Rehearsing your own prejudices

Do the people who made this video ever rehearse their own prejudices? Because while I don't believe in ghosts or Sasquatches or anything like that, the makers of this video seem to think its fair to invent the arguments they disagree with or disapprove of ("You just hate God!") and pass them off as the standard line of defense.

JE: I see what you mean, but I didn't look at it that way. I thought they were using extreme examples to illustrate the flaws in reasoning we see all the time. (And if you substitute "TDK" for "God," you can find examples in comments right here at Scanners!)

Jim -- thanks for the link and the video.

While I find the lecturer's presentation a bit simple [are all of the close-minded, "skeptical-of-skeptics" types he meets so . . . unimaginative?], I'll confess that I meet the people he's describing. Every day. And it's tough out there.

As an atheist [I think of myself as a "stone-cold, evangelical atheist" (in self-congratulatory terms, of course)], I occasionally have to remind myself that I don't actually know much anything about the existence of God. I then just comfortably embrace Occam's Razor and go about my atheist ways.

Of course, I'm confronted with an intricate, difficult problem -- I have a closed mind about closed-minded people.

I'll survive. . . .

He had me until he mentioned "true ideas," as if there is anything resembling verifiable truth. So-called truth relies entirely upon sensual, subjective interaction with an external environment. Truth is arguably a matter of interpretation, since all understanding of the phenomenological world is mediated. As such, we choose to believe certain things and not to believe other things, based on our individual understanding, individual subjectivity. We believe what we believe because we believe it to be true, validated by the experiences and data we have before us. Which is partially his point: open-mindedness is recognizing, by and large, that we cannot know everything for certain, though we can believe in certain things based on available information.

But this issue of "true ideas"... it bothers me. I cannot bring myself to believe in absolute truths. Maybe momentary "truths," but nothing that I would consider approaching ahistorical, eternal veracity. I hesitate, remembering the issue of the lamp. I don't believe it's a ghost moving it. It seems logical to believe that the heat fan does. In fact, I believe that the heat fan moves the lampshade. But does that make the logical choice the "true" one? Semantics to be sure, but something that's important here. While I agree by and large with the presenter--his distinction between closed and open minds is wholly accurate, though maybe a little facile--it does seem that, behind all of his thinking, there is an assumption of attainable, actual truths. And that's something I can't quite swallow.

JE: Think of it this way: Do you believe in gravity?

Point taken, but can we conceive of gravity outside of lived experience? We conceive of gravity, perceive it, and understand it through our encounters with data that we presume to be fact, which we interpret to be an eternal truth, because of our perception. Epistemologically speaking, we cannot know anything without necessarily interpreting it through our senses and intellect. We perceive the world to operate in a particular way, but, arguably, we cannot know it to be "true." We can understand it as an accurate, valid interpretation based on available information, but that doesn't mean it's true. And understanding things to operate in a particular way--believing in them--does not mean acknowledging them as true. Or something. So, yeah, no absolute truths. Question everything. Even gravity. (Which, again, is almost--almost but not quite--what I think they're saying here, but what I think needs to be articulated.) It's times like these that I wish I'd taken more philosophy in school. That way, I'd probably know what I was talking about.

JE: Right you are! I rely on gravity because I know I need to assume its existence in order to get downstairs to feed the dogs. As humans, with an extremely limited range of comprehension and sensory perception, we can't begin to assume knowledge of anything approaching Eternal Truth. We can only rely on demonstrable, repeatable, predictable principles about how the physical properties of the universe we inhabit appear to work. That is the essence of the methodology we call "science." Anything beyond that is unprovable, as far as we can understand that concept.

This is a pretty good video.

That said, I think the fact that the video is centered around ideas concerning the supernatural is slightly underhanded. Supernatural ideas are plainly not scientific ideas, and they don't observe evidence in the material world. They are obviously concepts that concern what we cannot see. In this way, evidence cannot support or refute supernatural concepts. It could be equally open or closed minded to say that you do or don't believe in God, or ghosts, or aliens.

bill r. notes that the video is, in it's own way, rehearsing it's own prejudices. Jim, you responded to bill r. by saying, "I thought they were using extreme examples to illustrate the flaws in reasoning we see all the time." You are right - these are extreme examples. I suppose what might frustrate those who stake their claim in religious ideas is the notion that others stake their claim in science-which cannot confirm or deny any religious concepts. They (and me to a certain extent) hate to see thinking stop at observable facts. It is equally frustrating for the opposite side to see thinking stop at unobservable ideas.

