Mod+ 269. DR. MICHAEL SHERMER, SKEPTICAL SCIENCE REPORTING

It's also quite effective. Prove that any of this pseudo-science is effective or real and you get a million bucks. Special bonus prize, you get to wave that in the face of people like me.
But people like you don't really matter. You think you are a biological robot. Most people know they are much more than that. BTW, have you read Irreducible Mind yet?


I found people with PhD's (quite a few OB/GYN doctors, oddly enough. what's up with that?) in fields unrelated to what they claim to be researching.
It's better than a historian who fails to make informed (or even factual) commentary on the work of an MD.

The fact that the organization is associated with the AAAS is only a twig of respectability.
JREF doesn't even have that much going for them.

edit: The 'less of a joke' thing is pretty harsh. I do not doubt that many of the researchers working in this field were sincere in their efforts to uncover truth and discover new things. Unfortunately, they just happened to choose a dead end. If there was something there, 40 years should have been enough time to produce SOMETHING, right?

It took 50 years to discover the Higgs Boson.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/higgs-boson-the-discovery-50-years-in-the-making-20131011-2vdki.html
 
A non-conscious insentient meaningless universe designing conscious sentient meaning-creating human beings…sorry biological machines..???

A non-conscious insentient meaningless molecule designing a conscious sentient meaning-creating human being as a mechanism to propagate itself…???

A conscious meaning-creating human being declaring itself to be designed by a non-conscious meaningless molecule as a propagation machine for the molecule...???

Does any of this make any sense to anyone?

It never made any sense to me. Just as Freud's reductionistic theory of the human psyche where the human drive was primarily fueled by sexual urges and a primordial distant event in the past led to this unconscious desire of a son wanting to kill his father and rape his mother. All this was taken rather seriously at the time by Freud and his followers (Jung being the crown prince), and even today there are a number of Freudian psychologists extant. But Jung recognized the nonsense, and it was one of the central reasons why he finally parted ways with Freud (and interestingly enough, a well accounted paranormal event that Jung describes in his autobiography that was pivotal during his professional separation with Freud). I view Dawkin's "Selfish Gene" theory as belonging in the same reductionistic category as Freud's Oedipus complex theory, attempting to explain diverse phenomena by reducing it all into one single event or thing in the past or present. It becomes intellectually ludicrous with any amount of critical examination.

The laws of chance which are well known - simply cannot account for life spontaneously emerging from inert lifeless matter. And it makes no sense at all that out of randomness can come the exact kind of physical laws that we know of, or the extraordinary scope, reasoning and imaginative capabilities of human consciousness. And despite what the Skeptics believe or insist upon, we still have no scientific evidence or theory that demonstrates how life can spontaneously arise from inert lifeless matter, or how non-conscious molecules and atoms that make up the neurons in our brain, billions of them, can organize themselves spontaneously - to create the conscious awareness each of us know is a reality. There literally is not a single scientific fact right now that demonstrates consciousness itself is a product of the brain. Sure, there is plenty of scientific data on correlation - but there is not a single fact demonstrating causation. So indeed, today's Skepticism - is oddly based not on science as we know it, but promissory note materialism - that what they claim, and propagandize on Ted Talks & Wikipedia. Almost like a promise that Jesus himself will return some day and save us all.

But here is something else that makes even less sense to me: A Germanwings Airbus A320 passenger plane carrying 150 people crashed Tuesday in mountainous southeastern France. On board was the well known German opera singer Maria Radner she was 33. She probably had no idea this would be the last day of her life, or that she would die a horrible death in the prime of her life. With her was her husband, and their baby.

Why indeed do we live in such a reality? Where these kind of things happen on a regular basis. Why has reality given us "intelligence" and "love" and why is reality itself grand - our universe so full of other worlds, and probably abundant with life. Why then, is such cruelty visited upon people like Maria - simply taking a plane trip with her family? None of them realizing that they would perish that same day. Why is it we have these hopes and dreams in us, that are crushed so easily? It is one thing to believe that intelligence and self-organization is inherent within our reality - it makes more sense than the nonsense that out of non-meaning can come meaning, out of randomness can come strict order, or that out of nothingness can come something. But what about Maria Radner and her baby, and the other 148 people on that plane? It still is a mystery to me. Still something that does not make much sense.

