Here is an informative little video by a guy named Steve Mould who does a lot of “science” videos on youtube. Its all (ostensibly) about how simple little processes can make “meaningful” structures from stochastic processes-and he uses magnetic shaped little parts to show this. Its a popular channeled followed by millions, and is often referenced by other famous people in the science community-and his fans love it.
And hey, it does show how meaningful structures CAN form from random processes. Right? So you can learn from this. Wink, wink. Nod, nod. And all the skeptics will know exactly what he is really saying. Cause we are all part of the clique that knows this language-the language of the skeptic propagandist. I mean, he almost hides it, the real message, it is just under the surface, and the less skeptically aware, the casualist, might even miss it. The casualist might not learn as much about Steve Mould and what he is trying to say here-but the skeptic knows. “See, atheism is true! Spread the word!” Steve has given the wink. The same wink used by DeGrasse Tyson, and Sean Carroll, Lawrence Krauss, Brian Greene, and on and on. You know the one.
And for 95% of his viewers, whether they know it or not, they got his message. I mean, look, its plain as day, right? He just showed you, that is certainly a meaningful structure that arose from random processes, isn’t it? Its defintely meaningful, its a, a, a , well, it’s shape that, we have a, a name for…that’s kind of…anyway, defintely random, I mean other than the magnets and the precut shapes, and the little ball with nothing else inside, and the shaking only until its just right then stopping kind of way…That’s random kind of right???
But there are 5% percent of his viewers that spotted his little wink and nod, and said, hold on a second. If you want us to believe that your little explanation about how simply life can form from nonsense without a plan, how blind exactly do you want us to be? 95%, they are hooked, you got them (Ryan StallardThere are so many creationist videos this obliterates. Especially 4:18.). But some likeGhryst VanGhod helpfully point out: “this is incorrect. the kinesin travels along fibres within the cell and takes the various molecules exactly where they need to be, they are not randomly “jumbling around in solution”. https://youtu.be/gbycQf1TbM0 ” and then you get to see a video that tells you just a few more of the things that are ACTUALLY happening which are even more amazing if you weren’t already skeptical (the real kind).
And if you go through some more of the comments you will notice a few more (real) skeptics, not the wink and nod kind, and you will start to notice why the wink nod propogandist skeptics everywhere you look in modern culture are a very puposefully designed cancer on knowledge and thought.
This new skeptic talking point is amusing. “Atheists really don’t care at all what others believe. Live and let live is their motto…” I mean they hardly ever even discuss it!
Militant atheism?? Its not even a thing!! I see nothing…Richard Dawkins, who is that Christoper Hitchens who?? Jerry Coyne, Coin, Koein? Scott Eugenie, who is he?? Nye I say Bill! The Four Mulemen?
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgIi12EA6BQ8HKL8QUccsOQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW21P0BwnxQ
I think atheists don’t believe in themselves.
I don’t even know what this is supposed to mean. Did God make rubber? Did God make sound waves? I don’t understand the point of this question.
Wow, Sam Harris is good!
I had never listened to him before.
Thank you.
My understanding of Christian theology is that, yes, God did make rubber and sound waves. God made all things bright and beautiful.
The vast majority of atheists couldn’t care less about what these “militant atheists” are on about.
Not everyone is deeply invested in Internet hype.
For all practicaly purposes, that’s right. It’s not even a thing.
Yes, there are a few militant atheists, but they are not representative of most atheists. And there’s no reason to have Eugenie Scott on your list. Yes, she fights for proper teaching of evolution, but that doesn’t have anything to do with atheism. I don’t even know whether she is atheist.
Atheists have a theory that they fear is nonsense? Well, nobody told me. Guys, please, I have to know now! How else can I get into worrying that my theory is nonsense if I don’t know what my theory is supposed to be?
I’m not scared of intelligent design. I’m scared of inept designs. That would worry anybody. But intelligent design is ok. Oh! You mean apologetics desperately trying to look like science!? Nah. It doesn’t scare me. I just recognize it for what it is.
This sounds, surprisingly, ignorant. I teach about problems in evolutionary theory. Otherwise students wouldn’t know there’s still tons of research to do. Most scientific fields have lots of open questions, and evolutionary theory is no exception. Why would anybody be afraid of that?
The Wikipedia entry on her claims that she describes herself as a nontheist but does not discount the importance of spirituality, and that she signed a 2003 manifesto, Humanism and Its Aspirations.
In a profile she is quoted as having said:
That seems unobjectionable to me!
But then why does every post you make reek of your worry that the theory is true? 🙂
Does your deity have free will?
Did it choose to create Covid-19 or not? Or, if you prefer, did your deity choose to create rubber? Sound waves?
