51. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #180231 by AtheistJon on May 14, 2008 at 12:15 pm

It's not apocalyptic if some people will survive, is it?

Anyway, maybe it's just better to accept that bad things are going to happen in the future. I mean we all have to accept the fact that we are going to die some day.

But, I'm not saying I want it to happen tomorrow.

My favorite response to the question, "do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?" Was when my co-worker got asked this on live tv, here in Finland. His answer was "yeah, he's coming over to have tea with me today". ;-)

So, yeah, Jesus is coming back, sure... and I'm gonna invite him to post responses to this blog. ;-)

52. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #180223 by AtheistJon on May 14, 2008 at 11:57 am

Of course, whoever wins the energy war will be fucked anyway because they won't have solved the energy problem unless they've destroyed 80% of the population of the world at which point everything will be fucked.

In the future, we'll be lucky if any computers will be built anymore and if there is energy to power them.

Plus, there won't be any jobs and the atmosphere is going to be like it is in China, except everywhere in the world. Plus the rising sea levels are going to drown major coastal cities like NYC and London. Disease, war, starvation, pollution, terrorism, disasters are all standing around the corner waiting to strike.

But still we go our merry way, get up in the morning and go to work. What can you do about it? I guess, we shouldn't worry too much about it... sort of like death, it's inevitable.

53. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #180221 by AtheistJon on May 14, 2008 at 11:49 am

Al-Rawandi, here's a topic which we are in total agreement about (at least on the surface of it). I think we are fucked.

As they say, it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. But, in the case of energy, overpopulation, pollution, it seems like the more time goes by, the more it seems like Jared Diamond's "Collapse" is really happening.

On the other hand, sometimes you go outside, like last weekend, and it feels like... wow, what gorgeous weather, spring flowers are blooming. Everything on planet earth is perfect. So how could things go wrong?

Anyway, I guess we probably won't really recognized how fucked we are until the shit hits the fan... I predict there will be energy wars between the US and maybe with Europe against the Middle-east, Africa, and China. Hard to say really, eg. whose side countries like India or Brazil will fall, but I just get the feeling, that when oil starts costing 200-300 dollars a barrel... all countries will stop being so friendly to each other -- like they are now ;-)

54. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #180046 by AtheistJon on May 14, 2008 at 6:23 am

I believe if more effort was put into redesigning our world with energy efficiency in mind we would be far better off.

And how would you propose we deal with (not just US but also Chinese) all the coal plants that have and are still being built and set up for minimum of 40 years operation to pay for themselves? Redesigning only does you any good when you are at the beginning of the project. Once a project is already in the field, it's a very expensive matter to rip things out and replace them.

55. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179929 by AtheistJon on May 14, 2008 at 2:19 am

the problem, especially in the UK is that the government pretend to be "green" by increasing taxes on everything, particularly fuel to falsely claim they are doing it in the interests of the environment. We cannot drop our reliance on the car because there is no alternative, our public transport system is basically non-existant, it is old, unreliable and expensive, and most importantly does not get you to where you want to go.

And again, anybody who wants to really be "green" shouldn't concentrate on only transportation as though it's the main place where we are consuming oil. It isn't. Public (ground) transport won't help light London at night time, warm up our food, warm up our houses. Won't help us transport goods to the stores, mail our packages, fly to lectures at distant universities. Why are we so blinded by the SUV vs Mini-Coop issue that we ignore all the other energy use cases? Even assuming that everybody in the US and England would ride a bike everywhere they go, have you ever seen the traffic situation in India and China? Those old rickshaws that they drive in India belch huge clouds of smoke (mostly CO2) into the sky... way more than any SUV. Overall, they might consume less fuel per rickshaw, but if you add up 100 million of them, with growth potential far surpassing the US automotive growth, you end up with alot more gas being consumed in places where environmental protection is simply a non-issue.

56. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179920 by AtheistJon on May 14, 2008 at 1:54 am

And you have to ask yourselves. Is the UK (or Finland, where I live) better off for having those huge taxes on oil.

Oil taxation is one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't situations. Which do you want? The incentive for people to lower their fossil-fuel consumption or the money to "live like a king", although you might have a bad conscience for driving an oil guzzling SUV?

Again, gas and oil for vehicle usage is only a small portion of the world's energy problem. What about the 100 MW coal plants that China has recently been building. Aren't they at least as worrying to you? After all, when you build a coal plant it has to run for 40 years or more to pay for itself. So, why does Richard Dawkins.net folks spend all their time jealously worrying about how cheap Americans get their gas, and ignore the fact that we are way too invested in other types of fossil-fuel dependent infrastructure.

57. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179913 by AtheistJon on May 14, 2008 at 1:40 am

Hi Mordacious1,

Remember that we don't just use middle-eastern oil for driving SUVs. There are a huge number of other use-cases for oil (both in the USA and elsewhere).

So, if you concentrate only on fuel efficient cars, you ignore all those other use cases.

Don't you?

58. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179876 by AtheistJon on May 13, 2008 at 11:09 pm

Mmurray:

These figures for energy demand in 2050 and the like. Are they based on present population trends and the assumption we will all have first world living standards in 2050 ? That is never going to happen. At some point we have to get the population under control.

The numbers are based on 1.6% (per year) GDP economic growth and 1% (per year) improvement in efficiency of energy consumption per unit of GDP and population growth to 10-11 billion by 2050.

The energy gap estimate was based on 1990: 12 TW, 2050 - 28 TW consumption, with the very optimistic assumption that we managed to trade carbon emitting fossil power for renewable resources (which is a must even if we are to reduce CO2 consumption to the dangerous level that is going into the atmospher just based on today's current energy use minus optimistic energy efficiency improvements). See Nate Lewis' projections below.

BTW, we could all just live in caves and then we'd no longer need large quantities of energy. But if you advocate this, you should first show your belief by doing this yourself before forcing it on others.

Also, I have to repeat one, to me amazing fact, which is that the total energy consumption of the world isn't just neon signs, SUVs or oil usage for transportation purposes in general. Most of the energy consumption is from manufacturing and
things like lighting your house in the dark.

If you go to the following web site, you can see how Professor Nate Lewis from Caltech did his calculations in both his ppt slides or his lecture at:

Overview:
http://nsl.caltech.edu/energy.html

Slides:
http://nsl.caltech.edu/files/energy.ppt

Streaming video lecture:
http://nsl.caltech.edu/files/energy.ram

Regards,
Jon

59. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179725 by AtheistJon on May 13, 2008 at 3:15 pm

By the way, just for education purposes, Nate has an excellent scale for what energy units and order of magnitude really means in every day ordinary terms:

1 W - the order of magnitude of consumption of a cell phone or laptop (a good efficient laptop would consume about 9 Watts)
1 kW - (10^3 Watts or kiloWatt) is the amount consumed by the average household in electricity - if you're Al Gore, you consume 10-100 times more than this (or a hair-dryer or a toaster by themselves)
1 MW - (10^6 Watts or a MegaWatt) is the amount of energy consumed by a small jet engine airplane
1 GW - (10^9 Watts or a GigaWatt) is what you could safely get in electricity from a modern nuclear fission reactor (there's a brand new nuclear plant being built here in Finland which is supposed to produce 1.5 GW of energy).
1 TW - (10^12 Watts or a TeraWatt)is about the amount of electrical energy consumed by the whole planet as a whole.

The total energy consumption of the earth is about 14 TW. (Not sure how they know this)...

If you do some math, you can calculate the world energy needed by the year 2050. Assuming (conservatively) that the population grows to 10 billion (10^9) and the average energy consumption per person would be 2kW (currently in the US it's 10kW per person) with economic growth at a conservative rate of 1.5%, and assuming improvement in energy efficiency of 1%, the world would need an extra 10-30 TeraWatts of energy (also not sure exactly how this figure is extrapolated)... but it seems reasonable... although lots of very conservative underestimates of growth.

And to get 10-30 TW of energy, actually, we already have that amount of energy in fossil fuels, but the question is what will happen to the atmosphere of the earth when we burn it all and put all that CO2 into the atmosphere. Venus is the only other good data point which we have, where we have another example of a planet with a high CO2 content atmosphere.

Transportation energy is only a fraction of the total energy needs. Mainly people need food, lights, tv, running-water, heating, etc... So, worrying about the price of gas at the pump and size of our SUVs will in the best case scenario (if everybody switched over to riding bikes and rowing boats), we'd still have massive energy shortages.

That is, if we would suddenly stop using fossil fuels (today) as our energy source, how would we get a substitute amount of clean energy equivalent to 10-30 TeraWatts of energy. There don't seem to be any good answers at the moment.

60. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179712 by AtheistJon on May 13, 2008 at 2:43 pm

mesomodel

...but I really don't think we want to be shipping money to many of the countries that have uranium (or plutonium) deposits.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't plutonium a purely man-made atom? In other words, there's no such thing as plutonium deposits. But I agree with your point... not so nice to see tiny brained dictators possessing such destructive materials. Or, for that matter, getting money for selling it.

At least with Solar power there is a foreseeable return on investment even with current technology. With fusion, there's only technical feasibility research ongoing, so when you invest, you may never get your money back.

61. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179711 by AtheistJon on May 13, 2008 at 2:37 pm

The other humorous but tragically so item is this about CO2 emissions. If the world would somehow get to a point by the next 50 years of producing less CO2 emissions than would be made by 100% use of natural gas (i.e. the cleanest of the fossil fuels), we'd still be emitting so much CO2 (and this is just for the US) that if we buried it in aquifers (equally distributed over the surface of the USA), then the buoyant pressure of the CO2 gas upwards would be enough to raise the surface of the US about 20 feet.

Hmmm... just enough to meet the rising sea levels caused by melting of the Greenland ice-glaciers. ;-)

62. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179707 by AtheistJon on May 13, 2008 at 2:28 pm

Oh, and by the way, for nuclear fission power. The main good thing is that it is a carbon neutral energy source, but if you do the arithmetic. A nuclear fission reactor produces 1 GigaWatt of power (i.e. 10^9 Watts). The world will be needing on the order of 10 TW of energy to fuel the future energy demands. So, we would need 10,000 nuclear fission reactors to solve our problem. But, if we had 10000 nuclear fission reactors, we'd only have enough uranium to run those reactors for 10 years. So, the only alternative to uranium fuel cycle reactors would be plutonium based reactors. Nate makes the joke that "we should be thankful to Iran and North Korea for doing their part in reducing global warming".

By the way, to get 10000 nuclear reactors (and hence the 10 TW of energy needed), we'd need to build about one every other day for the next 50 years. The cost would be about 70% of the entire world's GDP ;-)

Solar energy has a similar problem with respect to scale. For every person on the planet, there would need to be about 10xthe area of their roof in solar panels, plus there's no good solution to the energy demand at nighttime.

63. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179700 by AtheistJon on May 13, 2008 at 2:15 pm

By the way, the world currently uses 14 TeraWatts of energy. By 2050, we will need another 10-30 TeraWatts of energy (hopefully CO2 friendly energy).

Nate Lewis had a great quote from his friend Rick Smalley:

Nuclear Fusion may one day be the answer to our energy problem, but nobody wants to live near a nuclear fusion plant. In fact, 93 million miles is just about the right distance for us to live from a nuclear fusion reactor. The sun is already in the perfect location for us to have a nuclear fusion reactor. By the way, we need ~10 (at best) TeraWatts to sustain our energy demands in the 21st century. The sun gives us 100,000 TW of energy. Of course, there's pretty serious problems in harvesting the solar energy economically.

Nate Lewis has the idea of using solar panel paint.

64. Americans pray at the pump for cheaper petrol

Comment #179630 by AtheistJon on May 13, 2008 at 12:55 pm

Richard Dawkins said:

We need US prices to be double or even triple what they are today, in order to force motorists to buy more economical cars -- small cars, hybrid cars, electric cars etc.

I was curious if this comment is based also on the idea that our CO2 emissions need to be reduced? Or was it just a statement against the Saudis? I used to live in Saudi Arabia, myself, and I would agree that it is a vile type of government, but compared, for example, to Egypt, or Iran, or Syria how is it any viler?

Anyway, to come back to the issue of US gasoline addiction. It's not just the US who is addicted to gas. I'm sure others will have noted this in this thread. But, does anybody know what the total amount of energy (or power, i.e. rate of energy) consumed by the world is? And what fraction of that energy consumption is for transportation purposes? I know the answer, because I watched a fascinating lecture by my old Freshman chemistry professor from Caltech, Nate Lewis on the JPL van Karman lecture:

http://realserver1.jpl.nasa.gov:8080/ramgen/vod/av/2008/vk-lect/080228-vkl-WhereintheWorldWillOurEnergyComeFrom-AVC-2008-038c.rv

So, qualitatively speaking, the amount of energy used by transportation needs is a minor almost trivial part of the energy problem of the world. Where does most of the world's energy go? Industrial purposes (i.e. making electricity, supplying heat, etc...). So, it's a rather lame reason for criticizing the US in the grand scheme of things. In the long run, the energy problem boils down to one main thing... the population of planet earth... which isn't just the fault of George W. Bush, as much as liberals like Al Gore might like to blame him.

There are currently no good answers for meeting the world's renewable energy resource needs. And based on Nate Lewis' lecture, I would predict that in the future, energy costs will be effecting US, Europe and Asia, more and more.

65. 3QD interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #179216 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 10:30 pm

Sayid said

Although I think what the guy doing the interview was talking about is how some people would put meaning on that event beyond just probability.

Yes. The very word "miracle" almost implies that if something very improbable happens, it must be God who did it. That's just so wrong.

