Ricky Gervais | Religion VS Atheism, Black and White Stand-up part ·
Colour TV Talk Show part + dialogue
Starting video at limit:
Ricky Gervais | Religion VS Atheism
Entertainment Infinity | 16.I.2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYnjDCZUV6A&t=264s
- I
- 5:12 "unlike religious people I look at all religions equally"
That's like me saying (not quite true either) "unlike scientific people, I look at all scientific theories equally". I wouldn't say that, since I actually don't, I prefer the ones that square with my religion, perhaps a bit like you disprefer the ones that most dissquare with your scientific theory.
Congrats to loving science, many people from a working class background a generation or two before yours do or did.
I found, Christianity could explain more than "science" as it is usually conceived of ("God did it" not being a scientific explanation, evolution, heliocentrism and big bang being "discoveries" and so on).
If historic sources go "a miracle happened" I don't have to go "were they hallucinating or lying?"
If computers can't think at all, and apes can't learn to speak (they can't learn the meaning of "not" even if they certainly have a "don't do it", nor of past tense, nor of future ...), that is cannot learn to think rationally, I don't have to pretend this is what man's mind ultimately is akin to, and developed from or along lines of.
- II
- 5:55 OK, in other words, your parents were not totally convinced, intellectually, their Christianity had a direct pragmatic value overriding intellectual concerns, and perhaps that is the same with your atheism?
My grandmother was a lot like that, and she was atheist (or on and off such, sometimes quarrelling with God over not hearing a prayer prefaced with "God, if you exist" and sometimes dissing her daughter - my ma - for giving me a religious education and very outspokenly).
I think, part of her reason of being atheist was, like her dad, she was a social climber. With poverty, well, in a way I am too. But I am not willing to barter Christianity away to climb socially.
- III
- 7:20 "you're saying you believe because the alternative is too terrible"
Well, that would be one extra reason. Annihilation is not very comfy as perspective. I believe there is eternal damnation, because I don't wish even my worst enemies total annihilation.
- IV
- 7:30 "I can't help what I believe any more than you can"
It's a bit like what one could say of any other lifestyle choice.
Not true.
When I look for a future, and means to it, it is actually my choice not to look for employment, but for editors - in the sense of printers and commercial sellers of what I have written.
Those who don't agree with what I write would, if not necessarily remind me, all of them, definitely remind themselves of that.
Obviously, Calvinists don't agree, they think God has chosen for you.
At least Calvinists as popularly thought of.
Similarily, if you think you are "thinking basically as a computer thinks" - that being a complex arrangement in matter and the output not being thought in or to computer, but being thought (or thought content) to those reading the screen or subjected to its alarms and disturbances, as homeless people are, sometimes (like where light switches on if you move an arm), to us this is the content of someone's forethought ... - if you ignore that the "output" needs a non-computerlike you for it to be actually "thought" even subjectively to you, you will of course think the accidents which "programmed" you make free will impossible.
- V
- 7:40 "there are two thousand seven hundred eighty odd gods"
How many of them would if transferred to Christianity look, not like an alternative view of God, but like an angel or a demon?
How many further would look very much like how Scots and Irish and Icelanders view fairies?
There is the God of the Bible (not too many alternative versions), there is the Ahura Mazda of Zoroastrism, there is Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva of Hinduism, there is the Platonic God, there is the Aristotelic God, there are the "retired creators" in Amerindian lore. Or in Lithuanian Paganism (where God is less important than Perkunas the Thunder-God, where Velnias is more Hades than Satan ...).
That's about it. Oh, there is of course the Muslim one as well ...
- VI
- 8:32 If life is all there is, what do you do facing martyrdom?
I'm not saying all Christians do prefer martyrdom over apostasy, over changing sides, if given the choice, but some of us do, and on our view, rationally so.
- VII
- 9:12 Injustice makes your blood boil? Sounds like a hangover from Christian morality.
- VIII
- 9:24 Oh, religious intolerance is of course nothing you could be guilty of ... how about irreligious intolerance, then?
