Enemies of Reason available to Americans
Category: Skepticism
Posted on: August 15, 2007 12:53 PM, by PZ Myers
Thanks to Blake for mentioning this: you can watch Dawkins' The Enemies of Reason, part 1, on Google Video right now. Yay!
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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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Comments
You know what I like about cheap blank DVDs? Easy video samizdat, and no region codes unless you insist on it.
Posted by: Brian X | August 15, 2007 12:57 PM
Glad to be of service!
Posted by: Blake Stacey | August 15, 2007 1:01 PM
Hey, thanks Blake Stacey!
Posted by: Matt the heathen | August 15, 2007 1:15 PM
04:30 - Dawkins lets his freak flute fly.
Posted by: forsen | August 15, 2007 1:30 PM
Thank you!
It's not just Americans that are left out, it's us Finns too!
Posted by: Markus | August 15, 2007 1:32 PM
Hey, I'm Swedish and the video works great for me as well. Maybe I'm american at heart?! ;)
Anyway - thanx for the upload!
Posted by: Pekka S | August 15, 2007 1:32 PM
I downloaded it with bittorrent last night. Honestly, I was a little bummed by it. In the previous series, he got to go around and meet some real crazies, and take on a subject that was traditionally taboo to attack. In this one, his targets are just so easy it's not fun anymore - I mean, he's right, the amount of superstition in the world is shocking and dismaying, but there's just only so much satisfaction in telling a mellow 80-year-old man with a funny mustache that he can't douse.
Posted by: jeffk | August 15, 2007 1:37 PM
What, can't you get Bad Science over there?
Grumble, grumble, not getting the recognition I deserve, grumble. :-(
Bob
Posted by: Bob O'H | August 15, 2007 1:42 PM
jeffk, I disagree.
I think showing the goofs dowsing is the perfect setup for his talk about vaccines at the end. Looks like next week he moves on to alternative medicine. Maybe people will see the parallels between the dowsers and the homeopaths, and how double-blind studies are necessary to expose the effectiveness of both methods.
Posted by: Matt the heathen | August 15, 2007 1:52 PM
I LOVE the first shot - the way the camera pans along the chanters and comes to rest on a very skeptical-looking Richard Dawkins.
Boy, am I'm going to enjoy this!
Posted by: CalGeorge | August 15, 2007 2:51 PM
I watched the video and when Dawkins stated that reason was the result of logic, observation and evidence I thought maybe we missed the boat with the scarlet A. We could have used olé which would have had the added benefit of aggravating the right wing bigots who are all worried about the incursion of the brown people.
Posted by: CJ | August 15, 2007 3:04 PM
An excellent program and well needed. Those who say these are easy targets should remember the huge number of believer there are out there - 25% of the UK public in astrology for example. Where the series perhaps lacks balence, is to show how facinating science is. This program might make a few doubt, but not convert many to the study of science.
Posted by: sailor | August 15, 2007 3:31 PM
That's a good suggestion CJ, but no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I for one would be proud to wear a scarlet olé. And, if anyone gives you flak, just tell them you're a bullfighter.
Posted by: Brownian | August 15, 2007 3:45 PM
"Bullfighter." V-Nice. =D
Posted by: Kseniya | August 15, 2007 4:03 PM
It's very well done.
Watch 38:09 - 38:16. Very funny!
Posted by: CalGeorge | August 15, 2007 4:39 PM
I really liked the part about the pigeon looking over the left shoulder. It highlights the mechanics of irrational behavior and false beliefs in a way that anybody can understand.
Posted by: RamblinDude | August 15, 2007 7:13 PM
"The light from some of the closer stars started its journey in the time of the dinosaurs."
Sorry Richard, you got that wrong. In fact, the scale of your error (assuming a 'closer star' is 100 light years away, and 'the time of the dinosaurs' was 100 million years ago) is equivalent to stating the distance between New York and Los Angeles as 4 metres!
Posted by: Ian B Gibson | August 15, 2007 7:15 PM
That's really close. He doesn't say how close he means so you can't say he's off by any distance.
Posted by: Steve_C | August 15, 2007 7:21 PM
100 million light years is not even in our local group of galaxies. Oops...
I guess in the BIG scheme of things, 100 million light years is still kind of close...
Posted by: Matt the heathen | August 15, 2007 8:01 PM
Since he was talking about stars you could see by lying on your back in a field, I think it's safe to say that this excludes any stars not in our galaxy.
Posted by: Ian B Gibson | August 15, 2007 8:14 PM
It's on Bittorrent, too. About 650 peers at present.
Posted by: Guest | August 15, 2007 11:00 PM
No, he's correct about the star thing. The light from some of the closer stars DID start out towards the Earth at the time of the dinosaurs. It also reached the Earth at the time of the dinosaurs, or 100 years or so after they were wiped out.
Actually given the size of the Milky Way all the light reaching us must have started out within the time our own Homo sapiens species has been around.
In true creationist mode, doesn't this mean that, since Richard Dawkins has clearly made a mistake here, we cannot take anything else he says as a 'fact'.
Therefore evolution MUST be false and GOD does exist!
Halleluja!
Posted by: MartinC | August 16, 2007 3:49 AM
Great video. We need it broadcast here. Dawkins nails it when he says, " we trust feelings over observable evidence." And, education has failed to bring observation skills
Posted by: Rick Schauer | August 16, 2007 11:53 AM
I guess it's just a bit of a let down after reading his books and articles that he covers so little ground here.
That's television for you.
Posted by: Ian B Gibson | August 16, 2007 1:02 PM