JE: Well put as always, nathan. Thinking does not have to stop at observable facts (Special Theory of Relativity, anyone?). The important point is that to reserve judgment on an issue because of a lack of persuasive evidence (e.g., "I don't believe in ghosts because I have never been presented with a situation in which the only explanation is supernatural") is not an example of being "closed-minded." Open-mindedness leaves the question open, subject to revision if and when further evidence becomes available. That's the method of science: I do not put intellectual stock in something until it has been demonstrated to work in practical terms. Religion, obviously, is not "practical," and is thus not provable in empirical terms.

Contrary to the popular assumption, religious prejudice works both ways as we watch the so-called non-believers discriminate against the religious folk on the basis of their own "beliefs"; whether you believe in creationism or atheism (or anything in-between), you're still espousing a belief (a belief in nothing is still a belief). You have faith that God does not exist. While both parties play dirty as the "intellectual" attempts to make the religious look like fools, and the religious accuse the literati of lawlessness and sacrilege, they are more alike than unalike. They refuse to understand.

This is why everything fails in this nation; the child-like behavior of principles who behave as if they know everything and everybody else knows nothing. This is why the citizens and residents of this nation are treated like children.

For the record, I consider myself an atheist, but I try not to lecture anybody. I try not to appear arrogant - and God knows I don't always succeed...

JE: Depends on how you approach the evidence for your "belief." George W. Bush sees the world as a child, speaks as a child, and treats his listeners as children. In many respects his approach worked: He persuaded many to believe in things for which he had presented no evidence (indeed, the real-world evidence was overwhelmingly against him). Obviously, given the results of the 2000 and 2004 elections, many in this country like being addressed in these terms. When it comes to religion, most of us in the USA are brought up to believe in a deity, and if we grow skeptical later on in life it is only because we encounter evidence as adults that leads us to question the validity of long-held beliefs in the supernatural, from the Tooth Fairy to the miracles of Jesus. Once you understand how the bible came to exist in its present form, for example, you may be less inclined to see it as the inerrant word of god. Once you understand more about how the human brain works, you may find more satisfactory explanations for the varieties of religious experience than supernatural ones. To some (like Kirk Cameron), the existence of the banana PROVES the existence of god, because he sees it as better-designed than a soda-pop can. Others see the banana differently and don't see it as demonstrating anything whatsoever about the existence of god, but see its similarities to other fruit-bearing plants. It's the same banana -- the difference is in the interpretation of the evidence.

The Bush administration promoted the idea that Saddam's recalcitrant attitude toward inspections was evidence that he was hiding something. They claimed that something was WMD. In fact, he was trying to preserve his regime by hiding the fact that he had no WMD, because if his neighbors and his own people found out he posed no serious military threat, he could not have stayed in power. Again: Same behavior, different interpretations of the evidence. We need to consider all the possibilities, then see which evidence best supports which explanation, and which explanation best fits the evidence we actually have before us. As George Orwell said: "To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle."

Hi Jim,

Equally important and meditation-worthy are the factors that catalyse close-mindedness. Identifying the culprits behind the scene is crucial to resolving the problem. I believe the three biggest offenders are Fear, Pride and Stupor. Superstitions are all based, in large part, on fear. It is the Stone Age way of lazy reasoning, either to gain confidence (which was sorely needed at times), or to explain away things for lack of the ability to perform emperical tests.

Pride, on the other hand, accumulative in nature, is such a powerfully restrictive force that it is often seen as equivalent to the destruction of the individual, the reasoning of which is really misconceived and inconsistent. The individual thinks that way because, in truth, something dies when Humility steps in. But of course, the individual lives on and is the better for it.

Stupor, the anathema to Change, is the most dangerous of the three, and the most blind of them all. Ignorant or otherwise, it may also encompass Fear and Pride within its borders. As the word suggests, people are usually not readily aware that they are afflicted with it. We humans are such creatures of habit and would choose to feel comfortable, rather than put our minds to exertion. Nothing wrong with that, unless of course, when the mind becomes torpid and lose the ability to identify open possibilities.

Please note, this is not a crash course in Ethics or Religion. I am just trying to identify the reasons behind close-mindedness and/or myopia. As such, it is not my intent to preach, though it may sound like it.

