Let's be careful out there....

June 15, 2008 7:30 AM

Stupid DesignNeil deGrasse Tyson gives a short view from the other side of the coin. (SLYT)
posted by Benny Andajetz (40 comments total)

"Imagine if you had a separate hole for breathing and eating and talking - that would be just really cool, right?"

Obvious that nothing intelligent put this specimen together.
posted by roygbv at 7:35 AM on June 15, 2008

Five minutes of stand-up at the improb.
posted by hal9k at 7:43 AM on June 15, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

he spelled Crocodile wrong.
posted by parmanparman at 7:48 AM on June 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

You know, the "crockadile"[sic] thing annoyed me, too...but I enjoy this man's mind enough to be forgiving. I forget, have we already watched this, here?
posted by squasha at 7:54 AM on June 15, 2008

"aborted feces"

Ouch. Now that's a slip I'm glad I've never made.

OTOH, this is the most excited I've ever seen Tyson. He was really into this one.
posted by fungible at 7:58 AM on June 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Metafilter: An entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage system.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 8:09 AM on June 15, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

Amusing, but it's just preaching to the choir.

The people who believe in ID aren't coming from the same background, so there isn't a common frame of reference to even begin talking. If the audience was filled with ID believers he'd simply be another bully, attempting to push his particular views down someone's throat and of course, not accomplishing much.

Religion and faith don't make empirical sense. To try to argue against them on a rational level signals not only a stunning blindness to what 90% of the world believes in but also that you don't understand the argument, so you should really just sit down and listen.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:22 AM on June 15, 2008

I've seen this video and it made me think "wow we suck." It's amazing we've gotten this far.
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 8:32 AM on June 15, 2008

Amusing, but it's just preaching to the choir.

I think Richard Dawkins was in the audience there...

ID is just a shell game. For a number of people religious faith is a supernatural appeal to authority. It gives people justification for dictating how others live. Dancing is Wrong! Why? God said so!

The goal of ID isn't to prove anything, it's to cast enough uncertainty and doubt on science that middle-of-the-road folks can be swayed into thinking "I guess there's room for discussion."

I doubt very much that the real movers behind ID; the folks who work at the Discovery Institute, Ben Stein, et al; believe one word of it. It's a bit of social engineering intended to sneak a very conservative agenda into schools and public discourse.

So, yes preaching to the choir, but it is important to reiterate often that the arguments of these folks are just a house of cards. I think the next front for the pro-reality crowd is to expose this for what it is, politics.
posted by device55 at 9:30 AM on June 15, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

To try to argue against them on a rational level signals not only a stunning blindness to what 90% of the world believes in but also that you don't understand the argument, so you should really just sit down and listen.

Sure. And let them run things too. Let them staff the schools, stack the courts, and pass laws that dictate what I am and am not legally allowed to do based off of an absurdist fairy-tale.
posted by sourwookie at 9:32 AM on June 15, 2008 [14 favorites has favorites]

One of my favorite evolution videos is the explanation of endogenous retroviruses and how there's locations in chimp genetic code and human genetic code that contain RNA fragments from a common ancestor in the exact same places. It's fucking awesome.
posted by symbioid at 9:32 AM on June 15, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

Great videos, Benny A. and symbioid! Haven't seen either. And for the latter the music was well chosen and timed against.
posted by uni verse at 9:47 AM on June 15, 2008

I love Tyson and enjoy his appearances on PBS or when he is on Daily Show or Colbert. His complete giddy-ness with science is infectious.
posted by ao4047 at 10:00 AM on June 15, 2008

I really, really want to like Tyson, but I just find him incredibly irritating. He talks about interesting stuff in an interesting way, but there's something about him that just rubs me the wrong way. Nails on a chalkboard.
posted by brundlefly at 10:09 AM on June 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

That was pretty stupid.
posted by brautigan at 10:11 AM on June 15, 2008

He's full of human shit, i mean grit. Evolution is a crock on my sundial.
(Just kidding, shut up! That ERV vid is cool.)
posted by gorgor_balabala at 10:19 AM on June 15, 2008

And let them run things too.