Despite you saying that I’m quite sure phoodoo will continue to repeat that.
As usual.
phoodoo: I think atheists don’t believe in themselves
Don’t worry. We’ll manage despite your efforts at thinking.
Well, you are now claiming that evidence we have from the internet about public opnion is wrong. In order to make that claim, you have to at least have some evidence to counter the evidence I just provided. I don’t think you have such evidence other than your own anecdotyle feelings. Whilst I am sure your feelings have meaning, aerticles in the New Yorker like “All Scientists Should be Militant Atheists” from 2015 isn’t just a feeling. Hundreds of thousands of views and millions of books sold on such topics isn’t just a feeling. Richard Dawkins isn’t struggling to earn a living out of his mother’s basement with his crazy theories.
Evolution is not solved science-not in the slightest KN. But this is what the scientific community is trying to ram down people’s throat- the idea that is is settled science (oh so curious). One doesn’t have to believe in the young Earth Creationism to see that there are many problems with evolution theory. This whole game of, “Oh, why does the theory bother you so much.” while pretending the idea that the theory might be wrong doesn’t bother the science community is nonsense.
I know the game. I see the numbers. I have seen the internet propoganda. I see the book sales. I see the desire to censor intelligent design promotion. THIS very sites Lizzie most defintiely knows what guerilla skepticism is all about. YOU know what guerilla skepticism is. Do you know what happens to pro ID proponents on Wikipedia (you do)? Skeptic groups don’t get together to play bridge. The Four Horsemen is not a Disney ride. There is a lot of money to be made as an online atheist.
Your claim doesn’t really hold water. Everytime someone here claims it is the theist bothered by evolution and not the atheist bothered by the fact that it might not be true, I will repeat this. The data is conveniently unimporatnt to the “scientists” when it comes to propoganda prevelance.
phoodoo,
Strong post, phoodoo. Strong on innuendo at least. The basic fact remains. All religion is based on human invention, human imagination. You are welcome to disagree and you are welcome to suggest an alternative option that you think is going to affect how atheists see life.
Whenever you are ready…
PS, I’m still interested to hear why you are concerned about atheism. Why are you threatened by other’s non-belief?
Innuendo? Huh?
I take it your are making up new defintions for words again. Maybe you have decided innuendo means cats.
Skeptic.
There is near zero chance that the theory of evolution is wrong at it’s core. The fine details will change of course, but the idea of inheriting characteristics and the niche is indeed settled science, or as close as it ever gets.
Or do you mean something different by “wrong”?
What part of the theory might be wrong? All of it? Some detail? Do you deny inheritance?
And even if it’s 100% wrong there’s nothing better to replace it with. Unless you have something to propose?
Said the guy who refuses to use the word “fitness” the same way everybody else does. phoodoo, who has his own personal definition of fitness and uses it in lieu of the actual definition is complaining about someone else using words incorrectly?
I guess in phoodoo’s theism this behavior is encouraged.
What follows is my opinion, to be believed or rejected as others see fit.
Science, art and religion are related to thinking, feeling & willing. Science should be impersonal and be concerned with knowledge that applies to all. Art is personal and is a way for individuals to express outwardly their inner feelings. Religion is designed to train the will. Religious instructions such as the Ten Commandments are set out like laws which must be obeyed. But if a person is under compulsion to obey these rules then they cannot be said to have free will.
But the evolution of consciousness requires humanity to develop through stages, just as individuals are required to pass through childhood before they can become adults responsible for making their own decisions. Religions which command their followers were necessary in the development of humanity.
Modern secular societies are abandoning the old religions which tell them how to behave. A modern person might say, “I would not deliberately take the life of another, not because I am commanded not to, but because I know it’s wrong to do so”. In the birth of modern society humanity has a new-found freedom and it’s inevitable that this freedom has led to abuses.
Societies that once obeyed their religious leaders now obey laws set by political leaders. Governments set common laws, and if people are obliged to obey them then this is no different to religious commandments. Individuals should act within the law, not because of compulsion but because they want to. Fear of getting caught should not be a reason for refraining from criminal activity.
Atheism is the natural outcome of the abandonment of old religions. Gone are the days when individuals who are born into a religion must remain a member of that religion. Whereas facts of science should be universal and shared by everyone through common understanding, what a person believes should be up to the individual and atheism is just one belief system to be chosen among many. As is scepticism.
A person’s moral conduct is judged, not on their their beliefs, but on their actions. Many atheists have higher morals than many religious believers and, of course, vice versa.
And many educators of science believe they are teaching facts when in reality they are teaching personal opinions.
