A commenter at Uncommon Descent wrote
Keith, I am not convinced that you are an atheist. I believe that you are angry at God and suffer from cognitive dissonance. And to say that the evidence supports your materialist belief system is completely absurd!
I’ve seen versions of this “angry at God” accusation levelled at non-believers quite often and I wonder why those that use it think it makes sense.
The indomitable KeithS responds later in the same UD thread:
Okay, here’s some psychologizing for you guys:
You realize that atheists have good reasons for disbelieving in God and that they make good arguments to which you have no intelligent response. This makes you very anxious. In a vain attempt to lessen the anxiety, you try to convince yourselves that the atheist isn’t really an atheist, he’s just angry at God. That way you don’t have to take his arguments seriously. It’s much easier to write them off rather than acknowledge the painful truth: you cannot answer them, and your faith is irrational.
I’m not sure I agree with Keith on “…atheists have good reasons for disbelieving in God” and I would say myself that I have never had an inclination, need or desire to believe in “God” and thus never needed to convince myself that disbelief is a better option. I have never been a smoker. As a kid I tried to emulate others and puffed away but I couldn’t get past the point where addiction presumably kicks in. I have great respect for those who, having succumbed to addiction to nicotine, have been able later to kick the habit. Similarly, I can admire an ex-believer who has decided to quit. It must involve a great effort of will but at the same time I just can’t grasp the appeal of believing in the first place.
I’m sorry if the analogy regarding addiction is somewhat pejorative to people with religious convictions but I do find great difficulty in understanding the whole concept of “virtuoso believing“. I’m sure it involves emotion much more than reason. So while I’m puzzled that anyone could categorize an atheist as “angry at God” I can see why there is mutual incomprehension between believers and non-believers. Also being a non-smoker makes me less of a campaigner against smoking. As long as people don’t insist in blowing smoke in my face or that I should try this new/old brand of cigar, then I claim no right to stop other people from enjoying a quiet smoke.
I think there are one or two non-believers here. Is anyone angry at God?
phoodoo,
Is there no-one from the scientific fringe with whom you disagree, phoodoo? It seems that being at odds with the established view is credential enough for you.
lol. HAHAhaha, holy crap. There seems to be no end to your credulity with respect to the paranormal. Out of curiosity, how many of these do you think are real phenomena?:
Astral Projection, Crystal Healing, Ancient Aliens, Telekinesis, Telekinetic Spoon Bending, Telepathy, Clairvoyance, Psychic Mediums, The Illuminati, Moon Landing Hoax, 9/11 inside job, Heavy Metal and Rock music is Satanic rites backwards, Dungeons and Dragons is occult devil worship, Obama Birth Certificate? (There are many more but these are just the ones I can remember on the top of my head).
One wonders why we bother with telescopes, binoculars and satellites, or submarines, or cameras for inspecting sewage pipes, or FMRI or Xray machines for detecting tumors, cancers and other ailments, when we could just be employing remote viewers to look through solid objects and far away.
There is one simple reality check for Targ’s claims.
What is the most likely thing to happen to someone who goes to the CIA and demonstrates actual, useful, and reliable remote viewing?
Anyone?
Beuller?
Can we expect him to walk out and announce to the world that he has this amazing power? Unimpeded?
Here’s the graph on Targ’s background:
Targ was born in Chicago.[1] He is the son of William Targ, an American book editor who was well known and respected in the field of commercial publishing.[6][7] According to Martin Gardner, Targ was introduced to the paranormal by his father whose Chicago bookstore carried a variety of paranormal works and whose later published works at Putnam included a biography of Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, and Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods.[8]
Targ received a Bachelor of Science in physics from Queens College in 1954, followed by two years graduate work in physics at Columbia University.[1][9][10]
Russell Targ was involved in early laser research at Technical Research Group where he co-authored, with Gordon Gould among others, a 1962 paper describing the use of homodyne detection with laser light.[11] Later, at Sylvania Electronic Systems, he contributed to the development of frequency modulation and mode-locking of lasers,[12][13][14][15][16][17] and co-authored a 1969 paper which described the operation of a kilowatt continuous wave laser.[18][19]
In 1972 Targ joined the Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory at SRI as a senior research physicist in a program founded by Harold E. Puthoff.[20] The two conducted research into psychic abilities and their operational use for the U.S. intelligence community, including NASA, the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and Army Intelligence.[1][21] Targ worked at SRI until 1982.[22]
From 1986 to 1998 Targ worked in electro-optics as a senior staff scientist at the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company,[23] where he contributed to aviation windshear sensing applications of Doppler heterodyne lidar technology.[24][25][26]
That doesn’t seem like an attack on his creds. The thing is phoodoo simply wants to substitute his own judgement for every person–scientist or not–who disagrees with his own take on the matter. wikipedia is, to some extent, a democratic entity. So if a large majority of people believe in something that’s not true–it will like be stated as a fact on some wiki page, in spite of the falsity.
