Mind=Blown

Malkintosh · 6 months

Relevant for those of you who want it put differently.

instasquid · 6 months

As much as I love this quote, it only works for atheists. Theists will claim that their deity will just "re-happen" or some shit.

SimilarImage · 6 months

Age	User	Title	Reddit	Cmnt	Points
3 months	Tiger337	Pretty Awesome Quote	here	602	1526
2 months	undercurrents	There is no god and that's the simple truth - Penn Jillette	here	27	120
1 month	tralaklypse	Penn Jillette makes a strong point.	here	0	9

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Alifib · 6 months

Honestly, this quote is question begging. There's no reason for a religious person to accept it as true. Given their beliefs, God could easily just re-reveal everything.

the_onetwo · 6 months

Sam Harris gives a similar analogy which I loved, how if we lost all knowledge and had to start over, science would eventually pan out but how would we be able to determine that Jesus is the son of god? etc; I believe it's in the beginning of 'End of Faith," though correct me if I'm wrong

here_for_the_lols · 6 months

This guy is one of my favorite entertainers. I think his aggressive style of delivery can put some people off, but his points are more often than not very well thought out and thought provoking. Very underrated!!

OhhhhhDirty · 6 months

Anyone else getting tired of seeing "Mind = Blown?" I mean did it really "blow your mind" man? I would say like seeing a space shuttle launch or something would be mind-blowing, but reading a Penn Jillette quote?

Don't get me wrong it's a great quote, but I think the term mind-blowing is being devalued, and pretty soon seeing someone on the side of the road with a flat tire will blow the mind.

paidijones · 6 months

E.G. Isaac Newton developed Calculus, but I heard that unknown to Europe the Chinese had discovered it long before that. BTW correct me if I'm incorrect please.

[deleted] · 6 months

Analysing it from a scientific angle:

No, he's not right. First there's religion, then there's science.

Remember Karl Popper? Science is falsification. For what humanity didn't understand, they filled in the blank spots with some form of 'god'. These can be seen as a hypothesis. Then science came to falsify them.

Perhaps it is religion (as a first stage towards science) that seperates us from animals. If we didn't question our surroundings and gave it some interpretations, we'd just still be scaveging.

TheMultiEnabled · 6 months

This is obvious, Not mindblowing.

Roflkopt3r · 6 months

Don't be too certain about it. Our science is not the reality itself, it's just a model. If everything would be to wiped out, a different model may emerge.

I'ld suggest the ideas of radical constructivism and the allegory of the cave in this context. They don't even need to be accepted as true, just considered as a possibility.

Beretot · 6 months

Makes sense, though I disagree on the wording. The way science is built, every piece of discovery largely depends on the interpretation and creativity of the discoverer. Newton's Laws aren't the absolute truth, they're just one way to interpret reality. Who knows how we'd rediscover the Euclidian space. And think of how it branches out. A simple difference there and Calculus is suddenly completely different.

I agree that "new science" would be wildly closer to our own than the "new religion" from our religion. But to say there would be no differences in our science if it were wiped clean... That's absurd.

skibblez_n_zits · 6 months

How I feel about OP posting this.

Vadorm1r · 6 months

Religions being bullshit is not a proof that there is no god.

Bepador · 6 months

Does anyone else read this in his voice, or is it just me?

jacobtaylor1987 · 6 months

THIS blew your mind? Man, your mind has a pretty low bar.

koyo4 · 6 months

While religion will never be the same, like science and math, philosophy, of which i believe in, will also be the same.

thegreenwookie · 6 months

How does this logic provide proof of there being no god? Why would a being with unlimited power make anything the same ever again? And why do atheists care so much about the non existence of a god? Atheism is just as much of a crutch as any other religion.

But I have no clue as to what's, really, going on and neither do any of you.

Phatfunkadeelio · 6 months

Anyone else find this statement contradictory. How do you know if you wiped out religion it wouldn't come back in a similar form? It has never been done....or even tested...so aren't you taking a logical scientific argument and backing it with zero scientific support? Just saying...my mind was the opposite of blown.

SurfinTheWeb · 6 months

You know how I know he's right? Because this picture has been posted 6 different times now and every time it found its way back to the frontpage.

Dendarri · 6 months

This would be true if you assumed there is no God. If you took the position that there is, then you could assert that he would communicate his existence to us again in the same way he has in the past.

It's not really a mind-blowing statement, but rather an unsupported self-referential one. Unless we make an isolated space colony and run the experiment...