My Best,
Bertha
 
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For me the most interesting part of the interview was when Shermer asked, "Why is it wrong to kill people?" This is an important question because both his own scientific materialism and the extended consciousness idea give the wrong answer. The right answer is surely that each individual human being has autonomy, dignity and their own plans, relationships and projects, and that to kill them is to violate them and destroy all of this. Plus, you need to add the idea that to kill someone is usually to harm them, because death is usually a bad thing.

With all of this in place we can perhaps start to understand why mass murder is wrong. But no world view that I know of can really make sense of the wrongness of killing. Theists' belief in the afterlife and divine command ethics tends to mess things up for them, and atheists' refusal to accept the existence of objective morality and values tends to mess things up for them.

Anyway, the point is, "Because we're all connected in some way we don't understand" is not a good answer.
 
1. Shermer mischaracterized Van Lommel's data in a fashion that was deliberately misleading to those reading his article. He made it appear Van Lommel supported his Skeptical position when in actuality, Lommel came to a 180 degree different conclusion.

I have to wonder if there is some connection between Shermer's misdeed and other Skeptiko guests who made the exact same misinterpretation. I found that these guys are extremely reluctant to read any original research that violates their beliefs. I bet they read Shermer and just started parroting what he wrote.
 
People like Shermer and Dawkins and Krauss are performing a tremendous service to people like Alex and all of us
who don't buy into the radical system of postmodern reductive scientism.

I got a good chuckle out of this... kinda true. I'm gonna publish Krauss next week... I think you'll be proven right :)

Let's not be believers too.
Belief does not make truth.
Nor does it make good arguments.

agreed! vigilance! onward!
 
Richard, first off; bravo for having the balls to go swimming in a shark tank alone. I disagree with your stance on some of these matters, but the vigour you're putting into converting the heathens is almost admirable.

I sort of noticed that you claimed not to be driven by a belief system... but I also noticed that you are making a lot of assertions where opinions would do instead. Indeed, you seem to be quite eager to sell your view of things. This is usually the smoke to the fire of dogmatism.

I also noticed a tendency towards positivism. "Prove this is real" and so forth. But science doesn't work that way, now, does it? Popper killed positivism 80 years ago. Say, you wouldn't be one of those scientism advocates who skipped taking a second-year philosophy of science class would you?

You don't have to answer that. I guess my question to you is: what would you say to someone who claimed straight up that they had had multiple 'paranormal' experiences of a personal nature? Would you assume they were lying? Crazy? How would you go about having a meaningful discussion with said person?
 
I also noticed a tendency towards positivism. "Prove this is real" and so forth. But science doesn't work that way, now, does it? Popper killed positivism 80 years ago. Say, you wouldn't be one of those scientism advocates who skipped taking a second-year philosophy of science class would you?

But why are you putting Popper forward as cutting-edge philosophy of science? Philosophy of science has moved on a great deal after him. You've had Thomas Kuhn and then the whole postmodern movement, for example. Here's philosopher of science Elliot Sober on the Philosopher's Zone basically summing it all up:

And many philosophers of science, myself included, think that when you look at the details of what Popper meant by 'falsifiability,' it turns out that it's not a good account of what testability really means, it's not a principle that really succeeds in separating science from non-science. So falsifiability as a technical idea from Popper, I don't agree with, the looser idea that scientific theories should be testable, which was Popper's starting point, I agree with that.
 
Hey Alex,

This question:
After all, who really believes they’re a biological robot leading a meaningless life in a meaningless universe?