No, sit down and listen. Learn what drives them and then speak to them on their level. If you insist on the battering ram approach, you are sometimes going to lose. Plus it's a short term strategy. It would be better to develop long range solutions so they don't and can't get anywhere near power or preferably, just didn't exist.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:22 AM on June 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I know, I hear you. You're right. I just get so...pissed. Ugh.
posted by sourwookie at 10:26 AM on June 15, 2008

His argument seems to be that because the world is not perfect God could not have created it. It is a new version of an old argument with many different responses to it.
posted by vorpal bunny at 10:54 AM on June 15, 2008

I just get so...pissed. Ugh.

Yeah, I know. You hear the argument and you're like "Seriously?! It's the fucking 21st century, ok? We put men on the fucking moon and brought them back repeatedly. Why don't you listen to what those scientists and engineers have to say about the universe as opposed to your invisible sky god, who's greatest feat these days seems to be making a statute cry in some backwater town?!"

But by that point, they've already placed you in box and tucked you neatly in the back corner so they don't have to think about those things that contradict their faith. I talked to some of the people who believe such things (The Bible is literal, Earth created 12,000 years, etc, etd), and it's maddening at times. You mention carbon dating and they bring up Lucifer and his tricks to distract us from god, etc, etc. It's been bred into them, to the point where belief is so fundamental that they literally can't remove it, because to do so would bring down the entire house and really, what fool would do that? Maybe the stone ain't perfect and it's an ugly color, but it's there holding everything else up, so not only will it not be moved, it can't be moved.

People are complex buggers. They make quantum physics look simple.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:55 AM on June 15, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

No, sit down and listen. Learn what drives them and then speak to them on their level.

I contend that even this approach will generally not work. Consider the fact that, at least in the US, Christianity^TM is not just a brand and a worldview, it is an entire lifestyle. Continual reinforcement of the worldview and lifestyle are pervasive. Most, if not all of their close friends are Christians, and they are always told, as though it were a Brave New World-ish hypnopaedic axiom that Appeal to Authority (the Bible) is definitive. When in doubt, the Bible trumps all outside argument.

I can say this from personal experience -- getting someone to fully "come to their senses" about their religious faith is tantamount to getting them to finally and firmly reject not only a comforting belief which tells them that, ultimately no matter what, everything is going to be OK, but to become a pariah among all of their friends, possibly their families, and disrupt if not entirely destroy their participation in the social fabric around them.

Those who evangelize to get people INTO Christianity have a huge advantage: "Join us and all of these built-in warm and fuzzies are yours." Those who would try to convince Christians that they are mistaken really have only the cold and un-comforting task of saying that there isn't someone Powerful out there looking out for you, and the universe not only doesn't give a shit about you, but it's not even aware that you exist.

There is not much to say on "their level" because, unless they are skeptical in the first place, your Appeal to Reason instead of Authority will fall not only on deaf ears, but on an innately hostile culture and perspective.

I guess the way to do it is NOT to talk to them on "their level" but to find the ones who are willing to talk at all instead of re-play the Argument Sketch from Monty Python for an hour.
posted by chimaera at 11:02 AM on June 15, 2008 [7 favorites has favorites]

Sourwookie already took one tact on BBlatcher's response to Tyson (Religion and faith don't make empirical sense. To try to argue against them on a rational level signals not only a stunning blindness to what 90% of the world believes in but also that you don't understand the argument, so you should really just sit down and listen.
posted by Brandon Blatcher To which BB reponded that SD proponents should learn what drives the ID crowd and speak to them on the same level. I agree in part with that strategy--though I don't think it will ever be possible to reach 90% of those who truly fervently believe in creationism (I'm thinking of followers of James & Betty Robison or the seemingly hundreds of other creationist evangelicals).