Poop_Is_Edible · 6 months

I'm no theist, but this does not offer any reason why there is no god.

frownyface · 6 months

I'm not sure if it's true, but I've heard that eventually (hundreds of billions of years?) stars will be too far away from each other due to universal expansion for any light to reach each other. Any new civilizations developing in that environment would have no evidence they aren't alone. Virtually all of astronomy would never occur to them.

daveburnt · 6 months

Burn library at Alexandria? Set back progress of humanity who knows how many centuries...but only set back none the less.

Mick-the-Stick · 6 months

The way we represent things in science may change, like way we draw/represent atoms. Just because the way people represent god will change, does not make god any more untrue than science... Oh wait, yes it does.

tyskstil · 6 months

Kuhn would disagree...

mindfolded · 6 months

Book Recommendation: A Canticle for Leibowitz

"A Canticle for Leibowitz opens 600 years after 20th century civilization has been destroyed by a global nuclear war, known as the "Flame Deluge". The text reveals that as a result of the war there was a violent backlash against the culture of advanced knowledge and technology that had led to the development of nuclear weapons. During this backlash, called the "Simplification," anyone of learning, and eventually anyone who could even read, was likely to be killed by rampaging mobs, who proudly took on the name of "Simpletons". Illiteracy became almost universal, and books were destroyed en masse."

My physics teacher recommended this book for me when I was in the 10th grade and I feel it's my duty to pass on this recommendation. Great read.

ster_ster_ster · 6 months

This is the atheist equivalent of Christians quoting the Bible to defend themselves. Anyone who believes in a higher power would think their God/Gods/Goddess would just speak to someone else and tell their tale because... you know... it makes perfect sense that a deity would just pick a few random people to tell their story to and have the rest of humanity believe on faith of those individuals.

troahey · 6 months

I generally agree with/upvote r/atheism stuff but I really hate penn gillete so I'm gonna argue this...

How do we know science would be formed again the exact same way?

I'd say a lot of the religions today strike me as extremely similar with just small differences in the details, jesus not muhammad etc. etc.

So penn must REALLY be stressing the word "exactly" here.

Obviously soft sciences like psychology/sociology/anthropology would most likely form differently in exactly the same way that he asserts religions would form differently (some other thing in its place but not exactly the same thing). Based on the principles of his statement, we're now forced acknowledge that soft sciences are some how analogous to religion??? I really dont like this conclusion but it seems like thats where it leads...

So lets move on to the most hard science of all, math. Math can take a lot of forms, calculus, algebra etc, its not just arithmetic. Also, other cultures in the world at different times have used extremely different systems for arithmetic. In fact, ancient arabians used an arithmetic system that would be likened better to the arithmetic system used by computers. Its really just by chance that the system we use now beat out the arabian system so you cant say that science would certainly form in EXACTLY the same way.

You may be tempted to suggest that ultimately whatever math system you use, you will eventually lead to "exactly" the same place due to universal properties of math.

To which I argue that no matter what religion you use you will eventually conclude that "there is something else/a power in this universe bigger than me"

Finally, Science and Religion do not have to be mutually exclusive. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand you cant swing a dead cat without hitting some fundie thats willing to sacrifice science in the name of "religion". But just keep in mind that THEIR war on science sometimes tricks us into believing that these two ideas compete. But really its a false dichotomy.

In conclusion: Penn Gillette is a fucking twat.

P.s. Dont be butthurt, if you think I'm wrong, tell me why.

Xythan · 6 months

Obviously Penn has not read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn.

Science would not "re-happen" as it did before...however, something akin to what we believe we know could form over time. That said, religion recurring as it happened previously is infinitely unlikely.

Robann · 6 months

But.... Wouldn't some people reinvent religion as a super effective way of controlling the masses? and wouldn't most stories make their appearance in that religion, albeit with different settings/characters? The stories all have their purpose. Just like the laws of nature would be reinvented with different names...

Neither one will be rediscovered EXACTLY the same way, but I think both would re-emerge

evilbob2200 · 6 months

Funny story... He is really good friends with glen beck

tangst · 6 months

That's silly. How do you think we still continued with religious views even after several wipe outs to the slate? People will always look for a higher power to believe in.

IHateEveryone3 · 6 months

Please stop posting blatant propaganda.

