apply your knowledge. You can have access to all the facts in the world but if the compiler in your brain is dysfunctional you will still be lead to lots of faulty conclusions and incoherent utterances. You get smart plumbers and dumb lawyers. This guy and most of the other questioners gave me the distinct impression of people who fall into the category of well informed idiots.
Dieter Gribnitz "difference between educated and smart"? You sound like you are laboring under the idea that somewhere out there is a category of humans that have flawless thinking and don't make idiotic mistakes. There is no such person. We are all sloppy thinkers, a few of us are just a bit more useful during their rational moments. :P
For most part I think we are in agreement. You are right in the sense that we don't excel at all subjects in equal measure. I didn't mean to imply that there is a hard line between the two categories. My point was that you can remember every physics formula ever created but if you can't apply them, they are useless to you. Your intellect is proportional to your ability to process information and not to retain it. The amount of knowledge this guy seems to have on the subject and the arguments he has presented, leads me to believe he either has bad reasoning skills, must have overlooked a couple of critical variables or has confused himself with word games. Forgive me if I start to ramble but I find it fascinating that this level of reasoning is even possible. How this guy even manages to stand up right and not fall over more often is astounding to me.
"I choose not to believe in Neanderthals." What does that mean? "I choose to live my life pretending Neanderthals do not exist." or "I try as must as possible to sweep Neanderthals under the rug, much the way physicists ignored the black body problem in the late 1800s. It was an anomaly that people would get around to dealing with later. It could not truly be important." "I am not actually disbelieving in Neanderthals, just ignoring the implications Neanderthals have on overall biblical truth." Most of the evidence for the falsehood of the bible is contained in the bible itself. The trick is to get Christians to read the damn thing cover to cover.
The woman who opens the lecture should have had more sense than to wear something that looks like a dog collar around her neck to a recorded lecture. She looks absurd.
The only thing I could think of during all the time she was talking was that she was into BDSM. That's distracting. And that's why you shouldn't use it during a public speech. If you know how to give a speech you know that one of the important things is that you shouldn't wears distracting clothes or accessories that take attention away from what you're saying.
“The more I study science, the more I believe in God.” -Albert Einstein (The Wall Street Journal, Dec 24, 1997, article by Jim Holt, “Science Resurrects God.”)
+BloodOfYeshuaMessiah What universe do you occupy? In fact, we *do* drink and eat things because scientists say it's perfectly safe. Just about everything you put in your mouth contains chemicals that scientists have concluded is safe at the levels you would be exposed to by eating it. We not only have genes for tails, some kids are born with fully formed tails. We have genes for gills. We have a full coat of fur, (not hair, fur), as fetuses that we shed in about the 6th month. We still have the cells apes have, that made our hair stand up when we were way more hairy. But that's only the tip of the iceberg of proof we have. And I know what a religious nutcase you are, so it's not surprising you're a total moron in scientific subjects, but we didn't evolve from monkeys and nobody but imbecilic retards like you ever even says that. But pulling stuff out my ass and accusing someone else of believing it sounds like fun. Let me try it. Christians are so fucking stupid, they think that man was created just so god would have another dick to suck besides his own. This is false. God made man so his sun would have a supply of young boys to bugger when he visited earth. Xtians love Jesus because he was a pedophile child molester, caught red handed in bed with a young boy, just like a priest. That's a FACT, BTW. But most christians don't know that Jesus was also into golden showers and loved nothing better than to have a circle jerk with his apostles and some random boy they snatched to piss in Jesus's mouth. He *really* loved that. The last supper? That chalice he was holding was full of warm piss from a 10 year old boy and they all sat down to a big plate of turds from another boy they kidnapped. Don't blame me. That's what it says in the real bible..
+Kees den Heijer And that's why christians and theists based part of their validation for their scripture as above human intellect being the reason we need them, but if you're an unreasonable person how would you even understand it? but they like to think they got atheists by the balls with a contradictory statement; at least they tried to think.
+Kees den Heijer I think it's not all reasoning is bad, I totally disagree with the questioner, it's the way you go about reasoning, the methods you use, which is basically what the whole point of this lecture is about, so that questioner missed the entire point of this lecture. This lecture was, in part, about how to arrive at valid conclusions using good reasoning as opposed to using bad reasoning.
+screw .Google I wonder if the questioner really missed the point or he was feeling some biting cognitive dissonance and needed to counter it in any way he could?
Peter should give workshops to other atheist speakers on How To Take Questions From The Audience. Most treat it as an obligatory afterthought where they'll either receive banal praise or have to tolerate a few uncomfortable minutes of nutbaggery, but Peter got engaged and took the Q&A as seriously as the rest of the talk. Exemplary.
A student made a uneducated comment about vaccines and the anti-vaccine crowd, and Peter never corrected him pointing out that the most educated people are the hardest to educate. If either of them did there homework they'd be completely against them.
Also, the word 'faith' is often used interchangably with the 'trust'. There is an important distinction to make there. Trust is a belief based on an acknowledged historical pattern of integrity. In other words there is evidence based on experience. Not so with faith where belief is claimed without evidence.
Those things that "reign in [our] busy minds." are called thoughts. We also have thoughts about our thoughts. We think about whether or not our thoughts are validated by the reality of the world in which we find ourselves. When we find that our thoughts are not validated, we seek to replace those thoughts with thoughts that better fit the reality of this world. Thoughts about any form of super-natural have never been validated.
The quantum guy is seriously trying to bolster his argument with a _shifting the burden of proof_ fallacy. Where did they find that many dumb people to fill one auditorium?
ShadeyBladey You are right. My bad. But, then why is this woman wearing a collar? Is it some new fashion trend, or is she coming straight from a bondage session?
1:28:00 "An atheist would say there's no god, a Christian would say there is a god." Even if we took that as being accurate, they don't occupy equal footing. "There is no invisible 100 foot tall gorilla living in the supermarket down the street" and "there is an invisible 100 foot tall gorilla living in the supermarket down the street" aren't equivalent. This is the attempt to make belief and non-belief into mere difference of opinion. They're not. One of them is true. One of them has a burden of proof, while the other occupies the Null Hypothesis. Guess which is which.
"Intelligence has nothing to do with process." The process is entirely conducted by an intelligent organizing energy EVEN WHEN IT MAKES "errors". NOTHING IS unpondered.
His argument is very wanting. To show that faith is unreliable method he has to show first that God doesn't exist, because if he does, that would mean that people who believe in him have true beliefs, which will make their faith reliable. And the lack of evidence for religious beliefs doesn't bear on their reliability. For example, suppose that someone has a unique ability to know where the president is at a moment, but it happens that this person ignores this ability so that he never checks whether it's reliable or not, so he doesn't have any evidence that his beliefs about the president are true. Does it make his belief formation process unreliable? It seems not, because he does form true beliefs each time in a highly reliable way. So he needs evidence to show that faith is unreliable, and I see no other way of doing this but demonstrating that God doesn't exist.
