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.
phoodoo,
You’re supposed to come up with a quote in which Dennett tells us that he knows everything about the universe:
The quote you provided doesn’t fit:
phoodoo:
No, you’re supposed to supply a Dennett quote that actually backs up your claim.
You know everything about the universe, but I doubt I could could come up with an exact quote where you claim that you know everything about the universe. Most “know-it-alls” don’t actually come out and plainly state that they know it all, but it’s usually a subtext in pretty much everything they write.
Can you just give it a rest? Does it really matter, in the great drama of life, or in the lesser drama of TSZ, whether phoodoo has an exact quote that meets your precise specifcations?
Pitiful attempts to score meaningless points. And I would know.
🙂
Mung,
Because I don’t think so and would never claim it.
According to phoodoo, the ones on his list do come out and say it. That’s the claim he can’t back up, not for any of the 22.
Ask phoodoo. I had already moved on. After two days, it was phoodoo who brought up the subject again.
I am content to leave things where they stand: phoodoo made an impulsive claim about 22 people, and he can’t supply a single quote to justify it.
It’s a typical phoodoo failure.
The hot-air/windbag stuff is just projection on his part.
Claiming to have moved on while returning to that which you say you have moved on from. Is there something here I am missing?
While phoodoo may not be able to provide evidence to support his claim to your satisfaction, that doesn’t quite rise to the offense of saying one thing and doing another, does it?
Have you moved on?
Mung,
Yes. Basic reading comprehension.
Past perfect tense, Mung:
Do you know what past perfect means?
I’m willing to look it up. The perfect tense indicates a completed action. You moved on, a completed action. Your allegedly “perfect” action seems imperfect.
You appear to be looking for the progressive form, not the perfect form. You should know you’re losing when you have to appeal to grammar. You should have moved on, but you did not. It was not a completed action.
Maybe you are moving on, maybe you are not moving on. Time will tell. 🙂
I had payed keiths. I had written him a check. But then, later, I cancelled payment.
Why is he now complaining that I had not payed him? Does he not understand English grammar?
A tricky problem. The very act of claiming one has moved on, is necessarily an instance of NOT moving on.
In your example, though, things are not quite so confusing. Writing a check is not the same thing as paying someone. He gets paid (not payed) when he gets the money, not before.
Mung,
From Merriam-Webster:
I went on to different subjects. I moved on. The action was complete, and then phoodoo brought up the subject again.
My usage was correct:
PS. It’s ‘paid’, not ‘payed’. The latter is for nautical use.
To put it simply, it’s possible to move on from a subject more than once:
1. Discuss subject.
2. Move on to another subject.
3. Return to subject.
4. Move on to another subject.
keiths,
I just provided you a quote from Dennet where he says natural selection is not intelligently designed. Now in order to know that he would have to know everything about the universe.
An apology from you, although not expected will be greatly appreciated. As Mung has told you, people don’t say the words, ‘I know everything about the universe,’, instead they just say ridiculous things like, ‘there is no God ‘. The implication is the same.
Furthermore, entry into the hall of fame of windbag skeptics doesn’t only have one criteria. I have just given you one example. Another example would be physicists using their status as a physicist to pine about all kinds of subjects as if they are some expert or authority about that subject.
So again, another failure by you. I would wait for your apology, but that would probably be a long wait.
“Why is there something rather than nothing…the only plausible answer is, why not?”
Sean Carroll, windbag.
“Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing. A Universe From Nothing. ‘
Answers provided by Lawrence Krauss, windbag extraordinaire. *
*With afterword by Richard Dawkins, of course, because, why not (the only plausible answer).
“I wasn’t surprised by the theological offense, because I was intending to offend.”*
Lawrence Krauss
*By pretending he knows what he is talking about.
“God is Not A Good Theory”
Sean M. Carroll.
Because he says so.
“Why science and religion are not compatible.”
Sean M. Carroll, wishing he had chosen a different major.
“If you were just going to make the universe , and you were going to solve fine tuning problems, there is no reason to make any of these galaxies [besides ours].”
Sean M. Carroll, on what a God would do.
“Its not just that the most obvious fallacies of creationism are wrong, but being a good scientist leads you to a naturalist view of the world.”
Sean M. Carroll…on his regrets for not majoring in biology.
“Given what we know of science, why would religion have any grip at all {on society}”
Neil Degrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist who finds astrophysics boring.
phoodoo,
I’m puzzled as to why you offer the above remarks as windbaggery. They all seem to be paraphrases of the idea that religious explanations for life, the universe and everything are a bit, well, unsatisfactory.
I notice you refer to faith as your own personal explanation. One problem is that science and religion can be in conflict over facts. Science discovers facts and builds explanations intended to fit those facts. Religion makes authoritative claims that must be taken on faith. Where fact conflicts with some tenet of a religion (the iconic example – age of the Earth) facts are secondary to faith.
Another problem is that science doesn’t really answer “why” questions. The start of scientific enquiry is questions like “that’s interesting, I wonder what’s going on” rather than why is there life and why is there a universe.
Of course, as far as I can see, religious faith doesn’t supply answers to “why” questions either which is what your “windbags” are pointing out.
“Here is Betrand Russell, famous hero for atheists and skeptics…”
Sean M. Carroll, to applause, aware that there is a skeptic movement and that it has its heroes.
“There is a long venerable tradition of physicists, I am a physicist, physicists like after a certain age, to look around the intellectual landscape and see other fields of inquiry that are not physics, and go, I can do that better than they can, I am a physicist, how hard can it be. This is not what I am here to do.”
Sean M. Carroll, proceeding to do what he is not there to do.
