“sometimes forgiving someone is giving in to the comforting belief that forgiviness makes you a better person, when in reality, you’re just giving someone the right to be shitty.”

“Simply because we don’t have religion to justify, excuse or forgive anything, we ultimately are fully accountable for our actions.”

Yeah; that’s what I reckon too.

“any (or at least many) claims to “truth” or metaphysics derived from science, is treating science as a faith.”

If you’re implying the only path to truth is through faith, then I don’t see much value in it, to be honest.

I also quite like MovGP0′s mispelling as “belive”, as people do certainly live by their be-lifes.

This is one of my favorite videos…ever.
I just have one question, even though you explicitly state that you don’t like people using background music to get an emotional reaction…well the song at the end really got to me, what is it called???

Thanks for all the great videos.

This is the first time I’ve read the comments and I came across this one:
Yerneh wrote
“I would like to see more of you countering intellegent points made by theists, such as religion as a nessesity for keeping the human race together.”
This to me is the most ignorant and unintelligent argument theists have. Nothing is more divisive and non-religious people tend to be more moral then religious. Simply because we don’t have religion to justify, excuse or forgive anything, we ultimately are fully accountable for our actions.

i don’t believe forgiving our parents makes us adults. sometimes forgiving someone is giving in to the comforting belief that forgiviness makes you a better person, when in reality, you’re just giving someone the right to be shitty.

What will society come to without strict rules? You weren’t thinking clearly on that one!

“I believe that people who use background music in their videos in order to evoke emotion in their audience are odious.”

Why are such people odious? Music evokes emotion; this is what music does, so everyone who uses background music in his or her videos does so to evoke emotion in his or her audience. Some simply do so more artfully and, perhaps, less pretentiously than others.

Pathos isn’t always the intention, and even when it is, bathos isn’t always the result.
Surely you don’t mean to say simply that all people who use background music in their videos are odious, do you?

Science, despite belief to the contrary is not “true” but I outline that elsewhere, Al is making a metaphysical claim. Metaphysics is a notoriously dubious field (Read Kant’s critique of pure reason if you want a good argument for this.)

Al posits inferences, I posit counter-inferences.

Then invariably someone shows up with an anti-atheist agenda and pretends s/he and I are on the same side. Then I show that I don’t agree with them. Then someone tries to show that science is “capital T true.” Then I attack that position. Then someone abuses religion or philosophy. then Kevin (The Roycing Carnap) and I pipe up. Then people start calling me names.

Then Al releases a new video, and the whole thing starts again. :P

I think I have said it elsewhere but allow me to state it again. Al is right, CNN is silly for their portrayal of atheists as the root of all evil, etc. Creationism should NOT be taught in school because as a society we have decided that we like science, social science, and maths. Creationism is none of those (barring some particular arguments but I fall on Gould’s side here.)

However, science should also never be treated as a “faith” and any (or at least many) claims to “truth” or metaphysics derived from science, is treating science as a faith.

I thought you were making these videos for people who already are fairly educated and are interested in opinions on things they already know about. Not to educate the masses, who are massively uneducated…

It doesn’t seem fair to leave that up to one guy and his video blogs. If he *were* trying to persuade people uneducated in the subjects he’s talking about, wouldn’t the speaker be using more basic language?

Maybe I’m totally off. It’s almost 5 in the morning. I really don’t care at this point.

And that people usually fall back on calling someone a homosexual to make themselves feel better, even though…well I don’t even need to explain how dumb that is.

And I also believe that by doing so they are mostly insulting themselves, because it almost implies that only unintelligent, shepherd-following men with no deviating opinions are straight.