Lets go with your argument that somehow we atheists must disproof god for a second, despite that atheist simply state we have not seen the evidence. Say we are incapable to proof god does not exist. How does that proof he or she does exist? Two: Imagine we can proof god exist. What makes your definition of god true? Say we are absolute sure she exists. What makes you say god is male? There are more people who believe it is Shiva than those who believe it was a male. Are they wrong? How is that possible according to your definition. After all you claim that just feeling good about such belief and in absence of any proof that god does not exist then such believer is correct. What will you tell to all moslims? They believe you are running DOS 3.0 and they are Windows 3.1. Would you agree with the 10 commandments? How come moslims so much believe in the second commandment that they are willing to kill 160 or so people for a cartoon? How are you dealing with 9th commandment about false evidence? Also believing so strong that you are willing to kill for your god?
The argument he makes is that reliable methods generate evidence, and so the lack of evidence for religious beliefs undermine their claims of reliability. The idea of a reliable method is that it will produce consistent answers, regardless of who is using it. That is, anyone can use the method to get the same answer. In practice this doesn't always happen initially, but eventually as more people use the same method repeatedly they will converge on the same result. This is exactly what we see with science. There are always errors and uncertainties, but as the evidence accumulates scientists converge on the same answers and the debate moves on to new ideas. This is exactly what we don't see when people use faith. Different people get different results. These results never converge, and if anything diverge. The debate never moves on. This is what is part of what's meant by faith being unreliable.
Harry Ray Your definition of reliability is false. Reliability is not the same as consistency, a reliable mechanism is something which leads to the truth and thus a reliable cognitive process is one that produces true beliefs. But that means that in order to show that faith is unreliable you must show that it produces false beliefs, and you can't do that unless you also show that God doesn't in fact exist (otherwise, how do you know that religious beliefs are false?).
Fafner888 Actual according to your definition of truth that proof already exist. Do Muslims have faith? How about Satanists? What about Hindus? How about Jehovahs Witness, or Mormons, or Jones or Kordesh? I venture that all of them have as much if not more faith that you. And obvious you are going to say: i am right and all those poor souls are mislead. Which is exactly why we do not take faith serious as method to produce reliable truth.
This is interesting, I was 5 when I placed God, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny into the realm of make believe and fairytales after seeing my mother wrapping my present from Santa. My family are God fearing Roman Catholics…so…when I told them, in front of the priest at Christmas mass after catching her wrapping my present. It didn’t go over well. The church and my parents tried everything possible to convince me that God was real. Nope, I knew what they were saying was impossible so I never believed anything about God what so ever. And when they introduced the Jesus resurrection story to me, that was it. I thought that all adults were either crazy or lying to me. That was 50 years ago, my family is still crazy religious and at every family event we have the big debate. They don’t understand how it’s possible that I don’t believe in God, and I don’t understand why my family is so absolutely brainwashed with nonsense. Good times, I love mooching their stupidity. Be well.
@@mpersandThat would be because logic goes completely out the window when it comes to God and religion. That’s why they always fall back on faith because there’s nothing else to hold on to. The impossibility of God is to obvious to accept.
@@maxxwellbeing9449 Oh, I didn't mean that. I think there is plenty of evidence for the crucifixion and resurrection. Most scholars who study it concede that the crucifixion happened, and they are not believers. If you look at the evidence, it's compelling.
@@mpersand further to our other discussion. Would you mind pointing me at the evidence (documents) you mention. This is an area I really need to learn more about. I'm especially interested in how such torture/execution was documented by the Romans and how that can confirm the events which we read about in Christian religious texts (I'm Roman Catholic educated from birth and a history junkie so this is a passion of mine).
Bogosian is one of those really smart people who thought that we'd have a wonderful, completely rational utopia if we got rid of religion. Ten years later: (arguing with people who think that men can actually be women 😆 🤣)
Isn't it ironic that when, at 50:40, the questioner claims that "rationality doesn't serve a great function" he was trying to put forward a rational argument?🤯
it's an excellent teaching device though...reinforcing concepts and ideas helps to commit them to memory, and amazingly useful if you are taking notes. teachers like this are indispensable in an era of fleeting attention spans.
This is a great lecture. may I suggest. If you want people of faith to even give a bit of a listen, change the title. Thinkers should know that an inflammatory title would not invite any type of discourse.
Kees den Heijer "The hospital just called. Your brains will be ready in about a week. The reference is clearly coming from Peter not from me. Moron!" Hahahahahahahahahaha! *_When you wear Peter's uniform, you'll probably get bullets meant for him also, Dutchman!_* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
I don't know if goat sacrifice was used by the Aztecs, but It was used by the jews and christians. I've heard that is where the term scapegoat originated.
You missed out. If you had sacrificed a cow, you could have got a new house. A bull would have added 2 acres of land. But, if you had sacrificed a good fat pig, you could have gotten bacon.
I did listen to it enough to disregard what he has to say. INTELLIGENCE DOES NOT MAKE YOUR HEART BEAT. I do not need healing.My mind is not blocked I am open to ideas based on reason and evidence, you haven't provided any. It's really that simple.
That's because he CAN think critically. As opposed to assuming that if anyone agrees with the official position, they must be wrong. Which would be NOT thinking critically.
friendlywhiteguy You're a moronic idiot. The official story doesn't exist. The REAL story is research by dozens of experts in building demolition that tell us that what you cretins believe happened is impossible because they do it every day and it isn't something that can be done in secret, physics doesn't allow it, they have to rip the guts out of a building to position the explosives by the steel members. This renders the building unusable for the weeks it takes to do that!
"I wouldn't fly in a faith based airplane." Sums it up perfectly.
@Steve You're confusing faith with hope. I hope the plane won't crash, I do not claim to know that it won't.
Steve now you're misusing faith as trust... I trust the people involved know what they are doing. I do not claim to know something won't go wrong.
Steve No, again, most Christians claim to know. For example the Nicene Creed is a knowledge claim. Your statement on college is a hope statement not a knowledge claim.
@Steve Since we can't agree on the definition of faith, may I ask what evidence leads one to trust the Bible as a reliable source of information?
@Steve Can you explain what supernatural evidence is specifically? Could you give a specific example of evidence that could prove your beliefs false and/or change your mind?
Faith is claiming to know something is true without (reliable) evidence. All supernatural beliefs are faith based beliefs.
I am a retired teacher and had this happen in class one day.A student asked me a question and I was in the process of answering it and he said, "don't confuse me with the facts". Just thought that fit in here someplace.
+rick padgett Wonderful! :P I only wonder what sort of question it was :)
If you need to be right, you do not need facts. LOL
As a longtime educator, I experienced this more with parents than with students. Sadly, students go home to hear their parents harangue on and on about this issue or that issue. A few parents enjoy pitting the teacher against their child (your student). I would suspect that the student who said, "don't confuse me with the facts," was simply repeating something he heard at home. One of the problems with K-12 education is that you are not working with the student in isolation. It is likely that the student tells their parents and other adults the things you say. I think your sharing, rick padgett, fits in quite nicely because it is my thought that people grow up after parroting their parents and often do not see the power of drawing one's own conclusions based on reason and new learning.
