Sometimes, I just have to give Ebert two thumbs up.
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About Bad Astronomy
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
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December 3rd, 2009 at 9:05 am
Hahahahaha. Did Ebert actually make an allusion to the watermelon scene in “Me, Myself, and Irene” during that little jab at Kirk Cameron?
If so, priceless!
December 3rd, 2009 at 9:22 am
I’m beginning to think of Mr. Ebert as a skeptic, who also reviews movies.
December 3rd, 2009 at 9:41 am
Nice!
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:04 am
Man, Roger Ebert rules more than I thought he already did.
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:14 am
Ebert has written lots about theology and his personal beliefs (from Catholic school). Check his archives. He still believes in a god but how he justifies it is forgivable (to me).
I remember so clearly one day sitting on a bus returning home from a university class. That was the epiphany day for me – when I realized religion was wrong-headed. I felt guilty, scared, and all that bad stuff you are supposed to feel but I fought myself past it and now I’m an Atheist and guilt free.
I’ve always felt Ebert never had that internal battle that I had even though he might have had the same epiphany.
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:37 am
Ebert also has some good insights in his review of “Inherit the Wind,” which can be found in the archives of his website:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:43 am
I was stunned by this over Thanksgiving. For reasons too complicated to explain, we were talking about that cat at the rest home that seemed to take a liking to patients a day or so before the patient passed away. The cat would curl up and sleep next to the patient. Great story. Morbid and cute at the same time, which is tricky to pull off.
Now, I’m a massive skeptic, but tend to be more fair than most, and, honestly, the story was not reported in enough detail to make any real judgments. My initial guess would be confirmation bias based on what scant info I had. One thing I do with stuff like that is try to thought experiment out a possible mechanism. Could an elderly patient’s body undergo some sort of physiological change in advance of passing due to, well, just being too old? Could that create a scent? A scent a cat might be attracted to? What did the patients the cat “marked for death” die of? Any pattern there?
In other words, I *thought* about it. Probably more than I should have, but, hey, weird science is fun. I even tried to figure out how Mythbusters could test it without actually needing people to, like, die.
Everyone else in the room full of college degreed adults went with the “psychic cat” answer.
I sort of went quiet and got another serving of turkey and stuffing.
That being said, the dinosaur with the saddle is undiluted awesome.
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:15 am
I agree but we have alredy had presidents elected who were spirtulists Abe lincons wife held sences in the white house and Wordow Wilson consulted psycis as for athiets this is no suprise since they don’t beleve in God they are lead into the occult because like people of fatih they want to beleve in things biger then themslefs when they find no satisfaction in the occult they will come back to religon
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:23 am
I love Roger Ebert.
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:31 am
Maybe his skepticism was the reason he stopped dating Oprah.
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:39 am
Impressive. Never though I would like what Ebert wrote.
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:40 am
@ mike: have a source for this or is it just wishful thinking on your part?
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:54 am
@Quiet Desperation: There was an episode of House (I think) about this very subject. I think they found the patients who were about to die would have their body temps go up a little bit, and the cat liked to be next to the warmer patients. I have no idea if this is what could be happening in real life but it seems way more plausible than a psychic cat!
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Well, I’m only up to season 3 of House.
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:13 pm
@mike burkhart
You’re full of it. Your unsubstantiated claims are no better than religious frippery.
So sayeth the atheist, who doesn’t believe in the occult, homeopathy, or any other nonsense that isn’t supported by reason.
That’s not to say that some atheists don’t believe in nonsense, but not believing in an imaginary god doesn’t mean you have to flock to other imaginary garbage.
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
That is a great article. One thing though, I rather have to deal with an new age type. While I have had a new ager yell at me for hurting the crystals when I was taking a rock sample at a road cut I have never had one stick a gun in my face for being a “damn scientist” while doing field work. Last time that happened it was a self-professed “good” christan…
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:28 pm
@13: The question to ask is, which is the most likely answer to the “psychic cat” condundrum?
a) Selection bias
b) Physiological changes in those near death
c) The cat really does have psychic powers
(c) makes a cute story, but either (a) or (b) is by far the most likely answer.
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:35 pm
My guess on his watermelon reference is its similarity in size to a newborn, and how the banana analogy fails to hold up in that context.
(keepitcleankeepitcleankeepitclean)
December 3rd, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Ebert’s observation about people having a wide variety of nutty supernatural beliefs is the reason I believe that imaging a world without religion is a rather fruitless exercise. There is no lack of irrational belief in countries that no longer have a dominate belief system, like the UK and some other European nations where the non-religious are in the majority.
As a species we are driven by the desire to find explanations and connections for what are often just isolated random events, and even if you remove God from the equation, that desire doesn’t go away. Thus if you happened to read in your horoscope that you would be going on a trip and two hours later your boss stops by and tells you that she wants you to go to a convention in Sydney, Australia next week, you can’t help but wonder if the two were connected.
I was playing a game of backgammon with a colleague during my lunch break one time, and just for a laugh I called out what I wanted my roll of the dice to be. I called the first roll right, then the second, and when the third one fell exactly as I called it, my colleague just about fell off his chair. It was pure chance (I wasn’t cheating) but his first reaction was that there must be something spooky going on.
Still, there is one good thing you can say about New Age beliefs over fundamentalist religion. They don’t usually organize themselves into well funded crusades. There are some excepts, like the alt-med movement (though much of that is supported by religious fundies too) but on the whole they tend to do less damage in society than the fundamentalist wing of organized religion.
