“Good vid as to the principal, but one-way and consequently the destruction of a paper tiger. Turn this round and you’re talking about Dawkins. If it had been less myopic I’d have used this.”

I’m struggling to find a way that I can believe that he hasn’t missed the point entirely! Anyone got any ideas?

If you have a moment, please feel free to respond. He’s a nice chap, by the way!

http://www.pinksy.co.uk/index.php/2009/04/04/open-mindedness/

We don’t know what happened *at* the Big Bang. We just know it happened, based on evidence so far. There could have been a guy of gigantic proportions doing an experiment in his lab when an explosion occurred and the Universe happened, or there could have been something else equally unbelievable.

The point is we don’t know. We just know that given the conditions right after the Big Bang, it pretty much makes sense physically what we observe around us. Or rather, given the evidence so far, a phenomenon that can be described by a “Big Bang” seems the most probably explanation. Indeed, when new evidence comes up, theories are proved inaccurate, and must be modified, or kept on hold until new observations and / or hypotheses can make our understanding better (for eg the recent discovery of “dark matter” which we know almost nothing about as of now. I am sure our theories will undergo modifications as a result of this new information).

If you want to attribute the Big Bang to a “God”, fine, your choice. I’d rather stick to “I don’t know”, as someone above said.

If you don’t want understand that random explosions can lead to order, fine, but then it’s your *choice* to attribute it to spirituality or “God”, when you could equally have gone with “I don’t know”.

Keeping an open mind is simply a notion of looking at evidence objectively, and to not have prejudices when looking at new information. If I observe something that implies that my ideas are wrong, well then, I must try to prove that the new idea makes sense, and if it does, I must change my views. Simple, no?

To get back to the topic of chaos and order, the real kicker is that order can arise without the presence of any underlying order. Order need not exist beforehand for it to emerge. For example, cosmological models have no need for an initial ordered state preceeding the Big Bang, although we find lots of order in the universe (and in biological life) today.

Atheism is no inoculation to personal ideological blind-spots.

Nothing constructive comes out of explosions and random chance, not even millions of years later. I just can’t get that through my logic filter.

Never the less, it does. We can observe order arising from chaos, and we can prove it mathematically. Also, it’s very simplistic and insufficient to describe the events leading to our present as an explosion and random chance.

Perhaps it’s not just a matter of differing interpretations but also of acquiring sufficient insight? No offense meant, I just hope you see my point.

This is in fact what theists tend to do. It is not what atheists tend to do.

Atheists tend to examine the available evidence and then make decisions about the eixtence/nonexistence of gods. If you want to argue that the examination of evidence in deciding the existence of things is a starting “belief,” I suppose you can squeeze atheists in to your definition. I would note however that theists use that same methodology for examining the existence of almost everything but a particular god.

You just took a few paragraphs to say what it would have taken me an hour to explain, and I still would’nt have done it as efficiently. I didn’t even think about basic abilities to understand things while I was watching that vid, which is kind of embarassing. Kudos to you.

“I believe in God” is generally a short way of saying “I believe in the existence of God who has various characteristics.” It’s an assertion about the truth of existence of an entity.

“I believe in science” is generally a short way of saying “I believe in the methodological approach of science such that in my opinion it tends to make predictions that correspond very well with what is observed.” It’s an opinion of the reliability of a certain methodology. Usually they mean that comparatively; by ‘believing’ in science what they are saying is that they are of the opinion that science is a better methodology than its known competitors for discerning how facts are related.

Actual scientists (and some attentive laypeople) will additionally be careful to point out that science is not a universal methodology; it does not make universal analytic claims of truth, only probabilistic claims of truth insofar as they are supported by evidence. And it does not apply in all conceivable circumstances, but only those for which evidence would prevail to inform a hypothesis. It is only in those circumstances that science prevails to be a superior methodology than others.

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Oftentimes, an Atheist will prevail upon science (somewhat inappropriately) as a stand-in in order to provide an answer to a Theist’s question about what they believe in in the more essential sense (i.e. what is it that you believe is real or defines reality). The problem is that the Theist’s question “what do you believe in?” presupposes that there is some entity or theory for Atheists that would correspond exactly with God for Theists. Usually there isn’t an analogous entity to provide, and so an Atheist who is trying not to be rude will attempt to reply with *something*. The go-to “something” in Western culture tends to be a naive scientism.

However, I don’t agree with how the video generalizes certain sorts of people like for example the idea that those who believe in God and not incarnation and vice-versa are open minded only when you agree with them which is actually close minded.

There’s still something I’d like to understand about athiesm (or at least some people who claim to be athiests; I can’t really generalize): why when asked of what they believe they say “I believe in science”? I mean there are religious people who do believe in science (and even scientists who were indeed religious like Darwin) and there are even religions that support scientific thinking, pondering, and wondering, and questioning the evidence and sources, and science is thus incorporated into the religion which considers learning science as a way of “worship” or “meditating”. To me at least, I find it close minded to think that religious people don’t believe in science or are close minded.

I hope you could help answer these questions for me, since I think especially in a very globalized world, it is very important to understand other viewpoints and to learn what things people may be sensitive to certain sorts of people.

Again, thanks for sharing