JE: Nicely put -- and it doesn't sound preachy to me. I'm reading Jonah Lehrer's book "How We Decide," and I see some parallels to Michael Shermer's essential "How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God" and "Why People Believe Weird Things." Both Lehrer and Shermer detail the non-rational human factors that influence the choices we make, even when we try our best to be fully rational. The problem, of course, is that we are human and cannot entirely separate our rationality from emotions and other non-rational processes. Fear, pride, laziness, resistance to change -- these forces are strong with us!

Everyone claims to worship reason and rationality but such people never take it to its logical philosophical conclusion, and only apply it till it's inconvenient to do so. A rational look at the world finds humanity meaningless, life meaningless (or at least only as 'meaningful' as non-life), and life pointless - except in the sense that it's a human being's responsibility to reproduce. Rationally speaking, identity is false, pain is indifferent, suffering is a misunderstanding, and there is no you, nor is there any 'your mind' - it's all only a lot of brain activity, which, when you die, goes away.

These are the things scientific thinking, and logical thinking, and rationalism - if employed by people who are willing to go the distance with them - lead to.

But you would weasel your way out of it, I'm sure, and I doubt you agree with any of the things I've said rationality must inevitably lead to. Because you're only rational up to a point, or so far as it suits your own ends to be so. Which is not the spirit of a philosopher, ie a lover of truth.

I'm not a proponent of either side (at least not to the exclusion of the other side) but I will say - if you aren't willing to go all the way, or be honest or consistent, why bother.

Say what kind of world it is - at least to yourself, if not to others - or stop pretending to be Mr Rational. That goes for all these self-satisfied frauds.

The world needs fewer self-described 'scientific' thinkers, and more true philosophers, lovers of truth, who will employ the scientific approach in finding out truth, however bitter it may be.

JE: "... it's all only a lot of brain activity, which, when you die, goes away." Yes! That's a very good description of the human condition. Bedrock reality: We develop consciousness, then we lose it. We seem to be the only species aware of this ultimate truth. So, on top of this, it's up to us (using some of that brain activity) to construct whatever "meaning" we choose. In the Grand Scheme of Things, I don't believe human life is any more significant than, say, a fungus. Except that we're capable of destroying our entire species, and are well on the way to doing just that, even as we reproduce and love our children and grandchildren. Fungi don't do that. People also have feelings and self-awareness and, as a human myself, I respect that -- even admire it in a completely non-rational and rather self-aggrandizing way.

In regards to human conscious I particularly like this quote by Carl Jung from his book Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

There the cosmic meaning of consciousness became overwhelmingly clear to me. "What nature leaves imperfect, the art perfects," say the alchemists. Man, I, in an invisible act of creation put the stamp of perfection on the world by giving it objective existence. This act we usually ascribe to the Creator alone, without considering that in so doing we view life as a machine calculated down to the last detail, which, along with the human psyche, runs on senselessly, obeying foreknown and predetermined rules. In such a cheerless clockwork fantasy there is no drama of man, world and God; there is no "new day" leading to "new shores", but only the dreariness of calculated processes. My old Pueblo friend came to my mind. He thought that the raison d'etre of his pueblo had been to help their father, the sun, to cross the sky each day. I had envied him for the fullness of meaning in that belief, and had been looking about without hope for a myth of our own. Now I knew what it was, and knew even more: that man is indispensable for the completion of creation; that, in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world, who alone has give the world it's objective existence - without which, unheard, unseen, silently eating, giving birth, dying, heads nodding through hundreds of millions of years, it would have gone on in the profoundest night of non-being down to it's unknown end. Human consciousness created objective existence and meaning, and man found his indispensable place in the process of being.

Or animator Hayao Miyazaki's statement of life in his manga masterpiece Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

"Our lives are like the wind....or like sounds. We come into being, resonate with each other....then fade away."

JE: Beautiful. We create meaning how we can, whether it's a touch or a film or the Sagrada Familia.

Jim wrote: Grand Scheme of Things... I don't believe human life is any more significant than, say, a fungus. Except that we're capable of destroying our entire species...

Jim, I don't know if you have realised it already, but that idea perfectly summarises the true (and humble) spirit of the Stewardship of Man. Unfortunately, this idea has been late in surfacing to our collective attentions. Even as I write these words, many, many people still just take it for granted. Admittedly, there is something false about this concept; but it is, nonetheless, something that we can't easily discard just because of the flaw.

