Intelligence Squared - Gray / Dillahunty Flashcards
John Gray
How difficult is it for us to live if what Darwin said is true?
Darwin tells us that we die forever, that species go extinct, that the world is running down. All we have is ephemera.
The book is trying to peel away the veil that makes transience tragic. The loss of everything we hold dear is perceived as insupportably tragic.
The deeper meaning of natural selection is that we are going nowhere. This is not progress to perfection. All we have is drift and transience.
It’s very hard to accept that we’re Darwininan creatures with no purpose. Without the consolation of religion, not many people survive that catastrophe intact.
The concept of death can be taught to chimps.
No other animal has a sense of mortality running throughout their lives or an attempt to resist it through myths of bodily resurrection or a Platonistic soul.
We know now that cyberspace is a battlefield full of disinformation.
In Christianity suicide was a sin but now it’s a sin against humanity. Society now says your suicide is making us all depressed so we’re not going to let you. We’re going to inflict therapy on you to make you permanently cheerful.
It could never be a rational decision that one’s life was too unbearable or just too boring to carry on (and therefore not worth living).
Why is our wish to survive so tenacious? Are we under any obligation to find life worth living? The idea that someone’s life has to be justified is an absurdity.
I act on the basis that bodily death is the end. The idea of an indefinite longevity does not appeal to me.
Matt Dillahunty
Nebulous deistic arguments. The religious arguments that have survived are conveniently unfalsifiable.
Theological masturbation. Intellectual gymnastics. Pound the fear of hell into impressionable skulls.
2 people in the same room have access to the same information but come to radically different conclusions. We have to set the facts aside and talk about the processes used to reach those conclusions. What are the filters or presuppositions/preconceptions (a tacit assumption).
Mindless blind-faith obedience. We see religion on 100 fronts losing the argument. Hamster wheel of destructive and obsolete ideas.
Levity - treatment of a serious matter with humour.
Sabbath mode in oven appliances. Anecdotal evidence. Jesus had a really shitty weekend for your sins. Using the word ‘sacred’ to excuse bigotry, fear and discrimination.
Catholic Church plays the game of ‘Hide the paedophile priest’. Conversion therapy: pray the gay away.
The canonisation process - I wonder how many believers realise that the bible is the result of committee meetings.
Are we consigned to be an echo of our parents? Parents should teach how to think not what to think. Religious indoctrination can be like a software programme which is hard to uninstall.
There is a big difference between us and other animals in that we have reason. Reason enables us to make judgements, logical arguments, have thoughts about the future etc. Animals live in a continual present.
I don’t need validation from the rest of the Universe to find my own life important or meaningful. Humans are fearful of death so they try to write their own ending to the story.
Dan Barker
Why all this scorning of women? (Belief that someone or something is worthless or despicable). Eve was responsible for the downfall of humanity
Why do we need the elevated high priests?
Once a belief is ingrained it is very hard to uproot it. Reinforcement culture
There is a difference between government speech and free speech. The US government cannot have free speech because of the first amendment. It must show neutrality.
Newly packaged biblical fundamentalism - Rick Warren book ‘The purpose driven life’
Many people think this life is just a warm-up act.
The most unpleasant character of all fiction - 19 adjectives to describe God. Dawkins said this would make a great book. Barker writes about these and adds another 8 e.g. pyromaniacal - obsessive desire to set fire to things
The New Testament is a colossal missed opportunity to apologise for the Old Testament. Jesus doesn’t do this. He never talks about slavery. No women were invited to the Last Supper.
Religions counsel the personal life. In the secular world it’s pejoratively called “self-help”. We are deeply vulnerable and fragile beings.
So often in the secular world our religious impulses are stifled
The eternal adventure of discovering moral truth
Feast of Fools - popular festival during the Middle Ages (particularly in France) in which a mock bishop or poe was elected, ecclesiastical ritual was parodied, and low and high officials changed places
Were the crusades driven by religion or imperialism?
Sean Carroll
There are 350 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
Even when your mother met your father the chances of you being here are still infinitesimally small. DNA does not make any sense without reference to the environment it’s in.
Likelihood of simple life appearing on other planets. Experiments creating organic chemicals from inorganic chemicals have been done in the lab.
Science is human because of its fallibility. It proceeds by funerals and by being falsified.
We human beings are bundles of cognitive biases. We go easy on the propositions we would like to be true. What we should be doing is going especially hard on those propositions.
The mind is a process and function of the brain. When we damage the brain, we damage the mind. When we turn off the brain, we turn off the mind. Over 200 years of neuroscience we have learned that the mind is the brain. But many people don’t like this reductive materialism.
We’re wired to shape odd experiences into narrative that suits us. Nothing should be above ridicule because it gets people to think. You cannot disprove a notion that is completely vague and unfalsifiable.
Human beings were clearly programmed by evolution to impute intentionality.
There is some evidence that people who suffer from depression have a very realistic worldview. It’s a slight irony.
We think this relationship will be great but ignore the 50% divorce rate. Positive allusions - they make us feel better but they’re not true.
Intelligence allows you to think more abstractly and be more compassionate.
We don’t like information which confronts our sense of identity and expertise.
We’re not all rational otherwise we wouldn’t have diet-induced type 2 diabetes.
There is likely to be a galaxy clash in about 3 billion years wiping out human civilisation.
