Alan seemed to insinuate in my last thread that I didn’t explain WHY I think skeptics are full of hot air. So, in order to do so in a manner in which hopefully he can better understand, first I think I should start with a list of who these skeptic mouthpieces are, and then I can perhaps later fill in some of their statements, some of their backgrounds, and some of their beliefs. I hope this will ease Alan’s concerns. So, off the top of my head, here are some of the top ones I can think of. Sort of a Hall of Fame of atheist windbags. Guys who know everything about the universe, because they tell you so. Should be a useful database that we can refer back to later in other conversations. More added later:
In no particular order of annoying windiness.
- Neil Degrasse Tyson
- Sean M. Carroll
- Steven Novella
- Brian Greene
- Brian Cox
- Lawrence Krauss
- Michael Shermer
- Brian Dunning
- Phil Plait
- Jerry Coyne
- James Randi
- Cara Santa Maria
- Seth Shostak
- Richard Dawkins
- Sam Harris
- Robert Sapolsky
- Rebecca Watson
- Eugenie Scott
- Bill Nye
- PZ Myers
- Karen Stollznow
Well, its a good start. These are just sort of the most obvious, but its helpful to see where the tentacles grow from.
I already mentioned Sunday Assembly.
Do you mean should they be eligible for tax breaks in equality with churches. Seems fair. Fairer still to abolish tax concessions for religious organizations.
Apologies, Keiths
I appear to have mangled your comment by editing it thinking I was editing my own. I’ve lost the bit about you attending Skeptic meetings.
It said something like
OK, I’ve added that back in. Sorry about that.
Is that a church?
That’s one of them
Why? Does atheism constitute a religion?
Some countries have tried, including France, I think…
The argument is whether there are regular meetings akin to church meetings. I contend nothing of anything like similar scale in regularity or numbers occurs either among skeptics or among atheists.
I don’t think I denied that meetings of skeptics and atheists happen. I just question they happen regularly involving large numbers akin to religious meetings. But if I was unclear, I apologise and hope my position is now clearer.
Fine. Out of curiosity, how often have you attended such meetings and what, roughly, were the numbers involved?
Don’t get me started on the daft arrangement the French government has with the Catholic church over property. The property (cathedrals, churches etc) belongs to the state and the state is obliged to maintain them while the Catholic church still has free and exclusive use of them.
I’ve only been to one (the Skeptics Society is in SoCal, while I’m in NorCal). It was a geology field trip with a full busload of people, however many that is.
See this for some attendance figures at various skeptical conferences.
Suspending judgement until investigations are conducted sounds like science.
I’ve heard of Skepticon. Their annual conference figures are undisclosed on Wikipedia after 2012 when they were 1,500. This for the largest US skeptical organisation. I’d suggest that this is a tiny percentage of people holding views skeptical of pseudoscience and quackery. Maybe I’m wrong and there are many more gullible people in the US than I give credit for. Maybe phoodoo isn’t an outlier.
How could Alan possibly have known? I mean how could anyone even be aware that a “skeptical movement” even exists? Aren’t all attendees sworn to secrecy? Isn’t there an intentional blackout online pertaining to the word skeptic and societies?
I only found out about it myself, when I discovered the meaning of this very site, cleverly hidden in the URL address. In there, if one deciphers it, are the words “skeptic” and the letters z-o-n-e, hidden deep within the title. It turns out these are many of the same terms used by skeptic societies I was told by an insider, who made me promise to keep their identity hidden.
I won’t say his name obviously, but he goes by the pseudonym, Robert Smith, which interestingly uses the exact same letters and sequence as his real name, in an attempt to thwart any attempts at discovering his identity.
Are you thinking of something like this one:
Church of Beethoven, Oak Park
What is this “Catholic church” you are referring to. I have never heard of that.
Perhaps because I don’t live in the US but in Europe, where religious groups have ceased to have undue influence on public life. I forget that Keiths and phoodoo have different life experiences. Or did I read somewhere in one of his comments that phoodoo lives in China?
Orly?
If the Nones can have churches, why not one for the Alls?
They have some cool iconography:
Europe? What the heck is that? I looked it up online, on this thing called Google- it says it is a continent somewhere?
People live there? Are you sure?
phoodoo,
Is is past your bedtime?
It’s even worse here in Spain. The government of JM Aznar passed a law that enabled the Catholic church to silently claim the property of cathedrals, churches, cemeteries, civil buildings, even public parks and whatnot. Most of those are still funded and maintained with public funds, as if they were still the state’s properties. Disgusting.
deleted
Except that the ancient Skeptics did not think it was possible to arrive at definitive conclusions — not even whether water is wet.
Wow. That’s awful on so many levels.
Why would atheists need 10 commandments?