- IX
- 9:47 "the other is an organised body that uses that for power and corruption"
Extremely bleak view of organised religion, you definitely have some intolerance against that.
If not a religious, perhaps an irreligious one.
But you know, would your distinction be sth you applied to science?
I respect the thirst for knowledge, as long as it's an individual need, you know, but there is a scientific establishment which is an organised body using that certainly for power and money and perhaps (at least against Young Earth Creationists) for corrupt cornering of opposed intellectuals.
- X
- Dialogue under I:
- T Jones
- Hans-Georg Lundahl you made a faulty analogy. Ricky is saying that he believes religion is all false, that’s how he treats it. Your analogy acknowledges you don’t treat all science as false. So not comparable.
Now Ricky does (as most atheists do) cherry pick the specific examples of religion he mocks - which means certain extreme views like creationists. He also disparages Christians much more than Muslims. So in truth his statement is false.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @T Jones There actually is one religion he believes is true : Western Atheism.
- [T Jones]
- [Hans-Georg Lundahl man that was one long strawman logic fallacy by you - you didn’t address what I actually said and instead made this entire fairy tale of my position. That’s two posts by you and two logic fallacies.]
- [Hans-Georg Lundahl]
- [@T Jones I posted a continuation of my previous post before seeing yours.
It was part of an ongoing comment on the video.]
- XI
- Dialogue under II
- T Jones
- Hans-Georg Lundahl now a black and white fallacy by you. It’s not a socially climb OR keep religion as you suggest.
- Hans-Georg Lundahl
- @T Jones I was replying to his concern about his parents having a pragmatic reason for Christianity.
But it is often true that people raised lower class do have pragmatic concerns, somewhat overriding intellectual ones.
Ricky Gervais | Religion VS Atheism, Black and White Stand-up part ·
Colour TV Talk Show part + dialogue
Ricky Gervais | Religion VS Atheism
Entertainment Infinity | 16.I.2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYnjDCZUV6A
Error on my part, you can read it in advance, St Lucy was not martyred at Catania, but at Syracuse. St. Agatha was martyred at Catania, by very enlightened Pagan Romans, one can presume?
- I
- 1:39 three observations:
- earth being flat is not myth, it is false science
- earth being flat is not a stopgap, it is essentially part of Osiris myth (could have been a pre-Flood memory)
- earth being flat was not universally believed up to discovery earth is round.
It was believed by Osiris worshippers, since in their view, the Sun went to the land of the dead under the earth, when it was night.
However, it is easy for that myth to accomodate Round Earth, as long as not too much of it is discovered, just place the land of the dead west of the land of the living, that way the sungod also gets to sea the dead after seeing us.
The default option is actually not having a definite view of the overall shape of the earth. Definite flat earth views come about bc of descriptions that are accurate, leave out roundness as hard to detect, and then are overinterpreted, when you press the descriptions.
But pressing them is about as optional, pre-Eratosthenes and pre-Magellan, as beliving Osiris.
- II
- 2:04 "We know it is fun to tell children"
Santa Claus, fairies, etc.
Since when do "we" know that?
A late nineteenth and early twentieth century acquired a lot of knowledge of paraphernalia of religions it (usually, in England) didn't believe, like St. Nicolas of the Catholics, fairies of the Irish and the Scots and so on. And the Protestant-to-Atheist Englishman, as well as American (though around 1900 the type was rarer in US) found these things fun, and found it fun to tell his children about the fun, and some of them found it fun to tell the children about it and wait to when the children figured out it was (on daddy's or mum's terms) just makebelieve.
And as this figuring out often came early, and as children's brains are like sponges, to some children this experience was a life lesson about scepticism, which they never got over.
This doesn't make it universal knowledge. Norwegian children don't hear all that much of the tooth fairy, I think (if I'm wrong, sorry søte bror!) and Swedish children also don't. And Lucia ... well, both Lucy's and starboys are too much rooted in Christian tradition to remain a cute fun falsehood to every Swedish child. After all, some Christians like Catholics and Orthodox do believe Lucy of Catania was killed for her Christian faith, and all Christians believe St Stephen was killed for it.