And to me it seems like religious people only need a 50% probability event going their way, to declare it a miracle. Things like rain on some specific day are interpreted so readily as probabilistic miracles... this is nonsense. Although it might not just be innate lack of probability understanding, I think a lot of the time we just see self-fulfilling "prophecies"... i.e. people waiting for a lucky event, which then confirms God. They of course ignore all the unlucky events that had to go first.

66. 3QD interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #179102 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 2:48 pm

Wait a sec. One correction of my post about Francis Collins. Not an evolutionary biologist... that would be Richard Dawkins.
Dr. Collins is (according to his Wikipedia entry) an American physician-geneticist. My mistake.

By the way, Jaz, I agree with you that emotion turns us into even bigger idiots. But, it's amazing to me, when you get engineers out of the classroom, how much they forget, and how we all tend to revert to intuition style thinking. I can't just blame others... I'm quite sure I'm susceptible to this myself.

67. 3QD interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #179089 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 2:07 pm

Whoops... Gnomean, now I noticed that
you defined event 2 as 6 blacks followed by a red (not black). Anyway, it still slightly differed from my point which was that the 7th spin was independent of the first 6. BTW This is what are called "independent random variables". I.e. when event X has no influence on event Y (and also the covariance(X,Y) = 0, if you want to get really mathematical ;-))

Jaz, you wrote

p.s. Is it me or does that whole "many mathemeticians querried the monty hall solution" seem ridiculous. I mean, why would actual serious mathemeticians ( I'm not one!)be thrown by a simple conditional probability problem??? Surely this is just a rumour that never actually happened....

I sort of agree with you here, but, then again, you look at a world reknowned evolutionary biologists who think that a frozen waterfall implies something about the truth of the holy trinity, and then you have to wonder. People (even mathematicians) can be real idiots, at times. And the really, really hard part is the "admitting it when you're wrong". You know... Sorry seems to be the hardest word... (that's maybe one of the only things I agree with Elton John about)...

68. 3QD interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #179080 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 1:48 pm

Not to beat a dead horse, but just one minor disagreement, Gnomead, to what you said:

Event 1: For 7 consecutive reds, the probability is (1/2)^7

Event 2: For 6 consecutive reds followed by a black, the probability is (1/2)^6*(1/2) = (1/2)^7

Your Event 1 and mine are the same, but what you wrote here as "Event 2" is not the same as what I defined as "Event 2": i.e. getting the 7th black after having gotten 6 blacks already.

In my definition of event_2, you might as well forget the previous 6 throws. It is irrelevant. It's just incidental. In your defintion, I think Event 1 and Event 2 are the same thing. Although you did correctly calculate that they had the same probability.

For my definition of event_2, the probability is 1/2. Of course, throughout this discussion we ignored the fact that 0 is neither red nor black ;-)

69. 3QD interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #179067 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 1:22 pm

Hi Samir,

Don't take this the wrong way, but I think what you said just now was confused. Or at least confusing.

Yes, I must agree that the odds of getting 7 blacks in a row is indeed much much less then getting a black on throw 7 after having gotten the first 6 blacks.

So we are comparing 2 events: event_1 = getting black 7 times in a row, event_2 = getting the 7th black after having gotten 6 blacks already. By the way, the probability of event_1 is easy: It's (1/2)^7, i.e. 0.0078125 or .78% probability.

I think it is wrong to say that event_1 is "the odds" and event_2 is "the probability". Odds and probability are synonyms, at least in American english. Maybe in Britain it is as you say...? But I have the feeling that you are just a little confused.

Again, I hope you don't take this the wrong way. They say you should never correct people, if you want to make friends and influence people, but I hope this doesn't apply in this case!

70. 3QD interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #179042 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 12:39 pm

Gnomead, don't feel bad. I screwed up the card problem, too, when I first heard it. I have the feeling (intuitive?) that most people get it wrong.

BTW. Does anybody else have any other examples of such probability problems, where most people's intuition fails them? It is an interesting connection of ideas, i.e. of connecting this bad innate probability calculation to religion. Hadn't thought of that before... at least not explicitly. I just think that most people don't have enough logic in them to construct (or tear down) arguments beyond 3 steps long... especially when somebody authoritative demands that we should all accept an argument without going beyond step number 1. ;-)

71. 3QD interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #179031 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 12:15 pm

OK. Seems that the Monty Hall problem was the same as my Hawaii trip problem ;-)

By the way, a good way to make the "Monty Hall problem" extremely obvious to somebody who doubts it is to give the following similar problem:

Suppose you are playing the lottery and you choose a ticket (one out of a million possible tickets). Now, somebody comes up to you with all one million tickets and gives you your ticket which you chose. He then throws away 999,998 of the other lottery tickets in the trash, all of which were losers. He now gives you the option... stay with the first ticket (which you chose at random) or swap to the remaining ticket in his hand. Would you swap or stay?

