It is not that pseudoscience and superstition and new age so called beliefs
and fundamentalist zealotry are something new.
They've been with us for as long as we've been human.
But we live in an age based on science and technology
with formidable technological powers.
Science and technology are propelling us forward at accelerating rates.
That's right and if we don't understand it
by we I mean the general public
if it's something that - 'Oh, I'm not good at that. I don't know anything about it.'
then who is making all the decisions about science and technology
that are going to determine what kind of future our children live in?
- What's the danger of all this? -
- I mean this is not the thing... -
It is two kinds of things. One is what I just talked about
that we've arranged the society based on science and technology
in which nobody understands anything about science and technology.
And this combustable mixture of ignorance and power
sooner or later is gonna blow up in our faces.
And the second reason that I'm worried about this is that
science is more than a body of knowledge.
It's a way of thinking.
A way of skeptically interrogating the universe
with a fine understanding of the human fallability.
If we are not able to ask skeptical questions to interrogate those who tell us
that something is true. To be skeptical of those in authority
then we are up for grabs for the next charlatan
political or religious, who comes ambling along.
It is a thing that Jefferson laid great stress on.
It wasn't enough he said to inshrine some rights in a constitution or bill of rights.
The people had to be educated
and they have to practice their skepticism and education.
Otherwise we don't run the government.
The government runs us.
You see, people read stock market quotations and financial pages.
Look how complex that is.
People are able to look at sports statistics.
Look how many people can do that.
Understanding science is not more difficult than that.
It doesn't involve greater intellectual activities.
But the thing about science is first of all
it's after what the universe really is and not what makes us feel better.
And a lot of the competing doctrines
are after what feels good.
And not what, what...
- True -
- Science does not prove religion. Because religion is faith-based. -
Let's look a little more deeply into that.
What is faith?
It is believe in the absence of evidence.
Now, I don't propose to tell anybody what to believe, but for me
believing when there is no compelling evidence
is a mistake.
The idea is to withhold believe until there is compelling evidence.
And if the universe does not comply with our predispositions
Okay, then we have the wrenching obligation to accommodate to the way the universe is.
So who is more humble?
The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us?
Or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth
and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved in the writing of this book?
I lost both my parents about 12 and 15 years ago
I had a great relationship with them
I really miss them.
I would love to believe they are spirits who are around somewhere.
And I'd give almost anything to spend five minutes a year with them.
- Do you hear their voices ever? -
Sometimes, about six or eight times since their death have verdict??
'Carl!'
just in the voice of my father or my mother.
Now, I don't think that it means that they are in the next room.
I think it means that I've had an auditory hallucination about it.
I was with them so long. I heard their voices so often.
Why shouldn't I be able to make a vivid recollection.
- This is what is interesting about this for me -
- You convince me long time ago that it was arrogant for me or anyone else -
- to believe there wasn't life outside of our... -
To exclude the possibility
- to exclude the possibility was an arrogance of intellect that we should not ??? -
- You couldn't prove. You didn't know it was there. But the arrogance...
Wait, we don't know if He is there
We don't know if He is not there.
Let's look!
- and if you take that, why can't you say there is alot we don't know?
I say that.
Here watch, there is a lot that we don't know.
That's what I believe. But that does not mean that every fraudulent claim has to be accepted.
We demand the most rigorous standards of evidence
especially on what is important to us.
So if some guy comes up to me
a channeller or a medium: 'I can put you in touch with your parents'
Well because I want so terribly to believe that
I know I have to need to reach in for added reserves of skepticism
because I'm likely to be fooled
and much more minor, to have my money taken.
- You are living with myelodysplasia -
Or I have been
- And just share with us because of your sense of language -
- and sense of understanding and being afflicted in perspective -
- what do you think about it and what does it do for you too? -
I didn't have any near death experiences. I didn't have a religious conversion.
- but you thought about what it would be to die -
Certainly and what it would be like for my family.
And in what I think about what it would be like for me
because I don't think it is likely that there is anything you think about after you're dead.
- That's it -
A long dreamless sleep.
I'd love to believe the opposite but I don't have any evidence.
But one thing that it has done is
to enhance my sense of appreciation for the beauty of life
and of the universe and the sheer joy of being alive.
- You've had a healthy portion of that before this but even you it happens to -
- appreciation -
Every moment
every inanimate object
And to say nothing about the exquisite complexity of living beings.
You imagine missing it all and suddenly it is so much more precious.
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