The Good Atheist Podcast: Episode 103
August 20, 2010 8:18 pm
We promised you a mailbag, and we delivered a big one! On this week’s show, Ryan and I talk about the recent shit-storm of awesome that happened when Phil Plait delivered his “Don’t be a Dick” speech at TAM 8, and of course answer your questions this month. Don’t miss it!
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8 Comments
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August 21, 2010
The rainbow of atheists!
My interpretation:
- Red = the angry anti-theists who have been badly harmed by religion and wish they could get rid of religion as quickly as possible
- Orange = avid debaters with an armada of facts, who love a thorough argument
- Yellow = the ‘dicks’ who piss on the religionists’ delusions to piss them off
- Green = diplomats who want everyone to stay calm and cordial, gently planting tiny seeds that might eventually convince people to become atheists
- Blue = people with progressive/liberal/socialist political leanings who are fed up with the religious infestation of politics
- Purple = LGBTQ people and allies, who are fed up with religious excuses for discriminationSome are a mixture of several colors, and may show different aspects to different degrees depending on the situation.
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August 21, 2010
I think one of the simplest arguments against religion is “Which one?” (The good ol’ “I just believe in one less god than you.”) There are thousands of contradictory religions and variations of religions, that various people have believed at various times. Each religious person feels like their own selection of belief is the right one, with no more justification than every other religious person has for their different selection. “None of the above” is the only comprehensively consistent position to take.
(And ‘who managed to convert more people’ isn’t a fair measure of the rightness of a religion, since from the perspective of a person of a disagreeing religion, the forces of evil could just be helping them draw people away from the truth!
)
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August 21, 2010
I don’t believe those fish people on the north pole are real
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August 21, 2010
I’m not as familiar with the US situation around nuclear power (apart from Yucca Mountain) but until today I have not seen sufficient evidence to believe that this is even a remotely good idea.
First, you might be right about new technologies being able to solve some or even most of the problems with waste disposal. Even taking that into account at the end of the lifetime of such a plant you still have to basically keep it in a sarcophagus since a substantial portion of the plant and items used is somewhat irradiated. I don’t think we monkeys are even remotely able to do a proper risk analysis for managing this stuff if it’s glowing dozens or hundreds of times of our lifespans long.
But let’s say we ignore that and focus on the economics:
The first issue is that there is hardly any company willing to make any kind of investment in nuclear without an enormous amount of political support and commitment in terms of risk waivers and *tax breaks* if not outright subsidies to build a plant. This, over the lifetime of the plant, artificially lowers the price of power produced at such plants in comparison to other sources. It’s true that most infrastructure is subsidized in this way but the incentive structure is an important policy aspect and in the European context there would never have been a single company willing to do nuclear power without the billions that were poured into EURATOM.But let’s say that we ignore this portion and conclude that it’s still a good deal because it’s a green energy source and our carbon output is lowered. Except, it might not be. Depending on who does the calculations and what is factored in, it can be quite the opposite. The major issue is that (as you mentioned) uranium is a non-renewable resource that has to be extracted from rock (where it is present in very small amounts), has to be shipped around the world, enriched (again very energy intensive) and afterwards shipped around for processing in specialized containers. A lot of that supply chain is supplied by fossil fuels, outputting lots of carbon. The nukes you mentioned are an interesting option but I have not seen any numbers that show how this could sustain worldwide nuclear power use in the medium-term just from the amount of material. Yes, coal power plants are much worse but just because it’s that incredibly bad doesn’t mean we should support a shitty option.
Finally: What happens if another global conflict arises over the uranium rich areas in the world? Any better than the current dilemmas with the middle-east? (OK, I didn’t fact check that one at all.)
Taken together I think many of these issues come down to: It’s too expensive and we’d be far better of investing heavily into decentralized renewable energy generation today.
P.S.: I think you said that the earth’s core is kept hot by nuclear fission (or at least had fissionable material involved), I believe it’s the radiation pressure that does it and that would be unrelated but I’m not that certain.
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August 21, 2010
If the good atheist was an oxymoron then you would have to be somehow bad at atheism which you aren’t so its not really an oxymoron unless your somehow morally bad which you would be to a christian. bad christian sounds like an oxymoron but christians really are bad both morally and bad at their texts/scriptures. I may be heavily biased with strong atheism but i see bad christians and good atheists, oxy for the atheist and moron for the christian.
