Atheist Debates - Religion and Fear
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- Опубліковано 26 сер 2015
- Part of the Atheist Debates Patreon project: / atheistdebates
Religions exploit our existing fears and sometimes manufacture fears that are exploited. Can this continue? Are we doomed to be fearful forever?
As we learn more about the world, it seems that religions grasp on the emotional anxieties of the world may be destined to fail.
"We are not sinners. We are not abominations. We were not born broken, and we do not need salvation. We embrace our right to think beyond the boundaries of religion. We are living and loving free from faith."
~Sarah Morehead
+Steven R. AMEN!
His poster on the right reads:
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
- Arnold Lobel
Nice beard you got there. :)
i would buy a "as we learn more, we learn there is much more to learn." t-shirt
I would buy a "doomed for failure, religion is" t-shirt.
I was taught to be afraid of everything bc of my religion but then I learned the real monsters are the ones on the altar singing holy holy holy lord.
Hey
I guess Im randomly asking but does someone know of a trick to get back into an instagram account?
I somehow lost the account password. I love any help you can offer me!
@Beau Kayson Instablaster ;)
@Sean Kyree Thanks for your reply. I got to the site through google and I'm waiting for the hacking stuff now.
Seems to take quite some time so I will get back to you later with my results.
@Sean Kyree it did the trick and I finally got access to my account again. I am so happy:D
Thanks so much you saved my account!
I believe in the Tooth Fairy. If you don't worship her, she'll send you to cavity land forever when you die. I have proof in the form of a book. I can't explain how it all works you just have to have faith because the tooth fairy works in mysterious ways.
Tooth Fairy cast a spell (aka god bless)
And the tooth shall be revealed the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth
You're not helping.
@@Ididntaskforahandleyoutube fuk off you prick with ears!!
dont overlook the molar ogre
This whole thing about the world is actually a better place to live today for the majority of humans than it ever has been is something I came to realize and have taken upon myself to spread the word about. My whole life I've heard what a crappy world this is and how it's getting worse and worse. It drives me insane to hear this any more.
Thank you Matt. Once again your clear thinking and reasoning is most appreciated.
This topic really strikes home for me as recently I have begun expressing to others my deconversion experiences. The melting away of supernatural fears has become a new found source of inner peace and strength for me. It was entirely unexpected.
Mike Whitenton, True sir.
Check this out.
gurudeseyesubai.org/a-word-on-religion-and-fear/
As far as I am concerned, if you can justify religion and gods, you can justify any irrational fear.
This Halloween I will be going as Matt's beard. Take that any way you want.
Religion never seems to tell us anything that science doesn't tell us first.
Indeed, religion comes across to me as the guy on your quiz team who, after somebody else has already given the answer, always chimes in with "I knew that one!".
+JMUDoc "Religion never seems to tell us anything that science doesn't tell us first."
I'm fairly sure science doesn't tell us that a magic man in the sky made the world, or that boiling mandrake root in goat blood is a cure for epilepsy. But I know what you mean.
Its kind of like when apologists say god created animals *through evolution* Before evolution was discovered they would just say god created things.
Or, that the animals from Noah's Arc got to Australia, New Zealand and America because the continents were joined as Pangea.
for a split second I read the title as "atheist diabetes"
+BassbaitGG "atheist diabetes"
As an atheist, is that something I should fear?
+Je Suis Ce Que Je Suis
It's at least something that Matt himself must currently contend with.
We're not claiming that you positively have diabetes, we're just not convinced that you don't.
Well, that fits me. I had diabetes and used to be a Mormon. I just rejected carbohydrates and ate meat a bunch... (Mormons eschew that) and now I'm an atheist without diabetes.
Hahahahaha!
"Fear is the mind-killer."
That's all I could think of for about the last half of the video. :P
+s bushido And yet wasn't the Bene Gesserit a religion of the _Dune_ universe? Certainly, they were demonstrably manipulative and worked to hide both that character of themselves and the goal: to create the Kwizatz Haderach.
Interestingly, they, too failed.
+s bushido A man goes into a tent that stores all the food of tribe then eat all the food. The tribesmen catch him and find his actions evil and immoral so they drag him out. What will the tribe do for this evil act, A cast him out of the tribe, B kill him, C torture and kill him D eat him. behavior, death, life, reproduction, mate selection , conflicts,,history, survival and environment could effect what shape morals,culture and religion take and all will of course effect the genetic outcome of the tribe and of course if the offender lives or dies by either the environment or the tribe. If the thief lives and come across more thief's they could grow in strength and then they could attempt to prey on the other tribes. How much of morality is genetic and how much is taught.