Isn't this a much more obvious (i.e. intuitive) version of the same problem? At least, to me, it becomes much more obvious this way.

72. 3QD interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #179027 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 12:09 pm

Oops. I meant 2 / 3 (not 1/3)... I guess I might as well elaborate:

Call card 1 (with Red and Black) the red side, "side A1". Call card 2 (with Red and Red), the first red side "B1" and the other red side "B2". Now, you picked a card (A or B) and saw red. So, you could have:

A1
B1
B2

Of those three possibilities, B1 and B2 both have red on the other side. A1 has black. So you have 2 out of 3 chances that the other side is red. 1 out of 3 that it is black.

73. 3QD interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #179025 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 12:05 pm

gnomead:

@AtheistJon - Is it 50%?

Nope. It's one third. See if you can figure out why.

I'll give you a hint. List all the possible combinations of possible ways you could have gotten the red card face. How many of those combinations have a red on the other side?

74. 3QD interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #179022 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 12:02 pm

Another good example of unintuitive probability questoins (BTW. I don't know what the Monty Hall problem is, anybody care to elaborate? Maybe this is the same problem...):

You're in a game show where you have the chance to win a trip to Hawaii. There's 3 curtains and behind 1 of them is the trip to Hawaii, behind the other 2 is nothing. Now, the host has you choose one of the 3 curtains. You tell him which one it is you chose, and after you tell him, he opens one of the curtains that you didn't choose, one which is an empty curtain... Now, after the empty curtain is opened, he gives you the option of staying with the curtain you chose to begin with or swapping to the one other remaining closed curtain. Should you swap or not?

75. 3QD interviews Richard Dawkins

Comment #179015 by AtheistJon on May 12, 2008 at 11:54 am

I agree with others. This is a fresh and refreshing set of new questions. Nice not to hear the Hitler/Stalin and not too many questions about religion.

About the probability question. As far as roulette is concerned, the history of the outcomes, has no bearing on the next result, so you can ignore the 6 preceding results. The probability is still ~50% (minus the probability of landing on 0).

There's another good probability question that most people get wrong. Suppose you have 2 cards in a hat... 1 has red on one side, black on the other, and the other has both sides red. You pick a card from the hat and you see a red. What's the probability that the other side is red? I give you a hint... most people guess this one wrong. If you've had any probability lessons, you should be able to get this right.

76. Discussion between Richard Dawkins and Paula Kirby

Comment #157816 by AtheistJon on April 9, 2008 at 2:59 pm

I tend to doubt that RD would want this interview to be included in his "greatest hits"... considering his hoarse voice, aye ;-)

For a novice of the religion vs atheism, evolution debate, I'll agree that this event was well done. For more serious stuff, I'd prefer tougher and more original questions.

77. Discussion between Richard Dawkins and Paula Kirby

Comment #157807 by AtheistJon on April 9, 2008 at 2:48 pm

Paula: What can I say? He was very charming, very interesting and excellent company - despite feeling rather beleaguered because of his horrible cold and croaky voice.

I met some famous people here in Finland, and for me it's always hard to get by the initial "celebrity" magic which makes you want to kneel down and bow. After a while though, they start to become average folk with whom you could have a regular conversation.

So, probably in your next engagment with him, you will be quite comfortable to sneak in a few hardish questions, aye? ;-)

Anyway, I'm sure all the people on this blog are immensely jealous! RD really is an icon. I always used to want to meet Carl Sagan and talk with him. When I went to Caltech (in the summer of 1987), I had the pleasure of meeting Richard Feynmann, but during the lecture he gave I think the 3 questions I was able to ask were rather lame. If you ever read Surely, You're Joking, he even mentioned that he hated it when students asked him about his Nobel prize... and guess what topic I asked about ;-) If I had it to do over again, I would have asked Feynmann a more technical question. One about special relativity, for example.

78. Discussion between Richard Dawkins and Paula Kirby

Comment #157767 by AtheistJon on April 9, 2008 at 2:06 pm

Well, I have to agree with you there. I was unaware of the makeup of the audience.

Hopefully, you will get the chance to try the "rough and tumble" interview some other day ;-)

Anyway, did you have any thoughts or personal impressions about RD himself that you could share with everyone? Wasn't this the first time you two had met?

79. Discussion between Richard Dawkins and Paula Kirby

Comment #157748 by AtheistJon on April 9, 2008 at 1:52 pm

Paula,

Don't take this the wrong way. I think the interview was done very cleanly and neatly and it was nice that you let RD do most of the talking, but I have a criticism about this interview which is, in a nutshell, this:

Does RD really need somebody to throw him softballs (pardon the americanism) like you did?