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August 22, 2010
I’m not religious or a converted atheist. Oddly enough I seem to be in 100% agreement with you (that’s weird, huh?). I’ve spent my entire adult life pondering (obsessing perhaps) these issues and yet you surprise me by bringing up aspects of the I haven’t thought of previously. Jake, for a dick you sure can be convincing
Love the show. I’m constantly talking back and expanding on the issues (in my head) while listening. You guys are the fucking shit! I have to say it is now official: TGA is my favorite edutainment media. No other internet or TV program captures my interest and provides the amusement and insight like TGA does. “Ta Da!”
I think you’re really onto something with the human empathy angle. What about mirror neurons and human empathy? I know there is some skepticism of the theory. What do you think? Do the studies provide a scientific explanation for what many assume to be a uniquely human quality (or maybe some religious based human divinity BS concept)?
Doesn’t the theory bolster the human-is-ape argument?And you’re sooo right about the show being like crack. I can’t wait for my next fix. (Yes, I’m a happy patron.)
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August 24, 2010
“I’d be an atheist if it wasn’t for all those dicks” hahahaha. I laughed so much. Yes, are there really a whole ton of these people out there? I don’t really think so.
If there are, they are identifying as other sects of the same secular circle.. ie: some people prefer to identify with humanism because atheism gets a bad rap, or the term “secular”, or the term “skeptic” — I think there are people (despite my blog title, that’s not why I chose it, I -love- the term Atheist) who do want to avoid the term…
… but they aren’t in the majority.
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As for the whole “Dicks vs. Non-Dicks” … well, I think there is a balance to everything. You said “We have to push hard” and all sexual references aside on a portion of text taken out of context, I agree with that entirely. We really do need to push hard. If no one pushes, if we just stand here not moving being “neutral”, or try to be “nice guys” and the lot of us just decide to be pussies about basically everything, we will get -steamrolled-. And nothing gets accomplished.
… but I do recognize the important of far more diplomatic aforementioned “nice guys”, don’t get me wrong.
So while some people seem to think we need diplomats rather than warriors, I think we need a little bit of both. That’s life, isn’t it? The world is a balance.. there are some nice guys and there are some dicks. That’s life in all facets.
“It’s like a service we offer”. “People get to be dicks through us” — Love this, it made me think of “living vicariously through someone else”. I think it might be true. There might be some really “nice guys” out there (and I have nothing against nice guys, just for the record, I just am not really a “nice gal” on average I guess) who would really every now and again really like to be a fucking asshole. Who knows? And maybe they get that fix by living vicariously through the dicks in life who happen to operate blogs..
.. eh, anything’s possible
I do think tolerance is taken (or demanded to be taken) too far today. “Tolerance” has come to mean “untouchable” in the eyes of the religious… “Tolerate us” means “Don’t be mean to us [by stating what we believe is irrelevant”
I don’t play that game. I touch.. that sounds bad, but that’s ok because I’m a girl and for some reason that makes it less creepy I’m told. *shrugs*
But honestly if that’s what tolerance means? That you are “untouchable”? Screw that. Frankly I don’t mind being intolerant if those are the rules.
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As for analogies… the hammer and the nail, holy crap, what the hell was that shit? I couldn’t believe it.
When I heard that from him, I thought to myself “Now I’m almost positive I can drive a nail into a piece of wood with two hard swings and move on to the next nail. Get it done and move on.”
In a way the whole hammering-a-nail analogy works for me, only that the original analogy (hammering it in slowly so you don’t damage the wood away) doesn’t make any sense to me. I’d pound a nail in and move on, why are we beating around the bush.. or the nail.. or.. whatever.
… but I digress. Severely. (That’s my nature, I think it takes very little time for people to figure that out
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In other news… Thanks for your input on my question. By the way, I hear you about potentially losing sanity over the sheer amount of things going on in politics. I can’t say I’ve ever been overly involved myself in following politics until maybe the last 6 months or so, and I’ve come to see just the sheer volume of -insanity- that is truly involved in the political world.
In a way I’m sorry for being so apathetic about politics until now, but in another way? I’m kinda glad I stayed out of it all, because it might have driven me nuts.
Regardless, I’m hoping to be more actively following it in the future, to a degree at least.
I do have my limits.
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September 29, 2010
I can’t believe you guys suggested that it’s OK to lie to a girl about being an atheist in order to get laid! That’s just wrong!
Lie about your income. Lie about your job. Lie about what music you listen to. Don’t lie about your lack of religion, your HIV status or the size of your penis, because when the truth comes out, someone’s going to get hurt.
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