That’s an occupational hazard of that sort of site. But the alternative of having phoodoo decide what should or shouldn’t be in there seems….well… a smidge worse than letting a consensus decide. Because even if the are hangers on and “haters” there’s also that batch of people actually in the field.
phoodoo, do you deny that you have a dog in this fight? You’re not impartial at all, are you? You won’t deny that it’s basically a religious impetus that moves you in all these matters, from DNA to bendy spoons, just as it is for W. Murray, will you? It’s not science for you, but faith, right? Why should people who are legitimately interested in the science here only take much interest in your musings on these subjects?
The Mk VII Gigaton Irony meter just exploded. They haven’t even made it yet.
phoodoo should meet my missus. Under the influence of her sister (a doctor, ffs, and she herself is a biochemistry graduate), she became very interested in crystals, angels, reiki, astrology, you-name-it. Drives me nuts. Her latest purchase is ‘clear your clutter with feng shui’. How about ‘clear your clutter by hiring a big skip’? 🙂
phoodoo,
All this discussion about wikipedia is crap.
YOU name a good source on evolution and ID and let’s discuss that source. How about that?
My guess: you won’t accept. In fact, we were already doing it. We discuss post from UD. It seems that you have no good argument to defend UD, so all you can do is put the focus of the debate somewhere else.
Too bad your fellows at UD prefer not to show their faces for a honest debate here, where they can’t ban us.
Dan Aykroyd was genuinely interested in the paranormal, despite the movie’s mocking tone.
There is indeed a Wikipedia group of skeptics whose goals include making sure pseudoscience articles are improved. ie clearly state pseudoscience in the lede and make clear that there is not scientific support for the concept under discussion.
What they do is list articles for improvement. I know because I signed up to them. So yeah, they make sure that the scientific consensus in the literature is reflected. Everything is of course referenced.
A world away from the nefarious actions of groups outside of Wikipedia who conspire to game the system. They are mainly interested in history and politics articles.
Meanwhile, phoodoo is going to explain the worldwide conspiracy that extends far beyond Wikipedia. Or not.
So what if articles reflect a majority bias. Wikipedia is designed to be user maintained. It’s a starting place for any topic.
Your response isn’t to my comment. Shrug.
It actually would be a problem if Wikipedia articles reflected a majority bias.
Exactly. Of all the examples phoodoo has given, I see only good things happening. His complaints amount to expressed dissatisfaction that his particular views are not part of the scientific consensus. It would be irresponsible to pretend these fringe authors and researchers had the credibility of their entire fields behind them.
If their shit is true, it is up to them to convince other scientists with their data so it can become the consensus view. The history of science is full of examples where this has been done, but it takes time. Unfortunately, history is also full of cranks screaming from the sidelines, and most of them really are cranks.
Phoodoo thinks these things are being repressed by some secretive atheist/skeptic cabal. Well, take the example of remote viewing. Why the fuck would any one have anything against the idea of remote viewing? It seems to me the thing would have enormous potential in science, industry, health care, exploration and discovery. Fuck me, I wish remote viewing was true. I wish I could believe it was a real thing that some human beings could do. I wish I could do it. But the data simply isn’t there. The fact that the CIA at one point was duped into wasting money investigating the claims does not at all substantiate anything on the subject.
XKCD has a very relevant comic:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_economic_argument.png
The alt-text for that comic is also good.
Yes, remote viewing is real, therefore materialism is false, Jesus is real and so is the afterlife and the terror of the darkness that otherwise awaits is diminished.
Unfortunately for you reality does not twist according to how terrified you are that this is indeed all there is.
Your life must indeed be terrible if clutching at “remote viewing is really real I tells ya” helps with the fear of death.
Your belief is weak, young padawan. Along with your deity – weak sauce indeed.
This is exactly what I meant when I said that you could love somebody dearly and still think they’re full of shit.
petrushka,
What makes you say Targ is a charlatan. What are you basing it on, on what you read on Wikipedia? You know him personally? You have seen his work?
Or let’s just be honest, he is a charlatan to you by definition of the work he does, which doesn’t fit into your materialist worldview so its automatically not science.