+s bushido "The Spice must flow!"
+s bushido Just hand me an Orange Catholic Bible, if you will. Ah, it's been ages since I read Dune but few works of fiction do a better job at tackling the way religions develop, what keeps them alive, what needs they fulfill and what ultimately drives them. Every religious person should read at least the first books...can't help feeling the whole series jumped the worm, if you will, once it got to book 4 or so.
Nocturnalux Yeah, I keep meaning to go back to it since I was so young when I first read the series that most of it went over my head. But that whole god-emperor worm thing is kinda strange.
I cant put into words just how wonderfully you encapsulated many of my thoughts. Excellent talk Matt.
this is one of the best sermons i have ever heard. better than any word of god on any sunday ;)
Love you Matt.. Keep doing what you're doing.
Thank you Matt, you are one of the clear thinkers in my life that I really appreciate.
Matt Dillahunty Matt, I always look forward to watching each and everyone of your videos! :D
If god wrote morality on your heart then why do you need an instruction manual? :P Monotheism is ridiculous nonsense.
+nontheistdavid As is polytheism. Interesting question though.
+nontheistdavid Jesus died for your sins, reach out and praise him,
God Bless
+ReliveTheDream How about you do something for David before you go demanding he appease your bizarre ancestor spirit.
You're very pushy.
MINDYOUROWNBUISINESS
I'll pray for you
ReliveTheDream
This doesn't answer the question oh deluded one.
I've been watching you (and others on the Atheist Experience) and your debates and public talks for years. I so appreciate this project and the gentle and sympathetic way that you have approached this subject of fear (even though I haven't experienced a religious fear for many years now) - particularly your point about "being alone in a darkened house and feeling creepy" was so excellently put. I've been working my way through this project's videos because I have recently become the president of my college's Philosophy Club and I wanted to have better communication skills.
This video has convinced me (without even really asking) to support the project. Thanks Matt.
What a nice and sympathetic comment. Pure joy to read. Thanks Arianna.
These new videos your doing by yourself are great. Keep us posted so we can, ''Dare I say it, change the world!''.
THANK YOU Matt great job as always!! One of the best talks on fear I have ever listened to. On many levels!!! THANKS!!!
Matt, this is my favorite video I've seen yet from the ADPP. Keep up the excellent work.
This was honestly a moving speech. Bravo, sir.
Wonderful, insightful and thoughtful video. Thank you Matt
This video is especially good, wow, in an excellent video series that doesn't really need the "debates" categorization. Hope this gets *many* more views. Shared.
Ok, that's me being a patron, these are just too good. Thanks man.
Also... A hard back version of demon haunted world in the background ..... The 1st book that made me think more critically.... Big up Dillahunty.
+iggypopshot That book was the final nail in the coffin of my religiosity, too.
Been thoroughly enjoying these videos. thanks Matt. :)
Thanks for such an amazing job you do. You have the answers for all the questions I had. Religion is keeping us from uniting also it is holding us back as civilization.
This is one of the best videos on that topic I ever seen!
Again very well explained by Matt. He's the most clear talk person I know.
Matt, one of your best talks yet.
great video Matt. thanks.
Great video, Matt!
Probably your best lecture Matt.
Excellent video. Thanks Matt
The thing about Matt when he's calm that makes so many believers transition is that his sheer honesty is astounding. He just looks like a dude trying to find out the truth.
This is good Matt. Short tempered Matt is annoying. He helped me so much when I was coming out of religion. If he acted like he does now, then I wouldn’t have questioned. I would have thought he was an “angry atheist”. COME BACK MATT!!!
Great vid, Matt!
Very well articulated and insightful.
In my own personal experience with religion and culture when meeting people who find out that I'm an atheist, the response I get isn't what surprises me but how the response is given. And it's not that I don't believe in God that bothers them, but that I don't believe in their God is the real shock. And that's the real problem when it comes to "God Argument" When asked if you believe in God, most religious people mean; "Do you believe in My God"
Great points!
Pretending that fear isn't there isn't realistic, it can only be taught to be managed, which is a great point there.