Your choices of the words 'bedrock' and 'up to us' have a ring of truthfulness about them. I happen to believe that what Paul wrote is true, too. I think he has defined the nadir of the presence of Man in this universe. It is something that will forever haunt our existence, for we are basically nothing. It is certainly very bleak down there.

And yet, as sure as there is a seabed underneath the ocean, so is there limitless space above the atmosphere. It is here that the question "What do we, or should we, want?" comes to play. Jim, if we stay sunk on the bottom floor, we would lose all meaning of existence, however arbitrary and irrelevant they might be. We would malign the very gift Evolution has been giving us for ages. Nothing becomes important anymore, not this civilisation, not this blog, not the feelings you have for your pets, and certainly not the warm, fuzzy emotions we have for our loved ones. Everything is sucked into a black hole, and Truth totally defeats itself.

The idea I'm trying to point out is: while there is certainly a way that inevitably leads down, why can't there be a way that inevitably leads up? Or if there isn't any way leading up, then perhaps we could prevent ourselves from hitting that bedrock you mentioned, Jim. That said, this very short essay of mine was written without the slightest intention of refuting anyone's beliefs. What I essentially did, and intended, was open up a new suggestion / possibility that can co-exist with the Truths that have already been laid here.

JE: This is what I meant when I said that, once we get down to the bedrock, it's up to us to build meaning on top of it. Without realizing it, I could have been referring to the Sermon on the Mount parable that President Obama used in a speech today, about the man who built his house on sand vs. the man who built his house on (bed-)rock. Meaning is endlesly unstable unless we first burrow all the way down before we start building. Switching metaphors: Humankind is but one wee twig on the evolutionary tree of life; we're not the center or the "highest point" on it. But we do have brains capable of meanings other species can't conceive. In that sense, I suppose, it's our "duty" to know what we believe in and why, and to see our condition as clearly as we possibly can. Because non-existence (death) is the only certainty, life is lived on the edge of the abyss. (OK, if I'm sounding preachy it's because I'm trying to dig down there...)

I wasn't actually arguing the semantics of belief or how we perceive the origins of organized religion, but more how we use any particular knowledge as a defensive tool.

I don't care to lecture religious nuts on their "wrongness" because, honestly I don't know if they're wrong, and I don't know that I'm right. What I do believe, I try to keep to myself. It spares me the misery of trying to program people to believe what I want them to believe.

I have an aversion to authority, yet I want my daughter to respect authority. So, I'm a hypocrite, in many ways. I think the government wants us to hate each other, wants us to fear one another. Hate and fear work as elemental forces in our lives, and religious belief (or a lack thereof) often serve those two masters.

To all:

I have read many of the comments on this page, and I have found the discussions to be very interesting and invigorating. Although I found the video to be a bit trite and somewhat of an exercise of over-generalization, much good can be gleaned from it. And I have a question for anyone who wishes to answer: Has anyone here ever had a conversation with a Christian about such matters as science/philosophy/etc. and said Christian spoke logically, clearly, and with a gentle voice?

To Paul:

I read your post and found much interest in it. However, I am not so sure the logical, reasoned thinking leads to a meaningless view of the universe. As one who wishes to do philosophy as a career someday (I am a student right now and have studied philosophy for almost 5 years), I have never been lead to believe that the universe lacks any meaning.

Also, you claimed, "The world needs fewer self-described 'scientific' thinkers, and more true philosophers, lovers of truth, who will employ the scientific approach in finding out truth, however bitter it may be." Unfortunately, it is not apropos for philosophers to employ the scientific method/approach in order to discover truth. Philosophers are not physicians, but rather metaphysicians, and so their work is done on an a priori basis (as opposed to a posteriori). You cannot employ the scientific method to ascertain if possible worlds are real or not, whether God exists, the validity of the law of non-contradiction, etc. But this just goes to show that the scientific method is not necessary for ascertaining many truths. Consider the statement "The scientific method is the only way to verify the truth of any statement p." Call this statement in quotations q. One might accept the truth of q, but then one would also have to accept that q is verifiable by the scientific method. However, q cannot be verified by the scientific method, and so q seems to be either false, or self-refuting.

