@devilsavocado3 (cont.)I am currently trying to understand salvation and how it works. the moral commands that confuse with my current understanding will be something I seek to understand down the road.
@devilsavocado3 I have a different perspective on morality and I understand to some degree both sides and I'm no longer questioning it at the moment.
You are right by the way, I also wonder about some things in the bible and question why God does what he did, but I have to realize God is infinitely wiser and has an infinitely wider perspective and I can't be so quick to place him under me and claim I understand him and believe its wrong. I try to be open and search for the answer, but for now
That's why religions go after the young. they are more susseptable to those arguements and will grow up believing them and won't doubt them later in life.
Where I live, there's no earthquakes (at least such quakes that can be felt), tornados, volcanos, tsunamis and what have you. Only natural disastrer that is common is floods. So I guess god is not particularly interested in bringing his wrath on central Europe and it's this pesky Japanease and Haiti (who are very religious) who get disasters. Right? The US must be making god very angry too. What a wierd logic...
While I see your point with the example of the tiger, I would have thought that while being the result of a series of random events, the tiger in question would be made (by it's parents) for the purposes of surviving it's enviroment to the best of it's ability, reproducing and protecting and raising it's children so that they can do the same.
i understand what your saying but let me clarify. If life is absurd, then creating your own purpose doesn't negate its absurdity. so in reality you ARE trying to convince yourself that life is worth living.
"On what basis do you make the claim that aggressive warfare and genocide are bad things?"
on the basis of the law that Jesus taught.
if we can set whatever rules we want to life, what is the basis you have for declaring that Hitler was a bad man?
"so in reality you ARE trying to convince yourself that life is worth living."
What is the alternative? That life is NOT worth living? That I should just reach for the nearest sharp thing and gouge out my own eyeballs? Anyone who adopts that philosophy will not live long enough to propagate it. Anyone who decides the opposite is going to have babies and pass on that cultural opinion. And either way... so what? What does God have to do with any of it?
Which law is that? To sell all of your possessions and give them to the poor? (Matt 19:21). Or maybe the bit about how slaves should obey their masters like they would Jesus? (Eph 6:5). Or what about the stuff about anyone who works on the Sabbath should be put to death? (Exodus 31:12-15).
@goodbyebrov Please inform me where Jesus gave us the rules we get our morals from. His comments on Slavery, serve your masters well and doubly so if they be Christian. On Rape, the Rape victim should marry the rapist. Jesus said, bring anyone who would not have me as his Messiah before me and slay him with the sword. Nice.
@goodbyebrov You are delusional if you imagine there is usable moral code in the bible of any great significance. You have to pick and choose from the all the wicked recommendations the few morsels of anything workable. That makes YOU your own lawgiver not Jesus. Secondly, we can easily tell Hitler was a bad man because he hurt and killed people - people don't like to be hurt, it makes them unhappy. What is the mystery here requiring divine revelation?
@ anticitizenx "This is a separate issue from the main topic of the video, but it is still worth discussing anyway."
actually they go hand in hand, if a board game has no purpose or objective, then it doesn't matter what you do with the pieces, create whatever rules you want you cant be right or wrong.
"create whatever rules you want you cant be right or wrong."
So? Isn't that what we do all the time? Chess and checkers use the same board but follow different rules.
Ask yourself. Why was Hitler a bad man? On what basis do you make the claim that aggressive warfare and genocide are bad things? I have an answer, but I want to hear yours first. I'm willing to bet that you cannot give me an objective reason.
@anticitizenx "we're not making meaning out of meaningless garble"
i didn't realize that nothingness is any different then meaningless? i understand meaningless as no meaning or significance, or nothing! you would be living a lie if you deceived yourself into believing you created your own purpose when you have no purpose so stop fooling yourself into thinking you do because you don't want to live a life that has no meaning, your trying to create meaning because your life is absurd without it.
"you would be living a lie if you deceived yourself into believing you created your own purpose when you have no purpose "
But I *DO* have a purpose. I made it up myself! There is no lie, no emptiness, no fooling. I just made up a purpose out of pure nothingness. The mere virtue of definition is all I need in order to have purpose in life. Who are you to tell me my purpose does not really exist when I absolutely created it myself?
@AntiCitizenX I love the way you say "Consider the following experiment." It's always with an ever higher degree of annoyance, as though it should be followed, ironically, by, "God damn it." lololol
@anticitizenx and on top of that, even if you do apply meaning to your life for whatever reasons, then you must realize that you, or anyone for that matter, can define their life any way they want and you have no right to say someone else is living a wrong or bad life when there is no standard, thus arriving at the conclusion that Hitler lead neither a good nor bad life, its all relative to their own perspective.
"a wrong or bad life when there is no standard, thus arriving at the conclusion that Hitler lead neither a good nor bad life, its all relative to their own perspective."
This is a separate issue from the main topic of the video, but it is still worth discussing anyway.
Brov, you need to understand that there is no such thing as objective morality. There is only self-interest coupled with social interaction, cultural perception, and physical consequences.
Finally, you need to stop thinking that just because humans behave in certain hard-wired tendencies that some magical sky-fairy must have programmed us that way. The whole thing is a classic argument out of ignorance, which you should know by now after watching this very video! My failure to account for apparent cognitive biases and socially focused interactions of human beings does not in any way prove the existence of some omnipotent pan-galactic superman.
@anticitizenx "The only purpose I have in life is the purpose I arbitrarily concocted for myself out of my own self interest."
that is absurd! it would be like me typing a bunch of random letters: jeincaiwnvbsheladfaw and then you trying to create some kind of meaning out if it when clearly there is no meaning or message at all to those random letters. again, how can a finite, being who has no purpose, be the source of meaning? your continuously trying to rationalize the absurd.
Brov, we're not making meaning out of meaningless garble. We are inventing our own meaning out of pure nothingness. If life is intrinsically meaningless, there is nothing to prevent me from arbitrarily inventing my own purpose out of whole cloth. It is really just that simple.
@anticitizenx i think maybe you should watch your video. everything i have said is what the video talks about! our search for meaning or drive to apply meaning is evidence for God. If God doesn't exist and things don't have meaning like your trying to get people to understand, then live it out, if you live like you have a purpose then your actions are displaying the complete opposite of what you "believe." so don't tell me when you try to add meaning, it has nothing to do with God.
Brov, there is nothing deliberate or supernatural about tremors in Japan. Say it with me: NOTHING. They are perfectly natural and entirely random. Yet 38% of American think it is a sign from God. A human bias toward teleological perception and anthropomorphization does not count as evidence for some magical sky-daddy with cosmic superpowers. People also have a tendency to consume sugary foods and forget their car keys. These things do not prove God either.
" if you live like you have a purpose then your actions are displaying the complete opposite of what you "believe."
The only purpose I have in life is the purpose I arbitrarily concocted for myself out of my own self interest. That is all. Life can still have purpose and meaning even in the total absence of a top-down arbiter. The general drive to do things in your life that go beyond TV and a couch does not magically prove the existence of Yahweh.
@anticitizenx, part 2) because we have this drive for meaning points in the direction of a meaning giver, otherwise we would be completely satisfied without having meaning at all. we should be searching for truth right? well if the truth is, we have no meaning then live it out! the fact that we have this drive clearly shows evidence for God, not that "oh we just want to live a different way then truth tells us because i want to have purpose" thats a joke
Brov, this very video provides several clear empirical examples of human beings endowing human-like qualities into phenomena that are completely natural. There are also examples where human beings assume purpose and design exist in things that are completely random. Now you are trying to tell me that the general human desire for setting goals and specializing in their labor is supposed to be any different. This is not a manifestation of God, but a mere facet of human nature.
@anticitizenx well lets think about it. If God exist then we obviously have a purpose. so we would have a drive to acknowledge this purpose and attempt to live it out. if God does not exist then we are the result of some explosion, thus we have no meaning, no reason for existing, we just do. that being said, we shouldn't have a drive to try and find or create meaning when its completely absurd. whats the point of creating our own purpose when its meaningless. its all meaningless.
@anticitizenx really, lets examine... If God does not exist, then we have no ultimate purpose which is why we have to apply meaning to our lives ourselves right? so what im getting at is, if God doesn't exist then why not live it out, live like we have no purpose instead of trying to make up our own reason, thats absurd! so... because we have this drive for a purpose only makes sense if God is real, otherwise we should be satisfied with out having any purpose at all? its totally inconsistent.
Brov, your personal discomfort with the meaninglessness of life without God does not in any way serve as a positive proof of God's existence. Human desire for meaning and purpose does not in any way serve as a positive (or negative) proof of God's existence. Human motivations and propensities have no physical bearing whatsoever on the external reality of a cosmic super-fairy. There is nothing unusual about trying to invent a purpose in a world that does not hand you one.