I love Dr. Boghassian. He is spot on with his approach and is genuinely interested in promoting rational thought without turning it into an argument. We are lucky to have him in our world, as I see things.
I hope you had your student back after class for remedial epistemology.
Don't confuse me with the facts my mind is already made up - paraphrasing Stanton J Friedman (ufo researcher/nuclear physicist)
I am sure my 7 th. grader did not know this guy.
My greatest challenge in my life now is to practice pure patience with anyone who defends faith--or any religious belief.
And sometimes it is near impossible to do so.
@Steve
No, christians engage in self-delusion.
Someone I trusted, who helped me, ended up in a health facility because she believed the dictums of Christian Science and let an infection grow out of control. It was so hard to listen to her admonitions to attend her church.
Same.
@@jimrahn5569 -No, I find it difficult to tolerate anyone who defends the use of faith as a reliable pathway to truth.
Does that basically mean that I have difficulty tolerating anyone who disagrees with me?
why not not talk about it.
I love how believers always try to defend their beliefs by stating that atheists also believe in their disbelief. This is like saying that not having hobbies is a hobby.
Great analogy!
PRAISE YSHUA TIMO ANTILLA, IF YOU BELIEVE THAT BELIVERS ARE NOT RIGHT YOU BELIEVE SOMETHING OR YOU WOULD NOT HAVE MADE YOUR STATEMENT AND THE ONE WHO REPILED TO YOUR ANALOGY BELIEVES THAT IT IS GREAT. SO HOW IS IT THAT YOU AND YOUR COLLEGUE DO NOT BELIEVE. WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE. SHALOM.
@@memeeverson4284 Understand that your are the one having the burden of proof. We make no fact claim like god exist. We simply don't believe.
It is
@@memeeverson4284
Your poisoned mind can't tell the difference between reasoned belief based on evidence and delusional belief based on faith.
Sit your ignorant ass down and stop embarrassing yourself with such idiocy.
30:00 "speaking in tongues: sounds like Italian"
I'm Italian, and to me that sounded like Chinese.
Where is those "pass that on to my ethnic brothers of ______" memes when u need one.
C'mon!!!!
Chinese people, speak up, claim it sounds like a drunk Irish dude or something... lol
Damn right. I find, that a few informative words goes further than a thousand words rushing like a raging river.
I wish all my professors could have been more like this man. Very engaging.
"Faith based belief processes are un-reliable" What a great quote!
I think one of the problems of overcoming the delusions that people have, in regards to trying to have a rational conversation with them, is the fact that, more often than not, people have allowed their personal identities to be tied up with the delusion. So any attempt to talk with them about overcoming irrational beliefs will be seen as a personal attack by them. And once people go on that type of defensive stance, they become so entrenched that no amount of reasoning will shake them from it. They let their religious beliefs come to literally define who they are as people. And thats where I get unsure on how to handle that situation. When people shut down, as they often do, I find it near to impossible to continue the discussion at all, let alone on a rational level.
Well worded and absolutely true.
AKA cognitive dissonance.
You don't need a diatribe to say what this commentator said.
Dr. Boghossian takes the mic at 9:00min
thanks
Thanks
Cobalt Cr
Thank you soooo much!!
Kudos!
Yes, thank you very much!
Really good presentation. For those wanting a summarized version, more or less the ideas are:
* Faith based processes are unreliable because they'll decrease the likelihood that one will have true beliefs.
* There are ways to solve problems better than others. Ex. The scientific method has proven to provide models closer to reality than other methods like divination and sorcery.
* Delusions have 3 criteria:
1-Certainty. Delusional people are completely certain their beliefs are true and unwilling to change their opinions.
2-Encouragibility. Delusional people want others to share their beliefs and are positive about them.
3-Impossibility. They don't match evidence and are usually wild claims.
* Rationality and critical thinking are based on testing claims against reality to get closer to the truth. The process is simple and based on:
1) Accepting that we don't know the full truth about anything. Being willing to change our opinions.
2) Testing our beliefs against evidence that is measurable, verifiable and repeatedly gives the same expected results. Looking for evidence that the belief may be false and then going back and testing how well it can answer to critics.
"I wouldn't fly on a faith-based airplane. " Perfect summary.
TY for this video. I just did it: Woke up & started reading his books. 😎✌️
I really like some of Peter's propositions.
Regarding the topic of faith, the last guy made an important point that wasn't fully understood, probably because Peter's definition of faith differs from that of the guy asking the question.
First of all, there is more than one valid definition for faith, because the word 'faith' is used in different contexts with different meanings. When the last guy presented the airplane example, what he was referring to is to the fact that many (if not all) of the decisions that we make daily are ultimately based on faith, faith understood as belief or trust. The example of the airplane is a good one: even though we might know that the probability of having an accident is incredibly small, we can't know for certain if our plane will crash or not, so we make a decision based on the belief (faith) that nothing bad will happen.
This faith, trust or belief is an emotional process, not an intellectual process, but it can be influenced by intellectual processes. For example: if you thought that the probability of dying on an airplane accident was a 1% chance, you would probably never consider taking an airplane (you would have no faith in it). But if you knew that the chance of dying on an airplane crash from a commercial airline was like 1 in 10 million, your sense of safety will most likely increase to the point that you will not even worry about it. On the other hand, some people will still worry and even consider alternative methods of transportation that might even be more dangerous, like a car, a bus or a train. This happens because they are not being rational, only emotional. They prefer to stick to what they already know rather than trying something unknown to them, even though airplanes are demonstrably safer.
In short: no matter how much or how little you know about something, your decisions will ultimately be dictated by an emotional process that many identify as faith. Your faith can be influenced by your current knowledge about something or simply by wishful thinking but it is faith nonetheless.
PS: Faith should not be confused with hope. You don't take an airplane hoping that it will not crash😂; you take it because you believe (you have faith) everything it's going to be ok.
Most of the questioners are not interested in listening and are poor listeners. Most were pushing their own wheelbarrows.
Sadly, but you are completely right!
Thinking is what our brains do 24/7/365.25.
Paying attention to our thinking and using this terrific brain power requires tremendous effort and an openness to the idea that we might have understood something incorrectly. I believe that is Peter Boghossian's point throughout all of his lectures.
Listening is not common in the USA. I think that might explain how this election cycle seems to be shaping up.
Listening is likely the most difficult skill to acquire. It requires suspending one's beliefs to do it well.
I like how he said everything important twice or three times. All profs should do that!
I think the questioner (and to an extent, Dr. Boghossian) got it wrong when discussing the analogy of the tiger in the bush. While evolution may have programmed our brains to find false positives, this is still an example of the value of truth. The primate learns that it is TRUE, that the rustling he hears in the bushes COULD be a tiger, and he learns that it is TRUE that there is serious risk to life and limb if he ignores the possibility that the noise could be a tiger. He also learns that it is TRUE that the benefits of investigating to see if the noise is actually caused by a tiger are far exceeded by the risks of doing so. Primates that don't learn these truths are far more likely to wind up as lunch meat.