“There is no evidence for any deity”
Lawrence Krauss, not noticing that there is something rather than nothing.
Brian Greene, on not being able to explain why the laws of physics are not evidence for God, but the clouds parting would be.
It is obvious, if you understand what “theory” means in science. (Hint: “theory” does not mean “hypothesis”).
Why would anyone need to explain such an obvious thing? If the laws of physics are predicted by there being a God, why didn’t anyone in your camp figure them out using only theology?
dazz,
Would the clouds parting and God revealing him or her self be evidence for God?
So God would be male or female? Why?
Why wouldn’t it? To channel FMM, if God is omnipotent and decided to make himself known that way, presumably he would know how to do it so that it’s obvious to everyone that he is indeed, God
It seems to me that by phoodoo claiming that ID can explain the purpose of life, but then not going on to explain what that purpose is but instead giving a series of reasons why he’s not going to say it means that phoodoo should be at the top of the list of windbags.
In the past stuff like that happened all the time, so it’s claimed. It’s only lately that your god has stopped doing personal appearances.
Ever wonder why?
It’s weird how the frequency of grandiose miracles seem to be inversely proportional with good science education, to say nothing of the spread of the smartphone.
phoodoo,
No, he says that natural selection is not intelligent design.
No, he would just have to know something about natural selection and how it operates. (And he does, of course.)
I don’t think the issue is that there aren’t enough miracles to convince you skeptics, I think the issue is that no amount of miracles will convince those who have decided that no amount of miracles will convince them.
The laws of physics aren’t miracles. Life is a miracle. Consciousness isn’t a miracle. Your ability to read a book isn’t a miracle.
God must be laughing to himself and saying, “Oh, but if I move a few clouds THAT would suffice? Ha!”
Didn’t that windbag Einstein say something about one being enough!,
Why yes he did!
The trick is to relate the miracle to the particular deity.
Does the realm your god operates in have its own laws? Are those laws miracles too?
etc etc.
Thinking out loud I read this:
Followed by:
And I wonder, if you’re going to call everything a miracle, then how can we make a claim that an y of that is due to some magical being in the sky?
Yet, this nice piece of circular unreasoning ends so:
Quite an irrational god. How could that suffice? If everything is a miracle, then what’s the difference? How could we tell?
It seems the existence of god is itself a miracle.
Funny how they forget that they are supposed to be pretending that their ‘Intelligent Designer’ might be something other than their god.
“We may, in fact I think we will in the next decade or so discover how to create life [in a laboratory], under early earth conditions, which would of course silence the theists who say it couldn’t happen naturally.”
Jerry Coyne, showing that you don’t need to be smart to go to Harvard.
I guess it could happen naturally given natural intelligent designers guiding the processes. But in order for them to do so, they would have to have some idea of what the end/goal/telos is of what they are attempting to accomplish.
Creating life in the lab is not an exercise in random unguided accidents. Someone should introduce Jerry to the actual science involved.
“Philosophical skepticism will lead to atheism. If you teach people about what we know, about what most likely happens when we die, they will strive to treat people better while they’re alive, and their grief will be lessened because they understand reality.”
Matthew Dillahunty. 2011 Atheist of the Year Award Winner. President of the Atheist Community of Austin, host of the Atheist Experience, Guest Speaker at the American Atheist Convention in Salt Lake City, Speaker at the Merseyside Skeptics Society, part of the Secular Student Alliance’s Speakers Bureau,(a US-American educational nonprofit organization whose purpose is to educate high school and college students about the value of scientific reason and the intellectual basis of secularism in its atheistic and humanistic manifestations.)*, who knows what most likely happens when we die, because he is a skeptic.
*It’s believed by some that all these organization, conferences, and media entities do not regularly hold meetings or discuss atheism (Alan Fox).
Apparently the part about starting with an end design, deciding to build that end design, based on the components of the design, by a team of designers, with the goal of designing is just like nature!
But I think Coyne would more likely say “Evolution isn’t random!”*
*Except you know, not not random…
But perhaps I am cynical. Maybe what he actually means is, they will just throw all the ingredients of early Earth into a room, close the door, and wait. Anyway, we won’t have to wait long to find out!
Well, I’d say that since we’re natural, and since there’s nothing unnatural about our intelligences, then it would be an example of natural phenomena producing life. It would certainly demonstrate that it doesn’t take magic to produce life. I’d say though, perhaps in partial agreement with phoodoo, that it doesn’t prove that there’s no gods (it depends on which gods).
Jerry would know that natural processes do not consist of purely random unguided accidents. I’d advice, whenever tempted to imagine that natural means mere randomness, to remember gravitation. It’s not random, and it’s still natural. Scientists know that it’s not random, and scientists know that it’s natural. Therefore, scientists know that evolution must be due to more than just randomness. For example, genetic inheritance is not random, yet it’s a process directly involved in evolution.
Clear enough?
Now, more to the point. A lot of scientific experimentation consists on putting the ingredients suspected to be involved in a process under controlled conditions. If experiments trying to figure out natural phenomena are invalidated by the fact that people are involved in the experimental design, then we know nothing about how nature works, and science doesn’t exist.
Is your god – blot of lighting male or female?
How about the thermal vents?
If yes or no, why?
As are the creative powers of bolt of lighting and thermal vents…Though by reading your posts, I begin to think that you either were actually created by your gods, or got “re-created” by one of them later on in life… lol
Incoherence and projections condensed into three tiny questions. J-Mac. You continue to shoot yourself in the foot. I’d advice … oh, too late!
Even more projection and incoherence. More shooting yourself in the foot. J-Mac, I understand that you’re desperate to try and save face, but this is having the opposite effect. You’re in the hole, so, stop digging!