@kararvn why do we need a worthy goal, why cant we understand life is meaningless if there is no God? it seems like we want the attributes of the existence of God without actually having God. seems like people want the "good" parts of theism without the idea of being held accountable i guess? idk, just seems that human behavior doesn't square up with "reality," assuming God doesn't exist. its almost as if our desire for meaning is evidence in itself that God exist? is that a possibility?
"its almost as if our desire for meaning is evidence in itself that God exist?"
If I told you that my desire for french fries means the Broncos are about to win the Superbowl, would that make any sense whatsoever? Because that's basically the leap you're making here.
Very well done video, as always. Agenticity is so ubiquitous, but very few people know of the term or even seem aware of their own anthropomorphic bias.
I spoke with a Deist a while back, and his mantra seemed to be, "SOMETHING had to create the Big Bang."
I was speechless. Even if that were true, which is not certain by any means, how do you get from "some-thing" to what is essentially "some-DUDE?" A super-dude perhaps, but still a dude. :-P
at 12:25 he said we continue to deduce purpose where there is none, or something along those lines, which i think is interesting because through my experience people are "hardwired" to live like they have purpose instead of arriving at the conclusion Albert Camus came to and he attempted to live it out. why does everybody want meaning in their lives if we evolved with no purpose but survive? we keep living like we have purpose or obligation to do something. why?
Answering the question of why people keep seeing "God" in perfectly natural phenomena.
In my Lenovo laptop i don't seen Lenovo in it, i know Lenovo created it. This video is a waste of time nonsense and it made me so happy to be the first to vote it down
Yeah, people tend to mix the concepts like "made for" and "used to"... Extend that to their analysis of reality and you'll understand why it's often flawed...
Well folks we can now officially and logically fuck all life because there exists absolutely no purpose for anything that has been done is being done or will be done.
you are in fact just as much a worthless piece of stinking smoldering primordial shit that happens to be able to walk. congrats the ultimate question has been answered!
Mountains can have a purpose if we see them as catalysts of rain, that in turn create rivers. And along rivers are where all major civilizations evolved...
@bjam89 Probably not. He should have said that they were not designed, Period. At 8:20 he completely talks down that poor helpless mountain, so I just wanted to defend it. It didn't do anything bad to him to deserve that kind of trashing...
@a575981735977018 but the whole video is about things being designed for stuff, not that they can't be used for stuff (like pencil shavings, i have used those to do lots of things...mostly pranks), sure they can be used to many things but the issue at hand is are they designed for those things
@bjam89 I reacted to him having such strong negative emotional tone against that mountain. Calling it nothing more than a pile of dirt and rock is clearly showing a lack of respect toward it. Just because it wasn't designed doesn't make it having any less value.
I think mountains were very important for the development of early civilizations by being the origin of rivers.
@a575981735977018 I agree with that the existence of mountains has had the beneficial byproduct of rivers, which humans have learned to utilize. But, this in no way is a reason to why they're there to begin with. There is no intrinsic design to a mountain.
@charkopolis Ok, lets take that to the extreme "a la Socrates".
Mountains were not designed. Then surely you agree that the entire earth was not designed, nor was any life existing on earth designed. We can conclude that nothing in the entire universe was designed.
But still you say a pencil was designed?
So how can there from something that was not designed, the universe, all of a sudden appear something that was designed, i.e. the pen?
@a575981735977018 I agree, nothing naturally occurring in the universe was not made by intentional design. And yes, I would still say that a pencil (and pen) are designed. The difference is that humans designed pencils (and pens) and no one or thing has designed the universe. How can there be something that was not designed? How about the pencil shavings from this video? We know how the pencil shavings came to be, and we know there was no purpose, or design, for them.
As for the universe, who said it all of a sudden appeared? The current scientific understanding states the universe began its current state of existence as a singularity in space-time some 14 billion years ago. So the whole universe is there, just smaller than it is today. There is no scientific understanding of where the singularity itself came from. And certainly nobody I know proposes the singularity poofed into existence. Does this clarify anything?
@charkopolis So about the universe. I recall reading something in a science magazine that us living in a virtual world (like in Matrix) would be more probable, because virtual worlds use less resources than a real one. So there are potentially more virtual worlds than real ones.
A virtual world is designed, and since there is no way for us to know if we live in a virtual world, we might live in one. So we might live in a designed world.
@a575981735977018 I don't see how the matrix scenario could be "more probable" than simply a real universe. The virtual scenario and real universe scenario are functionally equivalent. Because of the equivalent functionality, it makes no difference which is actually true, since there is no way of telling either way. It all becomes a moot point. More importantly, answering this question doesn't allow us to gain any meaningful perspective/knowledge. This leaves us right where we started.
@charkopolis Well, it could be "more probable" if we consider that we can cram in more entities capable of design in virtual worlds. So selecting a random entity from either real or virtual worlds more likely end up with a virtual one since there are more of them.
People believing that the world is designed maybe mean that we live in a virtual world created by a designer that can talk with them.
And for the question of "who designed the designer", that is where we end up where we started from.
@a575981735977018 If we consider the possibility that we live in a virtual world, then we must also consider the possibility that the virtual world we live in is itself a virtual construct, so why not a virtual virtual world? Or for that matter, why not a virtual virtual virtual world? Or any number in embedded virtual constructs? Before we start talking about how "Inception" was, we must observe that there is no discernible distinction between a real universe, or the proposed virtual one.
Further, if there is a designer of the universe, then who designed the designer? And then who designed the designer of the designer? If at any point you say that a designer needs no designer designer, then you concede that there are somethings which don't need a designer, so why not the universe itself? Why must we assign a designer to the universe? Again, this whole line of questioning admits no new knowledge. It makes itself a baseless line of reasoning.
This makes the whole proposition a moot point. Now, consider the FACT that people assign designers to things that have no designer. This is an inherent psychological condition all humans have. This must be taken into consideration when asking the question "Who designed the universe?" We naturally ask these questions, even if there is no bearing in reality to know if that is the right question to ask. To be honest to ourselves, we must forgo this question.
@charkopolis Yes lets not go down the path of asking who designed the designer of the designer etc.
But still it seems like a random choice if we decide to see the universe as designed or not, because as you said there is no discernible distinction between a real or a virtual/designed universe. We can just pick?
It seems like you sort everything into either being designed or random, right?
Then would we not say that evolution DESIGNED humans, because evolution is not random?
@a575981735977018 Yes, let's not bother with the ad infinitum conclusion one must draw with a designer. I would say it's not a random choice at all. All our senses convey to us that there exists an external reality outside our mind, and there is no evidence to support the notion that this external reality was designed by some agent with any purpose. If the choice to better reflect our understanding of our external reality, then the better choice is "no designer".
designed or random? Just to be technical, there could be other options we have not yet explored. With evolutionary processes, I believe there needs to be a distinction between design and purposefully designed. Evolution is certainly not random, but it's also completely aimless with intent. That is to say, evolution did not dictate what any species would evolve into for and future date. So, I would say humans are a byproduct of biological evolution. The word design makes inaccurate implications.
@charkopolis I think the problem is then the polarization of design vs. random.
This video basically argues that a pen is designed, a mountain is random, when in reality they are a bit of both. The pen is not 100 % designed on the atomic level. Looking closely the pen will contain random atomic structure. Likewise the mountain contains non-random traces, caused by the geological processes during its creation. It also contains non-random fossiles, leftover traces of ancient life etc.
@a575981735977018 You make a good point with observing that objects themselves, at different levels of magnitude present a lack of designed structure. However, the study made the distinction of "made for a purpose" or not, the formation of the structure can be made by any process. With a pen, we know it is made by humans for the explicit purpose of transferring a well of ink onto paper at a controlled flow. The mountain, however it was formed, was made by no one and for no purpose.
So yes, the formation of structures carries a with a mix of random and intended processes. But, the video's goal was to point out that humans have a natural inclination to believe objects are made with some explicit purpose, even when we know that many exist without purpose.
Just because something is deterministic does not make it "designed." There is no design whatsoever in a mountain. It is just a pile of rocks that got pushed up by geological forces. Sure, those forces may be somewhat deterministic as opposed to truly "random," but this in no way implies that some deliberately motivated entity made a conscious decision when framing the morphology of Mt Everest.
@AntiCitizenX I believe the problem with discussing this with people that claim the world was designed, is that their view is very binary. True or false, good or evil, random or designed. Nothing in between. They can argue that the mountain is NOT random (and hence designed), because random means something completely lacking structure. And if we fully track down this non-randomness we end up in big bang, and beyond the scope of science. That is where they can claim it was designed.
