As a mental health initiative. When I (O’Leary for News) first heard Bill Nye the Science Guy screaming on the video, I thought he was having a nervous breakdown:
In the fourth episode of the Science Uprising series of short films, cosmologist Lawrence Krauss informs us, arms waving up and down, “If you were designing a universe for life, I suspect that you would design it differently. There is no evidence to design or purpose to our universe.”
Cut to a figure shrieking unintelligibly from the podium at an American Humanist Association meeting, “I suck!” He appears—admittedly, this is entirely a matter of perception from a distance of time and place—to be having (or pretending?) a nervous breakdown.
The figure turns out to be science media personality Bill Nye the Science Guy, named Humanist of the Year in 2010. In the organization’s magazine, he enlarges on the depressing theme, “I suck”. Denyse O’Leary, “Believing in a Purposeful World Is Good Mental Health!” at Mind Matters News
Of course, he may have been doing it for effect. He is, at times, a bit of a showman. That said, if he effectively created the impression, he succeeded in raising the question.
We cut to science notable Freeman Dyson arguing for the fine-tuning of the universe. But, listening to Bill Nye scream “I suck,” one can’t help thinking that believing that we live in a meaningless universe may be a mental health hazard.
See also: What becomes of science when the evidence does not matter?
and
Babylon Bee: Earth cools due to Bill Nye’s ego
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