Great listening Matt.
Again, thank you for your work.
I heard of you through AronRa. I love your talks, you are as honest as it gets and you also had s religious past. All the best
As soon as people understand that there is no intent to anything, only cause and effect, fear disappears. The people with the most understanding and knowledge are the least likely to be religious, even if they know there is a lot more to be learned. It is concepts like karma, punishment and retribution that keep religion alive. Kindness to one another would be a much better MO.
That beard wave though, two big thumbs up
I really like these discussions...they are much more satisfying than the game of sound bites and "gotchas" and banal anti-religious declarations that are so often found in comments. Thanks Matt!
When I was a kid the main reason I believed was for consolation. Ironically when I sat in church I knew in the back of my mind the stories and preaching from the priest was bullshit but I forced myself to try to cling onto the belief in life after death because the thought of one day not existing anymore was terrifying to me as a kid. It's a bit pathetic looking back on it that the only reason I wanted to believe and pray to a fictional magic jew from 2000 years ago was because it made me feel better about death.
While I agree that religion as a whole isn't merely a tool used for control, I don't think it's disputable that religion has been used as a tool for control by specific groups. At one point the Catholic church used religion to be the dominant political force in mediaeval Europe, and still uses religion to attempt to control adherents to this day. Likewise many other groups have and continue to use religion in this manner.
For the common man it’s comfort and for the ruling class it’s control that’s why it’s so powerful. The controlling classes use it to control the people who are comforted by the same thing controlling them basically.
Faith is believing without evidence.
Science is accepting on evidence without belief.
Thank you, Matt.
Great. Thanks. Deserves million views and thousands of comments.
+SmartK8 by way of Sturgeon's Law, the second part of that is more like a curse. ;)
Good, clear presentation.
I would love to see Spencer Lucas get Matt Dillahunty in Ontario, Canada. Would be an awesome treat. The Non-Conference in Kitchener, Ontario with Prof. Lawrence Krauss was a huge success. People, here in Ontario, would be willing to dish out big bucks to hear Matt.
+AngryAtheist I'm glad to hear it went well. I wish I could have come out. It's not too much of a drive for me (from the Detroit area) and I have a cousin who lives in Kitchener, but unfortunately life happened, so i couldn't get the time away. Is this going to be a regular thing in Kitchener?
Not regular to Kitchener, Ontario. The 1st non-con was in Toronto. This was the second. Hoping that it's near me, I don't travel.
I would be super happy if the next one would be held in Windsor, but I wouldn't want to put you out. ;) lol
GreenmanDave HA , dude. Wouldn't put me out. I'd travel a little farther than that.
CHRISTIANITY IN A NUTSHELL:
It's like a jealous lover with a gun pointed at your head.
"Love me or I will pull the trigger".
Not just Christianity. all the Abrahamic religions.
Juan Vélez You're wrong. Not Judaism. I'm not saying it's nowhere in Judaism. it's just not a prominent part.
You must consider that there are _reasons_ why both Christianity and Islam have grown immensely larger than Judaism from which they originated. Actually, there are _many_ reasons, and the one identified by Ron Burgundy is one of them.
"otherisms" what a poignant thought. Thanks Matt you really help others in this journey of atheism and reason. Keep it up my freind
Great video!
love you man! Matt keep up the logic neutron bombs BOOM
[13:05] Matt, you didn't have a "debate" with Sye Ten Bruggencate. You had an intelligent monologue while Sye played the role of petulant child. Through no fault of your own, I regard that as the worst "debate" I've ever witnessed.
+SweetLiberty01 Agree, I thought my head was going to explode after just a few minutes of Sy Ten's circular horsepucky. Next time I watch anything involving Sye, I will have to remember to take some Dramamine well ahead of time..
I felt really bad for Matt while watching that one. The time and effort he wasted to go have a "debate" with a guy who refused to answer any questions or provide an argument beyond "We all know that god did it."
That definitely was an embarrassing debate and that was certainly no fault of Matt's. Sye's arguments were just really poor. I think even most theists who watched it thought that Matt won.
I saw that debate and I couldn't stand Sye. I'm a Christian, but I would 10 out of 10 times side with Matt against Sye. Such an embarrassing human being.
@@robertcampbellii9787 If even the Christians are siding with Matt on this debate, that really shows something about Sye.
