I love Phil’s video’s; they’re always so beautifully made and I especially love his narration of them.
They are always profound.
Check out Phil Hellenes YouTube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/philhellenes
Tag Archive: phil
I just watched this video by Phil Hellenes and as usual, it didn’t fail to be profound and… it’s hard to describe what Phil’s videos do to me. They move me? I guess you can call it a ‘religious’ experience. And I’m not kidding, just like the video of Neil Tyson speaking about the science behind The Big Bang, Phil’s video’s give me goosebumps.
If you haven’t watched any of his video’s yet… man you’re in for a treat. The man is a genius. I would even go so far as to say his videos are as inspiring as Carl Sagan’s and it takes a lot for me to compare other mere mortals to Carl Sagan.
Watch this video and be moved:
“What are we? I think we have the right to ask, I think we have the right to never stop. Anything born with the necessary curiosity has the right to ask what they are. And damn anyone tells you that you don’t.”
Oh, I loved this bit, so eloquent:
“The Abrahamic religions are pretty much all in agreement: you’re the shameful, sinful creature willed into existence by an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect god so that he can forgive you for not being perfect. He’s in love with you and he just wants you to love worship and obey him back, forever.”
I hope I’m not detracting for the sheer awesome of this video by quoting the video but I can’t help myself, it’s so well said:
“If we allow ourselves to believe in a god who approves of a single human killing, the killing of any human becomes arguably sanctified. The more we agree that nobody ever really dies, the less of a sin murder becomes…”
“… when a god that calls for the murder of any child, can be described with a straight face, as perfect?”
And this is why science will always win and why religion will always lose:
“Numbers have told us what the gods never could. And billions of answers later we’ve gone from rubbing two sticks together to colliding protons head on at close to the speed of light”
And this profound little gem:
“Sometimes we’re at our most alive when facing the prospect of our own mortality. Maybe that means that if we convince ourselves that we live forever we never really feel alive at all…”
Phil Hellenes, you are the most awesome.
This video is so worth watching, it’s almost as good as his other video “Science saved my soul”. Phil Hellenes is an atheist video making genius.
Watch his other videos here: http://www.youtube.com/user/philhellenes
The full quote for Bertrand Russell (emphasis mine):
I would like to say two things – one intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this; when you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed, but look only and solely at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say.
The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple – I should say love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way, and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.
I think this quote by Voltaire answers the second part of Bertrand Russell’s quote quite nicely:
The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.
Happily, there does seem to be a wave of reason going around. To think scientifically, the ability to reason is possibly one of the most important things a person can learn. I wish more people would.
The quote by Phil Plait (the coolest astronomy geek in the world):
Teach a man to reason and he’ll think for a lifetime.
Facts, evidence, reason. Science. Truth.
One Furious Llama 