Pascal Lefèvre
Philosopher Daniel Dennett talks to Jonathan Miller about why people still believe in God.
The Atheism Tapes: UK, BBC-4 Original broadcast dates: 18 October 2004 – 22 November 2004
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atheism_Tapes
Source
Jonathan Miller In Conversation with Daniel Dennett.
How refreshing to listen to 2 eloquent thoughtful caring men, one of them bearded, rather than 2 bigoted religious apologists, where the bearded one would almost certainly be an apologist for a warlord and paedophile. Subscribed.
Strictly as a mechanical process that is experienced now-here in infinite eternity, what we are is a superficial but complex part of the evolved image that's the observable universe.
If you drop sugar crystal into a clear container of water and stir, the solid grains move to the middle of the whirlpool were there's least change. (As a rough model of the action of gravity, and condensation of motion) Because the here-now experience is tuned to the environment of every different rate of change, and integrated into life via the senses. Yesterday was survived today, but there is no tomorrow in remembered experience except what can be predicted from access to the available spectrum of history internally and externally. Death is continuous for the top experience but every living thing has a continuously evolving core of chemical records, condensed from energy and assembled in stars and the planet.
So there's a mechanism of recycled information, some of which is internal temporarily to humanity, at every scale and rate of change. The degree of common sense and waking experience as individuals in possibly a "hive-mind" general state, …it isn't obvious.
If the research into AI does anything useful it will be about what it means to be human and "serve" humanity. What if there's no answer to that question?
(Respect for Jonathan Miller from "The Body in Question")
Delayed? Unlikely.
As soon as Thomas Huxley heard of the idea of evolution through natural selection, he said (in effect): 'So obvious. How stupid of me not to think of it."
What happened to USA since Ingersoll? Ingersoll smote religion, pulling no punches, and he was enormously popular.
The intellectuals may change the minds of the phew but comedians do a much better job and are not up there own ///// like some.