Your start to sound like Sagan here👍 a powerful assistance to so many of us, cheers👍
Well done Matt! Can these videos become available on podcast please?
you are a kind hearted person
Highly enjoyable video.
thay using the ignorance of people and emotions in a manner that feels magical, thay provokes doubt in your thinking and does so in secret and make you not to work efficiently with that doubt they create, I learned this the hard way, and when you do doubts They have more confidence to continue doing what they do, they know when you are in doubt, they are trained to do so, have a good one.
Darwinian view of religion:
- make up 4000 religions each with randomly different theologies.
- let the 4000 religions argue it out for hearts and minds
- the religions left standing will have some key strengths.
- they scare the most about the consequences of not believing
- they will make the most money, to fund a mass indoctrination campaign
- they will have an emphasis on suppressing female rights to focus on breeding as babies can add to a religion faster than intellectual argument. Children are easier to indoctrinate than adults.
- they will coach on illogical thinking
- they will challenge as dangerous the use of facts and logic
Now look at the current top most successful religions? Spot any patterns?
Carl Stein You're absolutely right that competition and success of religions is a process analogous to natural selection, except that it ain't natural.
Right on Carl. Are you familiar with bicameral theory? It provides for those who make evolutionary assertions like yours, a fine and rational foundation. The bicameral theory leads me to believe that religions today are obsolete residues of an evolutionary process that spanned eight millennia beginning with the discovery of agriculture and ending about the time of Jesus. The process transformed humanity from unconscious tribal homeless nomads into modern conscious people. The history of civilization since Jesus is about our adaptation to this new mentality and for sure we see the process is ongoing. Cheers!
Don't forget untestable claims. The fastest way for s religion to wipe itself out is by making its untestable claims blatantly obvious, they must be a few steps away from everyday experience.
If any claims are made, there needs to be an explanation of why they fail so much, like "yo u needed more fail" or it "it wasn't god's plan" or whatever
The only rule written in stone for my faith. "As ye harm none do as ye will"
WORTH LISTENING TO A FEW TIMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The carl sagan book placement reminds me of the needledrop's record placement too
"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear, is fear of the unknown"-H.P. Lovecraft.1890-1937.
I view religions as essentially failed sciences. Religion was simply the discourse humans used when all causes in the universe were opaque. We very naturally as a cognitive and behavioral imperative formed descriptions of the world. We tell ourselves stories about our origins and about where we are going. Those stories, given our pervasive ignorance and our disposition to see agency in the world, entail being in relation to imaginary friends and enemies.
We have this parent figure in the sky that watches over us and going to take care of us and demonic presences that we should really be worried about. As we achieved rationality and dozens of specific sciences were birthed, we see religion loosing on every aspect. On the front of human health and disease, science is winning the argument. With religion we used to get a diagnoses of demonic possession. Now we have the science of neurology and we know about epilepsy. It's loosing the argument ethically, and it will loose the argument spiritually.
As science progresses it will just make a mockery of our past discourse about Jesus, Buddha, Mohamed and the supernatural. Its a process that we have to be intellectually honest about and give time to unfold. Galileo said it best "the Bible tells you how to go to heaven, and science tells you how the heavens go."
He drew a line in the sand which separated spiritual belief and science. This is why our government is established in a secular way. So we can believe what we want and have that right. Our constitution protects this, and mentions nothing about God. So when Christians say "America is a Christian nation." I see hypocrisy and dishonesty.
Religions all around the world constitute what we call "belief systems." We have the freedom to believe whatever we want and is a profound right in a free society. It is unstable to build a government on a belief system, due to how many religions there are. What you want is objectively verifiable truth and information around to which we all can agree. Once you have that then go to your church and practice whatever religious tradition your heart desires. But know the difference like Galileo did between how to go to heaven and how the heavens go.
***** The self is an illusion. We can't reduce the experiential side to have intellectual conversation of information processing and neurotransmitters at the level of the brain. Some might argue that we are nothing but a pack of neurons. That misses the fact that half of the reality we are talking about is the qualitative and experiential side.
So when we try to study human consciousness for instance by looking at states of the brain, all you can do is correlate experiential changes with changes in cognition. But, no matter how tight these correlations become, that never gives you license to throw out the first person experiential side. That would be analogous to saying that if you flipped a coin long enough you'll realize it had only one side.