What’s your qualifications?
It’s not science because it’s not science, not because it does not fit into a “worldview”.
If it was “science” you’d be able to do something with it. What useful thing can you do with remote viewing?
Please demonstrate it and I’ll join your “worldview”.
Don’t demonstrate, and just give excuses? Well, just join the queue of cranks who have ideas but no support.
An ability not to be fooled. What’s yours?
Life after death is possible if materialism is false, right?
Using remote viewing, can you tell how many fingers I’m holding up?
Just a voice from the peanut gallery here: phoodoo is talking about metaphysics (materialism vs. supernaturalism), and the rest of you are talking about epistemology (empiricism vs. mysticism). That’s one of the reasons this conversation is going around in circles.
Kantian Naturalist,
Well there is more to it than just that. This whole movement they call skepticism is a joke. Omagain knows nothing about what Targ has done, but he heard other skeptics called him a pseudoscientist, so that settles it.
If you call yourself a skeptic, a rational thinker, and you affiliate yourself with a group of like minded thinkers, that makes you the very opposite of being a thinking person. They are a bunch of clowns who just believe whatever their little groups tells them to believe.
Its like calling yourself a member of a group of mavericks. We get together and talk about how we don’t listen to anyone. We have a mini-constitution which tells us what things we don’t go along with. We are truly renegades.
It has to be one of the stupidest movements in modern times. Skeptics who go around telling everyone what to believe.
O magain knows as much about Russell Targ as frogs know about badminton. And Allan says its just woo, because, well, it has to be woo. And we don’t believe in woo, because, well, we are the ones who don’t believe in woo. So of course its good if Wikipedia tries to discredit these people, they obviously need to be discredited. Idiots need to be told what to think!
phoodoo,
Your last comment is a mix of ad hominem and argument from authority.
Why don’t you show some evidence of Targ being right? For example, show us how he accurately explains something.
phoodoo,
Guillermoe makes a fair point, phoodoo. Tell us what is so convincing about Russell Targ? Could we set up a remote viewing experiment? I’m sending an image now.
Reports please!
Alan Fox,
Why don’t I teach Guillermoe and you open minded skeptics about Russell Targ? I guess the same reason I wouldn’t teach an aardvark to play the tuba. Aardvarks don’t want to play a tuba, even though they never could.
Alan Fox,
ETA
In case anyone had not yet switched on their viewing equipment I shall transmit the same image at 18.00 CET
phoodoo,
Did you get the image, phoodoo?
Alan Fox,
Alan, You could have saved the US government a lot of money, if you would have just called them and told them you already know all there is to know about the unseen realms of the universe, so they don’t need to ask anyone else.
Or is it the same reason why you don’t teach anyone to ride unicorns?
Perhaps you didn’t notice that I am not the only one reading this thread.
Anyway, it’s not that WE did not accept your evidence. It’s that you could not find any.
So, issue solved. Targ is a charlatan because even you, phoodoo, cannot find evidence to support him.
Alan Fox,
Maybe you should also call M.I.T and tell them to stop wasting their time researching all this nonsense about quantum entanglement, because its just woo.
Or if they only had Wikipedia at MIT, they would already know what to think.
I am pretty sure they would provide evidence for their cliams if we asked them to.
And phoodoo doesn’t want to do anything, especially not back up any of his claims.
Who said that you’ll know them by their fruit?
Not many ripened ovaries in evidence from ID and other frauds.
Glen Davidson
phoodoo,
Just be ready to receive the image. I’m broadcasting at 18.00 CET .
This could be big.
The internet redundant!
It’ll fix those pesky guerilla editors!
10.00 minutes!!!
Transmission ceased.
Reports on image quality, please!
You’d be surprised at some of the books I have sitting on the shelf. Tomes on ESP (including remote viewing), books by Sheldrake, Behe. Fawning tomes on Geller, the total opposite. Theosophy, theology, the alternative secret history of humanity. I collect the books that you fawn over as curios!
I know a little bit about the Stanford Research Institute as it happens. Guess who spent some time there that I’m sure we’ve both heard of, who I’ve mentioned before here? Who is also a proven fraud, able to manipulate credulous, eager to believe scientists with ease?
But meh, as it goes
you just ain’t worth having an actual real conversation with after all. quantum entanglement != remote viewing. How do you think we know about it? It has consequences.
I’m quite sure the world is weirder then we can possibly imagine. It’s just not turning out to be weird how you’d like it is all.
