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?
Rumraket,
What’s the Theory of Evolution?
You should try to beat Jimmy W. at his own game. Go over to Conservapædia and put up an entry on Rupert Sheldrake. Enlist KF in the effort and you can round out their collection of ID-friendly articles in a few days.
If you look at their main page, you will see that they already cover a lot of ID-related topics that you see at UD: Abortion, homosexuality, atheism and mass murder, and so forth. Conservapædia and UD are natural partners.
Out of interest how many of those are about ID rather then deficiencies with evolution?
I am happy to explain it to you, in exchange for an equal number of words about the Theory of Intelligent Design.
Why not take me up on it?
Rumraket,
Its easy. Its just like Jerry Coyne. “I don’t believe in God. And I hate him.”
Just like most people here.
That topic has already been discussed at length. You’re not answering my question.
That’s not a pro-ID paper published in a credible scientific journal. C’mon, you can do better.
I don’t how that works.
Prove it.
Rumraket,
You are not answering my question. What is the theory of evolution?
No, I say you avoid talking about ID because you know it’s bullshit and we can prove it.
I know what happens at Wikipedia. Still, irrelevant since you have 3 million scientific papers, the consensus of scientists, museums, TV broadcasters, etc who would have to be part of any conspiracy. So explain how this vast conspiracy operates. I like a laugh.
I asked for papers first. You give me papers, I give you the theory of evolution. Deal?
Same way everyone hates Voldemort.
This is called “diversion”. We have talked already about evolution and your arguments against it and our defense lead nowhere.
Let’s change the rules a little bit: you DEFEND ID, and we’ll tell you the possible faults we see.
For a start, no one has ever explained to me what the “designing process” of living organisms (previous to human intervention) consists in.
Guillermoe,
Theory of Evolution?
No papers for you to find, I guess the matter is settled. ID has nothing.
Evolution: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/
phoodoo,
Sorry, that’s just lame. Here was your golden opportunity, on a predominately pro-evolution blog with pretty light moderation, to provide the information that was supposedly censored from Wikipedia. You know it would be unlikely to be taken down, and if it was I would be the first to complain. And your response? “Do your own research”. Sheesh.
If you refuse to read the links, that’s up to you.
But don’t worry there is plenty more.
Is Rupert Sheldrake simply an author, or is he actually a PHD scientist of biochemistry from Cambridge? I wonder why they would refuse to allow someone to state that in his opening bio?
Oh right, the guerilla sceptics.
How about Dean Radin, what does the first paragraph say about him:
“Radin’s ideas and work have been criticized by scientists and philosophers skeptical of paranormal claims”
Well, if the scientists say so!
And Richard Dawkins, what do they say about him:
Clinton Richard Dawkins /ˈdɔːkɨnz/, DSc, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941) is an ethologist, evolutionary biologist,[1] and writer. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford,[2] and was the University of Oxford’s Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.
So Sheldrake is simply an author, whilst Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist huh?
Have any scientists ever been critical of Dawkins? How many papers has Dawkins submitted to science journals?
Oh wait wait, Jimmy Wales and the guerrilla skeptics say that is not fair to mention.
Close your ears all you want Allan, the facts are the facts.
phoodoo,
“The links”? I’m not going through the lot. I’m not at all interested in Sheldrake or general woo. The topic was evolution and ID, and your claim that ID papers had been edited out of the ID article. So a specific link backing up that claim would be useful. If you’ve already pasted it, I apologise, but I missed it. You can make me look stupid by pointing to it now.
Wales has made it clear his ambition to control the dissemination of ideas around the world.
socle,
At least Conservapaedia is honest about its viewpoint. Why isn’t wikipedia called “atheistapedia”, that would be much more honest.
They don’t want people to tell the truth there, they want to spread an agenda. Just like most people who call themselves “skeptics”.
Allan Miller,
If you are not going to accept the puffing up of Dawkins, and the intentional discrediting of real scientists like Sheldrake and Radin, nothing I show you will matter to you Allan. You are a close minded skeptic, which is extremely redundant I realize.
phoodoo:
“Wales has made it clear his ambition to control the dissemination of ideas around the world.” [citation required]
There’s always a conspiracy keeping the wondrous science of ID down. But how does it work so well, against all of the Godly forces that try to promote it?
Based on the same rigor as that which underlies ID, I think we can definitely conclude that it’s God who makes the conspiracy against ID work so comprehensively well. It’s the only explanation, especially since it’s the “Godly” who are constantly prevented from providing any sort of convincing (or even plausible) evidence for design. Satan is far less capable than God (again, something as thoroughly demonstrated as ID), yet the side supposedly with God is the one that loses all of the time. The truth is that evolution simply is God’s lie that he protects with a conspiracy that only he could mastermind.
