Rapture party at Three Birds this Saturday Come celebrate the upcoming Apocalypse with us this Saturday at Three Birds Tavern. And, in the unlikely event that we are still corporeal here on this material plane come 6:01, either because the Rapture did not in fact occur, or...
PZ Myers on Science and Religion PZ Myers' very entertaining talk from the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne in 2010 recently became available....
Ray Comfort Makes My Teeth Hurt Ray Comfort being interviewed on Atheist Experience on local public access television in Austin, TX. (How do you manage to sound like a blithering idiot within a minute-and-a-half of being introduced?)
Pioneer Anomaly Solved? The Pioneer Anomaly is a long-standing mystery where the solar-system-escaping Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft have been experiencing a tiny, unexplained sunward acceleration over the course of their journey
BBC and the Milgram experiment A beautiful (if disturbing) set of videos illustrating the Milgram experiments. Particularly interesting was the complete lack of empathy visible in the 19-year-old's face (though many others followed just as far in the experiments)...
Not to get too overtly- or overly-religious, but in this debate Deepak Chopra demonstrates very clearly the use of a great number of logical fallacies in argument — in fact, about the only real talent that he displays is that of shouting over his fellow panelists. (Whoever this Jean Houston lady is — Chopra’s co-proponent in the debate — she seems to have memorized a few dozen pithy zingers and anecdotes, but that’s about all she had to contribute. She would speak for minutes at a time, and I could literally not parse any meaningful content out of the gibberish of her New Age word salad of touchy-feely babble.)
Michael Shermer does his usual competent job of putting DC in his place, although Chopra was being particularly vitriolic against him, and kept shouting him down (he and Shermer have a bit of a history, and Chopra was particularly riled by Shermer’s use of the term “woo” in reference to his…work.)
But I could watch Sam Harris talk for hours. (His recent TED talk was pretty damn good, as well.) In this debate he was his usual brilliant, cogent self — he has the type of delivery style where he clearly states exactly what you’ve always felt, and wish you could express, but in a way you could never manage to arrange and deliver lucidly, and certainly not on-the-fly in a debate format. (For some reason the break-points kept occurring during his statements, which was both annoying and suspiciously suggestive that they were being edited — I’d like to see his parts uncut).
Here’s PZ Myers’ take on the debate. And be sure to stick around for the Q&A at the end where the quantum physicist in the audience pipes up to tell Chopra precisely how amply supplied with fecal matter he is, in regards to his appropriation of physics jargon into the realms of the meaningless.
I won’t go through the whole TBO.com story, but here’s a few choice quotes and my thoughts.
“I’ve been doing this for seven years and I learned that you can’t just dismiss accounts of unexplained experiences; there are too many of them,” says Buell, who founded his Paranormal Research Society in 2001 while he was a student at Penn State University.
This reminds me of one of my favorite Dr. Karl quotes: “The plural of anecdote is not data.” A lot of poor evidence consisting mostly of people having odd feelings does not make up for the lack of good evidence. Also, “unexplained” doesn’t mean paranormal. It just means unexplained. I don’t know why that dog outside is barking, it’s unexplained. Doesn’t mean it’s barking at a ghost.
“So far on this tour, we have heard some fascinating stories and met some credible people such as a scientist, a psychologist and a prison guard,” he says. “Skeptics think these stories come from bored housewives with overactive imaginations but that’s not the case.”
I doubt Mr. Buell could find a single skeptic who would come anywhere close to saying only “bored housewives” claim paranormal experiences. The kinds of things Mr. Buell would think are paranormal experiences are largely explainable in psychological terms, so anyone is capable of experiencing them. Even scientists, psychologists and prison guards.
“I just want someone to help get rid of a demon that is terrorizing us,” said a woman named Jennifer who declined to give her last name.
a
She says she has had four previous paranormal investigations of her Thonotosassa home and the last group pulled out when it revealed to them that a powerful demon was there. She says the demon has attacked her and her 7-year-old son and has become increasingly aggressive with each investigation.
a
Accompanied by a Tampa-based filmmaker who is doing a documentary on her, the woman said she wanted to share her story with Buell and his team to see if something could be done.
It sounds like this woman does need help, and the first thing she needs to do is stop listening to these leech-like “paranormal investigators” who have a clear profit motive in scaring the shit out of her. Ditto the film crew.
I’ve never watched the show Paranormal State so I’m not sure exactly what they do, but they’re going to be in Tampa next Monday. From what I can tell from their website, it looks like the show is about helping people who have “paranormal” problems, so presumably they’ll be looking for local people to appear in future episodes. Does being surrounded by people wearing socks with sandals count as a paranormal problem?