- III
- 2:27 Yes, and famously, atheists are often enough born with the right atheist parents to tell them that Hindus are born in India and Muslims in Pakistan and Christians in America ... there are also exceptions.
There are ex-Fundie atheists. And here is an ex-Evolutionist, ex-Heliocentric, ex-Big-Bangist Catholic.
Either way, from a psychological rather then moral standpoint, these would be labelled "converts".
And either way, whether they come from the right or the wrong community, they risk being treated as apostates by it.
... or, by now, as victims of sectarian indoctrination!
- IV
- 2:39 When you say "medieval beliefs" do you refer to beliefs believed in or about the Middle Ages?
And, by the way, so far you haven't defined what they believed in the middle ages, or why it would be wrong (or even just strange) to hold on to it.
Example, in the Middle Ages, certain rules of courtship prevailed and also in the Middle Ages, Chaucer tells how Troilus and Cressida became a couple. Now, that couple did not quite follow the Medieval rules of courtship, so Chaucer added:
"for to win love in sondry ages, there sondry been usages"
Do you think it is strange some hold on to a typically Medieval Belief (as in things believed in the Middle ages) like Cultural relativism?
Perhaps it would be more adequate to sane reason to stick only to one culture, the one taught by the parents, and interpret everyone else's culture according to it, and if someone was so unluckily Medieval as to learn cultural relativism from his parents, let him be an outcast! I don't think so.
- V
- 2:45 Yeah, right.
When was the last time you challenged your belief that:
- there is no God?
- there is no serious reason for anyone to think there is a God?
- there is no Santa Claus (I mean outside the version that is made up for fun)?
- there is no reason to believe in any Saint Nicolas?
- socially embarassing (in your particular culture) has the last word?
- VI
- 2:48 "that's what science does, it doesn't constantly try and prove itself right"
- And when did you last challenge your belief that scientists always live up to that?
- Or your belief that those who don't are found out by competing scientists?
- Or your belief there is never collusion among scientists not to be found out on some point (if for instance a creationist comes up with a good argument)? Do you also believe that free market left to itself never develops any kind of trusts?
- Or that a creationist who really has an argument for God could win the Nobel prize if he proves it, as if Nobel committee in Sweden were not hardline atheists and evolution believers? I mean, knowing Sweden, as I do, you should!
2:58 "it tries to prove itself wrong"
Name three studies where evolution believing scientists tried to prove Creationism was right or even possible, and then they stayed evolution believing scientists because they failed ....
3:24 "it would be the greatest scientific discovery of all time"
It has been made, Eratosthenes-wise by Aristotle, Magellan-wise by Adam, Noah, Moses and a few others since then.
But is your scientific expertise going to tell you openly about Aristotelic philosophy, or Thomistic philosophy, or Biblical history?
I think you show abstinence symptoms after being told the tooth fairy was just for fun, you are being childishly naive!
3:33 text in clip image
"the bible is not evidence, it is not a history book"
Are history books evidence of history?
To my best knowledge, historian analyticists and so on write history books, summaries about historic events with their filter on them, from historic sources.
Now, unlike the item "history book", it's a bit less easy to dismiss the Bible being a historic source, like, for instance, Anglo-Saxon chronicle.
3:39 Present history books are written by people sharing your bias about the supernatural. But apart from that bias, precisely history - historic sources, not modern history books - are very good evidence for the miraculous.
Tacitus and Anglo-Saxon chronicle also deal in it, not just the Bible.
And before you dismiss scientific side of evidence, take a look at medical doctors' commission in Lourdes.
- VII
- 4:24 I am not the least agnostic about Santa Claus.
I am very sure he slapped the heretic Arius at Council of Nicaea, I am very sure he had been in prison for confessing Christ previous to Ponte Milvio, and also very sure (this is where the meme comes from) he once threw in bags of money to a poor household just in time to save the daughters from prostitution.
I am also sure the correct pronunciation is Saint Nicolas.
