4x-pvcdLTJg.srt

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I think that fundamentalists and 
atheistic scientists have the same 

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problem,
the fundamentalists,

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so we could say the Christian 
fundamentalists in the US make the 

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proposition that biblical stories,
we'll call them mythological stories,

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are literal representations of the 
truth,

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but,
and that might be true depending on what

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you mean by literal,
but what they mean by literal over what 

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they attempt to make literal mean is 
that they're in the same category of 

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scientific facts because they don't have
the idea that there are different ways 

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of approaching truth and the truth can 
serve different purposes.

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They don't have a sense that your 
definition of truth is actually 

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something like a tool rather than an 
ontological statement about the reality 

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of the world.
And so the.

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The fundamentalists basically make the 
proposition that the idea that God 

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created the world in six days,
5,000

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years ago is literally true and they get
the 5,000

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year estimate.

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By the way,
by going through the genealogies in the 

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Old Testament and adding up the 
hypothetical ages and figuring out.

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You know how long before Moses Adam 
lived and some bishop did that back in 

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the.
I think it was in the mid 18 hundreds,

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I might be wrong about that,
but it was somewhere back about that 

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time and more or less that's been 
accepted as canonical fact ever since,

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and then the scientists say,
well,

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yeah,
those are empirical truth.

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They're just wrong.
See,

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and that's the only difference there is 
between the fundamentalists and the 

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atheist scientists,
the fundamental say those are 

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fundamental scientific truths and 
they're right and the scientists say,

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well,
their scientific truths,

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they just happened to be wrong.
Well,

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I think that's a stupid argument 
personally.

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I mean for a bunch of reasons.
One is that the people who wrote the,

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the ancient stories that we have access 
to,

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we're in no way shape or form 
scientists,

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you know,
modern people tend to think that you 

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think like a scientist and people have 
always thought that way.

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First of all,
you do not think like a scientist.

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Even scientists hardly even think like 
scientists,

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but if you're not scientifically 
trained,

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you don't think like a scientist at all.
So one of the things,

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for example,
that characterizes your thinking is 

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confirmation bias.
And so if you have a theory,

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what you do is wander around in the 
world looking for reasons why it's true,

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and the scientists does exactly the 
opposite of that in the little tiny,

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narrow domain where he or she is 
actually capable of being a scientist 

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and what they have is a theory and 
looked for a way to prove it wrong.

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But believe me,
you don't run around doing that.

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I mean you,
you can train yourself so now and then 

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you can do that,
you know,

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we can learn to listen to people,
for example,

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on the off chance that you might be 
wrong,

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but that is by no means a natural way of
thinking.

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And of course the,
the,

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the fundamental philosophical axioms of 
the scientific method weren't developed 

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until descartes and,
and who else?

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Descartes.
Bacon is one more.

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Anyways,
the name escapes me at the moment,

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but you can argue about when science 
emerged,

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but you,
you,

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it certainly emerged in it's articulated
form within the last thousand years.

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I think you could say even more 
specifically that had emerged in the 

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last 500 years.
Now you might argue with that and say,

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well,
what about the Greeks and other people 

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who were fairly technologically 
sophisticated or who invented geometry 

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or that kind of thing,
but yeah,

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yeah,
bear precursors to the idea of empirical

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observation.
Aristotle,

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for example,
when he was writing down his knowledge 

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of the world,
it never occurred to him to actually go 

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out in the world and look at it to see 
if what he assumed about it was true and

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it certainly never occurred to Aristotle
to get 20 people to go look at the same 

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thing independently.

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Write down exactly how they went about 
doing it,

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compare the records,
and then extract out what was common and

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that's a.
That seems self evident to us to some 

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degree,
but you know,

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it was by no means self evident to 
anyone 500 years ago and people still 

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don't do it.
So it's not even.

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It's not plausible.
If you know anything about the history 

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of ideas,
it's not plausible to pause it.

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That stories about the nature of reality
that existed before 500 years ago were 

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scientific at any but the most cursory 
of ways.

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So why we have that argument continually
somewhat beyond me.

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Part of the reason is though that 
everyone fundamentalists included really

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believe in scientific facts.
Even though they hate it,

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they'll use computers,
they'll fly,

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computers won't work,
wouldn't work unless quantum mechanics 

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were correct,
like the fact that you use a high tech 

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device indicates through your action 
that you actually accept the theories 

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upon which is predicated,
right?

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Same as flying the same as anything you 
do in it too.

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Complex Technological Society,
you're stuck with it.

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You're reading by the lights.
Do they work?

