“Things get technical when guest David and the hosts discuss science, scientists, and the MAP community. What place does science have in the community and what role does it play in conversations with non-MAPs? How can we as a community improve relations with scientists and how they represent us to the outside world? And do facts really not care about your feelings?
01) Making Sense with Sam Harris #160 – The Revenge of History (with Michael Weiss and Yascha Mounk)
“In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Michael Weiss and Yascha Mounk about the state of global politics. They discuss the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, the prospect that democracy could fail in the US, Trump’s political instincts, the political liability of “wokeness,” the Left’s failure to re-think its support of Chavez, the dangers of political polarization, the attractions of extreme partisanship, cancel culture, and other topics.
Michael Weiss is an internationally respected investigative journalist who has covered the wars in Syria and Ukraine and published widely on Russian espionage and disinformation. His first book, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror (co-written with Hassan Hassan), was a New York Times bestseller and named one of the Top Ten Books on Terrorism by the Wall Street Journal as well as one of the Best Books of 2015 by The Times of London. Weiss is a regular guest on CNN, MSNBC, the BBC and Real Time with Bill Maher. He writes a column for The Daily Beast.
Yascha Mounk is a writer, academic, and public speaker known for his work on the rise of populism and the crisis of liberal democracy. He is an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and a senior advisor at Protect Democracy. A frequent contributor to The Atlantic, the New York Times, and Die Zeit, Mounk is the host of Slate’s The Good Fight Podcast. He has written three books: Stranger in My Own Country, The Age of Responsibility, and The People versus Democracy, which explains the causes of the populist rise and investigates how to renew liberal democracy.”
01) Bleach Cult Performing Unsanctioned Human Experiments on Uganda Villages
“At the beginning of April, I started to receive messages on Facebook from a man claiming to have proof that the industrial bleach and water purifier, chlorine dioxide (Miracle Mineral Solution – MMS), can not only cure malaria, but can do so in as little as two hours. The messages, which included a link to a now-deleted YouTube video, were sent by 25-year-old former clairvoyant, Sam Little, who ended by stating, “The truth will always win in the end!”. The video Sam sent me a link to was titled, ‘Malaria cured in 2 hours with MMS Miracle mineral solution’, and was identical to the Red Cross “study” 7 years prior. Horrified that history was repeating itself, I asked him how he came to find this obscure video on YouTube, only to discover that he actually starred in it. Sam was the one who was front and centre, conning Ugandan villagers to feed this industrial bleach to their children, and no, I am not being overly dramatic, as the video predominantly shows children rather than adults drinking this toxic fluid. Over the following 6 weeks, I, and several others, probed Sam for information regarding this new “clinical trial” and, to our horror, discovered that he was only a cog in a much larger machine. This is the story of how, with Sam’s help, we stumbled upon a network of bleach-pushers that had conned up to 50,000 Ugandans to consume MMS by convincing them it was a gift from God.”
01) Andrew Yang on debate lineup: ‘We could not have drawn it up any better’
“Tech entrepreneur and Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang is expressing enthusiasm over the first debate lineup.
“We could not have drawn it up any better if we had been there selecting the draw ourselves,” Yang, who is the founder of Venture for America, told Hill.TV during an interview on Tuesday.
About Rising: Rising is a weekday morning show with bipartisan hosts that breaks the mold of morning TV by taking viewers inside the halls of Washington power like never before. The show leans into the day’s political cycle with cutting edge analysis from DC insiders who can predict what is going to happen. It also sets the day’s political agenda by breaking exclusive news with a team of scoop-driven reporters and demanding answers during interviews with the country’s most important political newsmakers.”
01) The Watchmaker Argument – Debunked (Teleological Argument – Refuted)
“As most famously presented by William Paley in his theological work titled “Natural Theology”, the Watchmaker Analogy (teleological argument) is a recurring argument for a designer, which, by way of analogy, asserts that complexity requires a designer.
The way Paley put it is essentially as follows: if you were walking across a field and saw a watch lying upon the ground, you wouldn’t assume that it had come together by chance because it’s too ordered and complicated. Rather, you would assume that it had a conscious and intelligent designer. By way of analogy, Paley then went on to argue that because life and indeed the universe is ordered and complicated, it too must’ve had a conscious and intelligent designer.
Throughout the video I pint-point several flaws and fallacies that those who use the Watchmaker tend to commit, but for a very brief summery (extremely brief), they are as follows:
1. False Analogy:
An analogy is a comparison between things that have similar features for the purpose of explaining a principle or an idea, and in this case, Paley insists that a comparison can be made between the complexity of a watch and the complexity of the universe, which both imply that they had a designer.
2. False Cause Fallacy:
Essentially, like all False Cause Fallacies, the Watchmaker Argument mistakenly confuses correlation with causation. It recognizes a relationship between complexity and designers, and then concludes that one necessarily implies the other.
3. Ignores Evolution by Natural Selection:
It completely ignores evolution by natural selection. Without getting into it too deeply, natural selection has been completely and utterly proven to be an unconscious process that has given rise to countless complex and purposed organisms. The watchmaker argument ignores this in the attempt to substantiate it’s black and white fallacy (deliberate designer or randomness).
4. Special Pleading:
Its core premise asserts that purpose and complexity requires a designer, and so if we draw the Watchmaker Argument out to its logical conclusion – that there is a god and that it created the universe and everything in it, then by applying the argument’s logic to itself we must conclude that this god too had a designer, and so on and so forth for infinity…
5. Contradiction:
The Watchmaker Argument is self-contradicting. The argument first assumes that a watch is different from nature, which it indirectly claims is uncomplicated and random. However, it then states that since the universe is so complicated and ordered it too must have a creator. Thus, it gives the universe two incompatible and contradicting qualities.
6. Shoemaker:
The Watchmaker Argument doesn’t imply a designer – it implies that there are many designers. After finding that watch upon the ground, imagine if you then saw beside it a shoe. Would you assume that a watchmaker made that shoe? Of course not – you would assume that a shoemaker made it.
7. Ex Nihilo The Watchmaker Argument acts as if a watchmaker creates a watch from nothing, when this simply isn’t true.
A watch, like all human creations, is a rearrangement of energy and mater that already existed.
8. Doesn’t Support Theism:
The Watchmaker Argument doesn’t support theism. Even if it were accepted as a sound argument, it would only prove that a universe had a universe designer – and that’s it. It wouldn’t prove a particular religion to be true.
9. Incompetent Design:
An all-powerful and all-loving god would not create organisms with the type of suboptimal design that can be seen in nature. Meaning that either that god isn’t omnipotent or that it isn’t omnibenevolent – or both!”
01) 10 things you didn’t know about orgasm – Mary Roach
“Bonk” author Mary Roach delves into obscure scientific research, some of it centuries old, to make 10 surprising claims about sexual climax, ranging from the bizarre to the hilarious. (This talk is aimed at adults. Viewer discretion advised.)”