So I don’t know if any here is mad at God, but it’s pretty obvious that phoodoo should be.
Glen Davidson
I just went and had dinner and visited my brother. Still none of those “50” pro-ID papers.
Weird.
While I have been reluctant to do so, you have now convinced me. If you dislike wikipedia so much, I better start donating. They must be doing something right.
Rumraket,
I believe it. Atheists hate the truth so much, they would pay good money to stifle it.
phoodoo,
Why do you refuse to talk ID? Nothing to defend?
I’d love to see ID applied to a concrete biological example.
It makes sense to me that the science articles would be dominated by actual scientists. I take it the pages on Christianity and Buddhism, e.g., are likely dominated by actual Christians and Buddhists. That makes sense to me too. phoodoo apparently wants ID supporters to be the guardian of TRUTH on ALL the pages at wikipedia. That seems problematic to me.
He’s concerned, for example, about atheists running the place. He doesn’t like the view that God talk really has no place in articles about millinery, helicopters, biology, French cuisine, Buffalo hunting, IBM, Boyle’s Law, etc. because, well, God is responsible for everything, no? That is, the only way wikipedia, or, really anypedia is going to be acceptable to phoodoo is if its subject is exclusively God.
While I think he might be right to complain if atheists were running the show at an article about, e.g., Islam, I really don’t think a paragraph on the wonders of Creation and the Divine Intelligence need to be found in an article about Milton Berle. That is, my sense is that wikipedia has got things balanced pretty much right on the God front.
Oh, but you should have added the second!
But no, best not to mention that right?
phoo,
Was ID making great strides in the world before Wikipedia was invented?
If so, presumably it was Wikipedia that stopped ID journals publishing ID content?
Your defence of the indefensible is great, please keep it up! ID is failing because Wikipedia is biased? What a joke….
walto,
Rupert Sheldrake and Dean Radin are REAL scientists, unlike Richard Dawkins. I wonder why Wikipedia wants to hide this truth?
OMagain,
Why would I choose to ignore that? You are making preciously my point for me, and you don’t even realize it!
Many people review books and have differing opinions. Many people think Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne are unintelligent windbags. Its not Wikipedia’s role to choose who is credible and who is not. Except that is the role they play. So if its a philosophy they endorse, well, then of course they are a brilliant researcher (it matters not what the truth is) !
If it is not a philosophy that Wales and his cronies endorse, OF COURSE they are going to claim that someone else doesn’t agree with that person. And if someone tries to correct factual information, what happens? Those who attempt to edit it are banned.
So what if someone on Wikipedia says Dean Radin got his statistics wrong. That doesn’t mean he got his statistics wrong, or that he has been discredited, or anything of the sort. It means that he has done work on subjects which don’t fit the atheist, materialist agenda of Wikipedia. That is what propaganda is! They manipulate truth to fit their agenda.
Thanks for pointing that out O Magain! You are exactly the kind of person they manipulate the truth for. Gullible sacks who want to be told what is true.
Here’s the opening graph on Sheldrake there:
Alfred Rupert Sheldrake is an English author,[3] public speaker,[4] and researcher in the field of parapsychology,[5] known for his “morphic resonance” concept.[6] He worked as a biochemist and cell biologist at Cambridge University from 1967 to 1973[3] and as principal plant physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics until 1978.
Here’s the opening graph on Radin:
He has been Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), in Petaluma, California, USA, since 2001, and is on the Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Psychology at Sonoma State University, on the Distinguished Consulting Faculty at Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, and former President of the Parapsychological Association.[1][2] He is also co-editor-in-chief of the journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing.
What you must dislike is not the description of them as non-scientists, but the tone of the remainder of the articles, which concentrate on the lack of other scientists who agree with them about much. I can see why you might not like that relatively scornful tone. But if what is being reported is true, what should they do?
I mean, I don’t deny that these two renegades could be right about everything they’ve ever uttered, in spite of institutional opposition from most academics, but why should wikipedia suppress the information that almost no reputable scientist agrees with either of them about very much? If it’s accurate, it’s accurate, even if you find it unpleasant.
Or how about this entry about Russel Targ:
“Russell Targ (born April 11, 1934) is an American physicist, parapsychologist and author who is best known for his work on remote viewing. Targ’s work on remote viewing has been characterized as pseudoscience[2][3] and has also been criticized for lack of rigor.”