"They can argue that the mountain is NOT random (and hence designed), because random means something completely lacking structure."
That is not what the word "random" means. Making this argument is a bit like saying that because my car was NOT built by Toyota, then the tooth fairy must have dropped it from the sky. It is a nonsensical false dichotomy founded on an intrinsic perceptual bias.
@AntiCitizenX My point of objection is probably at 8:19 where you start the sentence with "In every literal sense imaginable" and then continue to say the mountain has no purpose and is random. Because of the use of "imaginable" I try to show that imagination is not that easily confined, by imagining examples of purpose, non-randomness and designed. Remember, Einstein said "Imagination is more important than knowledge." The quote continues saying knowledge is limited but imagination is not...
I don't think you appreciate the meaning of the word "random." The opposite of random is NOT designed. It is deterministic. A system is random if the final state cannot by precisely predicted due to a lack of information about the underlying variables which govern it. A system can be designed and still be random (i.e.;, dice) or it can be designed and deterministic (i.e.; a bridge).
@AntiCitizenX What I am saying is that everything designed is deterministic. And since the opposite of deterministic is random, the opposite of designed is also random.
The dice are not random, you need to apply random external forces on them to generate random values, and those forces are not part of the design. The purpose of dice are only to give discrete values on a wide variety of external forces. If we knew the forces applied on the dice we could theoretically calculate the outcome.
"If we knew the forces applied on the dice we could theoretically calculate the outcome."
This applies to EVERYTHING. Some might even argue that it applies to quantum mechanics itself (unless you accept the Copenhagen view). In either case, all you are doing is arguing semantics now. Random or deterministic, a mountain was not "made for" anything. No conscious entity is required in the generation of a mountain range.
@AntiCitizenX Does this reply mean you are ok with that everything designed is deterministic? And that the dice are deterministic?
I did not say that a conscious entity is needed. I say WE CAN NOT KNOW if it was designed or not.
The mountain has traces of determinism that go back to the big bang, beyond our knowledge of the big bang. Something that go beyond our knowledge is something we can not know.
All you've done is claim that pencil shavings are "designed" simply because the pencil itself was designed. It doesn't work that way. Even if the universe itself happened to be designed (which we have ZERO reason to suppose), that in no way means a mountain was designed as well. You also keep confusing deterministic with intentional. The two are NOT synonymous. You also neglect the significance that this is an intrinsic perceptual bias in human nature.
@AntiCitizenX In this case I am focusing on the question of if the universe happened to be fully or partly designed. So then finding "pencil shavings" would mean we could deduce that some form of design has occurred.
Yes I am a bit confusing deterministic and intentional, because then we arrive at the question of if there exists a "free will". Do you say that something designed require a "free will"? How else would we distinguish products of natural processes with consciously designed stuff?
Free will is a completely separate issue. The only issue here is that there obviously exist things in this universe that were not made for any specific purpose (i.e.; pencil shavings). There also exist things that morphologically develop through completely natural and aimless processes (i.e.; clouds and mountains). Finally, there exists a bias in human perception that tries to attribute "design" to these things anyway. That is the only point to this video.
@a575981735977018 "We should look for design in randomness!" NO! The main point of the video is that humans intrinsically look for design when there is none! I've read your discussion to this point and I find your rhetoric fundamentally flawed. You are refusing to accept the obvious. Why? Where is this stubborn streak of refusal coming from. Why persist in a viewpoint in which every position you propose is summarily stricken down? At this point, you need to ask yourself a hard question ...
@charkopolis I'm not looking for a world designer. My whole point in this began with me feeling there was something inexact with the reasoning of the video, which I then diagnosed as caused by the lack of a clear definition of the word "design". During this discussion I've tried to learn more about "design" by stating some things, and asking questions, and I believe I actually have learned some.
Now ask yourself, if we find a pen in the forest, how do we know that it was designed?
@a575981735977018 Pens are a human artifact, and therefore by definition, designed with a purpose by humans. Full stop. What "fundamental flaw" could you seriously consider to say anything to the contrary?
When all is said and done, a "mountain" is just the by-product of tectonic plate collision. There is no conscious entity required to guide this process and the final result is a random distribution of elevation in the overlying topography. You can imagine all sorts of things to do with it after the fact, but that does not mean it was specifically "made" for anything. I fail to see why this is such a difficult pill to swallow.
@AntiCitizenX Well, maybe my thoughts are affected by "swallowing the pill" of quantum mechanics. There you find that the answer to if something is true or false can be that it's both true and false at the same time.
So I see the mountain as POSSIBLY both designed and random at the same time. Maybe that can be justified somehow by the "anthropic principle", which state that the world must be compatible with conscious life, and from that we can draw conclusions.. But now I speculate...
Look deeper into the subtext of what the animation wishes to convey. This has nothing to do with believing in God or not-I think most people who watch bamby, or what ever, don't just sit there and go, "oh well its only pixels-", but at the same time we don't say,"oh wow God created this cartoon. T he two can't be equalled, spotting human traits in something doesn't mean you believe in God.People who place God in the making of something-has nothing to do with that experiment-that's something else
@advy1 I believe the point of the study was to show that humans imbue human traits into non-human objects, i.e. antopomorphization. This, coupled with agenticity, would show a psychological explanation to people saying that God was the agent behind the cause of the Japan earthquake. Since God was angry (a human trait). So agenticity, with antropomorphization gives a clear explanation why people would believe this.
The triangle a rectangle experiment only tells us that depending on how things are animated-ie down to certain patterns of movement we can relate to as human beings-when the rectangle is destroyed we feel its a shame-because it was obviously meant to be a rectangle in the first place-otherwise why draw one to start with? As humans we confirm our conscious state and our humane need for harmony in the world. We all know its just a rectangle and triangle-but just as in animated film-one needs to-
The tree does serve a purpose other than being an inanimate object; which is to provide oxygen for the planet so that we may breath-the earth is finely tuned so that we can live on it-everything in its place in the pecking order and food chain-the question is, by intelligent design or by random selection? By God or not? There are quite probably other galaxies that do sustain some form of life.
@advy1 oxygen production is a side effect of the breakdown of carbon-dioxide and sugar, not the purpose. also the statement "there are quite probably other galaxies that do sustain some form of life" shows your ignorance in full, it is nearly impossible that we are the only life that exists, in fact i am pretty sure it is full blown impossible.
The WLC argument is a simple case of trickery: note that
A: Premise 1 slips "design" into the question ("fine tuning" is in essence, a design framwork) thus the question is also the conclusion;
B: Premise 2 works as a random "pull out a possibility" with no justification whatsoever (there's no reason given to remove chance or necessity as options); and
C: Premise 3 is a restatement of the question that contained the conclusion ("fine tune"/"design")
seriously it's lame to see people trying to convince themselves there are no Gods and afterlife... when the only thing you gotta do is an Out of Body experience and then you'll know you're more than just a physical body.. Everybody has the cappacity to live the experience and see for themselves. Stop arguing ! Just Go Find OUT ! there are lots of technique available on internet to acheive an Out-Of-Body experience.. you don't do it... you'll always live without knowing the truth about life !
@chikipoune and there is planety of studeis that disproves, out of body, hell net time you have one be sure a friend has placed a note somewhere that you can't see from any other angle then over it, then if yu after the out of body has the right info then it might be true but if not it is fake
I am sorry I do see your point however, your arguement fails to recognize sexual selection in biological specimens which means the male tiger for example is designed by the female tiger for both beauty and ferocity.
Do you see how difficult it is to avoid the perception of design? Female tigers did not "design" anything. They just preferentially mate, and morphological changes ensue.
@AntiCitizenX By choosing a preferential mate in a sense they do design the species. For example why are the peacocks so pretty because the peahens are shallow. It is still an intelligence at work within sexual selection granted not a highly thought out one but it is there non the less. They are not designing the species with a goal but they do choose their mates and not everything gets awarded that opportunity to mate thus being left out of the line. I do not think that is all illusion.
@dsdougharty It's still just natural selection. The females who prefer mates who's offspring turn out to be more successful will pass those traits onto their offspring. The same even applies to us humans, brothers and sisters tend not to find each other sexually attractive it's an instinct. Science now gives us an explanation for this - avoidence of inbreeding. Brothers don't say to themselves 'I will not find my sister sexually attractive to avoid designing defective children'
@dsdougharty I am taking the definition of agency in this context as meaning some sort of conscious planning specifically with regards design. Mating is determined by instinct. Tigers do not have sex to have baby tigers, they have sex because of their hormones. Whatever choice occurs is also determined by instinct which has been naturally selected. A siberian tiger's color is paler because it hunts in snow the offspring of females who don't prefer pale will die out. There is no choice.