Watch it, and keep telling yourself-accidents, accidents, accidents, each part an accident, not designed at all, …please let it be an accident!!!!
I love this part in the comments. Watch Hemlock freakout because someone said its designed. And you guys want to say its the theists who are threatened by this. Innuendo…Hehehe…It doesn’t mean cats Alan.
I don’t understand why we should say “accidents, accidents, accidents.” I say nature, nature, nature. Maybe in phoodoo’s circles “accident” and “nature” are synonyms. Not in mine though.
P.S. apparently phoodoo reads some of the answers, but it doesn’t seem to register. Now I understand why phoodoo cannot but insist on the very same mistakes. All explanations go way above that head.
Of course you don’t REALLY believe in accidents. No one does. But as an atheist it is all you have to cling to, so…
More lucky accide…er,… Nature! Hahaha. They are synonymous.
So The New Yorker decided to publish an essay by Krauss. I don’t know what you think that shows. I hadn’t even heard of it until now. I started reading it but as usual with Krauss it didn’t take long for him to make some pretty obvious philosophical mistakes and then keep on rolling as if nothing had happened. That becomes tedious, to say the least.
Dawkins was a wealthy university professor long before he published The God Delusion. I don’t know how much money he’d made from that book. Personally I agree with Michael Ruse when he blurbed for McGraths’s The Dawkins Delusion, “The God Delusion makes makes me embarrassed to be an atheist. The McGraths show why.”
In any event, it’s not really clear to me what we’re talking about anymore. Are we talking about “Internet Atheism” or “New Atheism” as a socio-cultural phenomenon? Are we talking about the epistemological credentials of atheism or of theism?
If we’re talking about New Atheism as a socio-cultural phenomenon, I think it’s worth thinking about whether or not it’s moment is over. At Slate Star Codex, “The Godlessness that Failed” argues that New Atheism peaked in 2012 and started to decline soon after.
My sense of things, like Scott Alexander’s, is that the New Atheists basically splintered into the social justice warrior types and the intellectual dark web types — with most of the New Atheist head-honchos (Dawkins, Harris, Dennett to a lesser extent) siding with the latter, along with the likes of James Lindsay, Helen Pluckrose, and Peter Boghossian.
At the end of this video there is a link to a simplified cartoon of the citric acid cycle which is also worth watching.
Weird. I’m an atheist and I don’t feel a need to cling to anything, and I don’t find “accidents” as my only option for “clinging”, had I felt that need. I suspect you don’t understand what atheism means, or whether people should feel in need for clinging to something, let alone because they don’t believe that your imaginary friend is real.
I watched the video, and I didn’t see the claim that accidents and nature were synonymous. Can you point to the exact minute they declared it so?
Entropy,
Good luck getting phoodoo to explain anything, let alone bring any evidence to bear on any explanation he may one day decide to advance.
I think he became wealthy when his popular science books took off in the US, where there was a gap in the market for some robust debunking of young earth creationism. How he became to be considered by some to be a spokesman for atheism is a mystery to me and to him. I get that many dislike the prickly Brit prof persona but he’s hardly active these days and the current animus seems to me overblown.
In any case phoodoo has FMM’s talent of really knowing what people are thinking despite their protests.
phoodoo knows better however.
Yes, it’s a way phoodoo uses to avoid direct discussion though
never answering straightforward questions is another favourite.
Of course these recently linked videos are extremely simplified. In reality it’s all just a chaotic mess. 🙂
Entropy,
What does the claim of Atheism mean? How do you support this claim?
Maybe it isn’t a claim. Maybe it is just a statement of personal position, and as such it does not need support.
As Neil says, there is no claim. Atheism is not a philosophy, it’s just a personal view.
Kantian Naturalist,
Guerilla skepticism-do you know what that is KN? Attacking people’s wikipedia entries, do you know what that is? Skeptic groups, you know what those are yea? Skeptic conferences, you ever heard of them? You talk as if there are four people who promote atheism, and they are talking to each other in a closet somewhere.
So I just gave you more examples of more people who are promoting atheism, by using so called science to bolster their belief (and hopefully everyone else’s) that life is so easy to develop without design, see. Just shake a bunch of pieces together in a glass jar, and voila, look how simple it is! That was Mould’s message. Why else do you think Mould is saying its so easy, when the reality, as many of these videos I have posted have quite clearly shown, is just the opposite. Its not simple in the slightest. Mould couldn’t be more disingenuous about how “easy” cells and life can form. So why should he paint it as easy when its stupendously complicated?
