Walkout at Susan Blackmoore lecture protesting anti-religious theme.

What Karla fails to see I think isn't the belief itself that causes the perceived derision it's the how and why people believe.
Sidenote from Karla an article she wrote for CSICOP a few years ago
I'm sure there's a good dose of mods and rockers to the skeptic-proponent divide, but if skeps are content to put everyone else into the self-deluded and religiously indoctrinated camp, it's no surprise when people reply in kind. Look at the number of skeptics who portray themselves as misunderstood outsiders while materialism dominates political and cultural life to see a blatant lack of awareness. When a high table insider like Dawkins tries to identify with abused choir boys and young bible belt lesbian goths to promote his Orwellian master plan, I want to throw up.
 
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I'm sure there's a good dose of mods and rockers to the skeptic-proponent divide, but if skeps are content to put everyone else into the self-deluded and religiously indoctrinated camp, it's no surprise when people reply in kind.

Right and its no surprise when proponents call skeptics dogmatic materials with nefarious plans to convert people to their religion that skeptics will respond in kind.

It's a vicious cycle. We can continue to spin our wheels, assign blame, launch insults, and talk past one another or we can actively try and break the cycle!

It has to start somewhere. Why not right here on skeptiko?
 
It has to start somewhere. Why not right here on skeptiko?
To do so would require an ability to juggle macroscopic philosophical concerns and microscopic data. Some of the smarter people on this forum can sustain both without ignoring either, but in general people want to make everything big picture, or divert discussions into the long grass where they can procrastinate about detail.
 
To do so would require an ability to juggle macroscopic philosophical concerns and microscopic data. Some of the smarter people on this forum can sustain both without ignoring either, but in general people want to make everything big picture, or divert discussions into the long grass where they can procrastinate.

All I think we really need is the intelligence to recognise that the petty bickering gets us nowhere and a willingness to push past the hurt and really communicate.

I'm not saying that's easy - our instinct to prettily bicker is pretty entrenched - and different people are still going to engage on different levels of depth, but even the most superficial discussions will be more useful, and less harmful, with this approach.
 
All I think we really need is the intelligence to recognise that the petty bickering gets us nowhere and a willingness to push past the hurt and really communicate.

I'm not saying that's easy - our instinct to prettily bicker is pretty entrenched - and different people are still going to engage on different levels of depth, but even the most superficial discussions will be more useful, and less harmful, with this approach.
I believe the divisions are too sharp for consensus. Spiritual creatures on an earthly journey vs. meat robots living out a cosmic joke, wishful thinkers vs steely realists, does not suggest an obvious middle way.
 
I believe the divisions are too sharp for consensus. Spiritual creatures on an earthly journey vs. meat robots living out a cosmic joke, wishful thinkers vs steely realists, does not suggest an obvious middle way.

When you say consensus - are you talking about consensus in meta-physical beliefs, or consensus about how we should interact with each other?
 
I'm offended by people taking offence when they're being offensive. As with the Blackmore case, she was winding people up then feigned surprise. That's politics, not science.

I agreed with you that Blackmore shouldn't have been surprised that people were offended by her offensive remarks. But I was asking for clarification on your meaning of consensus in your prior post:

When you say consensus - are you talking about consensus in meta-physical beliefs, or consensus about how we should interact with each other?
 
I agreed with you that Blackmore shouldn't have been surprised that people were offended by her offensive remarks. But I was asking for clarification on your meaning of consensus in your prior post:
Do you mean play nice? That relies on everyone playing by the rules. I perceive a general movement to limit the beliefs of someone like myself by the use of institutional scorn. I'm prepared to illustrate why I perceive that to be true, and am prepared to have that perception questioned. I'm not prepared to have my rights to those beliefs queried on an ideological basis. If people recognise the difference, they'll get no problem from me. What usually happens is blanket denial. Denial that skeptical materialism is ideological in nature, especially.
 
Do you mean play nice? That relies on everyone playing by the rules. I perceive a general movement to limit the beliefs of someone like myself by the use of institutional scorn. I'm prepared to illustrate why I perceive that to be true, and am prepared to have that perception questioned. I'm not prepared to have my rights to those beliefs queried on an ideological basis. If people recognise the difference, they'll get no problem from me. What usually happens is blanket denial. Denial that skeptical materialism is ideological in nature, especially.

I mean a bit more than simply playing nice, but that's on the right track and I have more to say on it. But first I'm just trying to figure out if by consensus and middle road you were referring to what people believe about all topics vs. a particular consensus and middle road agreement on how we should converse with one another.
 
This sentence seems to run counter to almost every other post you have made criticising "big science".
Why? Big Science seeks to maintain totemic ideas based on a single way of knowing. In the case of materialism it attempts to reduce other ways of knowing to the absurd, as Blackmore did here in such blatant style. The students rejected her notion of intellectual ascendency, which appears to have shocked her, or so she claimed.
 
Why? Big Science seeks to maintain totemic ideas based on a single way of knowing. In the case of materialism it attempts to reduce other ways of knowing to the absurd, as Blackmore did here in such blatant style. The students rejected her notion of intellectual ascendency, which appears to have shocked her, or so she claimed.
I started a thread in the C&D forum. I'd link to, but for some reason I can't access that particular forum. Here's the link again.
 
I started a thread in the C&D forum. I'd link to, but for some reason I can't access that particular forum. Here's the link again.
A fascinating video that illustrates everything that's wrong with skeptical materialism. Science is no longer portrayed as a method, a set of tools, it wants to stamp its mark on every aspect of human life. It portrays its advocates as downtrodden and abused and elevates scientists - of which the overwhelming majority work in regular jobs - to guru status in possession of the only truths worth knowing. It even adopts words like denier to equivalence doubts about its thrall to the status of holocaust refusenik. Scientists have no special status, whatever their tutors insisted. They pick their feet and scratch their arse like the rest of us.
 
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I believe the divisions are too sharp for consensus. Spiritual creatures on an earthly journey vs. meat robots living out a cosmic joke, wishful thinkers vs steely realists, does not suggest an obvious middle way.
I think these two caricatures of either end show perfectly that most of us are in the middle somewhere.
 
I mean a bit more than simply playing nice, but that's on the right track and I have more to say on it. But first I'm just trying to figure out if by consensus and middle road you were referring to what people believe about all topics vs. a particular consensus and middle road agreement on how we should converse with one another.

Gabriel?
 
To do so would require an ability to juggle macroscopic philosophical concerns and microscopic data. Some of the smarter people on this forum can sustain both without ignoring either, but in general people want to make everything big picture, or divert discussions into the long grass where they can procrastinate about detail.

Wow. I have to hold a mirror up to this post. It would appear that if you agree with gabriel you have:

an ability to juggle macroscopic philosophical concerns and microscopic data

If not, you:

want to make everything big picture, or divert discussions into the long grass where they can procrastinate about detail.

Note: Two ways of saying exactly the same thing, firstly with a positive spin, then with a negative one.
 
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