JE: Well done, Travis. What we refer to as "science" is usually thought of as a body of knowledge -- but it is above all a method, a disciplined way of thinking. It's not the only one we have, and it is necessarily provisional, always subject to revision and transparently unable to account for all realms of human experience. That's my favorite part of this video: "The unexplained is just that: unexplained." Science invites skepticism and accepts demonstrable limits. That is part of the definition of the word.

If anything, I'd say the religious folk are probably the happiest of all of us. They so believe in what they are, what motivates them - they don't need facts, science, logic to prove a point, but the magic of their own beliefs, and they are completely satisfied with this - whereas atheists, agnostics, humanists have only the cold, brutal science, and more often than not, they ridicule their brothers and sisters in Christ, Muhammad, what have you.

Unfortunately neither group will ever be happy together.

JE: I wouldn't presume to know if one group is happier than another. Personally, I was never more miserable than when I was young and told to believe in the God of the bible. WHICH God, I wondered? Church was a miserable experience, rooted in fear and stern (but vague) warnings from Above. To me, science is so much more user-friendly. I can handle the reality of an indifferent universe; the idea of a raging alcoholic bipolar parent looming above me, however, is just something I can't bring myself to believe in. We were always told that God is good; but the God of the holy books is wanton, intemperate, unpredictable, inconsistent and unspeakably cruel -- in the name of omniscient, all-powerful, mysterious "good." A God who expresses the worst of humanity, as well as its highest aspirations, can only be created by humanity in the image of humanity. The day I figured that out, I was very happy indeed.

Jim - In looking over your response to David Lawler's comment, I began to think of things I hadn't thought about in a while. Namely that our experiences in church can color our ways of thinking about religion in ways we may never even know. The experience you describe is very different than the one I had. Church was not miserable (though at a certain age I might rather have been playing video games than listening to a sermon). There were warnings from above, but they were rarely rooted in fear. The church that I grew up in, though flawed to be sure, was (and still is) a dynamic community of people who believed in a complex God that couldn't be boiled down into simple terms. Images of judgement stood alongside images of grace. The paradoxes of the God of the bible have always seemed to be the exact opposite of what humans would invent. I've read the bible several times, and devoted large portions of my life to studying it, and I've never occasioned to think of the God it depicts as intemperate and certainly not inconsistent. He seems to follow through with exactly what he says he'll do. In some cases he performs drastic and destructive deeds, and in other cases he shows great kindness, but he never does something different than what he said he'd do.

This isn't meant to convince anyone that the Bible is truth, or that my conception of God is anywhere near reality. I only mean to suggest that the God the Bible depicts is far more complex than the average church makes him out to be.

JE: That sounds like a positive church experience. What I saw were people who behaved one way at church and other ways elsewhere. We went to several different Protestant churches, from Presbyterian to Methodist to Lutheran, and as much as I wanted to believe, and told myself I did believe, it never made any sense to me. The idea of God made life pointless. You do things because you believe they are right in your heart and soul, not because an authority figure tells you to. To me, the God of the bible was just an all-powerful version of my (alcoholic) dad. You walked on eggshells around him, afraid of setting him off. Then he'd blow up and after he'd wiped out the world with a flood of rage, he'd feel regret and promise not to do it again. Science isn't personal.

Hi All -

Great thread!!! In decades of traveling over (and over... and over...) this ground I don't recall ever hearing a discussion as generous, humble, open-minded, and non-judgemental (not to mention aptly titled) as this one has been so far. Generally these things devolve quickly into name-calling and evangelism, with believer and unbeliever alike going heavy on the vitriol. You rarely (if ever) hear the three simple words at the heart of the matter ("I Don't KNOW") from folks on either side, but everyone here has copped to them right off. Very Cool.

Jim - The last few posts (Dave Lawler, Travis, Nathan M.) and your responses, triggered a thought I've had before, but one that perhaps needed this context to fully gel. It's been my experience in dealing with folks on both sides of this divide that these issues are rarely about ANYTHING more tangible than simple "rehearsing our prejudices". When you said:

'What we refer to as "science" is usually thought of as a body of knowledge -- but it is above all a method, a disciplined way of thinking. It's not the only one we have, and it is necessarily provisional, always subject to revision and transparently unable to account for all realms of human experience.'

... you really highlighted the fact that not only ISN'T science a body of knowledge (at least not in the sense we generally use the term, i.e. KNOWLEDGE=TRUTH), but the "facts" science produces should never be regarded as such. Despite the claims of some of it's more devout but less informed accolytes, science simply isn't built to produce "Big T" truth.