December 3rd, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Ebert’s article on Expelled was pretty good too. I recommend looking it up.
Also, re post #8, are you saying atheists will inevitably join the occult and then go back to “mainstream religion?” That doesn’t sound right on either point.
December 3rd, 2009 at 1:41 pm
@20: Mike is simply repeating the Christian fundamentalist party line that atheists are unfulfilled and unsatisfied with their lives without religion. It’s a load of garbage, but that doesn’t stop them from repeating it (and worse) ad nauseum.
December 3rd, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Re: the psychic cat
There was actually an episode of House recently with the same phenomena. Here’s the link: http://www.housemd-guide.com/season5/518herekitty.php
Basically, House deduces that psychic kitty is actually just cold kitty. Kitty is attracted to patients who are running a fever (thus near death) or are being kept warm with warming blankets or heating pads (because they are near death). So kitty takes a nap, and then the patient later dies. Kitty’s presence is later attributed to woo. I don’t know how scientifically plausible House’s logic is, but it actually makes a lot of sense to me as my cats like to curl up on my stomach on cold nights because I’m warmer than the couch.
December 3rd, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Yeah, that Expelled review of Roger’s is powerful stuff. It doesn’t appear to be archived on his own site as he wrote it as a blog piece for the Chicago Sun-Times. Linky here:
Roger Ebert ‘review’ of Expelled
It’s more a complete tearing-to-shreds decimation rather than a review, which might explain why it’s presented as a blog piece.
December 3rd, 2009 at 5:19 pm
I love the story about Oscar the death kitteh. But seriously. Apparently if Oscar curls up to next to a patient not about to kark no one panics, but if Oscar curls up next to someone not long for this mortal coil the staff go in to panic mode and call the family. Hmmm. It is unusual after all for sick old people to die in a hospice… What? Really?
I’m leaning towards the kitteh serial killer theory myself.
December 3rd, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Sadly, someone actually killed Oscar the “Death Kitty” shortly after the story made the news. These kind of stories may be quaint or funny to us, but unfortunately they have real consequences.
December 3rd, 2009 at 5:40 pm
I believe the story that Oscar was murdered (apparently a dented bed pan was found near his body) is a spoof. Onionesque style.
December 3rd, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Ebert seems to be harder on what he thinks of as “New Age” beliefs than on conventional Abrahamic beliefs. Why is belief in reincarnation (something essentially every traditional Buddhist or Hindu subscribes to) at the level of belief in Young Earth Creationism? If belief in reincarnation is disqualifying–and this can be a really vague belief, nothing more than that karma (=causation in a very broad sense) can pass from one being to another–why isn’t the belief in intercessory prayer also disqualifying? If you want to say that only atheists or agnostics are rational enough to lead, go ahead. But I can’t see why New Age fuzziness is worse than fuzzy mainstream beliefs. Do the mainstream beliefs, when fuzzy enough, get a pass because they are traditional? What’s traditional varies from subculture to subculture. I grew up in a family eccentric enough that some of us are rebelling against early 20th-century New Age (or spiritualist beliefs) from earlier generations. Woo is woo, sure, but why is knowing what you spirit animal is (without giving it any practical significance) worse that being willing to say grace at the table?
December 3rd, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Thank God for Roger Ebert!
December 3rd, 2009 at 8:39 pm
@ BlackCat:
Mikey keeps his reference material right next to his dictionary. Oh, wait…
@ Beryl:
I agree wholeheartedly. I’ve never understood why religion gets handed a get-out-of-rationality free card. The number of people who believe something has nothing to do with whether or not it’s a fair representation of reality.
Many fundies — and well-meaning progressives — would force western society to treat all religions as sacrosanct. Witness the silliness over the political cartoons depicting Mohammed.
December 3rd, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Yep, Phil’s comment is perfectly concise. How do I make ASCII art for opposable digits oriented toward zenith?
December 3rd, 2009 at 10:17 pm
. /0
. / /
(___0)
(____0)
(____0)
(____o)
. / /
Well, it worked in textedit….
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:07 pm
That… looks like a cross between an alien grenade an some sort of bee larva. I think I’d rather be stung to death by hornets than have hands that look like that.
I mean… thanks for trying! (honestly I’m no artist and couldn’t even come close to that)
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:13 pm
The comments section on that article made fascinating reading. It made me thankful for the comment community we have here at BA, because I don’t think I would survive, having to compete with such lunacy.
In fact, what would probably happen is, I’d spend my entire work days hammering out posts in the futile fight against nonsense, aaaaand lose my job. Maybe I would chip at the surface of the hundreds of millions of nutcases, but talk about a pyrrhic victory!
I had no idea Roger Ebert was as enlightened as he has shown. I join Phil in a humble offering of thumbs!
December 4th, 2009 at 4:14 am
Heh heh. I was just reading those comments over at Ebert’s article and found this little gem:
The real problem with the creationists is that they believe The Flintstones was a documentary.
I’m sure I’ve seen that somewhere before, but it bears repeating. Kind of sums up creationism very nicely in a single sentence.
December 4th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Ebert’s the man! My very favorite reviewer. While many naysayers believe he’s become too “soft” since his cancer struggles began, you can’t deny that he always has an interesting, well-informed point of view underlining his reviews. I for one appreciate that he borrows from his personal beliefs and education when judging a film; if you’ve got it, use it. It’s just good criticism.