Obviously the answer is no one. You know this. I would challenge you to work a bit harder to understand why this is the case. It's just sounding like you're getting stuck on stupid here. I mean no offense by that, but you're in a cul-de-sac with this one.

Also on a stranger and more curious note, I'm wondering why you cut the interview off without thanking Shermer. I mean, I get that you said "thanks" to your audience, but it never happened during the actual interview. Normally there's a natural closing with your guests. Did the recording stop? Was there more after Shermer mentioned the movie he was working on? He just got cut off there.
 
Just listened to this interview and would like to address Shermer's question to Alex about where did Aunt Millie's mind go. The short answer is it didn't go anywhere.

Shermer's insistence that there is a football game inside the TV produced by the TV is obvious nonsense. He insists that when the football game disappears the football players die and the game is gone forever. Those who are as old as I am know that simply grabbing the rabbit ears on top of the TV, or turning the rabbit ears, will often bring the football game back. The game is very much alive despite the problems with the TV which is old and suffering from Alzheimer's.

Evidence has just been presented that proves the point (despite Shermer's insistence that his interpretation of the data will be different). Bernadette Doran who was on Skeptiko and who treated Alex for a medical problem just gave a lecture in Chicago on how to grab the rabbit ears of Alzheimer's and bring back Aunt Millie brain. I quote from the promo,

Thirty-five years of research and clinical experience show that the Bengston Energy Healing Method® is a powerful, safe energy therapy that can produce remarkable results for cancer, Alzheimer's, depression, digestive diseases, cataracts, eczema and many other physical and emotional problems. Clinical experience shows that it is especially effective for reversing the symptoms of Alzheimer's, and in this free lecture, Bernadette Doran reviews typical results in a number of case studies. For example, one patient had Alzheimer's for 3 years, and was in a state of decline. She was incommunicative, increasingly confused, and unable to do self-care and basic tasks. After just one Bengston treatment, she was able to dress herself and wash dishes. After four treatments, she was able to hold conversations, remember names of visitors, had a more upbeat attitude, and was much more physically active. Bengston Method appears to be quite remarkable in reversing Alzheimer’s symptoms, and consistent in its effects from patient to patient. The therapy can be done in person or as distant healing. Join us for this compelling lecture!

As a final point on this I reference Shermer's recent article "Anomalous Events That Can Shake One’s Skepticism to the Core."

In that article Shermer tells the story how his new wife's dead grandfather grabbed the rabbit ears of a transistor radio that Shermer had tried to fix and was able to come back to play love songs for 24 hours on his wedding day. How sweet of him! His mind not gone anywhere. He had just learned how to broadcast a message with his mind using a receiver. Shermer should learn to do the same.
 
This was a very anticipated interview. But, it was very disappointing in two ways. One way I knew was coming was from Shermer's unchanging and unscientific prejudice of the widely available research Alex discusses. However, I had hoped (and thought) Alex, with his well tempered attitude, would have still called Shermer out on his blatant and open non-acknowledgement of peer review research.

Shermer betrays himself horribly by the examples that Alex brought up and his go-to...But, it's an unknown and I don't like the conclusions, so WE can't include this! Therefore it's forbidden and WE must marginalize it. Ha ha...woo woo! And, because more of US disbelieve that science and we're more popular? So, you're persona non grata if you do.

But, Alex kept the kid gloves on and pulled his typically calling it like it is exchange.

I understand why you did it Alex, but I also think you shouldn't have and why I don't agree.

I'd prefer more of intellectual knock down drag out (more science, less what this interview was) debate. Figuratively and with all the decorum of course. Maybe Sam Harris. Who knows.

Thanks Alex.
 
