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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5311 Posts |
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Gorgo
SFN Die Hard
USA
5311 Posts |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 04/30/2012 : 08:56:12 [Permalink]
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| Thanks for the links, Gorgo. I think I will go one liking and enjoying Neil DeGrasse Tyson, just as the two critical people at the links you gave obviously do. It's that Bizarro Tyson guy that appears now and then that puzzles and dismays me. |
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 04/30/2012 08:57:31 |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13481 Posts |
Posted - 04/30/2012 : 10:03:59 [Permalink]
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| I thought Tyson's response to this kerfuffle pretty much said what I thought. He's simply leaving that war to the people who are best suited to fight the fight. People like Dawkins, I suspect he means, who have passion for the fight. And that's fine with me. Tyson, as our best public science educator, has other fish to fry. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 04/30/2012 : 14:45:28 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
I thought Tyson's response to this kerfuffle pretty much said what I thought. He's simply leaving that war to the people who are best suited to fight the fight. People like Dawkins, I suspect he means, who have passion for the fight. And that's fine with me. Tyson, as our best public science educator, has other fish to fry. |
And the whole "other fish to fry" argument (or, as Tyson put it, "I don't have time for this") raises again the question of how Tyson has time and energy to dismissively and with very crude lumping (at least in the eyes of some here, and the two bloggers Gorgo just linked to), distance himself people who are and would prefer to remain his natural allies. Totally unnecessary to his desire to not be thought of as an atheist. (Unless Tyson thinks he needs to actually be perceived as attacking atheists in order to be better accepted by theists. I certainly hope that's not the case!)
And please don't go on again about people being "too sensitive," Kil. We're not overly delicate. It's not hypersensitivity by others he targeted, it's Tyson's words, manner and tone. Tyson really was, at best, deliberately rude, and it does nobody any good, except for gloating theists on the sidelines.
How long will this "I Don't Have Time for This" media tour last? Wouldn't it make more sense for him to just state his self-identification as an agnostic and not an atheist, and then talk about science, instead? Better use of his time, if you ask me, and fewer people would be upset. |
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13481 Posts |
Posted - 04/30/2012 : 16:27:00 [Permalink]
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| Mooner. Did you read his response to the blog? And he said he keeps getting dragged into this. So maybe he's taking a little time to say "Stop it." Niether of the statements were very long. |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 05/01/2012 : 02:42:13 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Kil
Mooner. Did you read his response to the blog? And he said he keeps getting dragged into this. So maybe he's taking a little time to say "Stop it." Niether of the statements were very long.
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Three times in a row, my replies have been wiped out by mysterious Firefox crashes. I'm going to see if I can fix that before trying again. |
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 05/01/2012 : 05:00:26 [Permalink]
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Okay, I disabled all my plug-ins, closed some high-memory windows, and so far Firefox looks stable.
No, I hadn't been aware of Dr. Tyson's response at Friendly Atheist. But I found and read it.
In quick summary, he wrote some good things, expressed his reasons for not wanting to get into more constant theism-bashing, and he also wrote some problematical stuff, including an argument that bolstered the opposite of the point he was trying to make at the time. But what he didn't do was respond to the central issues raised at Friendly Atheist after Tyson's videos.
In all this, Tyson at least avoided further "insults."
Tyson was kind (and systematic) enough to number his main points. I'll use his numbers below, though I will skip several of them, and I will only quote directly when needed:| 3) In my opinion, ideas matter more than words and labels. In a point I've made before, our language has only two words that reference or measure a person's non-religiosity. So werre left debating who's sortable into one word or another, rather than discussing the access that religious zealots have to school curricula, or the subjugation of women in many religious philosophies. Consider that Christopher Hitchens was a tireless fighter for human rights his entire life. But at no time were you compelled to say "Go Atheist, Go!" Instead you couldn't help notice: "This guy cares deeply about the disenfranchised." |
Here, I think, Tyson shoots his own foot. If Christopher Bleeding Hitchens of all people could be taken seriously on social issues without his extremely militant, in-your-face, and evangelical atheism getting in the way, Tyson seems to have ravaged part of his own argument for keeping his science separated from his freethinking. But that separation is not the main issue people are complaining about. That issue is his dismissive statements about militant atheists, and his conflation of other freethinkers with them.
Number 4. This was a fairly "strong atheist" argument, one that does not rule out effectively and scientifically "disproving" theism. In fact, his ideas are thoughtful and among the strongest I've heard: | The concept that you can't prove a negative is often applied to "you can't prove God does not exist". This notion, while strictly true in logic and philosophy, is simply rubbish to the practicing scientists. That's why logicians and philosophers, in modern times, make bad scientists. We prove negatives all the time. But our language is a bit different. Instead we might say, "Evidence is overwhelming for the absence of "WXYZ", such that we will abandon all further experiments on the subject and go on to other problems" For example, if you say there's a bear in a cave, and I surround the cave with footprint-powder and observe for a year that no bear tracks are left outside of the cave - at any time, I have **in practice** demonstrated that there is no (living) bear within. For these reasons I will never say "You cannot prove that God does not exist." |
That's about as far as anyone can carry the "strong atheist" position, and I agree with this. I was especially enlightened by his differentiation between how philosophers and scientists see this matter.
But number 6 (there's no #5) is more problematical to me: | 6) The world (but especially America) contains productive, practicing scientists who pray to a personal god (about 40% of the demographic). So being a scientist is **empirically** not equivalent to being an Atheist. Typically they have filtered their religious texts for spiritual fulfillment, ignoring patently false statements about the physical world. So the fight for science literacy is not against religion, it's against religious people (and perhaps others) who are trying to change policy in ways that undermine the training of scientists and practice of science here and elsewhere. For those who want to fight religion beyond these battle fields, I will not stop them. But my portfolio of energy and interest does not include such conduct or activities. |
I think that the fact 60% of scientists are non-theists, even in the USA, is significant. It looks to me that the cup is well more than half full, rather than 40% empty. And the numbers of freethinkers are much higher among biologists. So no, you don't have to be an atheist to be a scientist, or even to be a good one. But I cannot help but wonder if theism is a silent deterrent to Christian scientists, that perhaps an un-compartmentalized brain might do a better job of science. But then, that's just my thought, and, like the strong atheist statement Tyson made, this (though interesting), is also irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Now the part of #6 that I've emboldened: This seems close to, but not identical to, NOMA, though stated much more weakly. It's not NOMA, but it seems a step in that direction. I'd state things in pretty much the opposite way: "The fight for science literacy is not against religious people (who at least potentially can change), it's against religion (which is damned near impossible to change)." Or, hate the faith, not the faithful. Or at least try.
If Tyson addressed his perceived (and I still perceive them) dismissive and conflating attacks on his true allies, I failed to see where he did. |
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13481 Posts |
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Machi4velli
SFN Regular
USA
854 Posts |
Posted - 03/15/2014 : 00:17:24 [Permalink]
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Is it me or is his own description of his position precisely weak atheism? I don't understand why he hates adjectives (31:10).
Interestingly, he says his position on a deity is his position on unicorns, which is almost exactly what Dawkins has said of his belief (I think he used fairies?). |
"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking
"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus |
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Neil de Grasse Tyson, Atheist or Agnostic