Why not ask him a lot harder questions. Ones that haven't already been asked a million times before? I should think that an atheist like you who has seen and heard all of these same old arguments and discussions a million times already would be bored to tears by the interview you gave?

Why not ask RD some more juicy questions (not that I can come up with lots of juicy questions myself either (at least not without a fair amount of preparation)? I should think something like the discussions that go on in this blog where people digress and digress until you really get to know somebody's core beliefs?

Were you instructed to give such easy questions or was this your own choice?

Wouldn't you agree that your questions were almost the epitome of "softballs"?

Regards,
Jon

80. Beware the Believers

Comment #152003 by AtheistJon on March 30, 2008 at 1:25 am

I think TwiddleFare is right about this. As I said originally, I think the lack of clarity and the "I'm smarter than you" mockery makes this a never very funny video anyway. Wouldn't an actual atheist somehow have used the irony of the 'expelled from Expelled' episode?

I think some of you have turned this simple bit of Flealike anti-RD video, into a "subtle", "postmodern", "incongruos", "culturally modern" rap video, but to me it's just the Emperor's New Clothes effect.

If there's any place for atheist's to show their "I admit it when I'm wrong" ability (which the religious people lack), then I think this is a great case.

Of course, if I'm wrong and this really is a spoof of "Expelled" (rather than a spoof of RD and company), then I will admit it when enough evidence is brought forth. However I would still reserve the judgment that the video just isn't funny anyway.

I'm with robatoholic, rap should die out yesterday... but, ok, I'll admit that it's definitely a matter of taste. I never liked rap, never will.

81. Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Comment #151912 by AtheistJon on March 29, 2008 at 4:44 pm

Well explained, Steve.

By the way, any advice to me for dealing with my "moderate" religious family?

Just curious, how do you deal with religious folks in your family?

82. Beware the Believers

Comment #151893 by AtheistJon on March 29, 2008 at 4:15 pm

Whether the video maker is pro or anti RD/PZ, I still think the "humor" lacks much beyond the superiority theory of humor level of thought. Sheer mockery of sth because it is "stupid" in the eyes of the mocker... I would think a fan of RD could put together a much funnier video.

There is so much more deeply funny things about the religious viewpoint and defenders of creationism.

The great teapot: What are you talking about?

By the way, there is a new laughterexperiment site with the laughlab:

http://www.laughterexperiment.co.uk/
http://www.quirkology.com/USA/index.shtml

It's quite interesting... Recommended for the Dr. Benway thread.

83. Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Comment #151878 by AtheistJon on March 29, 2008 at 3:51 pm

The defense I'm hearing, from my "moderate" religious family members as quoted above, is the same old argument you always hear from the religious, i.e. "those are the extremist wacky Christians"... "real Christians" don't do that...
(same kind of response that "moderate" Muslims gave to 9-11)...

84. Beware the Believers

Comment #151875 by AtheistJon on March 29, 2008 at 3:41 pm

Steve,

I don't think it's even a matter of taste. I think this is supposed to be superiority theory humor. Excerpt from the laughlab.co.uk website:

Superiority theory

Why do people tend to laugh when someone slips over a banana skin or has a custard pie slapped into their face?

Well, according to one theory of humour, we laugh because these types of situations make us feel superior to other people. The person who tripped over the banana skin, or was the recipient of the custard pie, has been made to look silly and that makes us feel good. In fact, it makes us feel so good that we laugh.

The superiority theory also explains why we laugh at certain types of jokes. Many jokes make us feel superior to other people. In these types of jokes, people appear stupid because they have misunderstood an obvious situation, made a stupid mistake, been the hapless victim of unfortunate circumstance or have been made to look stupid by someone else. According to the theory, these jokes cause us to laugh because they make us feel superior to other people.

Here is a classic 'superiority' joke from LaughLab:

A woman goes into a cafe with a duck. She puts the duck on a stool and sits next to it. The waiter comes over and says: "Hey! That's the ugliest pig that I have ever seen." The woman says: "It's a duck, not a pig." And the Waiter says: "I was talking to the duck."

The flaw with superiority theory based humor is that you just cannot laugh at the "joke" if you are among the "spoofed" group. At best, if you are very self-secure, then you find it simply boring and unwitty. As I guess we do.

85. Beware the Believers

Comment #151855 by AtheistJon on March 29, 2008 at 3:08 pm

I don't think it's your age Richard. You aren't that old ;-)

The Simpson's is absolutely brilliant. Especially their take on religion!