In Eastern Europe, Ukraine or Poland, the Church kicked out hundreds of orphans out of their supposed property becuase of its real estate value…When social media spread the news, they tried to introduce a law in the parliament prohibiting the criticism of the Church…something like that…
In Russia, the Orthodox church cut a deal with Putin. For their political support, Putin is isolating the minority religions, including other Christian religions, like the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, that just separated from the Russian Orthodox Church…
When I lived in Spain many years ago, I observed that only very old, and very young people attended the Catholic Church…
What us it like now?
I don’t know, haven’t been to a mass for ages. According to official stats:
I think those stats are outdated though. Current data shows that catholics are down to a 69% and atheists/agnostics/unbelievers up to a 29%
From the frame of reference of the goalposts, they are not moving at all.
🙂
I know, walto, I know. 😞
Great to hear from you again!
This may be unfair to Alan. In this place called Europe they may not have goalposts, so how is he to know?
Mung makes a joke and J-Mac completely fails to notice.
phoodoo,
After six days, I’m still waiting for you to back up your claim:
Where are the quotes?
Still waiting, phoodoo.
There are 21 names on your list, but you haven’t supplied even one quote supporting your claim:
Looks like you’re the one who’s full of hot air.
Stop it! What are you doing? Trying to build a reputation of being some kind of a nut with OCD?
I think he’s trying to illustrate that creationists cannot support their claims and cannot admit it. But I don’t know who he expects to benefit from that illustration.
Ha ha. Hits a little close to home, eh J-Mac?
Remember this?
You still haven’t backed up your claim either. Just like phoodoo.
Eventually, J-Mac I suppose. There’s only so much that can be suppressed, eventually the unconscious will rebel. There have been many conversions from this sort of seemingly impenetrable rejection of reality. IIRC keiths himself started out as a fundie. You just have to keep chipping away.
Being held to account for the claims you’ve made and cannot support is kind of the point for a lot of people, including me.
It’s easy to make claims. Supporting them is also easy. Retracting a claim when you realize you cannot actually support it, well that’s something else entirely.
Hey, phoodoo, where’s your evidence that FBI use physics all the time?
Hey, J-Mac, where’s your evidence that you can have 90% of your brain removed and still function normally?
Hey, phoodoo, where’s the evidence you make decisions outside of causality?
etc etc etc.
I suppose that is how you would view actual scientists too, if you knew any.
Man, this attention to detail and checking and re-checking and not assuming anything, it’s like you are a nut with OCD!
I expect it’s related to the fact these people don’t realize how much hard work it is to actually progress the frontiers of knowledge. Armchair pseudoscientists the lot of them.
Don’t be an idiot, keiths!
Whether the brain mass is removed or squashed, you still don’t have the mechanism how the brain compensates for 90% of neurons that may as well not be there, and why the brain would evolve that big, if the great majority of it is not needed… 😉
You can always use a loaded question and shift the burden of proof, like Darwin’s faithful did it when they couldn’t explain the evolution of sex, but that’s shameless….🤗
Do you really think it is unfair to ask for your alternative explanation? What else did you expect?
And now you look silly, because you have nothing. That’s the price you pay for supporting a position that is nothing but an endless repetition of the mantra “evolution can’t do it”.
J-Mac,
I guess that’s as close as you’ll come to admitting that you got it wrong, and that the man in question did not have 90 percent of his brain removed.
Who says they “may as well not be there”? “Compressed” is not synonymous with “non-functional”.
So according to you, the Designer made the brain ten times larger than necessary. Oops.
Why so wasteful?
Just for keiths-windbag number 1, Danniel Dennett:
In this talk he starts off with : “Science done right is the humanities. Oh what a great idea ”
So when asked to talk about “the science that I was interested in…” what does he do?
Spends an hour and 15 minutes talking about his philosophy and supposition. As far as I could stand to listen, not one word of real science.
There is simply too much garbage personal belief to bother quoting it all.
phoodoo,
First, Dennett isn’t even on your list.
Second, you haven’t provided a quote from him that fits your claim:
I’d be surprised if Dennett or anyone on your list has made such a grandiose claim, which is why I’m not surprised that you are unable to provide quotes.
keiths,
The list is intended as a resource, to be saved and referred back to regularly. I have already said the list is far from complete.
So why does he talk about science, when his lecture has nothing to do with science? There is an hour plus of material-have at it. Though I admit its pretty unbearable, for anyone who doesn’t like being told what to think.
He is an expert on consciousness, don’t you know? I guess you have never listened him.
Is your universe anything but your consciousness?
phoodoo,
Dennett hasn’t claimed to know everything about consciousness, either. You’re still 0 for 22. Not a single quote to back up your claim.
Have you learned your lesson?
I’d have to say that your continuing demands that phoodoo post in good faith shows that you haven’t learned your lesson. As William Benetta wrote:
phoodoo really doesn’t have any choice. He lies because he MUST. He probably has less choice about lying than a Trump cabinet secretary.
Oh do I?
keiths,
“If natural selection is not intelligent design, and it isn’t…” Daniel Dennett (Hot Air Skeptic Hall of Famer inductee)
I am supposed to transcribe the whole hour and 16 minutes just for you?