Same reason you don’t want to talk about ID I suppose. Trot back to UD where you can hear the sound of heads exploding over a certain challenge, why don’t ya…
LOL. It has been proven quantum entanglement cannot be used to transmit information. So you can’t appeal to quantum entanglement to explain how remote viewing is possible.
There’s actually a very interesting problem here, which has to do with expertise and testimony. How should non-experts determine who counts as an expert? How should we walk the fine line between deferring to expertise and committing an appeal to authority? These are quite serious epistemological problems that arise not only here — about whether or not there’s “remote viewing” — but we also see this raised in various sorts of “science denial” (climate change, vaccination, the debate about GMOs).
Here in the U.S., there’s a newly-passed House bill, HR 4012, which would require the EPA to request, compile, read, and curate all data associated with every peer-reviewed study it cites in its regulations. That would impose a massive burden on the EPA that would basically hamper its ability to function at all. The public rationale given for this bill is that a government agency must make public all of the data it cites in its decisions. (Yet I doubt that the bill’s author, Lamar Smith (Republican, Texas 21st District, would impose the same restrictions on the CIA.)
Point being, the idea here is that those pesky scientists just can’t be trusted to do their job. There’s a deep distrust in expertise and in intellectuals that I find quite alarming. And at the same time, technocracy — ceding all decision-making to experts — is terrifying. How to square the circle here, of democratic control of scientific knowledge, is a really big and fascinating problem.
phoodoo,
No, it would not be good if Wikipedia was on a mission to discredit people. But frankly, it would be pointless to pursue this as a campaign against pseudoscientists. They discredit themselves, mostly by their habit of just making stuff up. “I’ve discovered a new phenomenon”. Really. Do you have any evidence? “Err … it’s a bit shy of closed-minded skeptics.”. It is notable that people with access to these supposed powers make their money by selling books and doing shows. If it were me, I’d be picking lottery numbers.
To repeat, I just want evidence, chum. I don’t think that makes me closed-minded. You, on the other hand, fit the description of someone so open-minded their brains fall out. Is there any woo-meister who even you would consider a bit ‘out there’? Do you exercise any discrimination at all?
Have you tried discussing evolution with phoodoo?
Open-minded to magic claims, yes. To science, not so much.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
Oh yes! 😉 I did open an edit window to add that very caveat, but changed my mind.
It’s a good point.
phoodoo, a simple question and a simple request.
Q: Do you believe remote viewing is real/possible?
Request: What is the single most convincing piece of evidence for that, as a starting point for further discussion?
I got your transmission, Alan. Loud and clear.
So HAH!
Allan Miller,
“No, it would not be good if Wikipedia was on a mission to discredit people.”
Its not “IF” Allan. This is precisely what happens! Its not even a matter of great debate, its well known this is exactly what happens. Just because you want to bury your head in the sand, and try to rationalize every instance as being just the public’s perception, or just ordinary disagreements of opinion, doesn’t prevent this from being a well documented fact.
Anyone who says IF this were to really happen is just being completely ignorant of the subject. Its what happens Allan. It is the reason why Sheldrake is called an author and Dawkins a scientist. Its the reason why every paragraph following the description of someone who doesn’t believe in the typical beliefs of evolution is followed by a disclaimer on Wikipedia…”so and so’s work has been widely rejected by the scientific community…”
What the fuck does that even mean? It means nothing. There is no such thing as a scientific community. The very people they say this about are scientists for crying out loud. If Stephen Meyer writes a very well evidenced and thorough book, a group of skeptics will write, “His book has been said to be full of factual errors..” And who is the person who said it is full of factual errors? It doesn’t matter, as long as they say someone said it. It could be Nick Matzke who hadn’t even read it, it doesn’t matter.
For you to claim, that well, then someone else can just go back and correct the truth, shows you don’t know the first thing about the issue. If you post something, and it is deleted by another editor three times, you will be banned. Who do you think gets to decide which edit stays?
Its not IF Allan. It doesn’t matter what YOU think is “woo.” The fact that you call something woo, before you even know the evidence for it, shows just how early the bullshit begins. That is why they do it. Are Stephen Meyer’s books “woo?” But Richard Dawkins writes facts? Should Pandas Thumb or a skeptic society web page be a source of unbiased critiquing Its not an accident that they quote reviews for people they don’t like from Skeptic Society webpages.
To Meyers book: “In a review published by The Skeptics Society titled Stephen Meyer’s Fumbling Bumbling Amateur Cambrian Follies…”
That’s from his Wikipedia page for crying out loud Allan. Its not “IF” Allan. There is no “IF”. This is exactly what happens. Wake up dude.