@DontBendOverForAllah I am not. Tell me have you been a tiger? Do you know for certain that no thought goes into mating. To save you the trouble you have not and you do not. I find it amazing that those that swear by evolution still hold human so superior I however swear by evolution and do not assume we are the only species capable of thought. I get the temptation to be so anthrocentric I however do not like such baseless assumtions in my thinking I only wish I wasn't so alone in my humility
The design argument always puzzled me because god has the ability to change the laws of physics, defy human logic, perceive every single moment in time, has no physical form and is so mysterious that we can't even begin to comprehend its nature. Which means the design argument explains this complex universe by saying it was created by something even more complex. Strange don't you think?
When did the word/idea 'purpose' come to be in our language development. Is it truly an innate part of the brain or are we victims of an evolution of thought that funnels how our brains process the world into certain concepts that took time to develop? Does that make sense? I often wonder if language development stunts the mind when it comes up with certain concepts.
@mooseclamps Mental trickery that took time to develop IMO. I doubt that pre-complex language Humans seriously contemplated the purpose of the sun or the wind much more than my dog does.
Where does FOX get these surveys? They must call 10 of their closest friends and if 8 of them claim some bullshit then they report that 80% of surveyed people claim whatever.
BTW as an animator often grappling with conveying emotion and intent from CGI constructs (like the ones on my channel) I found that shapes animation fascinating! So much personality and story was conveyed with such simple forms.
That clip could be used to great effect in animation courses.
Its odd you would release this video now.....I've had to inform people about the mistake of anthropamorphizing non-intelligent events and processes several times in the last week alone.
this can't be coincidence! it must be a sign from god! =P
Oh gosh, there's something wrong with me, I just saw geometrical objects moving. Ok, ok .. just kidding. I didn't associate to any particular human situation, but I searched for pattern though.
This is exactly what I've long argued with theists about: Function and purpose are not synonymous. Purpose exists only in minds, function is a property of the object.
Also excellent videos, I always look forward to more.
In my humble opinion, most arguments for the existence of God are rooted in childish thinking eventhough they can expressed in a pretty profound and seemingly intelligent coating they ultimately seem to be rooted in an immature view of reality.
We consider things good and evil so there must be a very big authority somewhere.
we are makers who are made ourselves so there must be a first maker.
we didnt have to exist so someone must have made it so that we would exist
:) love these videos as u are proving that so many people are so dam ignorant to even watch a video that explains away all of their held beliefs. i'd like to see how many americans watch your videos and wake up to the fact that the goverment is controling them through exactly the same means.
I love this series. It's absolutely amazing that what little we know of psychology shows that we're no where near infallible, and yet the majority of the people will still walk around claiming to know that ghosts, UFOs, and all sorts of strange things exist simply because "they saw it". If only it was easier to get people to understand this...
At least one of the human artifacts was intended to be unfamiliar. They called it a "tryogaster" when really it was an overly elaborate compass. Imagine looking at random hunk of metal like a carburetor. It may look man-made, but it may not necessarily look like it was "made for" anything. That's probably where the 4% came from.
@devilsavocado3 (cont.)I am currently trying to understand salvation and how it works. the moral commands that confuse with my current understanding will be something I seek to understand down the road.
goodbyebrov 1 month ago
@devilsavocado3 I have a different perspective on morality and I understand to some degree both sides and I'm no longer questioning it at the moment.
You are right by the way, I also wonder about some things in the bible and question why God does what he did, but I have to realize God is infinitely wiser and has an infinitely wider perspective and I can't be so quick to place him under me and claim I understand him and believe its wrong. I try to be open and search for the answer, but for now
goodbyebrov 1 month ago
That was an exceptionally ignorant flawed compilation...Hey your getting Bitter I mean better.
Well like mastering anything ignorance takes practice too.
Keep up the good work
philopolymath 1 month ago
I really enjoy the smug indignant tone....ohh how we shame ourselves
philopolymath 1 month ago
Next THE CAUSE of the EFFECTS are INDEPENDENT of MAN's understanding of them..
So AGAIN you link a claim of understanding to a subject which has NO relation to the object.
Also our understanding AT THIS TIME does not preclude NEW understanding
You also state tautologically God as an impossibility..
A reasonable BELIEF considering your ignorance
It is possible that our understanding of the EVIDENCE will mature to enable us to KNOW the CAUSE be it God or Man or Chance
philopolymath 1 month ago
OK so first of all ALL the universe is NATURE so anything in it is NATURAL.
So any evidence IS Natural..there can be No SUPER-Natural..oxymoron...
And to say the truth is there is nothing supernatural about them is correct but stupid and rhetoric.
philopolymath 1 month ago
'Tis true. Even after the minor earthquakes in Tulsa so many people got religious.
kryptonbornson 1 month ago in playlist Psychology of Belief
I am made to recall Chuck Jones' animation masterpiece, The Dot and the Line.
PachucoDesigns 2 months ago
That's why religions go after the young. they are more susseptable to those arguements and will grow up believing them and won't doubt them later in life.
lautz73 2 months ago
Where I live, there's no earthquakes (at least such quakes that can be felt), tornados, volcanos, tsunamis and what have you. Only natural disastrer that is common is floods. So I guess god is not particularly interested in bringing his wrath on central Europe and it's this pesky Japanease and Haiti (who are very religious) who get disasters. Right? The US must be making god very angry too. What a wierd logic...
wojciechkolacinski 3 months ago
2:45
"Little triangle are apparently friends, or maybe even lovers"
Now, I don't want to shatter your shipping, but I just can't see them getting together. It's all obviously very platonic.
--Proud Square/Isosceles Triangle shipper
uvauva2 4 months ago in playlist More videos from AntiCitizenX
Fantastic addition to your series, cool to see the Sagan references too. Keep up the awesome work!
soulure 4 months ago in playlist More videos from AntiCitizenX
It wasn't Paley the teleological arguments began with. That's a common misconception. In fact, it was Plato, in his dialogue Timaeus.
Well, obviously, God made the mountains to compell us to invent skiing, snowboarding and photography as well as to foster condensation.
lazyperfectionist1 5 months ago
While I see your point with the example of the tiger, I would have thought that while being the result of a series of random events, the tiger in question would be made (by it's parents) for the purposes of surviving it's enviroment to the best of it's ability, reproducing and protecting and raising it's children so that they can do the same.
secretworldleader 5 months ago
@secretworldleader Evolution is not a series of random events. Evolution is more or less the opposite of random.
DukeTwicep 4 months ago
Your channel doesn't have many videos, but all of them are pearls.
Keep it up!
jubulalau 5 months ago
AntiCitizenX, I love you. The end.
ThePTB 6 months ago
@anticitizenx im going to send you a private message instead of taking up 3+ comment boxes.
goodbyebrov 6 months ago
@anticitizenx "I made it up myself!"
i understand what your saying but let me clarify. If life is absurd, then creating your own purpose doesn't negate its absurdity. so in reality you ARE trying to convince yourself that life is worth living.
"On what basis do you make the claim that aggressive warfare and genocide are bad things?"
on the basis of the law that Jesus taught.
if we can set whatever rules we want to life, what is the basis you have for declaring that Hitler was a bad man?
goodbyebrov 6 months ago
@goodbyebrov
"What is the basis you have for declaring that Hitler was a bad man?"
Because I am a self-interested creature. The goals of Nazis and fascists run contrary to my desire for a comfortable and indulgent lifestyle.
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago 7
Respond to this video...
"so in reality you ARE trying to convince yourself that life is worth living."
What is the alternative? That life is NOT worth living? That I should just reach for the nearest sharp thing and gouge out my own eyeballs? Anyone who adopts that philosophy will not live long enough to propagate it. Anyone who decides the opposite is going to have babies and pass on that cultural opinion. And either way... so what? What does God have to do with any of it?
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago 3
@goodbyebrov
"on the basis of the law that Jesus taught."
Which law is that? To sell all of your possessions and give them to the poor? (Matt 19:21). Or maybe the bit about how slaves should obey their masters like they would Jesus? (Eph 6:5). Or what about the stuff about anyone who works on the Sabbath should be put to death? (Exodus 31:12-15).
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago 7
@goodbyebrov Please inform me where Jesus gave us the rules we get our morals from. His comments on Slavery, serve your masters well and doubly so if they be Christian. On Rape, the Rape victim should marry the rapist. Jesus said, bring anyone who would not have me as his Messiah before me and slay him with the sword. Nice.