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It never made any sense to me. Just as Freud's reductionistic theory of the human psyche where the human drive was primarily fueled by sexual urges and a primordial distant event in the past led to this unconscious desire of a son wanting to kill his father and rape his mother. All this was taken rather seriously at the time by Freud and his followers (Jung being the crown prince), and even today there are a number of Freudian psychologists extant. But Jung recognized the nonsense, and it was one of the central reasons why he finally parted ways with Freud (and interestingly enough, a well accounted paranormal event that Jung describes in his autobiography that was pivotal during his professional separation with Freud). I view Dawkin's "Selfish Gene" theory as belonging in the same reductionistic category as Freud's Oedipus complex theory, attempting to explain diverse phenomena by reducing it all into one single event or thing in the past or present. It becomes intellectually ludicrous with any amount of critical examination.

The laws of chance which are well known - simply cannot account for life spontaneously emerging from inert lifeless matter. And it makes no sense at all that out of randomness can come the exact kind of physical laws that we know of, or the extraordinary scope, reasoning and imaginative capabilities of human consciousness. And despite what the Skeptics believe or insist upon, we still have no scientific evidence or theory that demonstrates how life can spontaneously arise from inert lifeless matter, or how non-conscious molecules and atoms that make up the neurons in our brain, billions of them, can organize themselves spontaneously - to create the conscious awareness each of us know is a reality. There literally is not a single scientific fact right now that demonstrates consciousness itself is a product of the brain. Sure, there is plenty of scientific data on correlation - but there is not a single fact demonstrating causation. So indeed, today's Skepticism - is oddly based not on science as we know it, but promissory note materialism - that what they claim, and propagandize on Ted Talks & Wikipedia. Almost like a promise that Jesus himself will return some day and save us all.

But here is something else that makes even less sense to me: A Germanwings Airbus A320 passenger plane carrying 150 people crashed Tuesday in mountainous southeastern France. On board was the well known German opera singer Maria Radner she was 33. She probably had no idea this would be the last day of her life, or that she would die a horrible death in the prime of her life. With her was her husband, and their baby.

Why indeed do we live in such a reality? Where these kind of things happen on a regular basis. Why has reality given us "intelligence" and "love" and why is reality itself grand - our universe so full of other worlds, and probably abundant with life. Why then, is such cruelty visited upon people like Maria - simply taking a plane trip with her family? None of them realizing that they would perish that same day. Why is it we have these hopes and dreams in us, that are crushed so easily? It is one thing to believe that intelligence and self-organization is inherent within our reality - it makes more sense than the nonsense that out of non-meaning can come meaning, out of randomness can come strict order, or that out of nothingness can come something. But what about Maria Radner and her baby, and the other 148 people on that plane? It still is a mystery to me. Still something that does not make much sense.

My Best,
Bertha

Yes I agree with you about Freud. Dreadful stuff. I recommend Jeffrey Masson's book The Assault on Truth.
Freud blamed children and young women for the sexual perversion of the adult world into which they were born.
The Oedipus complex is also a projection or displacement of adult feelings into the child, imo.
 
I think the answer, "I don't know" is a valid position to take. It is also valid and appropriate for me to question whether or not someone else's answer is based on evidence or faith (pretending to know things you do not know).
Seeing this as some sort of "slight of hand" and equates with 'moving the goal posts' is a bit disingenuous.

My point was that it isn't "I don't know". Most of the time it's "We know! We know! We Know!....And 'anybody who questions scientific materialism's efficacy for describing reality is an idiot!' 'And we only make claims based on testable fact and those other frauds rely on all of these metaphysical assumptions and faith without evidence.....'

Until they are pressed on issues like consciousness or meaning or values or how life arises out of inorganic matter or where the 'laws of nature' were before the Big Bang etc. - and suddenly they discover humility. As I wrote, then it becomes, "Oh well, we don't know that yet....but we know for sure that scientific materialism can provide the answer one day."
Is that not "pretending to know things you do not know"? Is it not belief that inspires their faith that their methods will provide the answers? One could make the argument(as some people like Thomas Nagel has) that after decades of research the evidence to date would suggest that many of these things do not in fact reveal themselves to the scientific materialist method. Yet in spite of evidence to the contrary, their faith that materialism is the only possibility persists.