We have very strong third person objective measures of things like anxiety and fear. You can bring someone into a lab and if they say they are feeling fear you can scan their brains with a MRI and see that their amygdala response is heightened. You can measure the sweat on their palms and see that there's an increased galvanic skin response. You can check their blood cortisol and see that it is spiking. So these now are considered objective third person measures of fear, however if half of the people come into the lab tomorrow and said they were feeling fear and shown none of these signs and they said they were completely calm when their cortisol spiked and when their palms started to sweat, these objective measures would no longer be realizable measures of fear. So the cash value of a change in physiology is still a change in the first person conscious side of things and we're inevitably going to rely on people's subjective reports to understand whether our correlations are accurate.
I'm not arguing that consciousness is a reality beyond science or beyond the brain or that it floats free of the brain after death. I'm not making any spooky claims about its metaphysics. What I'm trying to say, however that the self is an illusion. The sense of being an ego, an I, a thinker of thoughts in addition to the thoughts. The sense that we all have of riding around in our heads as a passenger in the vehicle of the body. That's where most people start when they think about these questions. Most people don't feel identical to their bodies, they feel like they have bodies. They feel like they're inside the body. Now that sense of being a subject, a locust of consciousness inside the head is patently illusory. It makes no neuro-anatomical sense. There is no place in the brain for your ego to be hiding.
There are people who claimed to loose these feelings that the center dropped out of the experience so that you just rather than feeling like you're on this side of things looking on as though you're almost looking over your shoulder appropriating experience in each moment, you can just be identical to this sphere of experience that is all of the color and light and feeling and energy of consciousness. This is classically described by Buddhist contemplatives as self-transcendence or ego transcendence in spiritual, mystical, new aged religious literature. If you seriously want to take the project of being like Jesus or Buddha or whomever your favorite contemplative is, self-transcendence really is the core of the phenomenology that is described there.
This can be experienced by anyone and while it tells us nothing about the cosmos or the origins of our cosmos, it tells you nothing about the divine authorship of certain books. It doesn't make religious dogmas any more plausible but does tell you something about the nature of human consciousness.
The problem with religions is that they extrapolate from these experiences and make grandiose claims about the nature of reality. Because if you loose your sense of a unitary self, if you loose your sense that there's a permanent unchanging center of consciousness, your experience of the world actually becomes more faithful of facts.
Couldn't agree with you more, Sean Combs aka P. Diddy.
+Secular Atheist
_"The self is an illusion."_
There's no reason to view it that way.
_"We can't reduce the experiential side to have intellectual conversation of information processing and neurotransmitters at the level of the brain."_
Sure, but you can't reduce the operation of a computer to atomic theory either. You need a better set of conceptual tools to understand the system, such as, at the very least, logic gates etc, but chances are you'll want to start with a high level block diagram with much higher level abstractions to grasp what it does. What consciousness is - is an embodied reality model. What you call "the experiential side" is just the beliefs held by that model about what it experiences. There's nothing magical about experience - in particular, we don't need an explanation for how color and sound manifests in reality - they don't - they're attributes of the model.
_"Some might argue that we are nothing but a pack of neurons."_
We are. We're also nothing but a pack of atoms, but those are levels of abstraction that don't give us any insight into what consciousness is.
_"That misses the fact that half of the reality we are talking about is the qualitative and experiential side."_
That depends. The neuron abstraction can fully describe the system. It's just lacking in conveying higher level understanding of how it works.
_"So when we try to study human consciousness for instance by looking at states of the brain, all you can do is correlate experiential changes with changes in cognition."_
No. We can also reverse engineer the logic and try to actually understand the system at an appropriate level of abstraction. There are plenty of brain functions that are understood on a circuit level today.
_"But, no matter how tight these correlations become, that never gives you license to throw out the first person experiential side."_
Sure it does - when you reverse engineer the system to a level where you are able to understand the process that generates the internal reality model and the embodied subjective viewpoint within that model. Some people might argue that we're not justified in drawing that conclusion yet, because we don't have a full computational theory of consciousness yet, but personally I think it's so obvious what kind of system the brain is based on what's known already that I consider the slight induction unproblematic.