Does the primate ACTUALLY believe there is a tiger there? We don't know, but he has wisely chosen to ACT as if there were a tiger there. If he were a being with language ability, who had to explain to the rest of the troop why he raised the alarm, and interrupted everybody's feeding time, he might tell them that he had SEEN the tiger. He might even convince himself that he had. Perhaps then, he becomes the prophet of the tiger god or something because he saw the tiger that no one else could, and he saved the troop.
Perhaps he then begins to make more pronouncements of danger to the troop. He tells them that there will be an earthquake if they don't sacrifice part of their food to the Tiger god (or his designated representative on Earth, the Tiger Prophet). They do so, and there is no earthquake! The Tiger Prophet has saved them AGAIN! Soon, the Tiger Prophet no longer has to hunt and forage with the rest, of the troop. They need him to divine the the ways that they can keep themselves safe from tigers and earthquakes, so they sacrifice part of their food to the church of the Tiger Prophet. And when a tiger does get one of the group, or a natural disaster hits, the Prophet explains that the primates who were killed had displeased the Tiger God, and more faith, dedication and sacrifices are needed if they don't want to end up the same way.
Soon, the Tiger Prophet is basically in charge of the troop, living off the hard work of the others, and he designates his first born son to be the next Prophet. And by this time, since his warnings had saved the troop from so many calamities that he had imagined were coming, perhaps even the Prophet himself is convinced of his own abilities, and believes in the Tiger God as devoutly as everyone else... and also gets a very nice living from it.
Now religion has come into the world.
I was a Mormon for nearly 25 years. I truly believed in Jesus, God, religion, et cetera. I have a doctorate and although I know that doesn't prove one's intelligence I would like to think that I'm not a complete doofus. Religions can fool you though. I really appreciate the atheist viewpoint now.
Why are you immediately referring to the binary choice? It's not just religion or atheism. You don't need an intermediary, like religion, to understand a superior being.
It is binary. Either there is a god, or there isn't. You've done a bait and switch by calling it a "superior being". Of course you don't need religion to consider the possibility of a superior being. A supernatural being that created the universe, on the other hand, you do... at least, if you are accepting it and not simply entertaining the idea. There's a strong argument that each successive generation of humans are "superior beings" to the previous generations. They are born into a world with greater knowledge than the past, with greater technology, and - at least for most of the last century - are more socially conscious. This is not to say 'all' members of a successive generation are better than previous generations, but that the potential for any given individual within a generation is higher for the "next" generation. Possibly this will plateau, or decline, but that doesn't matter.
There's also the argument that a "superior being" could just be any being that is better than another being at a given thing. Usain Bolt is a superior sprinter than me. Mike Tyson a superior boxer. This also applies to other species. Dolphins are better swimmers, bacteria is better at reproducing, birds are better at flying.
@@TheZooBrooksAB
The guy who asked the last question is confusing "faith" with "trust".
Faith is believing things without evidence.
Trust is believing that you can rely on things that have behaved a certain way in the past.
They're different in a fundamental way. We _trust_ a jet because we see them successfully delivering people to their destinations in every case (almost).
Theists have _faith_ that God exists in spite of the _total lack of evidence_ to support that belief.
If you have Faith evidence is all around you and you cannot help but see it. If you don't have Faith there is no evidence, nor will there ever be any that would be convincing to you. Question atheists invariably ask is "What would it take for me to convince you that you are incorrect about your Faith?" There is no answer to this question. When you ask atheists, "What would it take to convince you that there is a God?" most won't answer, some say a miracle, some say nothing would convince them. The last group is the only honest one. If Jesus appeared to Dr. Boghossian, showed him the nail marks and turned water into wine for him he would not believe. As soon as Jesus left the Free Thinker rationalizes what they heard and perceived. They would convince themselves that it didn't happen.
TheCatholicHeretic So if I have faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster that makes him real?
Your comment doesn't make sense. There are hundreds of gods and if faith is all it takes to make them real then they're _ALL_ real.
Warren Harding Thanks for proving my point. You don't get it. You never will. So are you a 7 on the RD scale or a coward like most atheists? I'd be a 1.
TheCatholicHeretic Well if my logic isn't sound that means you didn't explain your idea very well. Because you said "If you have Faith evidence is all around you and you cannot help but see it."
But if a Hindu has faith he will see a different god to you and it will be the real God because he has faith.
An argument can only be as logical as its premise.
Warren Harding You didn't answer my question. Answer it and I'll continue the discussion. On the RD scale 1's and 7's are the brave people. Anything else is a coward. Which are you?
Should've showed the powerpoint
For the record, my athiest family does Santa and Easter Bunny. It's fun. Maybe I am wrong, but I think it is likely harmless. I do not think religion is harmless however. I know of no adults that believe in the Easter Bunny and plenty who believe in Christ or Allah. It's the memetic defenses of religion that pose risks to critical thinking, not the illogics of childhood.
Beautifully said.
Just discovered this guy; he's very good, isn't he?
48:35 Is that guy stoned? Did I just hear him say that science is what you can convince the most people it is? I mean, crap, there's stupid and then there's stoopid. That was stoopid.
Not really. I took a sex ed class. They said that the condom as 80% effective against pregnancy, but totally effective against STDs.
They said that they came up with a vaccine for HPV in 2006, but HPV was discovered in 1983.
Now, they are saying that the COVID vaccine is effective when according to the January CDC, and Census Bureau only 6% of the population got sick and only 0.1% died.
@@troybody115 your sex Ed class must have taken place some time around the 80’s when there was widespread panic about the AIDS virus, and inaccurate beliefs about HIV being small enough to pass through a condom thus making condom wearing unnecessary, were circulating through the public.
It’s understood now that that the ability of condoms to prevent male to female std transmission and pregnancy are about the same.
Condoms cannot protect you against Herpes(HPV) and, Syphillis which are contracted through contact with sores. Or syphyllis, HPV and chlamydia infections of the throat which can be transmitted during oral sex.
The best way to protect one’s self from HIV is to take Pre Exposure Prophylaxis 4 hours before sexual activity and for 2 days after.
This method is ~100% effective as there have only been 3 breakthrough cases of the virus mutating to infect people who’s blood serum levels indicated threshold dose.
those cases were involved in outbreak clusters of over 100 persons in one case and 70 in the other. And in each only 1 person contracted a prep resistant hiv strain. Indicating that the mutations necessary to circumvent our best antiviral safeguards fundamentally compromise the biological fitness of the virus.
Did he seriously say "The more I read about the confirmation bias problem, the more I think confirmation bias is a real problem"?
bg6b7bft It was a bit more complex then that. He was referring to the problem of mostly pseudo academics that have an idea and then only reading books or material that agreed with their opinion.
Here's a good example, and I'll use myself because I was guilty of this exact thing for a while. The "Jesus doesn't exist - even as a man" hypothesis. I used to think Jesus was did exist as a regular human. Then I heard a talk by David Fitzgerald and read his book Nailed, and I thought "Oh look, Jesus didn't exist". Then I continued to read more books on the "Jesus doesn't exist" camp. That created a confirmation bias because I wasn't reading books from the other camp.