This video is pointless/unhumorous to me, too, and I'm "only" 38.

86. Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Comment #151850 by AtheistJon on March 29, 2008 at 2:59 pm

Thanks Geoff...

It is sad to live in a family where you can't bring up the topic of religion at all because they all take offense from your position rather than being able to discuss things objectively.

I guess that's why they say to never discuss politics or religion when visiting somebody's house. But then again, this is my own family... I feel ashamed of them.

87. Beware the Believers

Comment #151840 by AtheistJon on March 29, 2008 at 2:44 pm

I have to go back to the laughlab pages to try and understand this "humor". I'm with RD and Steve... it didn't strike me as funny at all... or at best one of those SNL skits at the end of the show which are so off the wall that they are only barely funny.

Under the laughlab site: http://laughlab.co.uk/
There are several categories of why things strike people as funny. I think this humor falls under the Superiority Theory. My interpretation is that the video maker wants to feel superior (kind of a meta superiority) to Atheist advocates by putting the "I'm a scientist and I'm smarter than you" line in our mouths.

I'm with Steve, I don't consider this self deprecating humor. Self deprecating humor is more obviously humorous. My favorite recent such humor is the weird Al video "White and Nerdy" which mocks us white nerds but also the rap culture, since it's a spoof of the song "Riding Dirty"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEzGIuY7kw

88. Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Comment #151412 by AtheistJon on March 28, 2008 at 4:47 pm

Well, I'm not sure that it's so wise to ask for personal advice on this blog, but hey, what the heck. I guess most Atheists can sympathize with me on this.

I forwarded a link of this story to my moderately religious family members, thinking that it would be another chink in their defense of this crap. But I got back the following emails:

My email:

Dear Family,
Hate to go back to a sore topic for you, but here's another tragedy caused by religion:

This foxnews story provides the essence of why I think that the concept of prayer is such a bad one:
Police: Girl Dies After Parents Pray for Healing Instead of Seeking Medical Help

Love,
Jon

It seemed to have hit a nerve because I got 4 immediate responses (from folks who generally don't write to me that often except to forward an occasional good joke)

#1 response (step-mom):

No matter what you say.... we are all STILL PRAYING FOR YOU!

xoxo "Step-Mom"

#2 response (sister):

Obviously these people did not know anything about prayer, or they would have known that they should do the right thing and find all the help for the poor girl that they could!

Don't blame Jesus (not religion--Jesus was against alot of religious tradition himself!) for something some idiots did!

Love,
"Sister"

-------------
#3 response (from great Uncle/Aunt):

Jon-You may not want it but we will continue to pray for you. Love "Aunt and Uncle")

----------------
#4 response (from mother):

Jon Since you have never had much religious training, (my fault), you don't understand that most Christians don't agree with this either....and the persons you are sending this to also don't believe your lack of understanding about their beliefs. It is probably better to keep that to yourself as you will never influence any of these people to your point of view, and you just alienate them.

Love, Mom

-------------
I'm open to any suggestions of how to deal with relatives like this from anybody with a sense of understanding. Please no flamers.

89. Happy Birthday, Richard Dawkins!

Comment #150117 by AtheistJon on March 26, 2008 at 1:13 pm

Adding my Happy Birthday congratulations!

Even though idolotry is probably unhealthy, I have to say that I think RD is a wonderful guy!

And what a great year, aye? Anyway, I got to know RD through TGD and his online video appearances, so I think it was a fine year for being an atheist!

90. Expelled Overview

Comment #149422 by AtheistJon on March 25, 2008 at 3:30 pm

It is amazing to me, the lies and deception that is alive in this crap. Really makes them seem like very bad people. I have strong feelings of love towards america, but I would never lie to forward my own political views.

Josh,
Oletko Suomalainen? Sun sukunimen perusteella, luulisin että on ainakin suomalais sukujuuret. Suomessa on myös hirveitä uskovaisia, mutta onneksi täällä tuntuu olevan ennemmän ateistit.

If you didn't get that, I was suggesting that you sound like you might be Finnish.

;-)

Jon

91. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #141006 by AtheistJon on March 9, 2008 at 3:11 pm

Steve,

Did you ever find any jokes about Bill Maher? I haven't been following this thread. If you do find one, you can contact my personally, too, since I often don't have time to follow these blogs on a regular basis.

By the way, just a recommendation for the other atheists out there on this site. If you haven't seen "There Will Be Blood", you should definitely see it. You will be pleasantly surprised at the ending.