William00048 2 months ago in playlist More videos from AntiCitizenX
@goodbyebrov You are delusional if you imagine there is usable moral code in the bible of any great significance. You have to pick and choose from the all the wicked recommendations the few morsels of anything workable. That makes YOU your own lawgiver not Jesus. Secondly, we can easily tell Hitler was a bad man because he hurt and killed people - people don't like to be hurt, it makes them unhappy. What is the mystery here requiring divine revelation?
DevilsAvocado3 1 month ago
@ anticitizenx "This is a separate issue from the main topic of the video, but it is still worth discussing anyway."
actually they go hand in hand, if a board game has no purpose or objective, then it doesn't matter what you do with the pieces, create whatever rules you want you cant be right or wrong.
goodbyebrov 6 months ago
@goodbyebrov
"create whatever rules you want you cant be right or wrong."
So? Isn't that what we do all the time? Chess and checkers use the same board but follow different rules.
Ask yourself. Why was Hitler a bad man? On what basis do you make the claim that aggressive warfare and genocide are bad things? I have an answer, but I want to hear yours first. I'm willing to bet that you cannot give me an objective reason.
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago
@anticitizenx "we're not making meaning out of meaningless garble"
i didn't realize that nothingness is any different then meaningless? i understand meaningless as no meaning or significance, or nothing! you would be living a lie if you deceived yourself into believing you created your own purpose when you have no purpose so stop fooling yourself into thinking you do because you don't want to live a life that has no meaning, your trying to create meaning because your life is absurd without it.
goodbyebrov 6 months ago
@goodbyebrov
"you would be living a lie if you deceived yourself into believing you created your own purpose when you have no purpose "
But I *DO* have a purpose. I made it up myself! There is no lie, no emptiness, no fooling. I just made up a purpose out of pure nothingness. The mere virtue of definition is all I need in order to have purpose in life. Who are you to tell me my purpose does not really exist when I absolutely created it myself?
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago 7
@AntiCitizenX I love the way you say "Consider the following experiment." It's always with an ever higher degree of annoyance, as though it should be followed, ironically, by, "God damn it." lololol
PachucoDesigns 2 months ago
@anticitizenx and on top of that, even if you do apply meaning to your life for whatever reasons, then you must realize that you, or anyone for that matter, can define their life any way they want and you have no right to say someone else is living a wrong or bad life when there is no standard, thus arriving at the conclusion that Hitler lead neither a good nor bad life, its all relative to their own perspective.
goodbyebrov 6 months ago
@goodbyebrov
"a wrong or bad life when there is no standard, thus arriving at the conclusion that Hitler lead neither a good nor bad life, its all relative to their own perspective."
This is a separate issue from the main topic of the video, but it is still worth discussing anyway.
Brov, you need to understand that there is no such thing as objective morality. There is only self-interest coupled with social interaction, cultural perception, and physical consequences.
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago
@goodbyebrov
Finally, you need to stop thinking that just because humans behave in certain hard-wired tendencies that some magical sky-fairy must have programmed us that way. The whole thing is a classic argument out of ignorance, which you should know by now after watching this very video! My failure to account for apparent cognitive biases and socially focused interactions of human beings does not in any way prove the existence of some omnipotent pan-galactic superman.
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago
@anticitizenx "The only purpose I have in life is the purpose I arbitrarily concocted for myself out of my own self interest."
that is absurd! it would be like me typing a bunch of random letters: jeincaiwnvbsheladfaw and then you trying to create some kind of meaning out if it when clearly there is no meaning or message at all to those random letters. again, how can a finite, being who has no purpose, be the source of meaning? your continuously trying to rationalize the absurd.
goodbyebrov 6 months ago
@goodbyebrov
Brov, we're not making meaning out of meaningless garble. We are inventing our own meaning out of pure nothingness. If life is intrinsically meaningless, there is nothing to prevent me from arbitrarily inventing my own purpose out of whole cloth. It is really just that simple.
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago
@anticitizenx i think maybe you should watch your video. everything i have said is what the video talks about! our search for meaning or drive to apply meaning is evidence for God. If God doesn't exist and things don't have meaning like your trying to get people to understand, then live it out, if you live like you have a purpose then your actions are displaying the complete opposite of what you "believe." so don't tell me when you try to add meaning, it has nothing to do with God.
goodbyebrov 6 months ago
@goodbyebrov
Brov, there is nothing deliberate or supernatural about tremors in Japan. Say it with me: NOTHING. They are perfectly natural and entirely random. Yet 38% of American think it is a sign from God. A human bias toward teleological perception and anthropomorphization does not count as evidence for some magical sky-daddy with cosmic superpowers. People also have a tendency to consume sugary foods and forget their car keys. These things do not prove God either.
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago
@goodbyebrov
" if you live like you have a purpose then your actions are displaying the complete opposite of what you "believe."
The only purpose I have in life is the purpose I arbitrarily concocted for myself out of my own self interest. That is all. Life can still have purpose and meaning even in the total absence of a top-down arbiter. The general drive to do things in your life that go beyond TV and a couch does not magically prove the existence of Yahweh.
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago
@anticitizenx, part 2) because we have this drive for meaning points in the direction of a meaning giver, otherwise we would be completely satisfied without having meaning at all. we should be searching for truth right? well if the truth is, we have no meaning then live it out! the fact that we have this drive clearly shows evidence for God, not that "oh we just want to live a different way then truth tells us because i want to have purpose" thats a joke
goodbyebrov 6 months ago
@goodbyebrov
Brov, this very video provides several clear empirical examples of human beings endowing human-like qualities into phenomena that are completely natural. There are also examples where human beings assume purpose and design exist in things that are completely random. Now you are trying to tell me that the general human desire for setting goals and specializing in their labor is supposed to be any different. This is not a manifestation of God, but a mere facet of human nature.
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago
@anticitizenx well lets think about it. If God exist then we obviously have a purpose. so we would have a drive to acknowledge this purpose and attempt to live it out. if God does not exist then we are the result of some explosion, thus we have no meaning, no reason for existing, we just do. that being said, we shouldn't have a drive to try and find or create meaning when its completely absurd. whats the point of creating our own purpose when its meaningless. its all meaningless.
goodbyebrov 6 months ago
@anticitizenx really, lets examine... If God does not exist, then we have no ultimate purpose which is why we have to apply meaning to our lives ourselves right? so what im getting at is, if God doesn't exist then why not live it out, live like we have no purpose instead of trying to make up our own reason, thats absurd! so... because we have this drive for a purpose only makes sense if God is real, otherwise we should be satisfied with out having any purpose at all? its totally inconsistent.
goodbyebrov 6 months ago
@goodbyebrov
Brov, your personal discomfort with the meaninglessness of life without God does not in any way serve as a positive proof of God's existence. Human desire for meaning and purpose does not in any way serve as a positive (or negative) proof of God's existence. Human motivations and propensities have no physical bearing whatsoever on the external reality of a cosmic super-fairy. There is nothing unusual about trying to invent a purpose in a world that does not hand you one.
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago
@kararvn why do we need a worthy goal, why cant we understand life is meaningless if there is no God? it seems like we want the attributes of the existence of God without actually having God. seems like people want the "good" parts of theism without the idea of being held accountable i guess? idk, just seems that human behavior doesn't square up with "reality," assuming God doesn't exist. its almost as if our desire for meaning is evidence in itself that God exist? is that a possibility?
goodbyebrov 6 months ago
@goodbyebrov
"its almost as if our desire for meaning is evidence in itself that God exist?"
If I told you that my desire for french fries means the Broncos are about to win the Superbowl, would that make any sense whatsoever? Because that's basically the leap you're making here.
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago
@goodbyebrov No.
KaraRvn 6 months ago
Very well done video, as always. Agenticity is so ubiquitous, but very few people know of the term or even seem aware of their own anthropomorphic bias.
I spoke with a Deist a while back, and his mantra seemed to be, "SOMETHING had to create the Big Bang."
I was speechless. Even if that were true, which is not certain by any means, how do you get from "some-thing" to what is essentially "some-DUDE?" A super-dude perhaps, but still a dude. :-P
KaraRvn 6 months ago
@KaraRvn
Don't get me started on the Kalam Cosmological Argument. I could do an entire video on why that chain of thought is so pathetic.
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago
at 12:25 he said we continue to deduce purpose where there is none, or something along those lines, which i think is interesting because through my experience people are "hardwired" to live like they have purpose instead of arriving at the conclusion Albert Camus came to and he attempted to live it out. why does everybody want meaning in their lives if we evolved with no purpose but survive? we keep living like we have purpose or obligation to do something. why?
goodbyebrov 6 months ago
@goodbyebrov Because we need a worthy goal. Carl Sagan ftw! ;-)
KaraRvn 6 months ago
Answering the question of why people keep seeing "God" in perfectly natural phenomena.