It wasn't until I started reading some of the 'other side', such as Bart D Ehrman, that I started to have at least a more balanced opinion. (I could challenge my confirmation bias). I personally still think that there's not enough evidence to say Jesus did exist, and if I was placing money on it, I'd put it on the "didn't exist" camp, but I also think it's a bit tricky to answer.
The point - going back to this talk - is Boghossian is saying a lot of people only do the one side. They get an idea and then read the books that reinforce that one idea (confirmation bias) and he's saying that's he's observed more cases of confirmation bias happening.
This man is on the level of true reality and pure common sense, reasoning and understanding in what is the truth of here and now. I just cannot come to grips with how delusional and out of touch with reality that I really was at one time in my life, then to hear these other people that are still falling for and "believing" what is not true just makes me cringe, just to think that I was like them at one time. What it really all comes down to in the end is if we choose to not want to understand what is real, from ignorance and foolishness. I am more than thankful to be in reality today, and I am still learning new things because I am human, and I have to let my own pride down to gain more knowledge in this one life that I do have.
How much do you wanna bet that you're still not in reality?
A very reasonable answer to the question, "Will you allow me to sit in your clas?" is "Not if you're disruptive."
9:08 for the start of the talk to skip the intro.
"Conviction is evidence of nothing but, conviction.
One's conviction is evidence for the strength of the delusion, and not evidence for the truth of the delusion.
Confidence does not map on to accuracy."
Excellent counter-apologetics point. I must remember this.
A reliable process produces a reliable result, always and independent of time, place and personal opinion. Given that faith produces different results for different peoples in different places at different times, faith is clearly unreliable.
that was VERY well said and it's a point that PB should include
As I just told a friend of mine who I forwarded the link to, this is without a doubt one of the most calmly, intelligently reasoned presentations of this topic I've ever seen. And he does an excellent job of fielding questions from the audience in the latter part. Just brilliant!
Jesus, The Easter Bunny, God, Fairies.. all delusions
your stupid thoughts are the ones fictional.
@Tybok...wow, thanks for such a scholarly rebuffal...troll on!
you are a delusion. prove that you exist!
@@akosikuyzak
You're delusional. The "Crusader" label proves that.
I have to disagree about the Esther Bunny.... This one time, I took 3 Big Hits of DMT... and well
hands up if you want to go to every lecture this guy gives
You can really see that he is a teacher
"Santa is a gateway to atheism." I agree with this. It teaches you to not take, ahem, _as gospel,_ what some authority has told you. If they lied about Santa, they probably lied about Jesus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.
A 12 month old uses cognitive thinking processes to discover reality. When they begin to walk and crawl they learn through experience what is true about reality.
That the floor exists for example and that walking into the wall causes pain.
Peter : "There's a little reverberation in the mike"... Very good , step number one in critical thinking: provide clarity.
yep ...when you believe in things you don't understand, then you suffer. superstition ain't the way.... superstition - Stevie Wonder
I would like to thank all "gods-believers" for showing me, every day, how liberating it is to be an Atheist.
i am very impressed with this speaker, especially and particularly the manner in which he handles the Q & A. very well done.
15 signs of how most religions are abusive relationships:
1. Quick involvement. He comes on strong, claiming, You get pressured for an exclusive commitment almost immediately.
2. There is jealousy. Your Deity is excessively possesive.
3. He is controlling. Insists you ask for permission to go anywhere or do anything.
4. He has very unrealistic expectations (in writing). He expects you to be the perfect person and blames you if you aren't.
5. There is isolation. He tries to cut you off from friends if they hold other opinions.
6. He blames others for his own mistakes (in writing). It's always someone else's fault if anything goes wrong.
7. He makes everyone else responsibile for their feelings. he claims (in writing), "You make me angry" instead of "I'm angry." "I wouldn't get so pissed off if you wouldn't...
8. There is hypersensitivity. He Is easily insulted and will often rant and rave about injustices that are just part of life (in writing).
9. He is cruel to animals and children. He kills or punishes animals brutally. He also may expect children to do things beyond their ability (in writing).
10. His "playful" with your life. He enjoys throwing you down or holding you down against your will. Intimidates, manipulates, or forces you to engage in unwanted acts.
11. There is verbal abuse (in writing). He constantly criticizes you or says cruel things; degrades, curses, calls you ugly names. He will use vulnerable points about your past/life against you.
12. There are rigid gender roles. He Expects you to serve and obey.
13. He has sudden mood swings. He switches from loving to angry in a matter of minutes.
14. He has a past of battering. He admits to hitting women in the past, but states that they or the situation brought it on.
15. There are threats of violence. He makes statements such as, "I'll damn you forever," for the most minor faux pas. Abusive behavior can be a generational dysfunction and abused only begotten sons have a great chance of becoming abusers. Entities who abuse strangers are much more likely to abuse followers also.
How to Leave an Abusive Relationship with god
Method 1 of 2: Emotional Overview
End a Controlling or Manipulative Relationship
1 Realize that those first few hours will be treacherous. You have left your abuser but your abuser is more than that. Often times, our abusers are people that we have some fond memories of. The fear will subside.
2 Abuse is still a taboo subject. People continue to blame the victim. There may be comforting friends and family around, but it is going to be hard for them to understand. This is your battle and you are going to have to be stronger than any one person should have to be.
3 Most of the scars will heal. But the scars will remain in your mind. Just when you think you are totally over it all, a shadow will slip into your dreams. Conquer the abuse and destroy your abuser.
4 The first thing you should do if you have been abused is accept the abuse as something that happened. It is not your fault. It is nothing to be ashamed of and you can, and will, go on to lead a productive life. But you have to recognize and accept the abuse as being part of your story.
Method 2 of 2: Action Steps
1 Let go of who you think they are. It is not usually the loss that hurts the most but the loss of who you imagined or wished them to be.
2 Tell someone what is happening to you. Break the silence so that others can help you with your situation. When others know what we are going through it challenges us.
3 Change your routines, cell numbers and in severe cases you may want to consider changing your place of employment. Leave no word with any mutual friends as to your whereabouts. It is best if you can leave town altogether in some situations.
4 Get to know yourself. Spend some time in meditation and let go of any thoughts of inadequacy, fears or any other things that keep you in fear. The abuser within is sometimes the worst abuser of all. Be kind to yourself and become your own best friend. Seek counselling and support from others who have come through similar situations.
5 Take some time before you begin searching. You really want to find out who you are first and love that person before you seek another lifestyle. Do not ever give another person the power to give and take away love from you. Anyone who does not love the real you is not worthy of your attention anyway. Surround yourself with a loving network of caring friends. Center yourself.
starts at about 9:00 minutes in. Well worth the listen.
I think the thing that people seem to have the most difficulty with is keeping a question to under 20 seconds.
It would have been nice to have a visual of the lecture's slides.
There's another copy of this lecture on RUclips, it's actually the one I found first. About 30 minutes long, omits the meta-introduction and the Q&A.
For most people, it's difficult to speak in front of a large group of people you don't know if you haven't had practice at it.
Don't mistake public speaking difficulty with actually being unable to articulate privately.