Best regards,
Jon

92. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #137880 by AtheistJon on March 3, 2008 at 2:40 pm

Careful Zamboro,

As a counter-point to the Buddhism love-in going on in here:

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d21/lardnardo/9TM.jpg

Are you sure Buddhists don't have anything like fatwa's for cartoons that mock their mediative tradition?? ;-)

93. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #137218 by AtheistJon on March 2, 2008 at 2:23 pm

My mental problems are more on the depression side of the brain. I wouldn't say I definitely don't have any phobias, but nothing comes to mind as a definite phobia. I do get scared in a plane when there is turbulence, but the reassuring method for handling this situation is just to think about how rare a crash actually is. Of course, breathing healthily and relaxing (take your shoes off) can help, but these are again, scientific methods to alleviate a mental condition.

For depression, it's harder for me to think of a good scientific method (short of prozac) to alleviate the conditions. I suppose one good solution would be to travel to sunnier climes more often. I've heard that sunshine helps mental depression.

94. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #137211 by AtheistJon on March 2, 2008 at 2:15 pm

And to take another angle on this discussion, if you wanted to concentrate on the mental aspects of worry, and fear. As a scientific person, you could ask questions like "why do I worry?" "Am I afraid of death". These are all questions that could be handled "scientifically" by a psychotherapist. Again, no need for Buddhism's elimination of doubt rather the contrary, remain doubtful, but understand more deeply by asking questions.

95. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #137205 by AtheistJon on March 2, 2008 at 2:08 pm

I would say there is a scientific approach to that example. With a certain set of scientific questions, you could figure out the odds of any trouble happening. Teach yourself how planes work with aeronautics, work on planes as a mechanic asking questions like "what can go wrong". These are all scientific methods, so no need for Buddhism. And they do not eliminate doubts, just give you a scientific basis for justifying your willingness to fly. The Buddhist method is like all religion lacking in serious questions. It's more like crossing your fingers. So, what were we arguing about again?

96. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #137195 by AtheistJon on March 2, 2008 at 1:55 pm

In the lab where I work, I would love to pschy myself out with all kinds of mystical eliminations of emotional doubt. Cross my fingers, hope to die. But it doesn't do one lick of good. I might be emotionally very secure and not doubtful at all. But whatever I do is indifferent to my emotions, they have no influence at all on the objective realities of the lab environement. The bug is still not fixed even though I convince myself that this time I really, really, really, really fixed it. The bug is only fixed when the evidence proves it to be so.

There is a difference between personal emotional doubts and skeptical enquiry and challenging beliefs.

I think you need to give me a concrete example... otherwise we're lost in a sea of jargon.

97. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #137189 by AtheistJon on March 2, 2008 at 1:46 pm

Steve,

First, if this were so, then I would repeat again my view then there is no Buddhism per se.

You lost me on the two kinds of doubt explanation. I think you were saying that the other type of doubt is being scared or insecure, right? So then, isn't doubt as I said above. i.e. when you aren't sure about something. So, what does a doubter do? He asks questions. What are the chances of this plane crashing? etc... But somewhere in this thread, I thought I heard it said that Buddhism strives to eliminate doubt... hence eliminate questions. This seems to be unscientific.

In the face of Murphy's Law, doubt and the questions that arise from doubt should never be eliminated. Elimination of doubt is the antithesis, at least, of good engineering practice, if not science also.

98. Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher

Comment #137179 by AtheistJon on March 2, 2008 at 1:32 pm

The thing I like about science is that it doesn't claim to have "the answer".

You have to start this kind of discussion with the questions. Only then can you get into the answers.

Religion wants to give us answers without any questions.

In Science there's actually the possibility that there are no answers to our questions. Religion (and I suspect that Buddhism is just as guilty as Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism) thinks it has the answer to all questions, and it allows no questions. That's the point that Sturmunddrang was saying about doubt.

Doubt is really simple. Doubt is asking questions when you are not sure. Religion is about being sure when there is no valid reason for being sure.

99. US Treaty with Tripoli

Comment #137173 by AtheistJon on March 2, 2008 at 1:25 pm

Hi Scooter,

Just to make it clear. I wasn't blaming you for starting this. Just trying to give you a chance to say something like "Hey guys, can't we all get along"? ;-) No, I don't think you'd be wasting your time on this blog if you didn't, at least at some level, like the society of other Atheists, leftists (liberal facists ;-) included). No?

I agree with you that if you get called a cunt, then you can't be blamed for starting the flame.

This is a diplomacy job. We all gotta get better at arguing, and I would imagine that nobody wants to get into this kind of war everytime you talk with certain individuals.

100. US Treaty with Tripoli

Comment #137164 by AtheistJon on March 2, 2008 at 1:06 pm

Sorry Geoff... typo. I removed your name from the "other side" of the war. Truly sorry about that.