When I watch this commentary on the vast universe compared to quotidian matters, I’m at first swayed. After all i love science and generally find the belief of a personal god who cares about football outcomes etc to be repugnant and narcissistic, and just plain stupid.
But I pride myself on not always arguing for things I believe in, but also arguing against things I believe in.
I personally DO NOT AT ALL believe a caring creature created the universe or cares about human foibles and creates little coincidences to help average people do average things, but I don’t use things like size and distance and scarcity of human life to lend credence to this disbelief.
It’s as if he’s saying “if the universe cared about us, the universe would be smaller and mainly filled with us.” This is a completely random assumption. We are not a universe and we have no idea how universes would express the act of “caring.”
By telling us we are self-centered to think the universe cares about us, what with how big and sparkly the universe is, he is being self-centered by implying the universe would care about the thing he personally is interested in – astrophysics. he’s also portraying the universe like some spangled baubled trannie strutting around oblivious to you and me because it’s so taken with its own blingy and larger than life greatness. It’s obviously more scientific to say the universe doesn’t “care” about anything. But you don’t prove this by how big it is. A pebble doesn’t care about anything either.
To play Nye’s game I could ask: why is it more sensible a conscious creator (given that one could exist) would care more about pyrotechnics in an unoccupied corner of space, than about whether I win a football game or find a lost sock? Why would ANYONE but a sociopath care more about the supernova that affects no one than whether my disease goes away? There is no practical gauge to use to figure out which is more significant.
And why is size the determiner? It takes enormous ore mines, foundries and factories to produce one nano microchip. The microchip is the goal, not the giant “kiln” from whence it came. So there is no necessary logic supporting that the tiny isn’t significant. There’s no scientific reason, and no poetic one, why the universe, the big bang detritus and scope, isn’t a byproduct of creating sentient life. The byproducts of nano circuitry, the piles of refinery crap and dross that gets tossed, are vast, too.
The reason i don’t believe in god or universe-intended coincidences or messages is because there are more logical explanations, simply by looking at statistics and having common sense. We know by law of averages we will perceive things to have a kind of coincidence or irony level, and this happens naturally.
Combatting one value judgement with another is stupid. Perhaps he is fighting illogic with illogic to make a point. Nye is smarter than me. But whenever scientists do this, I wonder, why not fight illogic with logic?
That said, hilarious spoof. The universe is telling me to share it on ILP.