My dog says snakes don't talk.
My cat doubts that!
@Steve but a particular snake talked.. and snakes used to walk before being cursed to crawl on the ground.. right?
@Steve You really believe such fables? Do you know Solomon also talked with ants according to the Quran? Or Mohammed rode on a flying horse? If you can't believe any of that, then apply same logic to talking snake and donkey, or chariot of fire, or sun standing still(the earth actually revolves not the sun) in the Bible.. You really need to see books removed from the Geneva and KJV 1611 Bibles.
@Steve They're all the same thing, made up stories and traditions.. Islam is just the religion of the Arabs, the Hebrew had theirs, ancient Khemet, Babylon, Greece, Rome etc Everyone thinks they have the truth and the rest are false.. No book dropped down from heaven, people made up stuff and claimed they received it from heaven. The earth isn't flat, upper sky isn't made of glass, what did all the carnivores eat on board the ark for 12 months, and also when they got off since all life had died??? You believe languages came from the tower of Babel?? what of the new languages of few centuries?
Remark of the last speaker: "I wouldn't fly in a faith-based airplane." - Fantastic!
I wouldn't fly on a faith based airplane. perfect
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
Steven Weinberg
I wish he would have asked the guy who was saying that reasoning is unreliable, what method of thought by which he arrived at that conclusion other than REASON. I'm not the first person to say it here, but here it goes: He's cutting off the very branch upon which he rests his argument.
+Geoff Stockton you should get back to keeping up with the kardashians now, don't want to miss the ending geoff..
Pat Brennan
What kind of stupid assumptions are you making about me? I don't even own a TV, I've never watched the Kardashians and I don't know how you arrived at such an embarrassingly wrong conclusion about me.
Is there a joke somewhere that I'm missing?
If you disagree with me, how about you actually address my point if you are able.
You raise an excellent point, Geoff.
It is popular to just shoot off a remark like, "you should get back to keeping up with the Kardashians now......."
Inevitably, that remark suggests that there really is nowhere to go since as you point out, Pat Brennan does not know you (and neither do I). I do wish Pat would have addressed your point.
Of course, the argument made by the "questioner" falls flat with the notion that "reasoning is unreliable." He did not seem rational to me.
In an attempt to provide a constructive criticism; I believe what was meant is that our reasoning is not infallible and can be wrong, hence, unreliable. Banana fits in hand = god = unreliable reasoning.
Adam Workster
LOL
Biogeography, the entirety of the fossil record, all of genetics, morphological similarities between animals, embryology, phylogeny, vestigial organs, chemical similarities between animals and observed instances both in small scale lab experiments and in nature. That's the 'incredibly huge amount' he was talking about.
Peter is brilliant!
I just don't understand why some of these people had the questions they did. It seems as if they either just didn't get it or they willingly refused to get it. He made his points extremely clear
These are bad and dumb questions, but that one guy argues that reason is a bad way of coming to the truth, but assuming that a conclusion is true is a good way of coming to the truth? That has to be one of the dumber arguments I've ever heard from a theist, and he doesn't sound like a dumb person.
Sometimes I wish I could understand the delusion that leads people to these bizarre conclusions, other times I think I'm better off not knowing.
Ignorance is easily overcome but stupidity lasts forever. He is a prime example of an educated stupid person.
Dieter Gribnitz All smart people believe stupid things. Newton believed in alchemy, including the nutty spiritual teachings of alchemy. Newton also believed he could predict the second coming of Christ using Bible codes. Einstein embarrassed himself publicly by clinging to scientific determinism and the idea of a static universe. Plato gave us Platonism. Pythagoras believed that beans are evil.
If the smartest men in history could believe in things that dumb, we have to assume that the rest of us are more wrong about more things.
I agree that smart people can start from faulty premises or have incorrect information leading them to erroneous conclusions. I am sure that my assumptions on a vast array of subjects are fractally wrong due to my lack of knowledge on a subject. ( The speculation on this guy's intellect might be one of them ) That being said, this does not mean that being well educated guarantees that you are smart. The difference between being educated and being intelligent is your ability to apply your knowledge. You can have access to all the facts in the world but if the compiler in your brain is dysfunctional you will still be lead to lots of faulty conclusions and incoherent utterances. You get smart plumbers and dumb lawyers. This guy and most of the other questioners gave me the distinct impression of people who fall into the category of well informed idiots.
Dieter Gribnitz "difference between educated and smart"?
You sound like you are laboring under the idea that somewhere out there is a category of humans that have flawless thinking and don't make idiotic mistakes. There is no such person. We are all sloppy thinkers, a few of us are just a bit more useful during their rational moments. :P
For most part I think we are in agreement. You are right in the sense that we don't excel at all subjects in equal measure. I didn't mean to imply that there is a hard line between the two categories. My point was that you can remember every physics formula ever created but if you can't apply them, they are useless to you. Your intellect is proportional to your ability to process information and not to retain it. The amount of knowledge this guy seems to have on the subject and the arguments he has presented, leads me to believe he either has bad reasoning skills, must have overlooked a couple of critical variables or has confused himself with word games. Forgive me if I start to ramble but I find it fascinating that this level of reasoning is even possible. How this guy even manages to stand up right and not fall over more often is astounding to me.
"I choose not to believe in Neanderthals." What does that mean? "I choose to live my life pretending Neanderthals do not exist."
or "I try as must as possible to sweep Neanderthals under the rug, much the way physicists ignored the black body problem in the late 1800s. It was an anomaly that people would get around to dealing with later. It could not truly be important."
"I am not actually disbelieving in Neanderthals, just ignoring the implications Neanderthals have on overall biblical truth."
Most of the evidence for the falsehood of the bible is contained in the bible itself. The trick is to get Christians to read the damn thing cover to cover.
The woman who opens the lecture should have had more sense than to wear something that looks like a dog collar around her neck to a recorded lecture. She looks absurd.
Elas Mobranch God is just dog spelled backwards. I hope she bites you!
What does her fashion choice have to do with the lecture?
The only thing I could think of during all the time she was talking was that she was into BDSM. That's distracting. And that's why you shouldn't use it during a public speech. If you know how to give a speech you know that one of the important things is that you shouldn't wears distracting clothes or accessories that take attention away from what you're saying.
Normal academia attire tbh...
“The more I study science, the more I believe in God.”
-Albert Einstein
(The Wall Street Journal, Dec 24, 1997, article by Jim Holt, “Science Resurrects God.”)
+BloodOfYeshuaMessiah
You, sir, are are one of those people that this talk was specifically made for.
+BloodOfYeshuaMessiah What universe do you occupy? In fact, we *do* drink and eat things because scientists say it's perfectly safe. Just about everything you put in your mouth contains chemicals that scientists have concluded is safe at the levels you would be exposed to by eating it.
We not only have genes for tails, some kids are born with fully formed tails. We have genes for gills. We have a full coat of fur, (not hair, fur), as fetuses that we shed in about the 6th month. We still have the cells apes have, that made our hair stand up when we were way more hairy. But that's only the tip of the iceberg of proof we have. And I know what a religious nutcase you are, so it's not surprising you're a total moron in scientific subjects, but we didn't evolve from monkeys and nobody but imbecilic retards like you ever even says that.