In any case, I don't think it makes sense to call the self an illusion. It's a concrete system producing an experience of reality. There's certainly nothing less real about the self as the experience of anything else, so an appropriate question could be "An illusion compared to what?" At best you could argue that the words "reality" and "illusion" are synonyms IMO, which doesn't seem to be right, as there are legitimate usages of illusion that refer to different ways of experiencing things - that both would have to be illusions if everything is.
Wow... formal debate in a UA-cam chat room. (Quite well informed one at that.) ...impressive
36:35 That makes a lot of sense; at least I know of no real remedy to the kind of irrational fear you might feel in a dark, cold and strange environment.
Bingo! In so many of us their is an unexamined/subconscious well of fear that is denied and suppressed,its a lot easier to avoid the Uncertainty in living and.lose oneself in comforting superstitions/formulas that keep humans from honest self examination( and therefore psychologically immature)The comforting belief/formula also needs to be defended with suspicion and aggression that has divided humanity from its inception..
Fear works. Nothing cripples the rational mind like fear and nothing is more effective at doing this than the hell threat. This is why many people even though they've mostly abandoned their religious beliefs still cannot shake off the sheer terror of hell. That's because graphic depictions of hell fostered by imagination were deeply implanted in the their psyches during early childhood. Some former believers are so paralyzed by hell fear they have to seek out professional help. When that happens you realize just how debilitating childhood indoctrination can be.
sweetsweatyfeet I loved this comment.
You were in P.R.'s convention and I didn't know about it! Damn it all to Oblivion! T_T!!!
When ever any proponent of religion voices their favourite fable I always come straight at them with" Just how exactly does God manifest in the Natural world we inhabit. Thats what it all comes down to for me, if they can not answer that to my satisfaction, then God is simply a mental construct. Proud to be an Atheist.
Matt, this was an amazing lesson.
+Reveal Truth You forget that most Atheists started out within a religion and decided for them selves that it is all BS. That is free thinking! You don't believe dogma and make your own decision based on your knowledge.
+Met Man Thanks for the back up sentiment, but I do not correspond with raging internet ghost, mostly because I do not believe in them. Peace & love to you fellow free thinker..TTYL
freethinkingMILF I was just correcting his lacking argument. Who knows, he may actually learn something here!
+Met Man Lol, maybe so, but doubt it.It seems that the person only just created their account to come here to attack posters & argue. I make it a point to check people who comment's page &
activities to get a sense of their motives and sincerety. This person or computer generated antagonist (I like to think it is a computer virus, because I just can not believe real people behave like this) just recently created their account & has been posting beligerent accusations throughout this video. So I do not waste my time on them; I do not even bother reading there comment when I see it starting out hostile or condescending, can not allow someone I do not know ruin my day or effect my mood in a negative, know what I mean. I enjoyed Matt's video, commented letting him know so and moved on with my life...lol
freethinkingMILF You make a good point. His account does seem new and fake. Oh well I'll just hope someone else will read it and then it won't have been for nothing. If not, I want my minute back. lol
Great point: the world, in fact, is NOT going to hell in a handbasket.
As one example: In the U.S., rates of major crime are now just half of what they were 25 years ago. (FBI stats at www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm .) Yet people still talk about "the rise in crime" that's resulted from loss of faith--if anything, as nonbelief has proliferated, crime has diminished!
POWERFUL.
Hey, Matt, I agree with most of what you've said. I'd add that religion also inculcates a sense of shame in its body of believers, to reinforce the perceived holiness of their deities, to draw the line between man and God.
Dillahunty could start a cult. "Acknowledging you don't have certainty could also be empowering, because you no longer have to fear." All Hail Father Prophet M-Hunt
The cult of Atheistism, cats shepherding cats.
Haha, it could be a cult of personality, though, but that wouldn't be fair. Helping to alleviate people of their irrational fears is noble, not cultish.
That book is the reason I became an atheist at 13. It has a wonderful "baloney detector" that really helps with evaluating claims.
38:00 - actually, sleep is for processing and sorting the information our brain collected during the day.
We have associative memory, which is why we are capable of creativity. During sleep is when our brain forms those associations, by trying out different existing memories, and activating them to find the best matches.
This process is known as dreaming.
I watched this video at double speed and can recommend doing so. If you want to spend 40 minutes watching this video then do so by watching it twice at double speed!
note for self, starting from 5:00
the courage to confirm something is a direct product of not being afraid of not knowing.*
--
how it works:
Suppose I sense that X or Y (hopefully two complementary possibilities, a hypothesis and a null hypothesis), and that I intuitively prefer X, or don't feel that I have the tools to deal with Y.
two scenarios:
1. "I only know how to recognize X"
--> I'll assume X and use X to deal with all X's and Y's.