This goes well beyond Travis' sweet little Godellian q/p paradox to much more essential matters of how we regard the information our science gives us. With my sincere apologies to any fans of phlogiston or spontaneous regeneration or the pre-Copernican Geocentric universe, it should be pretty obvious that life span of any given scientific "fact" will always be inversely proportional to the amount of scientific method actually being applied to it. Every experiment produces at least as many questions as it does conclusions, all of them ripe for futher experimentation in an inquiry as endless as the universe itself (provided you can keep swinging the grant money...). Science is the way we explore the universe, not the nature of the universe itself. It's a vehicle, not a destination - if you're after "Big T" this is not the droid you're looking for.

This is not to say science isn't fabulous on a practical level. It gives us a very handy and imminently effective method by which we can examine and evaluate the constant stream of input we're all swimming in. We don't have to make blind guesses (or trust to the admonitions of others) when it comes to how best to go about things. We can study things for ourselves, check them out, try them on, see how they work in comparison to what we're doing now, and make informed decisions as to how we want to proceed in the future. Free at last... free at last...

Or are we? For me the principal rub here seems to be that (despite all of the great 20th century work by Einstein, Schroedinger, Heisenberg, et al, showing the the observer is always a critical component in the determining the nature of the observations) there persists a tacit notion among devotees of science that objectivity should reign supreme. That somehow everyone who does the same experiment the same way should:

- observe and interpret the results uniformly

- reach the same conclusions

- fall in lock-step with each other when it comes to future behavior based on those conclusions

In other words, atheists and scientists tend to be be just as insufferably "Church Lady" as anybody else when it comes to dealing with people who see and do things differently. All such should be labeled as devious heretics or ignorant savages... and we're right back where we started from - namely "Burn her anyway!!!"

Why do you think fundementalists are so agitated? Could it be that they're simply not used to being on the hot end of the torch and are upset at the prospect?

This brings me to the thought that encouraged me to post: It's hard for me to look at the contrast between your church experience and Nathan's without wondering just how much our divergent histories play into the prejudices we go on to rehearse. It seems likely that, at least on a non-clinical but very powerful hands-on practical level, the scientific method is at work here: You've taken your own observations, drawn from them your own conclusions, and you've tried to base your future behavior on those conclusions in a way that seems to deliver an improvement over the performance you were getting before.

Over the years I've known a lot of folks who have "left the faith" (whatever faith that might be) and they generally tell a similar story. Their worldview was shaped by their experience - negative experiences with religion and positive experiences with secular alternatives led to a very understandable and practical readjustment in worldview.

Of course, I've known a lot of folks who have "kept the faith" or "found the faith" (again, whatever faith...) and they tell a similar story as well. Their worldview was also shaped by their experience - negative experiences with secular (or other religous) alternatives and positive experiences with their current religion led to a very understandable and practical readjustment in worldview.

Could it be possible that most folks (of whatever persuasion) are trying to do what they honestly feel works the best for them?

Could it be possible that people view the universe differently, not because they're brainless imbiciles or soulless decievers, but because they're different people who have experienced it... differently? Because they've applied the foriegn principles of their foriegn worldview to the foriegn details of their foriegn lives and observed an acutal improvement in the quality thereof?

Is it really neccessary for them to believe as I do before I can feel comfortable believing as I do?

I don't know how many times I've heard otherwise intelligent, caring people of every concieveable creed and code say things like: The problem is those (insert your boogeyman here) who just won't rest until everyone believes just exactly as they do. Once we get rid of them, everything will be great. All without a hint of irony.