What scientist has done work that hasn’t been criticized by SOMEONE?? Many people have criticized Einsteins work as as not being verifiable. I read a scientist said Einstein is wrong! Should that be in his opening paragraph on Wikipedia?? I don’t think Neils Bohrs work was very vigorous. Many say it is pseudo-science. I also heard Neil De Grasse Tyson make many factual errors on Cosmos. Work on string theory and the Big Bang have been widely panned as magical fairy tales…
What a load of horsehit atheist preachers are.
Time will tell. As it has for Velikovsky, Lamarck, and others.
Targ is a Charlatan, like Uri Geller. Why shouldn’t Wiki say so?
walto,
Sheldrake is much more of a scientist than Richard Dawkins is! He has a PHD in Biochemistry from Cambridge! When someone tried to change Sheldrake’s opening bio to point out this fact, they were banned. Why isn’t Dawkins called an author, who has been widely discredited?
Here is what they wrote in the opening of Michael Behe:
“Behe’s claims about the irreducible complexity of essential cellular structures have been rejected by the vast majority of the scientific community.”
Fuck you they have. Who wrote that piece of shit lie? Did they do research to see who has rejected it and who hasn’t? Who is this scientific community they refer to? What percentage have rejected it? Behe is a scientist!
The scientific community has flatly rejected the notion of the selfish gene, did anyone tell the editors this??
Its Nazi style propaganda at its finest. Twist the truth to suit your agenda. You have fallen for it.
As best as I can tell, it disturbs those who have staked a lot on charlatanry.
Glen Davidson
I for one am glad there’s a popular public resource that credibly exposes known frauds and charlatans. I’m still waiting for the bad news in all of this, the only thing you’re showing is that people you have some forceful ideological agreement with aren’t having their critics censored on wikipedia.
And here I thought you ID types were all about non-censorship.
Then why’s it on the wikipedia page? The geurillaskeptics not got around to it yet?
petrushka,
He is part of the scientific community. He was a senior research physicist at the Stanford Research Institute. He wrote significant papers on early laser research. He was hired by Nasa and the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency to do further research into psychic phenomenon.
Your qualifications are that you read Wikipedia.
phoodoo,
And you’re gullible. Where does such childishness get us? You can’t win the argument so you blame the opponent? I need evidence, chum.
Dawkins is described as an evolutionary biologist. One might kind of take issue with that, because his specialism is ethology, though I believe he has published papers on evolution, and certainly books of course. Sheldrake is descibed as a biochemist and plant physiologist, so where’s the discrediting? It is a fact that his ‘morphic resonance’ finds no friends in the scientific community, so that is accurately reported.
But anyway … you don’t like something on Wikipedia, edit the goddamned thing. But don’t whine if someone undoes it, because it is not there to represent your personal view of the world. But nor is it the case that ‘Wikipedia’ is doing the editing. It’s just people, and woo is a minority sport pursued mainly by cranks who want the world to sit up and take notice of them. Bet you’re a fan of David Icke too.
I find it bizarre that you are sympathetic to morphic resonance, but natural selection has you writhing like a slug in salt.
So you are simultaneously appealing to authority and rejecting the consensus of authority. I like your consistency.
I will only say that it takes no large amount of money to demonstrate true psychic powers, and plenty of people are standing in line to believe.
So when centuries pass without any convincing demonstration of psi, I don’t think it requires an expert to draw the obvious conclusion.
The woo is strong in that one.
petrushka,
Here, read it for Allan:
I am having a problem with Wikipedia. They think all remote viewing is “pseudoscience”. And they have defaced my Wiki bio-page with lots of nonsense.
I have written them a letter, enclosed here.
Remote viewing is not “pseudoscience.” Please immediately drop that inaccurate and insulting term that you have scattered throughout my Wikipedia bio-page.
Wikipedia’s definition: “Pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status. The term pseudoscience is often considered inherently pejorative, because it suggests something is being inaccurately or even deceptively portrayed as science.”
There are a number of reasons that editors at Wikipedia should not characterize remote viewing as pseudoscience, when it is not characterized that way by the informed scientific community.
1–In order to publish our findings in the 1976 Proceedings of the IEEE, we had to meet with the Robert W. Lucky, managing editor, and his board. The editor proposed to us that we show him how to conduct a remote viewing experiment. If it was successful, he would publish our paper. The editor was also head of electro-optics at Bell Telephone Laboratory. We gave a talk at his lab. He then chose some engineers to be the “psychics” for each of five days. Each day he hid himself at a randomly chosen location in the nearby town. After the agreed-upon five trials, the editor read the five transcripts and successfully matched each of the five correctly to his hiding places. This was significant at 0.008 (one in 5!, 5-factorial). As a result, he published our paper on “Information Transmission Over Kilometer Distances”.
