Skeptiko – Science at the Tipping Point

I firstly wish confess my position as a “materialist” and scientific sceptic, I believe that Craig Hogan has a great advantage over other investigators, the fact that he claims to have the extraordinary ability of “Remote Viewing” himself means that it would be within his choice to “sock it” to the materialists. I strongly encourage him to punch the materialistic scientists in the face with the extraordinary proof that they require. To take Great delight in destroying their worldview, and if they evade or try to ignore him, to go for the Maximum publicity to embarrass them. Even go for the cheap thrills of publicly snatching the million dollars from that “old fart” Mr Randi. Dance over their position! (Not for the dollars, but for the publicity-of course). On the other hand, he could take the “high road”, do the scientific research himself, and go for the Multiplicity of Nobel prizes that surely would go his way!!!. He could do it the easy way (first option above) or the hard way (second option) or even both. If neither, be more humble!!!. ( I really wanted to say -Just Shut the heck up!)

Hi Alex,

I am atheist and ‘skeptic’ and I must say I enjoyed this interview you had with Craig Hogan! You seem noticably more ‘reasonable’ towards the skeptical position than you used to be in the beginning. To be honest, you used to strike me as obnoxiously stubborn in your unwillingness to understand why skeptics hold the positions they do. But on this show you seemed to really get it, and I shared your frustration when you were trying to explain to your guest that skeptics aren’t ‘the enemy’, and that by working together we can find the answers. I really appreciated that, Alex.

Even if atheist-materialists (as you fondly call us) and spiritualists (like yourself) don’t agree on certain matters, I think its important we at least ‘understand’ each other, and why we think the way we do. Listening to your show, I got the sense that your hostility toward the skeptical position had waned somewhat. I really hope your guest learnt something from you in that regard.

first off sorry for the delay in replying… the whole “prove it to me game” misses the point… we’re all saying this every time we enter these discussions. Hogan is claiming that sufficient proof has been given, Wiseman agrees… so why are you not convinced?

first off sorry for the delay in replying… I guess I’m just anti-dogma. Of course, I still don’t understand what “data” aethists/materialists are looking at to support their position… seems like the best evidence is pointing the other way.

Alex one of the assumptions that is made in this interview, particularly the science vs spiritualty debate, is that somehow the “spiritual evidence” is not scientific. However, the data for abilities like precognition is from scientific evidence, scientific studies have been done and replicated, that in some cases is more rigirous than those that apply science to the brain.

agreed

In my opinion secular science has a double standard when accepting some studies and their evidences if the material is  related to metaphysics (read as religious). For example string theory produced no verifiable results for some time, however it was the darling of ‘science’ during that period. On the other hand, statistical studies of mind brain dualism and other experiential data, even in different disciplines  are often ignored by secular science. Its my belief that there is a stigma associated with religion/metaphysics that can be traced all the way back to secular sciences adoption of logical positivism over metaphysics at the turn of the century. Ghosts of the Vienna circle so to speak, where one of the renowned logician, theist and metaphysicist  of our century felt invited not to speak of his ideas and theorems. It was only by the intellectual weight  of his brilliant incompleteness theorem that we know him, his name is Kurt Gödel. I often wonder what would our world be like if we had chosen metaphysics over the stuffy precise sterile world of the Logical positivists.