JE: Thank you, George. We've taken this discussion well beyond the empirical vs. supernatural subject of the clip but I'm quite enjoying this. In past discussions of Intelligent Design the question of what constitutes "science" has been raised, and it disturbs me when I see it misused in a specious attempt to prove or disprove something it can't -- like the existence of a supreme being. As for losing my own religion: I don't think I ever really had it, even when I identified as a Christian. The unanswerable question for me is whether my experiences with Christianity put me off the whole concept, or whether my innate worldview (my deeply held moral beliefs, my instincts/understanding of how people function in the world, etc.) rendered religion unworkable for me. I could never reconcile what I believed with what I was being told I should believe (like Jesus is the "Only Way"). In retrospect, it felt like my intuition was ahead of my intellect in that regard. A form of experimentation bias? Rehearsing my own (unconscious) prejudices? Maybe, but at the time I didn't know that NOT believing in God was an option. Everything around me (including the Pledge of Allegience at school and the motto on my lunch money) reinforced God's omnipresence in the world. I felt left out, but I tried to fit in and do what was expected of me. That, of course, only made the rituals seem all the more hollow to me. I didn't "come out" of the God closet until sometime in my teens when I started to grow up, become more of my own person and feel more confident that my values were sound, even if they weren't always popular or conventional otherwise socially reinforced. (I'd learned a lot from the civil rights movement, and was appalled at an impressionable age by the casual, unquestioned racism of some southern relatives.) It wasn't a big deal, I just came to realize that my lack of belief didn't make me feel guilty anymore. I felt no need to proselytize. What you believe is part of who you are. Still, when it comes to the physical world, it is worthwhile to demonstrate that, say, a heater fan is causing a lampshade to move, and that there's no reason to believe it's a ghost or a devil or an angel, based on the evidence at hand. But when it comes to Eternal Truths, evidence and empiricism can only take you so far.

I'm waaaay behind in my RSS feed, so I just saw this today. Thanks very much for posting Jim.

I see the video as a nice primer to discussion about critical and logical thinking. Perhaps something that should be taught to a greater extent in high school...I think it's also somewhat of a reaction to the glut of uninformed talking heads we see daily on the news networks - and though I have a bias as to which political side tends to skip over the whole "open-mindedness" thing, it really does occur on both of them and frustrates the begeezus out of me. No one wants a good debate that might actually help move towards solving any particular issue - it's simply about being proven right or wrong.

And I did have to respond quickly to David Lawler's last comment. Of course, as Jim said, we can't really measure happiness so there's no way of proving things either way. However, I just can't abide the statement "...whereas atheists, agnostics, humanists have only the cold, brutal science, and more often than not, they ridicule their brothers and sisters in Christ, Muhammad, what have you." First of all, that's a HUGE generalization that atheists, agnostics and humanists "more often than not" make fun of the more spiritually minded folks out there. I don't see how you can possibly say this happens the majority of the time as well as fail to mention that it happens going the other way as well.

Secondly, I've always wondered how someone can look at science as cold and brutal. Don't get me wrong, I know the scientific method is indeed emotionless when it comes to looking at the voracity of facts and that Mother Nature is a harsh mistress, etc. But there's a simple beauty to not only the discoveries that science has led us to, but to the process itself. I'm a pretty damn happy person generally and don't go around being frustrated by the lack of evidence for all the things I want to know - it helps drive my curiosity. When I do discover the reasons or read about the theories behind certain processes, it typically makes me want to know more or simply puts a smile on my face as I go "Wow..." Granted, that's all anecdotal, so what do I know...B-)

More important than all the debate so far though - how come no one has pointed out the nice little shout out to "Eraserhead" in the video?

JE: That bit about movies and "Eraserhead" (... but ladies don't live in radiators...) was what made me realize I had to post this clip!

First of all, that's a HUGE generalization that atheists, agnostics and humanists "more often than not" make fun of the more spiritually minded folks out there. I don't see how you can possibly say this happens the majority of the time as well as fail to mention that it happens going the other way as well.

Of course, it's a "HUGE" generalization. Isn't that how we, as a people, as a generalized people, operate when confronted with a wealth of other generalizations? We view people as enormous, unsympathetic groups - unsympathetic only because they don't a specific, exact viewpoint. You're never going to get your point across to an individual, unless it has been whitewashed clean and made bland and palatable to the mob. You may speak for yourself, but you, sure as Heck, don't speak for anybody else.

Why is it so bad for atheists to poke fun at Christianity? We're talking about a religion with talking shrubbery, demon-possessed pigs, a man living inside a whale for 3 days, and the belief that every kind of animal in the entire world lived within walking distance of Noah's house.

Christians do not hesitate to make fun of other religions; the term "sacred cow" is used in the West as a derisive term to describe ridiculous and irrational reverence for undeserving subjects. Do we not realize that Hindus take their sacred cows very seriously? In a similar vein, Christians make fun of Scientology, and attack Tom Cruise for his "kooky" beliefs with gleeful abandon. Where is the respect for other peoples' faith when that faith happens to be Scientology?