As I said too, Shermer's arguments for these strictly materialist processes are all embedded with descriptions that presuppose intent, meaning, design, anticipated need.....but when pressed he'll say that's not what he means. What does he mean then? Again the answer is something along the lines of, 'Well, we don't know that yet either.....but I know for sure it's definitely not what my own argument implies it is!'

This is the kind of loosey-goosey, implicitly metaphysical and somewhat self-contradictory style of argumentation that someone like Shermer would be all over Chopra or a PSI or NDE researcher for making. Woo woo anybody?

... he makes this extraordinary claim for so called "moral emotions" for which there is no objective evidence whatsoever ...
He makes a claim for 'moral progress', not 'moral emotions'. Moral progress is the -- “improvement in the survival and flourishing of sentient beings”. His argument is that the definition of sentient beings is broadening, based on our understanding of biology, chemistry and, yes, philosophy.
So, I'll throw the 'moral emotion' argumentation into the 'straw man' pile.

No. He makes a claim for "moral emotions" as I quoted (15:00 ). You can throw it into whichever pile you like but simply declaring it a 'straw man' doesn't make it so. They have no objective, testable, or more importantly, falsifiable evidence that demonstrates how morality arises "biologically" from animals 'kicking' each other. They do have a whimsical narrative however. Now if that narrative isn't based on anything remotely like conclusive objective evidence.....what could it be based on? Belief perhaps? Like a story constructed to explain a preconceive conclusion arising from faith that it has to be biological?


... comes across as nothing but an attempt to use mythological narrative to account for morality in terms of a materialist belief system ...
One more time.
There is no 'materialist belief system'.
I do not pray to Darwin or worship at the periodic table.
I do not burn candles and chant calculus equations.

One more time. This represents materialism's lack of self-awareness

I don't see why materialists find it plausible that only other people have belief systems, not them. It is redundant of course to point out that one of the core tenets of their belief system is that materialism isn't a belief system. Worse...it's an absolutist belief system.

Of course, I'm assuming we are using roughly the same definition of the term 'materialism', eg. reality is comprised of nothing other than physical matter and processes.

In the example you give above, you look to the previous dominant belief system and infer that since materialists don't believe the same things they did, it means materialism isn't a belief system. That may be comforting to materialists, but it's not particularly good reasoning.
 
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Argh. When will they realise that a cybernetic machine is actually not reducible to physics? This is easily realised through the material application of information transfer. The ONLY way to transfer information through time and space is through the use of tokens that represent someting other than themselves and by operational nesecescity do not have any physical law connecting between the thing and the thing it represents. None!

The gap is closed by formal operations, codes, programming etc.. within the cell and within our tech. The formal operators being substantiated in matter again not through any thermodynamjc process but ultimately encoded. Codes, semiotics, digital programming are not physics! It is actually the codes and information in living things that control the very matter they are represented by!

We have not even got to spirit or consciousness yet. Even at this stage within material and information science it is self refuting!

Biological machines are we? The universe happened to stumble apon cybernetic AI programming through chance? Well chance is easily ruled out by even a single simple protein. All that is left is lawful necsecity, the laws of physics.

You must believe that blind chemistry can produce a language no less. Language from mud as I always say.

This is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence wouldn't you say? :)

There is none, not even a coherent concept to solve the epistemic cut, the symbol matter problem. It is in fact the exact same problem as the hard problem, how a network of firing nuerons can be something it is not. Evolution with its invoked magical abillities is null here because for any evolution to occur a thing must be able to encode it's own form via representations. Semiosis must pre exist. It is an irreducible relationship, sign, referent and interpretant.

This is all completely empirical. All completely scientific. Propents of the biological machine idea do not realise the implications of that claim. It is very clear through the functional operation of information transfer that we understand quite well and is evidenced in our own technology we are surrounded by. It actually has to be this way!

Information is not matter or energy! But damm I feel like a broken record, some people here get it. It is not too hard. But this realization has not yet permeated throughout the sciences.
 
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