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Yeah,
they work well,

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so it's really hard for people who are 
trying to hold onto a way of looking at 

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the world that appears to contradict the
scientific claims when everything they 

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do is predicated on their acceptance of 
the validity of the scientific claims.

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It's really problematic for people and 
it's problematic in a real way,

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I think because one of the problems with
the scientific viewpoint is it doesn't 

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tell you anything about what you should 
do with your life.

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It doesn't.
It doesn't solve the problem of value at

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all.
In fact,

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it might make it more difficult because 
one of the fundamental scientific 

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claims,
roughly speaking,

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is that every fact is of an equal 
utility,

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at least from a scientific perspective.

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Right?
There is no hierarchy facts.

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It's not exactly.
That's not exactly true because you can 

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think of one theory is more true than 
another,

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but that boils down to saying that it's 
more useful than.

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So I don't think that that's a really 
good exception.

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Okay,
so fine.

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You got the scientific atheist,
so on one end,

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and you got the religious 
fundamentalists on the other and what 

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they both agree on whether they like it 
or not,

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is that there's so much power in the 
scientific method that it's difficult to

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dispute the validity of scientific facts
and they seem to exist in contradiction 

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to the older archaic stories.
If you also accept them as fast fact 

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based account.
So what do we do about that?

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Well,
if you're on a scientific atheist end of

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things,
you say,

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well,
those old stories or just superstitious 

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science,
second rate,

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barbaric archaic forms of science,
you just dispense with them.

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They're nothing but trouble and if 
they're on their fundamentalist side you

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say,
well,

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we'll try to shoe horn science into this
framework.

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And really that doesn't work very well.
It doesn't work very well with the 

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claims of evolution.
For example,

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fact it works very badly and that's a 
problem because evolutionary theory is 

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like,
it's a killer theory and it's re,

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it's,
it's really,

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really hard and like it's not a complete
theory and there's lots of things we 

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don't know about evolution,

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you know,

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trying to wear hand wave that away.
That's,

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that's not gonna work without dispensing
with most of biology.

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So.
So that's a big problem.

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So here's another way of thinking about 
it.

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You don't just need one way of looking 
at the world.

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Maybe you need two ways of looking at 
the world and I'm not exactly sure how 

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they should be related to one another.
Like which should take precedence under 

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which circumstances,
but one problem is what's the world made

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of,
you know,

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what's the world conceptualized as an 
objective place made of.

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And the other is how should you conduct 
yourself while you're alive?

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And there's no reason to assume that 
those questions can be answered using 

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the same approach.

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I mean

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physics has its methods and chemistry 
has its methods and biology has its 

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methods,
so a method for obtaining the truth can 

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be bound to a domain.
So why would we necessarily assume that 

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you could use the same set of tools to 
represent the world as a place of 

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objects and to represent it as a place 
in which a biological creature would act

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in anyways.
I'm suggesting that we,

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that we don't view it that way,
that we have two different viewpoints.

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Maybe they can be brought together,
although it's not obvious how,

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but that it's not a tenable solution to 
get rid of one in favor of the other.

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And I think the reason for that is

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you need to know how to conduct yourself
in the world.

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You have to have a value system.
You can't even look at the damn world 

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without a value system.
It's not possible.

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Your emotional health is dependent on a 
value system.

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The way you interact with other people 
is dependent on a value system.

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There's no getting away from it.
And you say,

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well,
there's no justification for any value 

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system from a scientific perspective.
You're going to draw that conclusion 

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that no value system is valid.
Where the hell does that leave you?

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There is no down,
there's no APP,

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there's no rationale for moving in any 
direction.

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There's not even really any rationale 
for living.

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And so people say things like that,
well why?

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Why the hell should I care what happens 
in a million years?

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Who's going to know the difference?
It's like,

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yeah,
yeah,

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true,
stupid but true.

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And the reason I think it's stupid is 
because it's just a game,

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you know,
I can take anything of any sort,

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can find a context in which it's 
irrelevant.

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It's just a rational games like who 
cares if a hundred children freeze to 

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death in a blizzard,
who,

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what difference is going to make a 
billion years?

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Well,
what do you say to someone who says that

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you say,
well,

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seems like the wrong frame of Reference 
Bucko.

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That's what it looks like to me.
You know,

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because at some point you question the 
dam frame of reference,

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not what you derive from it.
And it certainly seems to me that 

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situations like that don't allow you to 
use that kind of frame of reference.

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There's something inhumane about it and 
that trumps the logic,

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or at least it should.
And if it doesn't,

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then all hell breaks loose.
And that doesn't seem to be a good 

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thing.