1. Great write-up of the year in film from AO Scott. And another from Manola Dargis.
2. David O. Russell discusses a scene from The Fighter.
3. Lawyer fave David Denby lists his top films. He rips both Inception and Black Swan...
4. A seasonal essay from Ricky Gervais on why he's an atheist. An excellent column on the role of religion in society (and the difficulty of being a Christian at Christmas).
5. I meant to put this up a couple of months ago. I could watch Eric Schmidt talk forever.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Odd and Ends [updated]
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2 comments:
a word on the gervais article, i've heard this story on why he's an atheist before, without the holiday and pseudo-science veneer. it is as honest as it is not compelling. he doesn't believe in god because when he was a kid his nineteen-year-old brother didn't and he suspected his mother didn't? that's the big takeaway? alright, well, that's something, i suppose. but if he's going to talk about his "logical" reason, here's to hoping he's not referring to that story. which is, ultimately, what he's doing. beyond that it's just cheap shots and pseudo-scientific bull crap. science knows what it does and doesn't know? really? read up on string theory. or parallel universes. or the very notion that a god is not a logical possibility in our known universe. of course not. God, as such a being is generally understood, transcends the known universe, meaning it's not a part of it. by definition. if you want to talk logic you're in the realm of philosophy. so ask the logicians the logical underpinnings of science. you'll go directly back to francis bacon, who built his notion, the scientific method, on the belief that god was orderly. there have been no other logical underpinnings provided for science. i'm not against science. far from it actually. let's just not ascribe to it things it cannot do, which include offer any information on that which cannot be seen.
I sort of consider myself a scientist since I have multiple degrees in it and at least know the scientific method. I doubt Gervais has taken a science class since his teens. He seems to have a lot of "faith" in these scientists without doing any actual work himself. (He sure has become an arrogant twat in recent years - his last HBO special was hideous; I won't be watching the new one).
Atheists also express "faith" in scientists being able to explain the unknown in the future, even though they can't now.
Last, if you were trying to invalidate something and couldn't do it, you would create substitutes (like Santa Claus and the Eastern Bunny) and then invalidate them - and extrapolate it out to the thing that's untouchable. You would point to other religions (like Mormonism or Scientology) and discredit them with ease. Thus making all religions suspect.
Until someone explains how humans became so conscious and reflective, artistic and generous, studious and ambitious, etc. over their chimpanzee counterparts, I'll stick with the multi-millenium theory for now. There's no scientific (cellular, physical, or chemical) reason for humans to be more than hunters and gatherers.
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