In my Lenovo laptop i don't seen Lenovo in it, i know Lenovo created it. This video is a waste of time nonsense and it made me so happy to be the first to vote it down
dxvxvx 6 months ago
@dxvxvx
Did you even watch the video?
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago
I literally saying to myself, "Big triangle is kind of a bully." Haha!
jjmblue7 6 months ago
Then Im *brain damaged* as all I saw was a fucking *triangle*. Then again, I do like Pink Floyd.
daeamarth 6 months ago
@daeamarth
I also primed you in the video. So don't feel too bad.
AntiCitizenX 6 months ago
Yeah, people tend to mix the concepts like "made for" and "used to"... Extend that to their analysis of reality and you'll understand why it's often flawed...
Acrimonator 7 months ago
Yet another excellent video AntiCitizenX. Thanks for your brain! Also, cool updated diagram animation. :)
honeylicious13 7 months ago
Excellent vid
Furoar 7 months ago
Well folks we can now officially and logically fuck all life because there exists absolutely no purpose for anything that has been done is being done or will be done.
you are in fact just as much a worthless piece of stinking smoldering primordial shit that happens to be able to walk. congrats the ultimate question has been answered!
Minimmatty 7 months ago
@Minimmatty yea sorry my thought train totally jumped tracks right there! Any way enjoy it cause it is a joke!
Minimmatty 7 months ago
Great video series! Please keep them coming!
monkeyundertree 7 months ago
Brought here by Phil Hellenes' favorites. Great video. Subscribed. Will watch the entire playlist.
PS Carl Sagan FTW!
akylae101 7 months ago
Excellent point about the childish nature of the teleological argument.
ozmoroid 7 months ago
@ozmoroid
Not just a mere point of argument, but now a scientific fact! :)
AntiCitizenX 7 months ago
Great video, great series.
DodoPandemic 7 months ago
Always worth a watch thank you very much.
mitenzouki 7 months ago
Great video, keep up the awesome work.
scotthorlbeck 7 months ago
Mountains can have a purpose if we see them as catalysts of rain, that in turn create rivers. And along rivers are where all major civilizations evolved...
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018 but they were not designed to to do that
bjam89 7 months ago
@bjam89 Probably not. He should have said that they were not designed, Period. At 8:20 he completely talks down that poor helpless mountain, so I just wanted to defend it. It didn't do anything bad to him to deserve that kind of trashing...
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018 but the whole video is about things being designed for stuff, not that they can't be used for stuff (like pencil shavings, i have used those to do lots of things...mostly pranks), sure they can be used to many things but the issue at hand is are they designed for those things
bjam89 7 months ago
@bjam89 I reacted to him having such strong negative emotional tone against that mountain. Calling it nothing more than a pile of dirt and rock is clearly showing a lack of respect toward it. Just because it wasn't designed doesn't make it having any less value.
I think mountains were very important for the development of early civilizations by being the origin of rivers.
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018 I agree with that the existence of mountains has had the beneficial byproduct of rivers, which humans have learned to utilize. But, this in no way is a reason to why they're there to begin with. There is no intrinsic design to a mountain.
charkopolis 7 months ago
@charkopolis Ok, lets take that to the extreme "a la Socrates".
Mountains were not designed. Then surely you agree that the entire earth was not designed, nor was any life existing on earth designed. We can conclude that nothing in the entire universe was designed.
But still you say a pencil was designed?
So how can there from something that was not designed, the universe, all of a sudden appear something that was designed, i.e. the pen?
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018 I agree, nothing naturally occurring in the universe was not made by intentional design. And yes, I would still say that a pencil (and pen) are designed. The difference is that humans designed pencils (and pens) and no one or thing has designed the universe. How can there be something that was not designed? How about the pencil shavings from this video? We know how the pencil shavings came to be, and we know there was no purpose, or design, for them.
charkopolis 7 months ago
As for the universe, who said it all of a sudden appeared? The current scientific understanding states the universe began its current state of existence as a singularity in space-time some 14 billion years ago. So the whole universe is there, just smaller than it is today. There is no scientific understanding of where the singularity itself came from. And certainly nobody I know proposes the singularity poofed into existence. Does this clarify anything?
charkopolis 7 months ago
@charkopolis So about the universe. I recall reading something in a science magazine that us living in a virtual world (like in Matrix) would be more probable, because virtual worlds use less resources than a real one. So there are potentially more virtual worlds than real ones.
A virtual world is designed, and since there is no way for us to know if we live in a virtual world, we might live in one. So we might live in a designed world.
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018 I don't see how the matrix scenario could be "more probable" than simply a real universe. The virtual scenario and real universe scenario are functionally equivalent. Because of the equivalent functionality, it makes no difference which is actually true, since there is no way of telling either way. It all becomes a moot point. More importantly, answering this question doesn't allow us to gain any meaningful perspective/knowledge. This leaves us right where we started.
charkopolis 7 months ago
@charkopolis Well, it could be "more probable" if we consider that we can cram in more entities capable of design in virtual worlds. So selecting a random entity from either real or virtual worlds more likely end up with a virtual one since there are more of them.
People believing that the world is designed maybe mean that we live in a virtual world created by a designer that can talk with them.
And for the question of "who designed the designer", that is where we end up where we started from.
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018 If we consider the possibility that we live in a virtual world, then we must also consider the possibility that the virtual world we live in is itself a virtual construct, so why not a virtual virtual world? Or for that matter, why not a virtual virtual virtual world? Or any number in embedded virtual constructs? Before we start talking about how "Inception" was, we must observe that there is no discernible distinction between a real universe, or the proposed virtual one.
charkopolis 7 months ago
Further, if there is a designer of the universe, then who designed the designer? And then who designed the designer of the designer? If at any point you say that a designer needs no designer designer, then you concede that there are somethings which don't need a designer, so why not the universe itself? Why must we assign a designer to the universe? Again, this whole line of questioning admits no new knowledge. It makes itself a baseless line of reasoning.
charkopolis 7 months ago
This makes the whole proposition a moot point. Now, consider the FACT that people assign designers to things that have no designer. This is an inherent psychological condition all humans have. This must be taken into consideration when asking the question "Who designed the universe?" We naturally ask these questions, even if there is no bearing in reality to know if that is the right question to ask. To be honest to ourselves, we must forgo this question.
charkopolis 7 months ago
@charkopolis Yes lets not go down the path of asking who designed the designer of the designer etc.
But still it seems like a random choice if we decide to see the universe as designed or not, because as you said there is no discernible distinction between a real or a virtual/designed universe. We can just pick?
It seems like you sort everything into either being designed or random, right?
Then would we not say that evolution DESIGNED humans, because evolution is not random?
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018 Yes, let's not bother with the ad infinitum conclusion one must draw with a designer. I would say it's not a random choice at all. All our senses convey to us that there exists an external reality outside our mind, and there is no evidence to support the notion that this external reality was designed by some agent with any purpose. If the choice to better reflect our understanding of our external reality, then the better choice is "no designer".
charkopolis 7 months ago
designed or random? Just to be technical, there could be other options we have not yet explored. With evolutionary processes, I believe there needs to be a distinction between design and purposefully designed. Evolution is certainly not random, but it's also completely aimless with intent. That is to say, evolution did not dictate what any species would evolve into for and future date. So, I would say humans are a byproduct of biological evolution. The word design makes inaccurate implications.
charkopolis 7 months ago
@charkopolis I think the problem is then the polarization of design vs. random.
This video basically argues that a pen is designed, a mountain is random, when in reality they are a bit of both. The pen is not 100 % designed on the atomic level. Looking closely the pen will contain random atomic structure. Likewise the mountain contains non-random traces, caused by the geological processes during its creation. It also contains non-random fossiles, leftover traces of ancient life etc.
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018 You make a good point with observing that objects themselves, at different levels of magnitude present a lack of designed structure. However, the study made the distinction of "made for a purpose" or not, the formation of the structure can be made by any process. With a pen, we know it is made by humans for the explicit purpose of transferring a well of ink onto paper at a controlled flow. The mountain, however it was formed, was made by no one and for no purpose.
charkopolis 7 months ago
So yes, the formation of structures carries a with a mix of random and intended processes. But, the video's goal was to point out that humans have a natural inclination to believe objects are made with some explicit purpose, even when we know that many exist without purpose.
charkopolis 7 months ago
@a575981735977018
Just because something is deterministic does not make it "designed." There is no design whatsoever in a mountain. It is just a pile of rocks that got pushed up by geological forces. Sure, those forces may be somewhat deterministic as opposed to truly "random," but this in no way implies that some deliberately motivated entity made a conscious decision when framing the morphology of Mt Everest.