Instead, I think that DeGrasse Tyson takes exactly the right approach (though BB is correct, in this setting he is preaching to the converted). The target audience that Tyson may reach with this is people who are people of faith--no matter how weak that faith is or how deeply it's buried--who see that beautiful tip of the iceberg (the frozen waterfall, the nautilus shell design, the helix in the head of a sunflower, hell, the double-helix of the DNA molecule) and want, almost desperately at times, to confirm that beauty by conferring its creation on a kind and benevolent anthropomorphic creative force.

I think that people such as that can be ultimately reached by the preponderance of evidence that the universe is not a kind and inviting spa, but alternately a brimstone-filled sulphuric hell and zero degree Kelvin-field vacuum.

The ID people are not the ones we need to reach. They are the ones that want books banned, fear that same sex marriages will end heterosexual procreation, and hold resolutely that the earth has reached the shape it is in a mere 6000 years, when man and dinosaur walked together. Nothing will shake that sort of bilndered faith.

It is the sensible, rational, faith holders in the middle that can be energized to see that there is no inherent contradiction between understanding science and holding religious conviction. Those people, talked to and "converted" if you will, will resist being duped to help the Texas School Book Commission waste billions of dollars keeping American schoolchildren 100 years behind the rest of the world in science, mathematics, physics, life-in-general.
posted by beelzbubba at 11:12 AM on June 15, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

His argument seems to be that because the world is not perfect God could not have created it.

Uh, no. His argument is that, if the world was created for us, the creator did a poor job.
posted by Flunkie at 12:23 PM on June 15, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

His argument is that, if the world was created for us, the creator did a poor job.

God did a poor job in comparison to what or whom? This is where both Tyson and the ID people make their big mistake. We can't "legally" attribute either intentionality or non-intentionality to the existence of the universe, because we have no other universe to compare it to. No one can say, "Well, I've seen a lot of universes, and this one was clearly created to generate life," or, "of every universe I've studied, this universe strikes me as being particularly inimical to life."

This universe cannot be said to be either hostile to life or friendly to life, since it can only be hostile or friendly in comparison to some other universe. All we know for certain is that the universe has been able to generate life at least once. Whether that is a lot or a little as far as universes go, we have no way of knowing.
posted by Faze at 2:39 PM on June 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

The more I learned about how the God of most religions (including the one I was raised in) judges people and what for, the more I WANTED to not believe He was real. Making the evolutionary move to Agnostic unbeliever and then to full Atheist disbeliever has been one of the greatest sources of comfort and security in my life. If I could do an adequate job of explaining the inner peace (and quiet) of getting God out of my head, I'd be preaching it from pulpit (and taking collections, heh heh). But if somebody else could, and did, that would be the best way to challenge Religion. The FaithDelusion-Based accuse the prominent Atheists of making their own religion; they deny it and try to avoid the appearances that they are. And that's their biggest mistake.
posted by wendell at 2:47 PM on June 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

God did a poor job in comparison to what or whom?

In comparison with what a reasonably smart person could have done, given ominipotence and omniscience.
posted by Flunkie at 2:54 PM on June 15, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

This universe cannot be said to be either hostile to life or friendly to life, since it can only be hostile or friendly in comparison to some other universe.

I have to say I don't understand this. Judging the hostility of the universe with regard to life as we know it can be done objectively without comparison to anything else. Our universe is objectively hostile to [air-breathing, water-drinking] life.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 2:54 PM on June 15, 2008

Also.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 2:57 PM on June 15, 2008

Benny Andajetz -- The universe isn't necessarily "objectively" hostile to life. Life does exist here. For all we know, that makes our universe particularly friendly to life, when compared to some other universes. But we have no point of comparison, so we can't objectively declare our universe either hostile or friendly to life. It just is.
posted by Faze at 3:08 PM on June 15, 2008

In comparison with what a reasonably smart person could have done, given ominipotence and omniscience.

I'd be a viking.
posted by rokusan at 3:41 PM on June 15, 2008

The universe isn't necessarily "objectively" hostile to life. Life does exist here. For all we know, that makes our universe particularly friendly to life, when compared to some other universes.