But pulling stuff out my ass and accusing someone else of believing it sounds like fun. Let me try it.
Christians are so fucking stupid, they think that man was created just so god would have another dick to suck besides his own. This is false. God made man so his sun would have a supply of young boys to bugger when he visited earth. Xtians love Jesus because he was a pedophile child molester, caught red handed in bed with a young boy, just like a priest. That's a FACT, BTW. But most christians don't know that Jesus was also into golden showers and loved nothing better than to have a circle jerk with his apostles and some random boy they snatched to piss in Jesus's mouth. He *really* loved that. The last supper? That chalice he was holding was full of warm piss from a 10 year old boy and they all sat down to a big plate of turds from another boy they kidnapped. Don't blame me. That's what it says in the real bible..
Speaker starts 9:00
I wonder how Dr. Boghossian would answer the question of "how does he know that the love for his wife and kids isn't delusional?"
53:48 "Reasoning is an unreliable process"...
That is arguing against reason, and that is cutting off the very branch you're sitting on.
+Kees den Heijer And that's why christians and theists based part of their validation for their scripture as above human intellect being the reason we need them, but if you're an unreasonable person how would you even understand it? but they like to think they got atheists by the balls with a contradictory statement; at least they tried to think.
+Kees den Heijer I think it's not all reasoning is bad, I totally disagree with the questioner, it's the way you go about reasoning, the methods you use, which is basically what the whole point of this lecture is about, so that questioner missed the entire point of this lecture. This lecture was, in part, about how to arrive at valid conclusions using good reasoning as opposed to using bad reasoning.
screw .Google "I think it's not all reasoning is bad"...
So do I, what's your point?
+pastafarianprophet I agree that that's the error the questioner was making.
+screw .Google
I wonder if the questioner really missed the point or he was feeling some biting cognitive dissonance and needed to counter it in any way he could?
Dr Peter Boghossian really promotes needed rational thought and free thinking with his lectures.
Belief is a feeling that something is real.
Faith is belief without evidence, or when there is contrary evidence.
What a pathetic way to live.
@Steve
Feelings can be anything, thus feelings that you want something to be true when it isn't is bullshit.
@Steve What evidence is there, to support Christianity?
"Ask my dog"
Doggo: Ruff. Ruff ruff!
Peter: Ah 1x2? Excellent, thanks doggo.
I wish they'd panned out and shown the entire presentation.
Peter should give workshops to other atheist speakers on How To Take Questions From The Audience. Most treat it as an obligatory afterthought where they'll either receive banal praise or have to tolerate a few uncomfortable minutes of nutbaggery, but Peter got engaged and took the Q&A as seriously as the rest of the talk. Exemplary.
Starts at 9:11
Yeah it didn't really need a 9min introduction
A student made a uneducated comment about vaccines and the anti-vaccine crowd, and Peter never corrected him pointing out that the most educated people are the hardest to educate. If either of them did there homework they'd be completely against them.
Peter is at: 8:40
As an dyslexic, atheist, insomniac I often lie awake at night wondering if there is a dog!
By what evidence can one base science to be the truth?
->Richard Dawkins - Science works [2013].
Also, the word 'faith' is often used interchangably with the 'trust'. There is an important distinction to make there. Trust is a belief based on an acknowledged historical pattern of integrity. In other words there is evidence based on experience. Not so with faith where belief is claimed without evidence.
a dog collar...really??? does she think anyone will take her seriously???
Shes into the lifestyle ;)
She enjoys a bit of bondage, good girl
I haven't said that there aren't sick people. What I argued is that that precise person was an articulate, intelligent and effective leader.
this lecture is actually about 15 minutes long if you cut out all the times he repeats himself
Wish I could see the slides. Great talk!!
Start at 9:45 to get right to it. :)
Those things that "reign in [our] busy minds." are called thoughts.
We also have thoughts about our thoughts. We think about whether or not our thoughts are validated by the reality of the world in which we find ourselves. When we find that our thoughts are not validated, we seek to replace those thoughts with thoughts that better fit the reality of this world.
Thoughts about any form of super-natural have never been validated.
that woman at the start ,...........jeezus ! :)
Faith Makes you think that the World is a shitty place that you have to endure in your pilgrimage to a better Place.
The quantum guy is seriously trying to bolster his argument with a _shifting the burden of proof_ fallacy. Where did they find that many dumb people to fill one auditorium?
Where did they find that many dumb people to fill one auditorium?
their called the general public.
Random Human *They're
exactly my point. lol
“It’s called FAITH because it’s not KNOWLEDGE!”
Christopher Hitchens.
Why is that woman introducing Peter Boghossian wearing a leash?
ShadeyBladey You are right. My bad. But, then why is this woman wearing a collar? Is it some new fashion trend, or is she coming straight from a bondage session?
Red Hunteur And the even bigger question is: why would you care that I care?
Red Hunteur Not from my perspective.
+Probus Excogitatoris
She's up in Portland. She feels like she's making a statement about herself... which is... kinda correct.
Probus Excogitatoris, she's wearing a collar. Her dominator has the leash.
1:28:00 "An atheist would say there's no god, a Christian would say there is a god." Even if we took that as being accurate, they don't occupy equal footing. "There is no invisible 100 foot tall gorilla living in the supermarket down the street" and "there is an invisible 100 foot tall gorilla living in the supermarket down the street" aren't equivalent. This is the attempt to make belief and non-belief into mere difference of opinion. They're not. One of them is true. One of them has a burden of proof, while the other occupies the Null Hypothesis. Guess which is which.
No no, you have to SHOW me something not existing, otherwise I'm just going to make laws based on something in my deluded head...
Whats with the Dog Collar Samantha
woof
@Robyn Shorrock- What does her fashion choice have to do with the lecture?
Eliot Drake The question is why does it matter?
She's into BDSM, that's what she's saying.
I DON'T KNOW IF ANYONE HAS NOTICED THIS BUT PETER LOOKS A LOT LIKE SEAN PENN ! GREAT PRESENTATION AND TALK !
Glad the mc wore her good dog collar.
I though I was the only one who noticed.
Also... turtle neck + blazer combo ftw
+Nick “swampfoot” Watson I was wondering why Samatha chose to wear a real dog collar
+Nick “swampfoot” Watson So is her "Master".
"Intelligence has nothing to do with process." The process is entirely conducted by an intelligent organizing energy EVEN WHEN IT MAKES "errors". NOTHING IS unpondered.
His argument is very wanting. To show that faith is unreliable method he has to show first that God doesn't exist, because if he does, that would mean that people who believe in him have true beliefs, which will make their faith reliable.
And the lack of evidence for religious beliefs doesn't bear on their reliability. For example, suppose that someone has a unique ability to know where the president is at a moment, but it happens that this person ignores this ability so that he never checks whether it's reliable or not, so he doesn't have any evidence that his beliefs about the president are true. Does it make his belief formation process unreliable? It seems not, because he does form true beliefs each time in a highly reliable way. So he needs evidence to show that faith is unreliable, and I see no other way of doing this but demonstrating that God doesn't exist.
