'Hey Bill Nye, How Do I Escape Religion?' #TuesdaysWithBill
Big Think
2018-06-06
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Today's #TuesdaysWithBill question deals with the unending conflict between science and religion. How does someone who has grown up indoctrinated with religious thinking break the old mold and learn to embrace science and reason?
It's important to adopt a critical approach to life and familiarize oneself with skeptical thinking. Stick to the facts. Evaluate claims. Judge for yourself whether the things people say are truly steeped in reason, or if it's all just wool over your eyes. These mindsets take time and effort to develop, so don't get discouraged if you don't become a totally rational, skeptical thinker on day 1.
All that said, there is one thing Bill cannot stress enough though: Do not confuse skepticism with cynicism.
Do you want to ask Bill a question for a future "Tuesdays with Bill?" Click here to learn how to submit: (http://goo.gl/Joiqzo).
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/bill-nye-on-how-to-become-a-skeptic
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Transcript - Hey Bill. I’m Andrew LaRue. I’m from northwest Ohio. Thanks for taking my question. My question is where — I’ve been indoctrinated with religion most of my life and I am 20 years old right now and I’m just kind of opening my mind up to what I’ve learned from science. And I’m just kind of wondering kind of by reeducating myself because religion is all I’ve really ever known. So I’m just looking to start over. Thank you.
Bill Nye: Andrew, this is a heavy question. How should you deal with science and religion? And what I tell everybody by analogy: When you learn about what we in science-education like to call skeptical thinking or critical thinking, where when someone says, "I have the ability to communicate with the dead," for example. At first you go wow really? And then they show you the evidence, which is you in a dark room and they hold hands and a ghost appears in the corner and you hear hissing sounds — shhhh, shhhh. If you’re led to believe that they’re ghosts, at first that seems quite reasonable to you. But after you start thinking about it skeptically, you go, "That’s probably a guy with a handkerchief on a stick and a steam kettle making hissing sounds probably." Which is what Houdini did by the way. So you come to abandon or change what you were brought up believing not in a moment, not in a revelatory instant, but over the process of many months and years.
So I encourage you, when it comes to religion, is to evaluate the claims which is a big thing in skeptical and critical thinking. Somebody claims that he— it was through his mind that he was able to get the tide to go extraordinarily low at the Red Sea. It could be. It could be, but there may be other explanations. It could be that when a football player or a baseball player in the U.S. has a successful play, hits a double in a critical point in a baseball game, scores a touchdown at an opportune moment — it could be that there is a divine spirit that enables this person to do this extraordinary thing at that moment. Or it could be that the person has been practicing this for years and years and years and he was at the right place at the right time and caught the ball or hit the ball or what have you. Both are explanations for you to evaluate.
It's important to adopt a critical approach to life and familiarize oneself with skeptical thinking. Stick to the facts. Evaluate claims. Judge for yourself whether the things people say are truly steeped in reason, or if it's all just wool over your eyes. These mindsets take time and effort to develop, so don't get discouraged if you don't become a totally rational, skeptical thinker on day 1.
All that said, there is one thing Bill cannot stress enough though: Do not confuse skepticism with cynicism.
Do you want to ask Bill a question for a future "Tuesdays with Bill?" Click here to learn how to submit: (http://goo.gl/Joiqzo).
Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/bill-nye-on-how-to-become-a-skeptic
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink
Transcript - Hey Bill. I’m Andrew LaRue. I’m from northwest Ohio. Thanks for taking my question. My question is where — I’ve been indoctrinated with religion most of my life and I am 20 years old right now and I’m just kind of opening my mind up to what I’ve learned from science. And I’m just kind of wondering kind of by reeducating myself because religion is all I’ve really ever known. So I’m just looking to start over. Thank you.
Bill Nye: Andrew, this is a heavy question. How should you deal with science and religion? And what I tell everybody by analogy: When you learn about what we in science-education like to call skeptical thinking or critical thinking, where when someone says, "I have the ability to communicate with the dead," for example. At first you go wow really? And then they show you the evidence, which is you in a dark room and they hold hands and a ghost appears in the corner and you hear hissing sounds — shhhh, shhhh. If you’re led to believe that they’re ghosts, at first that seems quite reasonable to you. But after you start thinking about it skeptically, you go, "That’s probably a guy with a handkerchief on a stick and a steam kettle making hissing sounds probably." Which is what Houdini did by the way. So you come to abandon or change what you were brought up believing not in a moment, not in a revelatory instant, but over the process of many months and years.
So I encourage you, when it comes to religion, is to evaluate the claims which is a big thing in skeptical and critical thinking. Somebody claims that he— it was through his mind that he was able to get the tide to go extraordinarily low at the Red Sea. It could be. It could be, but there may be other explanations. It could be that when a football player or a baseball player in the U.S. has a successful play, hits a double in a critical point in a baseball game, scores a touchdown at an opportune moment — it could be that there is a divine spirit that enables this person to do this extraordinary thing at that moment. Or it could be that the person has been practicing this for years and years and years and he was at the right place at the right time and caught the ball or hit the ball or what have you. Both are explanations for you to evaluate.
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