Comment by lokar

Now why'd you'd have to ejaculate that into the conversation?

Anyway, Minsky, perceptrons, great debunking of AI hype at the time, but a horrible person, ya know, just like Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.

https://www.christopherkremmer.com/post/to-sir-with-love

https://web.archive.org/web/20240519113411/https://skepchick...

Anyway, they're all dead. Can we move on? Although I remain astonished that Foundation got made when they cancelled Sandman and Good Omens after Neil Gaiman turned out to be pretty awful too. Maybe you have to still be alive to matter? What exactly are the rules here? I am so confused by this.

Eww, I see what you did there

Asimov wrote about it[0], and talked about it quite a bit.

So did Sagan. If you haven't watched Cosmos in awhile it might hit a little different these days, for multiple reasons (not all bad). The book is great too. Not to mention Sagan wrote "The Demon Haunted World".

There's a new form and an old form of this same thing happening today too. We have flat earthers, but other cults too. One of the common features of this cult of ignorance: having a little knowledge and thinking it is much more general. We all know those people who read a sentence or two and extrapolate. This happens all the time. Even in flat earthers. It's often seeking evidence to support the prior belief rather than updating that belief. Updating that belief can either strengthen the belief it weaken it. But if you're seeking truth you need you be willing to throw your beliefs out the window. Resistance to that is ego

[0] https://aphelis.net/cult-ignorance-isaac-asimov-1980/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World

I feel like I wasted 25 min watching that (at 2x).

If your thesis is "The US was founded on anti-intellectual principles" and your only supporting facts are:

   - Some of the early colonists were religiously-driven
   - The inconvenient examples otherwise (e.g. the Enlightenment-influenced founders) can be ignored because some people at the time disliked them
   - Some presidents since have been populists

Then that's a weak argument.

... and also, that could have been a 15 min video without the histrionics.

The modern west is still very religious, they just switched to a new religion without a mascot.

If you don’t believe me, explain to me how human rights, universal equality, democracy etc are based in science. You can’t, because they aren’t. Sorry for blaspheming. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do them, by the way, it just means that it’s our religion to do them.

Yes, life has no inherent meaning in and of itself. It's up to you to find what's meaningful. If that's praying to the FSM, father of all pastas, hoping his sauce never goes bad, so be it, if it's a more mainstream religion, or something else entirely that's all on you. I don't understand how you connect that to not flourishing though.

>However, if matter is all there is, then there is no meaning in the world. This is not a way to flourish in the world.

Things like this really make it hard, as an atheist, to receive the argument that my problem is with Christianity, and not with religion.

You're saying that my beliefs mean there's no meaning, and are incompatible with flourishing in the world. I understand you feel the need to defend your beliefs as valuable and important, but somehow it seems almost impossible for religious people to do so without denigrating atheism.

And yes, a lot of atheists are dismissive of religion too. But look, I'll show you: I personally don't find religion necessary to live an ethical and fulfilling life, but I understand that many people find it valuable and compelling, and that's ok as long as they let other people live their lives too. I think people can be intelligent, rational, and respectful of the beliefs of others, while still maintaining their own religious beliefs.

There, that wasn't so hard, was it?