Lets go with your argument that somehow we atheists must disproof god for a second, despite that atheist simply state we have not seen the evidence.
Say we are incapable to proof god does not exist. How does that proof he or she does exist?
Two: Imagine we can proof god exist. What makes your definition of god true? Say we are absolute sure she exists. What makes you say god is male? There are more people who believe it is Shiva than those who believe it was a male. Are they wrong? How is that possible according to your definition. After all you claim that just feeling good about such belief and in absence of any proof that god does not exist then such believer is correct.
What will you tell to all moslims? They believe you are running DOS 3.0 and they are Windows 3.1.
Would you agree with the 10 commandments? How come moslims so much believe in the second commandment that they are willing to kill 160 or so people for a cartoon? How are you dealing with 9th commandment about false evidence? Also believing so strong that you are willing to kill for your god?
Peter Nierop You comment has absolutely nothing to do with my criticism or the arguments in the lecture.
The argument he makes is that reliable methods generate evidence, and so the lack of evidence for religious beliefs undermine their claims of reliability.
The idea of a reliable method is that it will produce consistent answers, regardless of who is using it. That is, anyone can use the method to get the same answer. In practice this doesn't always happen initially, but eventually as more people use the same method repeatedly they will converge on the same result. This is exactly what we see with science. There are always errors and uncertainties, but as the evidence accumulates scientists converge on the same answers and the debate moves on to new ideas.
This is exactly what we don't see when people use faith. Different people get different results. These results never converge, and if anything diverge. The debate never moves on. This is what is part of what's meant by faith being unreliable.
Harry Ray
Your definition of reliability is false. Reliability is not the same as consistency, a reliable mechanism is something which leads to the truth and thus a reliable cognitive process is one that produces true beliefs. But that means that in order to show that faith is unreliable you must show that it produces false beliefs, and you can't do that unless you also show that God doesn't in fact exist (otherwise, how do you know that religious beliefs are false?).
Fafner888 Actual according to your definition of truth that proof already exist. Do Muslims have faith? How about Satanists? What about Hindus? How about Jehovahs Witness, or Mormons, or Jones or Kordesh? I venture that all of them have as much if not more faith that you. And obvious you are going to say: i am right and all those poor souls are mislead. Which is exactly why we do not take faith serious as method to produce reliable truth.
This is interesting, I was 5 when I placed God, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny into the realm of make believe and fairytales after seeing my mother wrapping my present from Santa. My family are God fearing Roman Catholics…so…when I told them, in front of the priest at Christmas mass after catching her wrapping my present. It didn’t go over well.
The church and my parents tried everything possible to convince me that God was real. Nope, I knew what they were saying was impossible so I never believed anything about God what so ever. And when they introduced the Jesus resurrection story to me, that was it. I thought that all adults were either crazy or lying to me.
That was 50 years ago, my family is still crazy religious and at every family event we have the big debate. They don’t understand how it’s possible that I don’t believe in God, and I don’t understand why my family is so absolutely brainwashed with nonsense. Good times, I love mooching their stupidity. Be well.
I think this is a major problem with Christianity today. Most Christians are completely unable to defend their belief with logic. 1 Peter 3:15
@@mpersandThat would be because logic goes completely out the window when it comes to God and religion. That’s why they always fall back on faith because there’s nothing else to hold on to. The impossibility of God is to obvious to accept.
@@maxxwellbeing9449 Oh, I didn't mean that. I think there is plenty of evidence for the crucifixion and resurrection. Most scholars who study it concede that the crucifixion happened, and they are not believers. If you look at the evidence, it's compelling.
@@mpersand
So...... You have example in reality of zombies?
@@mpersand further to our other discussion. Would you mind pointing me at the evidence (documents) you mention.
This is an area I really need to learn more about. I'm especially interested in how such torture/execution was documented by the Romans and how that can confirm the events which we read about in Christian religious texts (I'm Roman Catholic educated from birth and a history junkie so this is a passion of mine).
Bogosian is one of those really smart people who thought that we'd have a wonderful, completely rational utopia if we got rid of religion.
Ten years later: (arguing with people who think that men can actually be women 😆 🤣)
Yes, to "gods-believers" change is terrifying.
HAHA..."I take that class and I don't want you in it.." That was funny stuff...:)
hawkins/hitchens he is not but he is good
who's hawkins? hybrid hawking/dawkins?
another great lecture!! ;) ...every human being should listen and think on these things ;)
faith based airplane! LOL
Isn't it ironic that when, at 50:40, the questioner claims that "rationality doesn't serve a great function" he was trying to put forward a rational argument?🤯
OMG, his habit of saying everything twice (or more) is driving me nuts!
it's an excellent teaching device though...reinforcing concepts and ideas helps to commit them to memory, and amazingly useful if you are taking notes. teachers like this are indispensable in an era of fleeting attention spans.
I like it. It really stresses the importance of his point.
It’s a teacher thing
This is a great lecture. may I suggest. If you want people of faith to even give a bit of a listen, change the title. Thinkers should know that an inflammatory title would not invite any type of discourse.
LOL @ 59:00
Nobody, I mean, nobody puts ketchup on their hotdog.
Kees den Heijer
Why not?
Zaki Aminu It's a Dirty Harry reference.
Google is your friend.;)
Zaki Aminu The hospital just called. Your brains will be ready in about a week. The reference is clearly coming from Peter not from me.
Kees den Heijer
"The hospital just called. Your brains will be ready in about a week. The reference is clearly coming from Peter not from me. Moron!"
Hahahahahahahahahaha! *_When you wear Peter's uniform, you'll probably get bullets meant for him also, Dutchman!_* Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Kees den Heijer
*_Had enough, eh?_* Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! *_I'll let you off!_* Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
I don't know if goat sacrifice was used by the Aztecs, but It was used by the jews and christians. I've heard that is where the term scapegoat originated.
I sacrificed a goat and got a new door. Peter Boghossian is clearly ridiculous.
You missed out. If you had sacrificed a cow, you could have got a new house. A bull would have added 2 acres of land.
But, if you had sacrificed a good fat pig, you could have gotten bacon.
I did listen to it enough to disregard what he has to say. INTELLIGENCE DOES NOT MAKE YOUR HEART BEAT. I do not need healing.My mind is not blocked I am open to ideas based on reason and evidence, you haven't provided any. It's really that simple.
1:14:45 The guy teaches his students how to think critically but believes the official story about 9/11. LOL what a fail
That's because he CAN think critically.
As opposed to assuming that if anyone agrees with the official position, they must be wrong.
Which would be NOT thinking critically.
friendlywhiteguy
You're a moronic idiot. The official story doesn't exist. The REAL story is research by dozens of experts in building demolition that tell us that what you cretins believe happened is impossible because they do it every day and it isn't something that can be done in secret, physics doesn't allow it, they have to rip the guts out of a building to position the explosives by the steel members. This renders the building unusable for the weeks it takes to do that!
thank you so much