You are going to try to say, “Well, its got nothing to do with atheism, atheists don’t care what others think…” Baloney. Did you even look at the exchange by the guy named Hemlock on the youtube video? ONE comment by a guy who says life must be designed ellicits 14 ad hominem attack by this guy on what an idiot someone must be for thinking that its designed. 14! Oh, but the atheists, they just don’t care. They live and let live right? Just like you. Like Alan. Like Entropy. Like Jock. Like Flint. Like Corneel. Like Rumraket. Like the thousands and thousands of people who identify as skeptics. Like Sean Carrol, Like Brian Green, Like Krauss and Sapolsky, and Mould, and Novella, and Nye, they just don’t care.
For all those “scientists” who don’t care about religious beliefs, boy do they talk about religious beliefs! How many do I have to list, before you admit they care? How many quotes of theirs do I have to link to showing them talking about religion before you acknowledge they care? How many whacky posts by stalker Omagain do I have to show, for you to admit they care? How many times does Alan have to write “Atheism is just a non-belief, not a philosophy” to show they care?
How many other “non-beliefs” have so many believers?
Like whether one thinks flossing daily is good, something like that you mean?
I am sure there are tons of flossing groups online, I just haven’t noticed.
Some atheists see what people like you are promoting in the name of religion (lies, misrepresentations) and want to stop it infecting others.
E.G. Concentration camps.
You are just like those people screaming at the school board meetings, frothing at the mouth.
Any sensible person, atheist or not, is against what you are for.
And there is the problem.
Perhaps you can explain how life came about with design? When did it happen? How did it happen? Can you tell me a single thing about the design version of the origin of life?
The trouble is you are competing in the battle of ideas merely with anger. Anger at others, anger at people don’t support putting others in concentration camps for little to no reason.
All you have to do is show, scientifically, that life was designed and then nobody will care about the atheist version any more. They will all start to worship your deity.
Why don’t you try it?
poor baby, theists only had the entire world to themselves for most of recorded history and now there’s a little bit of pushback in some parts of the world against constructing our reality around tales from goat herders snowflake phoodoo is having a meltdown.
Live and let live perhaps? If your ideas are falling out of fashion, and they are (ever since WW2 in fact) then perhaps it’s best to just fade away quietly, with whatever remaining dignity you can scrap together.
Your loss.
What are you complaining about? That scientific research fails to support religious concepts such as creators, souls and second lives? Which religious ideas deserve consideration and why? Come on phoodoo, let’s see some substance, some beef in your sandwich.
Alan Fox,
I can’t be expected to teach you to read every time you post
That you demonstrate every time you post a comment. I get that you object to atheists and atheism.
But what are you for? What are you offering? What is your alternative?
Let’s have more than a nod and a wink for once.
I mean, he almost hides it, the real message, it is just under the surface, and the less skeptically aware, the casualist, might even miss it.
This is you, phoodoo. Your message is well-hidden among all that winking. Spill the beans! Enlighten us.
He’s afraid to.
That cock/rooster has crowed immutable times already.
He’s certainly reluctant. I’m (poorly) emulating Reverend Doctor Lenny Flank, late of the Pandas Thumb. He would routinely paste a screed of challenges following a comment by a creationist or ID proponent. The response to “why bother, Lenny” was “even a non-answer is an answer”.
Also I’m sure it infuriates phoodoo to be talked about rather then to. So that’s just the cherry on the cake really.
I’ve been looking at some of Steve Mould’s videos and he does some really fun, interesting stuff such as, How Oak Trees Manipulate Squirrels To Abandon Their Acorns. Here he is not setting up any artificial experiments, he is simply observing nature.
He talks about the phenomenon of masting where oak trees every so often produce a bumper crop of acorns. Vastly more than can be eaten. If they were to produce such a crop every year then this would result in an increase in the population of animals that fed on them and the trees would be no better off. For the strategy of masting to be successful all the oak trees in the area must work as a unit and synchronize this event, and this is what happens.
I love the way nature displays this group wisdom.
What about the gains? I’m very thankful for what I have gained by all the coordinated activity of the cells of my body making my continued existence possible. I believe that there are on average around one billion ATP molecules forming and providing energy in each of my body cells as I go about my life.
ATP molecules are like acorns, they come into existence to serve the greater whole.
I don’t know about that. I think there’s probably an important difference between secular faith and metaphysical naturalism.
Secular faith, as coined by Martin Hägglund in This Life, is the attitude of finding value, meaning, and purpose in the transient things of our mortal and finite life.
That could be understood as a personal, subjective existential commitment: a commitment to living a certain kind of life, being a certain kind of person.
By contrast, metaphysical naturalism is a philosophical position that refuses to accept any transcendent conceptions of God, or anything similar (no immortal souls, no libertarian free will).
That would be making a very definite assertion about the nature of reality, and as such does need some kind of argument.