Most likely. He is a creationist and American exceptionalist associated with the theocratic Discovery Institute, who plainly have a (religious) political anti-science agenda. All this is well documented.
phoodoo, the way Wikipedia articles pan out is a function of who and how many care the most about the material. I once tried to put in something factual, but arguably mildly critical about a show one of my kids was into on Nickelodeon. I tried to say four or five times that it was only apparently taped in front of a live audience. This was quite clear from watching it–most of it wasn’t even intended to look as if it was recorded live. But each time, someone–apparently a fan (or fans) of the show who didn’t like anything even vaguely negative in the article, removed my remark. Eventually I gave up. It was more important to him/her/them than it was to me.
So what you’re dealing with on sites or articles involving science is not only a lot of people who disagree with you but a group that is industrious and capable of supporting their views. Someone said above that it would be a shame if the site were too democratic. I understand and even sympathize, but that’s the nature of a wiki. It’s editable by everyone, so there will be slants. But, as I said above if there must be slants (and there must), one should want science articles to be slanted by those most active in the actual practice of science, just as one should want religion articles to be slanted by those most active in the practice of religion.
The thing is, you want your guys to slant ALL the articles even though there is no scientific consensus that supports a single thing you believe. There are fringe guys, certainly. And maybe they really ARE scientists (and not just “authors”) as you say, but if a large majority of scientists say they aren’t actually scientists, your buddies lose face–whether they will be proved right in the end or not.
Sondheim and Rorem used to argue about whether this or that piece was really an opera or “just” a musical. Sondheim said that the only thing that makes something an opera is that it’s performed in an opera house. That’s probably right. In science it’s the academy, the keepers of the flame, that get to decide who’s OK and who’s a charlatan, not because they’re always right but because nobody else is more qualified to do so. Democracy is often the best thing we’ve got–however shitty it often is.
So tough toenails. As many here have said, you’d do better doing some actual science or producing some actual evidence about something than whining so much about your ill-treatment.
Also, while I’m ranting, I’ve noticed over the past couple of weeks (while I’ve finally looked at a bunch of the articles on some of your beloved sites), that the vast majority of articles are simply attempts to burden shift–as if that would get you anywhere. You want to move the paradigm, and crying about treatment or tossing itsy-bitsy water balloons at the bad ole tank may make you feel good and a couple of your friends chortle and pound their chests, but it obviously isn’t ever going to stop the juggernaut. For that, it takes an actual theoretical improvement. Ptolemaic theory was full of epicycles. You and your friends claim that evolutionary theory is too. Maybe it is. But no one would ever have dropped Ptolemy because of prevalent fudging so it could be replaced by….um….you know, nothing at all. You’re just wasting your own and everybody else’s time puffing out harmless spitballs at at this monolith.
I mean, suppose CSI WERE a useful measure for some purpose and were not circular. How could it move science forward anyhow?
Let me close this rant by just saying that you guys should put up or shut up and go pray somewhere.
Another one that does not even have the courage of their (supposed) convictions.
I guess you are another William, who when pressed will revert to something like: “No, I never personally claimed that remote viewing is possible, I just want you to admit you are ruling it out from the start because you are materialists. ”
phoodoo, once again:
Q: Do you believe remote viewing is real/possible?
Request: What is the single most convincing piece of evidence for that, as a starting point for further discussion?
Phoodoo: my evidence against Targ is his claim that he demonstrated remote viewing to the CIA and walked away, with no restrictions on talking about it. I’ve read about his so-called demonstrations. Why are they indistinguishable from stage magic?
walto,
Except you are completely wrong. Not only is there a hierarchy to the editors, there is also a group of editors who have bonded together who intentionally work together to squash ideologies they disagree with (they are skeptics). And although this is theoretically against the rules, they are allowed to do this with a wink and a nod. They conspire together on different websites in secret, and then use this to silence edits they don’t like.
But of course, someone like you, who doesn’t really believe in science or truth, but instead likes pushes an agenda as you do, you are not offended by this. Intellectually honest people are offended however, but Jimmy Wales is not one of those people anymore than you.
Wikipedia is NOT an exercise in providing truth, its an exercise of promoting a worldview. Even Allan at least is willing to admit that if this was true, its not a good thing, unfortunately he is just unwilling to accept the reality of it.
But it does show quite clearly the petty dishonesty of the so called skeptic movement.
phoodoo,
Hey, phoodoo, did you get the image?
Whatever its perceived shortcomings, it is still a good source for references.