Those atheists who are blunt enough to poke fun at Christianity are merely doing to Christians what Christians casually do to other faiths. I am reminded of the enormous double standard between Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise. Both of them were religious kooks, but while Cruise's Scientology was (and is) fair game for public mockery, Gibson's hard-line Catholic faith was immune. He was largely untouchable until he uttered his famous anti-Semitic diatribe.

Thanks for posting this, Jim. I plan to show it to my children at the appropriate moment of their lives (obviously the 5 year old won't understand it at this point...)

Some of the comments have me remembering quotes from books, since I'm more of a book guy than a movie guy, but please don't think less of me for that :).

- "Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a God superior to themselves. Most Gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child." Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

- "...all we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us." J.R.R. Tolkein, Fellowship of the Ring

Pretty much all of "The Last Question", a short story by Isaac Asimov

Jim, I hope you don't mind ( :) ) but I put a reference to this blog entry in a comment on Roger's "Win Ben Stein's" blog entry. Someone showed up there who was a textbook example of a person mis-using the term "close minded" as demonstrated in this video. I recommended he come here and watch the video.

As far as a supernatural example goes, I thought you'd find this interesting. I don't really define the experience, as much as just accept the reality/truth of it - because there's no real evidence of anything.
I shared a room with my 18-month-younger brother when I was very young - I'm Pretty Sure I wasn't at school or kinder' - and one night, not long after going to bed; all over the walls, beds, and even us, were pictures.
I only remember an equestrian woman, some football, and a cartoon mascot for potato chips(which was moving), but it/they were everywhere. We freaked out, my mum came stompin' down the hall - regular occurance :) - flipped the light on, listened a bit, showed us there was nothing there, made various threats, and went back to bed. And after a bit, it started again. We were calm and curious by then, and as far as we remember, it went on until we went to sleep.
Centered against the far wall was a bright light in the shape of an egg, which I could only see in the corner of my eye. If I looked at it, it went away.
Later, I went out to the kitchen, where it was happening as well - though my brother doesn't remember this, and it's fuzzy: I recall the window, but not the outside. We talk about it every five years or so ,have stumped the odd person with the telling. But there was never a follow-up moment, or "closure" of any kind(like in 'Communion' or 'Close Encounters' - that would've been the stuff!). It hasn't made me open-minded in the sense that the vid is talking, because most ghost and near-death tales are very similar, and mostly real-world explainable.
I've never met anyone who's just dismissed my story out of hand, or had a relatable story; but I did catch someone trying to one-up me by inventing a story of his own! An example of "open-mindedness"?
I've known dozens of people who have(or don't bother)to contain their rage over being disagreed with; on things as mundane as the date of a horserace, an example I witnessed recently.
I think the producers would be better served by addressing more of the causes for the behaviour. When we can't accept, inside, that we don't understand a certain opinion or issue or fact, or that we might have spoken too quickly, or just made a mistake(!), then we're not inclined to listen to being told what we are, and left to our own devices. Even if this is just a sort of an introduction, the fear and loathing people feel is a large part of the problem.

Darren, it would be possible to construct a scenario that might explain your experience without resort to the supernatural. I'm not going to try...I wasn't there.

I too have had what might be called supernatural experiences. I remember being in the basement of my parent's house when I was about 18. Half the basement was finished; the other unfinished, which is where my Dad had his workshop; there was also the the laundry, the chest freezer, and general storage space.

My dad had these two stiff copper rods, probably about 3 feet long and maybe 1 millimetre thick. They were hanging from a rafter, in a corner of his workshop, about as far you could get from the door that connected finished basement to unfinished basement. I was sitting at a desk in the finished part, playing on the computer. I heard the sound of the two copper rods clanging together (although I didn't know it was them yet). The distance was probably about 30-35 feet, through a door and around a corner. I went to the unfinished part of the basement, and saw the two rods moving slightly. I tried to estimate the volume that would produce the sound I heard, and to get that much volume, I had to have one of the rods swing through an arc of about two feet and hit the other rod. Supernatural? Certainly it makes for a good ghost story. But maybe my sound estimates were off, and maybe a heavy truck passing by in the street, or a micro quake, caused the rods to clang together.

The point about this is not to disbelieve your story, or rationalise it whatever. It is, however, to remind us that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence in order to be generally accepted.