Celebrity Testimonial

Celebrity endorsements are the oldest trick in the book, and you would think we know longer care what brand of underwear Michael Jordan wears or what kind of appliances Kelly Ripa uses. Nonetheless, celebrity pitches stick in peoples minds, so even if we know better than to buy something just because a famous person claims to like it, we nonetheless remember the pitch and the product.

iknowadude · 6 months

our human intelligence has no idea where to even begin comprehending the cosmos. just as it's easy for religions to say you're reincarnated, go to heaven or hell, or whatever mumbo-jumbo they claim to have life and the universe figured out with, is one step below atheist saying you die and nothing happens, there is no god etc. your guess is a more educated claim but still a baseless one.

squeamish_ossifrage · 6 months

I like this, but I have one bone of contention... and I know posting it here is a bit of risk, but I'll preface by saying that I am not in any way a religious or theistic person. But I think it's fairly clear to say that all of the nonsense that is establish will contain the similar thread of an existence of god. Granted all of the mythos around it will be utter bullshit, but they will all follow a similar pattern. Now with this quote in mind, using the argument that the validity of science is in it's recreation, the likely re-creation of "god" would hence lend a modicum of validity to it.

I only make this point because there are times when I'm reading r/atheism quotes which have a sort of dogmatic certitude of the non-existence of god which borders on preaching the same way that saying any certain religion is correct is a form of preaching. If god is as likely as a teapot in orbit or a flying spaghetti monster and we consider an infinitely expanding nebulous universe, than all those things deserve the credence of their existence being possible, though highly improbable.

edit: added the words "in orbit"

wavefunction84 · 6 months

This shouldn't be labeled "Mind=Blown." It should be totally obvious to anyone.

The fact that it gets a "Mind=Blown" title is sad.

trollin_gay · 6 months

Repost?

khakimage · 6 months

I've tried to state this as a razor, solely because it would then be known as Jilette's Razor, but I never got anything satisfactorily succinct and precise. Maybe someone else can help me out here:

"Scientific discoveries are those which can be rediscovered by someone with no knowledge of the original discovery, making observations of the natural world, without reliance on any trusted sources."

Jeremymia · 6 months

I read the picture, and I was like, "that's an interesting point", so I upvoted. But then I went back and read the title of the post (mind=blown), so I downvoted. But then I was like "THIS ISN'T FAIR TO THE QUOTE."

I AM SO CONFLICTED YOU GUYS.

adogmatic · 6 months

Seems to me like a counter-factual piece of reasoning. You could say the very same thing about evolution. if the dice were to be thrown again, who knows what we'd end up with.

In other words, an interesting piece of thought, but not really a valid argument.

brainflakes · 6 months

I honestly wouldn't be so sure that at the very least a book similar to the Bible wouldn't be recreated. Certainly not to the exact extent that science would be replicated, but certainly we would at least see analogous stories to those from the Bible come about again by that time.

a_stray_bullet · 6 months

not sure how many times this has been reposted in the passed 2 months

TheTalkWalk · 6 months

I actually disagree with this. I am by a long shot no expert in the field of science however I do think that science has a random evolution just as religion would. To many random interests and hypothesis would be different in our intelligent people of history.

phoncey · 6 months

The fact that every religion is different doesn't automatically mean that God doesn't exist. It could likely mean that God does exist but every religion simply gets it wrong, or at least not completely right.

thetacticalpanda · 6 months

I do not understand why r/atheism is so obsessed with this quote.

Any theist who is critical of their own belief knows that they are dealing in revealed truth. Without 'Revelation,' they would not be saved/have knowledge of the true Religion/God.
Claiming that religion is false is not an assault against the existence of god, it's an assault against religion.
Devil's Advocate (I posted this in another karma whoring thread that used the same picture): "It's a rediculous proposition to imagine a scenario where every trace of my religion is erased. If you burnt every bible and deleted every copy, we would still have the pious who remember the holy book. If you killed every man, woman, and child with knowledge of the Bible you would still have religious artifacts, locations, and places of worship. Say you were even able to erase all of this: it would still not affect the truth of my belief. If you removed every trace of Alexander the Great, Alexander the Great and his deeds would have still existed. God sent his only son to die for our sins. Erasing the memory of Christianity would not assault the truth of that event. What it comes down to is this: You believe in a God who cares about human affairs or you do not. Eliminating Christianity would not affect what I believe to be the truth, which is that Jesus suffered and died for us."

Green_like_the_color · 6 months

If he added "I believe" to the beginning, this would be correct.

This guy is a terrible representative of atheism. He is an obnoxious, arrogant loudmouth. His skills as a magician are about all he has going for him. That and Teller. In fact, he could take a lesson from Teller about how to get your point across without ever having to open your giant yap.

DemPants · 6 months

This is a really interesting thought. I wonder what would happen if today we wiped out all the memory and documentation of religion?

divinesleeper · 6 months

Everyone on here is already an atheist, right? We all already know these arguments, that's why we're atheist. So why are we posting this stuff?

