Update: darn it, Phil beat me by minutes. Always check your RSS reader before posting something from elsewhere on the internets.
Found this video yesterday morning via Swans On Tea. It was so good I had to include it in the talk I gave yesterday afternoon at the Skeptics Society.
Backstory: Bill O’Reilly is very fond of using the tides as evidence that science doesn’t understand everything. Apparently some pinheads tried to point out that we actually do understand that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyHzhtARf8M
At a slightly deeper level: this is a good example of a worldview that can only imagine ultimate explanations taking the form of reference to some person — a being, a kind of conscious agent, who does things for reasons. If you try to give explanations that simply refer to the laws of physics, they will never be satisfied.
In the real world, things happen, not always for (those kind of) reasons. The laws of physics might not have any deeper explanation.
Science: A ⇐ B ⇐ C ⇐ D ⇐ E ⇐ ….
Religion: (A,B,C,…) ⇐ GOD
If you are religious and understand little bit of science you can as well go with A ⇐ B ⇐ C ⇐ GOD. Bill O’Reilly seems to have difficulties going beyond A.
I think Sean and our faithful readers would get a kick out of this (skip to around 4:45):
http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/thu-february-3-2011-jane-mcgonigal
psmith uses “atheist” blog replies derisive to an intentionally controversial and ultraconservative public figure as proof that ALL atheists are primative and amoral and Matt says that while he thinks O’Reilly is a scientific ignoramus …he agrees with that same idiot’s political views. Has the intellectual quality if readers on this blog declined or does O’Reilly just bring out the nut cases everywhere he raises his ugly head? 😉