It did make me raise an eyebrow when Rogan got him to admit he was afraid of the possibility of Heaven being real, due to it also being eternal.
Bruh, if you really don’t believe in something, why fear it? Do you know how scared I am of the possibility that Jason Vorhees is real? Not at all! I’m also not scared of the idea that Outworld is real and will take over our realm if we lose another tournament…
So shouldn’t the concept of Heaven be just as powerless to his sense of fear?
I’m not making a statement or trying to imply anything, I’m not sold on an afterlife of any kind (I think it’s a lovely idea, but, I also think it literally raining chocolate is a lovely idea), I just found that confusing is all.
Even if we assume he somehow made it through the hippy era as a PhD holder without trying it, there’s no way no one has hooked him up in the past ten years.
As an agnostic atheist that favors materialism, I found it to be very fun and exciting to do pretty massive doses of psychedelics, especially ones that frequently spur thoughts of “higher powers.” 2C-E, in particular is known for bringing about thoughts about the divine, and that was a lot of fun (I just played around on Universe Sandbox while I came up, put on some good music, then laid on the floor in a blanket and thought about the universe for a few hours).
God I gotta trip shrooms this weekend, that one time where I saw myself as a squid outside of my body playing with it and being judged by a stream of squids for refusing to “Stop playing with that thing and move on to embrace your truest self, a being beyond physicality, a being that can take any form or shape it wants, something far great than a human being.”
Was awesome…
God I hate being human. I’d demand to be freed from this flesh prison, but I’m not sure there’s anything to actually let out… That I may actually BE the flesh prison.
I feel like I’m in this weird camp of “I Don’t Want To Be An Atheist!”
Not because I fear Hell or anything, I just find the concept of a cold purely material universe where no greater force than Entropy exists scarier than any interpretation of Tartarus!
I feel like I’m in this weird camp of “I Don’t Want To Be An Atheist!”
I don’t think it’s that unusual. Most people are just pretty good at pretending that they believe in a higher power and repressing that fear that maybe this is all we get.
At least personally there was a period of about a year where I went through every apologetics argument I could find in order to try and hang onto the religion I grew up with, followed by another year where I called myself a deist before I confronted the possibility that there was really no evidence for anything more than materialism. I wound up reaching the conclusion that unless we find more evidence, most religions and supernatural beliefs are just wishful thinking. And given my personality, I couldn’t really ignore that conclusion once I got there.
I just find the concept of a cold purely material universe where no greater force than Entropy exists scarier than any interpretation of Tartarus!
It is a bit overwhelming. I tend to fall back on acknowledging that I am part of the universe rather than in opposition to it as a way of confronting that existential dread. Plus, entropy is actually not as scary as it seems at first since space and time are really, really big compared to the scales we perceive and think in. That leaves lots of places where order can appear without violating the second law of thermodynamics, and our species is very unlikely to ever really reach that point where the heat death of the universe affects us personally.
So I just file “the cold indifference of the universe” away in the same area as knowing the sun will one day expand and consume Earth: it’s interesting to know how it all works, a little scary, but very unlikely to ever significantly affect this little pocket of the universe I perceive as my self.
I… I want to hug you, I feel like I’ve actually found someone who gets it, instead of another edgelord mocking me for “Trying to cling to sky daddy faerie tales”
I’m sorry I can’t… I can’t accept a world where death is the final answer for us all… It’s it’s too much…
Yeah I just worry he might do what I did and find Gaia. Us earth worshippers are annoying enough without Dawkins among us. Though I’ll acknowledge I already had a foot in the door to pantheism at the time
Eh, I think he’s too stubborn and too good at defining his terms to go that route. I love the idea of Spinoza’s pantheistic view of the universe, but I would never tell the average person that because I don’t want to end up in the same box as Einstein, where just because I use the word “God,” people assume I’m religious.
Personally, I think Dawkins would wind up going the same route as Sagan, defining mystical experiences related to the universe as “numinous” rather than “religious” for precisely that reason: because it’s really obnoxious when people take your words out of context, so stick to using very specific words that don’t carry the baggage of religion.
If you’re a fan of extreme cringe, Jordan Peterson’s podcast episode with Richard Dawkins is the source for all that. But the double helix thing was probably the most entertaining one.
20 minutes of rambling builds up to Jordan Peterson saying he thinks people can comprehend DNA by moving their consciousness down to the micro level. Dawkins just repeats that back baffled. Then before he can even give a proper response, Peterson says: “I have have taken extremely high doses of psilocybin.”
Because Dawkins shouldn’t get a prize for being merely “Not as insane as the other bigot!”
What’s your understanding? Because he literally had humanitarian awards for basically being the biggest piece of shit ever when it came to women and transpeople, especially if they were both!
Richard Dawkins has a pretty fun comment about that https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NvzMJqkZV74
I just want to note that Dawkins has almost certainly taken LSD.
That might be, but I think he at least claimed on that podcast that he hadn’t.
It did make me raise an eyebrow when Rogan got him to admit he was afraid of the possibility of Heaven being real, due to it also being eternal.
Bruh, if you really don’t believe in something, why fear it? Do you know how scared I am of the possibility that Jason Vorhees is real? Not at all! I’m also not scared of the idea that Outworld is real and will take over our realm if we lose another tournament…
So shouldn’t the concept of Heaven be just as powerless to his sense of fear?