2. "I KNOW that I'm not sure if X or Y apply in [whatever system** I'm trying to work with...mathematical, physical, mental, whatever]. --> If X, what will I perceive (through thought, sense, instrument, or some other measurement)? If Y, what will I perceive?
e.g.:
How would I deal with a world where indecision/(delayed decision) has/does not have a concrete existence?
1. Einstein: "God [used to mean 'the decider of the state of the physical existence'] does not play dice". Eventually Einstein also came to terms with it, but someone could mark this as him being afraid of a concept of "or" built into the physical existence, and of how he would deal with it.
2. Someone else (can't even remember who): "I don't know, delayed decision definitely has a mental existence, why shouldn't it have a physical one? I really don't know, I've never perceived something waiting to decide which of two things it is... --> what would that 'waiting to decide' look like? What would it not look like?"
[goes and takes some measurement]
"Yup that photon was waiting"
--
( incidentally, if we take a similar measurement on a classical computer system, we find that the same hypothesis becomes false. )
We see that understanding any duality is a matter of accepting non-knowledge. That acceptance leads to being able to measure that duality a given system.
And suddenly, comfort in not knowing becomes...extremely valuable.
--
The above can also be understood as "how to ask God [here used to mean 'the decider of the state of all worlds]' a question". Seen this way, prayer becomes...equally valuable to the above, because both are really the same thing.
--
*I read this somewhere...can probably find it and translate it if someone wants to see an outside source
**I use the terms "existence", "world", and "system" interchangeably in this comment to refer to any thing (macro or micro, virtual or actual) with a measurable state
edited many times for structural consistency
I wrote this having only viewed 5:00 through 6:50 or so. Of course you proceed to explain a large part of the rest [though not the whole] within minutes.
Like minds think alike I guess
You are such a pleasant man, Matt, when you are not in power to hang up on callers.
Fear, I understood it as a child when I forced myself to get lost in a dense woods, over and over again, until I could no longer feel the sensation of "being lost". There is value in learning about oneself in this way, but looking back I wonder if it gave me a false-confidence of a sorts. If you aren't afraid of the world you interact with, are you actually confident within it? I'm not sure.
This was extremely profound
of all the senses, seeing is strongest sense for a human being. When its dark we lose our strongest sense of reality... So its natural for fear to increase when we lose our best sense of reality.
Regarding the infallibility of the pope. When I was young and being raised in the catholic church, the pope wasn't considered infallible except under certain ceremonial circumstances, which I think was called "ex cathedra". There was never a blanket claim of infallibility, or at least there wasn't back then. I've been done with catholicism for decades, so maybe it's different now, but that's my recollection.
Same.
This also means that the pope’s comments also only make doctrine in certain circumstances. Meaning, the pope can say sort of nice things about queer people but if it’s not ex cathedra, it’s not doctrine making.
Fuuuuck me in the ear .... I love your vids.
Have a damn good Friday Matt Dillahunty!!!
u rock Matt
I really like the frame on the left of Matt! Where I can find one of this?
Nice job! But somewhere in there you implied that cultural appropriation isn't total bullshit. But I'm just nit-picking. Loved it.
People who see you only on the atheist experience should really look at this channel, I think this would be an easier media for them to swallow and absorb considering many of the popular clips of AXP are knee-jerk rage/rant reactions
Cheers mate
So many of the rules are based upon keeping the group together, which benefits the the rulers by keeping the money coming in and bodies in the pew.
It is the unknown we fear when we see death and darkness, nothing more - Dumbledore
Hey! Demon Haunted World is one of my favorite books!
When you look at most of the "bad" things that take place, you'll most often find fear at its core. That's different than awareness or caution or trepidation. Fear is a powerful tool and THE emotion that is most easily manipulated for the gain of others. So world? Grow a pair. Thank you.
So Matt, will you remove comments from authors that disabled replies so that they can spout their nonsense without being challenged? Other UA-camrs already do and I don't see the downside. :-)
Low hanging fruit. Still challenge them in another comment
Dillahunty/Andrews 2020!!!✊🏻😎