Comments by "Ray caster" (@raycaster4398) on "Big Think" channel.

  1. Of all groups in the world the most highly accomplished scientists are also the group with the highest incidence of atheism. Intelligence, curiosity, **education**, critical free-thinking, empiricism and analysis. Niel here, by avoiding labels is merely being politically correct. Also as a scientist, his institution and research is funded by the public which often times has governmental (with conservative and even fundamentalist) taxpayer support, so he is forced to be an accommodationist. To deflect criticism he overemphasizes militant atheism as if all atheists are militant which they are not, so this is clever cover up. He punts on the fact that religion (personal revelation, scripture, dogma, faith) cannot determine truth whereas science (observation, theory, experiment, analysis, conclusion, consensus) is the only way to determine truth. He knows that religion derives from an ancient hunter-gatherer community bio-evolutionary survival mechanism and that religionists are indoctrinated from an early age when they're neurocognition is most susceptible to regimentation. Add religious ritual and tradition and this results in a firm often lifelong intense emotional attachment to religion. So when a scientist presents rationality, reason and the truth -- that there is no evidence of God or the afterlife -- people can't handle the truth. People...can't handle...the truth.
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