I’m not making a statement or trying to imply anything, I’m not sold on an afterlife of any kind (I think it’s a lovely idea, but, I also think it literally raining chocolate is a lovely idea), I just found that confusing is all.
Because claiming you have all the knowledge is even dumber than believing in religion.
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Praise the Basilisk, please don’t kill me Basilisk
Even if we assume he somehow made it through the hippy era as a PhD holder without trying it, there’s no way no one has hooked him up in the past ten years.
Idk would you want to be near him when he trips? He doesn’t seem like a fun person to do a substance that can cause experiences of religion with.
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As an agnostic atheist that favors materialism, I found it to be very fun and exciting to do pretty massive doses of psychedelics, especially ones that frequently spur thoughts of “higher powers.” 2C-E, in particular is known for bringing about thoughts about the divine, and that was a lot of fun (I just played around on Universe Sandbox while I came up, put on some good music, then laid on the floor in a blanket and thought about the universe for a few hours).
Dawkins on acid would be a hell of a time
God I gotta trip shrooms this weekend, that one time where I saw myself as a squid outside of my body playing with it and being judged by a stream of squids for refusing to “Stop playing with that thing and move on to embrace your truest self, a being beyond physicality, a being that can take any form or shape it wants, something far great than a human being.”
Was awesome…
God I hate being human. I’d demand to be freed from this flesh prison, but I’m not sure there’s anything to actually let out… That I may actually BE the flesh prison.
I feel like I’m in this weird camp of “I Don’t Want To Be An Atheist!”
Not because I fear Hell or anything, I just find the concept of a cold purely material universe where no greater force than Entropy exists scarier than any interpretation of Tartarus!
Ego death is a hell of a thing…
I don’t think it’s that unusual. Most people are just pretty good at pretending that they believe in a higher power and repressing that fear that maybe this is all we get.
At least personally there was a period of about a year where I went through every apologetics argument I could find in order to try and hang onto the religion I grew up with, followed by another year where I called myself a deist before I confronted the possibility that there was really no evidence for anything more than materialism. I wound up reaching the conclusion that unless we find more evidence, most religions and supernatural beliefs are just wishful thinking. And given my personality, I couldn’t really ignore that conclusion once I got there.
It is a bit overwhelming. I tend to fall back on acknowledging that I am part of the universe rather than in opposition to it as a way of confronting that existential dread. Plus, entropy is actually not as scary as it seems at first since space and time are really, really big compared to the scales we perceive and think in. That leaves lots of places where order can appear without violating the second law of thermodynamics, and our species is very unlikely to ever really reach that point where the heat death of the universe affects us personally.
So I just file “the cold indifference of the universe” away in the same area as knowing the sun will one day expand and consume Earth: it’s interesting to know how it all works, a little scary, but very unlikely to ever significantly affect this little pocket of the universe I perceive as my self.
I… I want to hug you, I feel like I’ve actually found someone who gets it, instead of another edgelord mocking me for “Trying to cling to sky daddy faerie tales”
I’m sorry I can’t… I can’t accept a world where death is the final answer for us all… It’s it’s too much…
Yeah I just worry he might do what I did and find Gaia. Us earth worshippers are annoying enough without Dawkins among us. Though I’ll acknowledge I already had a foot in the door to pantheism at the time
I think Dawkins would simply acknowledge it as a hallucination brought on by cultural concepts.
Eh, I think he’s too stubborn and too good at defining his terms to go that route. I love the idea of Spinoza’s pantheistic view of the universe, but I would never tell the average person that because I don’t want to end up in the same box as Einstein, where just because I use the word “God,” people assume I’m religious.
Personally, I think Dawkins would wind up going the same route as Sagan, defining mystical experiences related to the universe as “numinous” rather than “religious” for precisely that reason: because it’s really obnoxious when people take your words out of context, so stick to using very specific words that don’t carry the baggage of religion.
That’s hilarious! I had no idea there was more to this. Thanks for sharing.
Now I gotta track down Rogan and Peterson talking about Dawkins.
If you’re a fan of extreme cringe, Jordan Peterson’s podcast episode with Richard Dawkins is the source for all that. But the double helix thing was probably the most entertaining one.
Here it is: https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/the-jordan-b-peterson-podcast/id1184022695?i=1000574664589
Holy crap, I just listened to it, it’s a monologue by Peterson. He’s just talking at Dawkins, it’s incredible. Completely oblivious.
20 minutes of rambling builds up to Jordan Peterson saying he thinks people can comprehend DNA by moving their consciousness down to the micro level. Dawkins just repeats that back baffled. Then before he can even give a proper response, Peterson says: “I have have taken extremely high doses of psilocybin.”
The best cringe.
How the fuck do you “move consciousness” and what is the “micro level”,
I understand all of these words, but they are meaningless in this order!
Of course Dawkins and Peterson are rubbing elbows, I mean Peterson is basically the top person on Harris’ speed dial.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/shorts/NvzMJqkZV74
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Isn’t Richard Dawkins a bigger transphobe than Peterson, having literally compared being trans to wearing blackface?
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Because Dawkins shouldn’t get a prize for being merely “Not as insane as the other bigot!”
What’s your understanding? Because he literally had humanitarian awards for basically being the biggest piece of shit ever when it came to women and transpeople, especially if they were both!