[deleted] · 6 months

LOL. I used this argument with my roommates. I live with a Christian, Catholic, and a Muslim. One actually says... "well how do you know your science is true? It's ALL theory. We thoerize about atoms and physics. Even our sense of touch is all theory.Everything is theory!" (funny because he's a biological science major too).

[deleted] · 6 months

Yes

But in our actual history it was religion that triggered science.

I guess there is no need for science if there is absolutely no religion. Religion used to fill the void in our knowledge about natural phenomena. Rain had it's gods, fire had it's gods and water too ofcourse. At the moment we established these beliefs, we also imbedded some curiousity about 'what if...'

Please, for all that is reasonable, never discard the relevance of religion when it comes to the 'invention' of science.

the_codfather · 6 months

Why are people upvoting something that was on the front page a few weeks ago?

SSJSwagger · 6 months

I was wondering if r/atheism would ever show some Penn love.

taters_precious · 6 months

Well that is like saying "If all knowledge of past events and historical texts were wiped out, someone would figure it out again." But they wouldn't. Not that I am particularly for or against anything, I just mean that religion is based on what people believe are historical events that occurred and were notated in such books as the Bible or the Quran. Therefore it is kinda invalid.

rlittleton1 · 6 months

I upvoted the ever-loving shit out of this post.

Temple_Will_Fall · 6 months

Done.

CatholicFaithful · 6 months

There would be different nonsense, but it would have the same purpose. It would instruct us not to kill each other, not to steal, to love one another. And that nonsense would come first, and would allow agricultural and industrial civilizations to develop. And along with it education and science. And eventually, you'd get a whole subreddit who acknowledge nothing of value in religion. It might not be pleasant looking back into the swamp, but it is where we came from and there was no other way.

troubleman · 6 months

Bullshit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_%28philosophy%29

m3tzgore · 6 months

word!

Spectre93 · 6 months

I know right, I always assumed Penn was his surname too.

pandarotti · 6 months

This is quite true. Except when you begin to study gravitational forces.

whiteknight521 · 6 months

The problem with this statement is that theists will just say "God would never allow his knowledge to be wiped out." Put this one in the "brilliant observations that are useless in an argument with a theist" category.

niperwiper · 6 months

I greatly enjoy pointing out why there was drama in The Book of Eli to Christians. I say "So what is the big deal? Why would it matter if the last copy of the Bible were destroyed and why is Eli so intent on protecting it?" It forces them to admit this very point.

morganga · 6 months

Nonsense! Everybody knows all you need is a million monkeys :)

Travis-Touchdown · 6 months

Not true, though. We don't understand the world perfectly, and even if we did the world changes. Scientific discoveries derived from live samples of species that no longer exist can't be recreated, for example.

So no, if all scienctific knowledge was erased, it would never be rebuilt exactly to where it is, because some knowledge can, and will, be lost forever.

Cynical_Lurker · 6 months

Since when have gnostic atheists been praised? It's almost as bad as gnostic theism.

JoeOfTex · 6 months

This would actually be a really good experiment. What if all that nonsense came back.

shapisftw · 6 months

I'm proud to say that when I posted my picture on 4chan and asked how I look I've been told that I look like Penn Jillete.

MFazzina · 6 months

I believe it, but only because I accept science on faith. It's not exactly a proof...

soonerguy46 · 6 months

You're comaparing things that are fundamental with things that were written by man...

Falcon636 · 6 months

OH EM GEE, REDDIT KNOWS PENN'S SUNDAY SCHOOL TOO :'D

Amryxx · 6 months

Where is the mindblowing part? You can say pretty much anything if you don't have to prove it.

Has anyone submitted a time-is-circular-like-a-donut theory yet?

koavf · 6 months

Please don't submit an image that's just text. You can submit a self post with the same message.

P33J · 6 months

Where is his empirical evidence for this?

5up3rj · 6 months

I'm getting tired of seeing versions of this. There is nothing profound about it. If there's no God, then this is obviously true, and if there is, then it is obviously false. It seems like many of you want it to be profound, but it's trite, sorry.

afjamg88 · 6 months

This is coming from a guy who named his daughter Moxie CrimeFighter.

CowboyRocksteady · 6 months

...Spoken by a stage performer who graduated from 'clown college' with no actual professional degrees in religion, philosophy, or science. Two grains of salt imo.

m3ds334 · 6 months

I understand what he's saying, but doesn't the "some nonsense in it's place" kinda have the same quality as science being figured out again. I mean if the truth science is rediscovered, why is the nonsense being rediscovered?

thewindustry · 5 months

Purely speculation and not fact. The problem with his argument is that he assumes religion is false.

Thus, it's not an argument based solely on solid facts. Based partially on speculation.


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