AntiCitizenX 7 months ago
@AntiCitizenX I believe the problem with discussing this with people that claim the world was designed, is that their view is very binary. True or false, good or evil, random or designed. Nothing in between. They can argue that the mountain is NOT random (and hence designed), because random means something completely lacking structure. And if we fully track down this non-randomness we end up in big bang, and beyond the scope of science. That is where they can claim it was designed.
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018
"They can argue that the mountain is NOT random (and hence designed), because random means something completely lacking structure."
That is not what the word "random" means. Making this argument is a bit like saying that because my car was NOT built by Toyota, then the tooth fairy must have dropped it from the sky. It is a nonsensical false dichotomy founded on an intrinsic perceptual bias.
AntiCitizenX 7 months ago
@AntiCitizenX My point of objection is probably at 8:19 where you start the sentence with "In every literal sense imaginable" and then continue to say the mountain has no purpose and is random. Because of the use of "imaginable" I try to show that imagination is not that easily confined, by imagining examples of purpose, non-randomness and designed. Remember, Einstein said "Imagination is more important than knowledge." The quote continues saying knowledge is limited but imagination is not...
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018
I don't think you appreciate the meaning of the word "random." The opposite of random is NOT designed. It is deterministic. A system is random if the final state cannot by precisely predicted due to a lack of information about the underlying variables which govern it. A system can be designed and still be random (i.e.;, dice) or it can be designed and deterministic (i.e.; a bridge).
AntiCitizenX 7 months ago
@AntiCitizenX What I am saying is that everything designed is deterministic. And since the opposite of deterministic is random, the opposite of designed is also random.
The dice are not random, you need to apply random external forces on them to generate random values, and those forces are not part of the design. The purpose of dice are only to give discrete values on a wide variety of external forces. If we knew the forces applied on the dice we could theoretically calculate the outcome.
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018
"If we knew the forces applied on the dice we could theoretically calculate the outcome."
This applies to EVERYTHING. Some might even argue that it applies to quantum mechanics itself (unless you accept the Copenhagen view). In either case, all you are doing is arguing semantics now. Random or deterministic, a mountain was not "made for" anything. No conscious entity is required in the generation of a mountain range.
AntiCitizenX 7 months ago
@AntiCitizenX Does this reply mean you are ok with that everything designed is deterministic? And that the dice are deterministic?
I did not say that a conscious entity is needed. I say WE CAN NOT KNOW if it was designed or not.
The mountain has traces of determinism that go back to the big bang, beyond our knowledge of the big bang. Something that go beyond our knowledge is something we can not know.
The end.
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018
All you've done is claim that pencil shavings are "designed" simply because the pencil itself was designed. It doesn't work that way. Even if the universe itself happened to be designed (which we have ZERO reason to suppose), that in no way means a mountain was designed as well. You also keep confusing deterministic with intentional. The two are NOT synonymous. You also neglect the significance that this is an intrinsic perceptual bias in human nature.
AntiCitizenX 7 months ago
@AntiCitizenX In this case I am focusing on the question of if the universe happened to be fully or partly designed. So then finding "pencil shavings" would mean we could deduce that some form of design has occurred.
Yes I am a bit confusing deterministic and intentional, because then we arrive at the question of if there exists a "free will". Do you say that something designed require a "free will"? How else would we distinguish products of natural processes with consciously designed stuff?
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018
Free will is a completely separate issue. The only issue here is that there obviously exist things in this universe that were not made for any specific purpose (i.e.; pencil shavings). There also exist things that morphologically develop through completely natural and aimless processes (i.e.; clouds and mountains). Finally, there exists a bias in human perception that tries to attribute "design" to these things anyway. That is the only point to this video.
AntiCitizenX 7 months ago
@AntiCitizenX Ah! It must be the complete opposite! Something designed is NOT deterministic, it is random.
We can not ascribe any natural deterministic past of a pen, its past is random. Therefore we say some "free willed" agent designed it.
We should look for design in randomness!
Only if the mountain is somehow random and not determined by geological forces can we say it was designed.
Also here is where quantum mechanics crushes all hope of complete determinism, it contains inherent randomness
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018 "We should look for design in randomness!" NO! The main point of the video is that humans intrinsically look for design when there is none! I've read your discussion to this point and I find your rhetoric fundamentally flawed. You are refusing to accept the obvious. Why? Where is this stubborn streak of refusal coming from. Why persist in a viewpoint in which every position you propose is summarily stricken down? At this point, you need to ask yourself a hard question ...
charkopolis 7 months ago
Why are you looking for designer when there is absolutely no indication that one is there in the first place?
charkopolis 7 months ago
@charkopolis I'm not looking for a world designer. My whole point in this began with me feeling there was something inexact with the reasoning of the video, which I then diagnosed as caused by the lack of a clear definition of the word "design". During this discussion I've tried to learn more about "design" by stating some things, and asking questions, and I believe I actually have learned some.
Now ask yourself, if we find a pen in the forest, how do we know that it was designed?
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018 Because we know people make pens. And people are prone to dropping things. And people like walking through forests.
charkopolis 7 months ago
@charkopolis "Because we know people make pens. And people are prone to dropping things. And people like walking through forests."
Do you want me to use a rhetoric to show that your own rhetoric is also fundamentally wrong?
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@a575981735977018 Pens are a human artifact, and therefore by definition, designed with a purpose by humans. Full stop. What "fundamental flaw" could you seriously consider to say anything to the contrary?
charkopolis 7 months ago
@a575981735977018
When all is said and done, a "mountain" is just the by-product of tectonic plate collision. There is no conscious entity required to guide this process and the final result is a random distribution of elevation in the overlying topography. You can imagine all sorts of things to do with it after the fact, but that does not mean it was specifically "made" for anything. I fail to see why this is such a difficult pill to swallow.
AntiCitizenX 7 months ago
@AntiCitizenX Well, maybe my thoughts are affected by "swallowing the pill" of quantum mechanics. There you find that the answer to if something is true or false can be that it's both true and false at the same time.
So I see the mountain as POSSIBLY both designed and random at the same time. Maybe that can be justified somehow by the "anthropic principle", which state that the world must be compatible with conscious life, and from that we can draw conclusions.. But now I speculate...
a575981735977018 7 months ago
@charkopolis Ah, I wanted to make this a Socratic dialog, but I'm too tired.
So, check "design" on wikipedia: "No generally-accepted definition of “design” exists".
Before we can discuss if something is designed we need to define what "design" means.
I'm off to bed...
a575981735977018 7 months ago
Wow the triange thing shows so much about how our brain works.
thernr 7 months ago
Look deeper into the subtext of what the animation wishes to convey. This has nothing to do with believing in God or not-I think most people who watch bamby, or what ever, don't just sit there and go, "oh well its only pixels-", but at the same time we don't say,"oh wow God created this cartoon. T he two can't be equalled, spotting human traits in something doesn't mean you believe in God.People who place God in the making of something-has nothing to do with that experiment-that's something else
advy1 7 months ago
@advy1 I believe the point of the study was to show that humans imbue human traits into non-human objects, i.e. antopomorphization. This, coupled with agenticity, would show a psychological explanation to people saying that God was the agent behind the cause of the Japan earthquake. Since God was angry (a human trait). So agenticity, with antropomorphization gives a clear explanation why people would believe this.
charkopolis 7 months ago
The triangle a rectangle experiment only tells us that depending on how things are animated-ie down to certain patterns of movement we can relate to as human beings-when the rectangle is destroyed we feel its a shame-because it was obviously meant to be a rectangle in the first place-otherwise why draw one to start with? As humans we confirm our conscious state and our humane need for harmony in the world. We all know its just a rectangle and triangle-but just as in animated film-one needs to-
advy1 7 months ago
The tree does serve a purpose other than being an inanimate object; which is to provide oxygen for the planet so that we may breath-the earth is finely tuned so that we can live on it-everything in its place in the pecking order and food chain-the question is, by intelligent design or by random selection? By God or not? There are quite probably other galaxies that do sustain some form of life.
advy1 7 months ago
@advy1 oxygen production is a side effect of the breakdown of carbon-dioxide and sugar, not the purpose. also the statement "there are quite probably other galaxies that do sustain some form of life" shows your ignorance in full, it is nearly impossible that we are the only life that exists, in fact i am pretty sure it is full blown impossible.
MobileThinker 7 months ago
The WLC argument is a simple case of trickery: note that
A: Premise 1 slips "design" into the question ("fine tuning" is in essence, a design framwork) thus the question is also the conclusion;
B: Premise 2 works as a random "pull out a possibility" with no justification whatsoever (there's no reason given to remove chance or necessity as options); and
C: Premise 3 is a restatement of the question that contained the conclusion ("fine tune"/"design")
Thus, the argument is illogical.
