Friday, January 26, 2018

Let me introduce you to my invisible friend

Richard Dawkins‏Verified account 
@RichardDawkins

Theists: you get comfort in the imaginary embrace of an imaginary friend? Try real warm embrace of a real warm friend. That's real comfort.

Unfortunately, there's an epidemic of men and women who embrace their invisible friend. I constantly see joggers and pedestrians with earbuds talking to their invisible friend. I see people on park benches using the keypad of their cellphone to type messengers to their invisible friend.

Sometimes, in blind faith or desperation, these people leave messages for their invisible friend, hoping their invisible friend will respond. They get very agitated when they leave multiple messages with no reply. They actually believe that their invisible friend occasionally responds, even though that's a classic example of sample selection bias. They only remember the hits and conveniently forget all the misses. So what they take to be replies are sheer coincidence.

What can we do to stamp out this pernicious and pervasive Bronze Age superstition? 

3 comments:

  1. Ee gads! I hope his friends agree it was of comfort. Boy he left himself wide open...

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  2. How is it comfort to know that everything you are, and everything the "warm friend" you embrace is, will die and be no more, and that literally within a century no one will remember your name or face, and even if they did you'd be dead anyway? No, that may not be an imaginary embrace, but it certainly is a delusional "comfort".

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  3. If there is no God, then the inevitable consequences of this worldview would be that human life has no more intrinsic dignity than that of rocks, sand, and other inanimate, material objects. Life would only favor the people who are by mere chance successful--too bad if you are an utterly unknown loser, Richard Dawkins.

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