2—In our 23 year program for the government at SRI, we had to carry out “demonstration of ability” tasks for the Director of CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA, and Commanding General of the Army Intelligence Command. (The names are available upon request.) For the CIA we were able to accurately describe and draw a giant gantry crane rolling on eight wheels over a large building, and draw the 60 foot gores, “slices” of a sphere, under construction in northern Russia. The sphere was entirely accurate, although its existence was unknown at the time. The description was so accurate that it became the subject of a Congressional hearing of the House Committee on Intelligence. They were afraid of a security leak. No leak was found, and we were told to “press on.”
3—Remote viewing is easily replicated and has been demonstrated all over the world. It has been the subject of several Ph.D. dissertations in the US and abroad. Princeton University had a 25 year program investigating remote viewing with more than 450 trials. Prof. Robert Jahn also published a lengthy and highly significant (p = 10-10 or 1 in ten billion) experimental investigation of remote viewing in the 1982 Proc. IEEE.
4—The kind of tasks that kept us in business for twenty-three years include: SRI psychics found a downed Russian bomber in Africa; reported on the health of American hostages in Iran; described Soviet weapons factories in Siberia; located a kidnapped US general in Italy; and accurately forecasted the failure of a Chinese atomic-bomb test three days before it occurred, etc. When San Francisco heiress Patricia Hearst was abducted from her home in Berkeley, a psychic with the SRI team was the first to identify the kidnapper by name and then accurately describe and locate the kidnap car. I was at the Berkeley police station and witnessed this event.
5—Jessica Utts is a statistics Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and is president of the American Statistical Association. In writing for her part of a 1995 evaluation of our work for the CIA, she wrote: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted.… Remote viewing has been conceptually replicated across a number of laboratories, by various experimenters, and in different cultures. This is a robust effect that, were it not such an unusual domain, would no longer be questioned by science as a real phenomenon. It is unlikely that methodological flaws could account for its remarkable consistency.”
6–Whether you believe some, all, or none of the above, it should be clear that hundreds of people were involved in a 23 year, multi-million dollar operational program at SRI, the CIA, DIA and two dozen intelligence officers at the army base at Ft. Meade. Regardless of the personal opinion of a Wikipedia editor, it is not logically coherent to trivialize this whole remote viewing undertaking as some kind of “pseudoscience.” Besides me, there is a parade of Ph.D. physicists, psychologists, and heads of government agencies who think our work was valuable, though puzzling.
~~~~Russell Targ, May 12, 2014
But don’t let it hurt your little cocoon of a worldview, skeptics!
Phoodoo, if remote viewing is a true and useful phenomenon, It would not take experts to verify it. One could go on any talk show and demonstrate it. It wouldn’t take elaborate statistical analysis.
Magic tricks have been around since forever. they take advantage of misdirection. Honest stage magicians despise anyone who tries to pass the craft of illusion off as “real”.
Your guy is a fake and a fraud, and you are stupid. Sorry, but that’s the truth.
Oh, I see, you don’t know what “skeptic” means.
It actually doesn’t mean accepting self-serving statements from highly questionable sources, like Targ and phoodoo, as if they were the Truth.
I liked one of the American Greed episodes, where one fraud figured out how he’d pay back everyone who’d invested in one of his questionable endeavors. He decided that he’d transport himself into the future, read the winning numbers of lottery tickets, and buy tickets with those numbers. Oddly, it never quite paid off, but it appears that he really believed that it was going to work.
When these frauds finally manage to do something like that I’ll be likely to believe. Remote viewing itself could clearly be highly rewarding financially, like getting insider information. Oddly, it never quite pays off.
So, no tangible results, but whine endlessly that this is noted by Wikipedia (like I said, I’m no fan, yet everything phoodoo complains about is the good stuff that they do). Shouldn’t they be claiming that frauds like ID and remote viewing work, sans credible evidence?
Glen Davidson
Heh. Believe me, I’m all in favor of IDers embracing crackpots like Russell Targ. See if you can get more of this posted on UD, please!
I would agree that remote viewing isn’t pseudoscience. the correct term is fraud.
It is fairly easy to get away with fraud in science, because scientists tend to regard each other as truth tellers. When you get someone who is both dishonest and an accomplished illusionist making scientific claims, then scientists need to bring in an observer who is good at spotting misdirection.
Even that is no guarantee. I’ve seen a video in which a magician does a card trick in plain view of Penn and Teller, and they are unable to spot the “move.”
When you enter that kind of world, you need to design the tests very carefully. And when conditions are carefully controlled, psi disappears.