Aaron1975melbourne 7 months ago
seriously it's lame to see people trying to convince themselves there are no Gods and afterlife... when the only thing you gotta do is an Out of Body experience and then you'll know you're more than just a physical body.. Everybody has the cappacity to live the experience and see for themselves. Stop arguing ! Just Go Find OUT ! there are lots of technique available on internet to acheive an Out-Of-Body experience.. you don't do it... you'll always live without knowing the truth about life !
chikipoune 7 months ago
@chikipoune and there is planety of studeis that disproves, out of body, hell net time you have one be sure a friend has placed a note somewhere that you can't see from any other angle then over it, then if yu after the out of body has the right info then it might be true but if not it is fake
bjam89 7 months ago
@bjam89 why the hell on earth would you believe something like that ?... if you really wanna know just DO IT yourself, dude !
chikipoune 7 months ago
@chikipoune i have done so, and the note over my bed i got it wrong, ergo i do not think it is real, read up on science once in a while
bjam89 7 months ago
@chikipoune
yeah! one way to get an out of body experience is Acid! Except...not sure if you'd believe in god afterwards, you'd just feel really tripped out.
mlke 7 months ago
I am sorry I do see your point however, your arguement fails to recognize sexual selection in biological specimens which means the male tiger for example is designed by the female tiger for both beauty and ferocity.
dsdougharty 7 months ago
@dsdougharty
Do you see how difficult it is to avoid the perception of design? Female tigers did not "design" anything. They just preferentially mate, and morphological changes ensue.
AntiCitizenX 7 months ago 6
@AntiCitizenX By choosing a preferential mate in a sense they do design the species. For example why are the peacocks so pretty because the peahens are shallow. It is still an intelligence at work within sexual selection granted not a highly thought out one but it is there non the less. They are not designing the species with a goal but they do choose their mates and not everything gets awarded that opportunity to mate thus being left out of the line. I do not think that is all illusion.
dsdougharty 7 months ago
@dsdougharty It's still just natural selection. The females who prefer mates who's offspring turn out to be more successful will pass those traits onto their offspring. The same even applies to us humans, brothers and sisters tend not to find each other sexually attractive it's an instinct. Science now gives us an explanation for this - avoidence of inbreeding. Brothers don't say to themselves 'I will not find my sister sexually attractive to avoid designing defective children'
DontBendOverForAllah 7 months ago
@DontBendOverForAllah Exactlly natural SELECTION which inherently mean a choice is made.
dsdougharty 7 months ago
@dsdougharty I am taking the definition of agency in this context as meaning some sort of conscious planning specifically with regards design. Mating is determined by instinct. Tigers do not have sex to have baby tigers, they have sex because of their hormones. Whatever choice occurs is also determined by instinct which has been naturally selected. A siberian tiger's color is paler because it hunts in snow the offspring of females who don't prefer pale will die out. There is no choice.
DontBendOverForAllah 7 months ago
@DontBendOverForAllah I am not. Tell me have you been a tiger? Do you know for certain that no thought goes into mating. To save you the trouble you have not and you do not. I find it amazing that those that swear by evolution still hold human so superior I however swear by evolution and do not assume we are the only species capable of thought. I get the temptation to be so anthrocentric I however do not like such baseless assumtions in my thinking I only wish I wasn't so alone in my humility
dsdougharty 7 months ago
In my mind, a tiger definitely has a purpose. That purpose is to maul creationists when they spread lies about evolution.
IvanAndreevich 7 months ago
@IvanAndreevich
Can you hook me up with one?
mlke 7 months ago
The design argument always puzzled me because god has the ability to change the laws of physics, defy human logic, perceive every single moment in time, has no physical form and is so mysterious that we can't even begin to comprehend its nature. Which means the design argument explains this complex universe by saying it was created by something even more complex. Strange don't you think?
One4Thought 7 months ago
I hope that little triangle is okay...
jussts 7 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Why does god hate people on subduction zones?
FaganRoberts 7 months ago
Would it be possible to get that graph (At the end) in a download, or perhaps when you are done with the series?
AthetiusAI 7 months ago
Hey, I'm autistic and I saw the shapes as both :P
HomoCyborgZombie 7 months ago
...maybe even lovers."
Hilarious. XD
TomMSTie1138 7 months ago
Poll released by the "Public Religion Research Institute."
Showing time and again that strong religious belief is not the same as good ethics.
Morkindie 7 months ago
What's really interesting is the only 96% of human artifacts are made for something... WTF?
COEXISTential 7 months ago
@COEXISTential
See my earlier response to gpdl00355 for a possible explanation of this.
AntiCitizenX 7 months ago
How can old people still be so childish and believe such utter nonsense?
lilmarome 7 months ago
When did the word/idea 'purpose' come to be in our language development. Is it truly an innate part of the brain or are we victims of an evolution of thought that funnels how our brains process the world into certain concepts that took time to develop? Does that make sense? I often wonder if language development stunts the mind when it comes up with certain concepts.
mooseclamps 7 months ago
@mooseclamps Mental trickery that took time to develop IMO. I doubt that pre-complex language Humans seriously contemplated the purpose of the sun or the wind much more than my dog does.
Skep155 7 months ago
Where does FOX get these surveys? They must call 10 of their closest friends and if 8 of them claim some bullshit then they report that 80% of surveyed people claim whatever.
baxtar1963 7 months ago
Mountains were made for the sole purpose of making Baby Jesus happy when he looked around in the dessert.
Wait... um.....
rationalmuscle 7 months ago
So... 40% of the U.S. are blithering idiots.
Shit, I didn't need a "study" to tell me that. I live here.
rationalmuscle 7 months ago
Great ending with the Carl Sagan bit. :)
MagnusIan 7 months ago
Well, according to Fox "News", popular equals right!
RadarKat73080 7 months ago
BTW as an animator often grappling with conveying emotion and intent from CGI constructs (like the ones on my channel) I found that shapes animation fascinating! So much personality and story was conveyed with such simple forms.
That clip could be used to great effect in animation courses.
stiimuli 7 months ago
Its odd you would release this video now.....I've had to inform people about the mistake of anthropamorphizing non-intelligent events and processes several times in the last week alone.
this can't be coincidence! it must be a sign from god! =P
stiimuli 7 months ago
a new anticitizenx vid, squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ^_^
dreadpiratedan 7 months ago
Oh gosh, there's something wrong with me, I just saw geometrical objects moving. Ok, ok .. just kidding. I didn't associate to any particular human situation, but I searched for pattern though.
djalessandromagno 7 months ago
This is exactly what I've long argued with theists about: Function and purpose are not synonymous. Purpose exists only in minds, function is a property of the object.
Also excellent videos, I always look forward to more.
JoesephKatana 7 months ago
Love your psychology videos :)
MisterDax 7 months ago
How do you "like" a video more than once? Such as, 40,000 times?...
cartagia2 7 months ago
In my humble opinion, most arguments for the existence of God are rooted in childish thinking eventhough they can expressed in a pretty profound and seemingly intelligent coating they ultimately seem to be rooted in an immature view of reality.
We consider things good and evil so there must be a very big authority somewhere.
we are makers who are made ourselves so there must be a first maker.
we didnt have to exist so someone must have made it so that we would exist
etc.
KnownNoMore 7 months ago
:) love these videos as u are proving that so many people are so dam ignorant to even watch a video that explains away all of their held beliefs. i'd like to see how many americans watch your videos and wake up to the fact that the goverment is controling them through exactly the same means.
1234swindle 7 months ago
I just want to say . . , . . . The little triangle started it.
crocoshocker 7 months ago
@crocoshocker
haha! Nice.
AntiCitizenX 7 months ago
Teleological thinking is literally childish - how true.
stevehayes13 7 months ago
I love this series. It's absolutely amazing that what little we know of psychology shows that we're no where near infallible, and yet the majority of the people will still walk around claiming to know that ghosts, UFOs, and all sorts of strange things exist simply because "they saw it". If only it was easier to get people to understand this...
Cyrathil 7 months ago
"Who made this tiger?"
"How did this tiger grow?"
How much of religion is just uselessly complex riddles?
RakaTheTenacious 7 months ago
i really love these videos.
LordHines420 7 months ago
It also appears 4% of people don't know what Clocks and Spoons are for...
gpdl00355 7 months ago
@gpdl00355
At least one of the human artifacts was intended to be unfamiliar. They called it a "tryogaster" when really it was an overly elaborate compass. Imagine looking at random hunk of metal like a carburetor. It may look man-made, but it may not necessarily look like it was "made for" anything. That's probably where the 4% came from.
AntiCitizenX 7 months ago