Certainly not when compared to way way better universes that quite obviously, by definition, could have been created by an omniscient and omnipotent being. It falls far short from that viewpoint. Which doesn't seem to stop the typical creationist from arguing from that viewpoint.
posted by Flunkie at 3:47 PM on June 15, 2008

THE SPACE GODS ARE ANGERED!
posted by Artw at 4:46 PM on June 15, 2008

That was just wonderful. Who cares if it's preaching to the choir? Isn't that rather obvious? Why would you assume that all scientific discussion is (or indeed should be) intended to thwart intelligent design? I think that's a little presumptuous about the importance and attention deserved by all that ID bullshit.
Science is beautiful because it is the truth, not simply because it fights against those who wish to escape from it.
posted by GoingToShopping at 5:34 PM on June 15, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

This universe cannot be said to be either hostile to life or friendly to life, since it can only be hostile or friendly in comparison to some other universe.

True, but you can also say that it is impossioble for life as we know it to arise or even exist in 99.9999999% of the volume of the universe and as far as we can tell, life only exists on only one planet orbiting a small, unregarded yellow Sun in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy.
posted by JustAsItSounds at 6:20 PM on June 15, 2008

Faze have you ever been hit in the face with a large claw hammer? I haven't. But I'm pretty sure that I don't want to. I don't need to be hit in the face with a hammer to compare NOT being hit in the face with a hammer. I can guess this without seeing ANYBODY get hit in the face with a claw hammer that I would not like it.

I'm no genius engineer but I could, if given omnipotence and eternity, easily design a better god damned knee joint than the one that currently adorns humanity. That goes for the shoulder joint too.

The point is IF God is the designer then God produces mediocrity. I don't NEED a "comparison universe." I only need knees and shoulders and a 3rd grade understanding of structure and ergonomics.
posted by tkchrist at 11:26 AM on June 16, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

If this guys was stoned and in a dorm room with four other freshman, it would still sound stupid. But, at least he'd have an excuse.
posted by oddman at 11:43 AM on June 16, 2008

If this guys [sic] was stoned and in a dorm room with four other freshman, it would still sound stupid. But, at least he'd have an excuse.

A scathing critique, to be sure, oddman. However: do you feel it sufficient to adorn one of the worlds foremost astrophysicists the title of "stupid" without giving specific refutation to any of his claims?
posted by anomie at 2:21 PM on June 16, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Anomie, let me be the first to congratulate on your punctilious correction of a typo in a throwaway bit of snark on the internet, kudos.

But to your point, world leading astrophysicists can come off as pseudo intellectual potheads just as easily as anyone else. Do you really think he was making an argument? Really? Seriously? He was no more making an argument, then I was.

He was mocking creationists with a slide show and some semi-witty one liners. His entire message comes across as riffing on theme that might be paraphrased as: "Hey dude, when you really think about it the universe is harsh, man. Like it's way, harsh and badly built for humans. Oh, and also, wouldn't it be cool if we were more like dolphins? Totally!"

Furthermore, even if he were actually making a thought provoking presentation, I'd have to disagree with him to want to argue against his position. In so far as I assume that his basic claim is that ID is bad science I completely agree. So, why would I want to refute his claims?
posted by oddman at 8:15 PM on June 16, 2008

I thank you for your congratulations, Oddman, but my intention was not to correct your typo. My intention was to highlight the ridiculousness of saying Tyson "sounded stupid" without even proofreading your sentence. An Ad Hom to be sure, but somewhat relevant since you admit that you were discussing Tyson's style rather than his argument in your "throwaway snark".

Nevertheless, thank you for expanding on said snark. Yes, I really do believe Tyson presented a form of argument, inasmuch as he attempts to use the tactics of ID to refute it. I see no reason why you should have to personally disagree with Tyson's claims to argue against his position. In some circles, this is known as "playing the devil's advocate" or "debating." It can help to solidify an argument, or just to pass the time between wanks.
posted by anomie at 10:56 PM on June 16, 2008

Yes, and in other circles it's called "getting stoned and shooting the shit" or "mental masturbation."

Kind of like what you and I are doing now.
posted by oddman at 11:03 AM on June 17, 2008