Mega-thread for help with rebuttals against skeptical talking points

I do hope I'm not speaking ill of the dead however, since this Paul Anlee hasn't posted anything on his blog for nearly 4 months now. I'd check his social media, though he apparently only uses Facebook, which I don't have. His bio on that blog of his seems to indicate he let his ego go to his head, and that he finds it appropriate to vehemently attack dualists, idealists and monists as 'unscientific' and 'irrational' even though, as Dr Greyson found, and increasing number of scientists seem to be turning away from physicalism. How he can be expected to be treated seriously when he resorts to name-calling and bullying is baffling. 

The fact that he made a whole post as well whining about being called close-minded (which he quite clearly is) while also being advertised on another blog that bashes pseudo-skepticism is comedically ironic to me. 

On a serious note though, I was pretty ticked off by his claims about 'scientists stimulating experience' and there being 'hundreds of experiments' indicating such. Of course he didn't cite any examples of these at all, and in fact he rarely does cite his sources or evidence on his blog, but such misinformation and flat out lying is an embarrassing thing to resort to. Then again, he did claim even Hoffman had heard of some experiment that used magnetic stimulation to remove someone's sense of colour in their left eye or something? What's that all about?

(As I keep trying to tell you) I don't think you need to be concerned about what some sceptic somewhere might think, Omni. If they come into your territory,  then fair enough, but you have to realise it's very important (to them) that their view of the world is correct. 

They really don't want it, believe me. I still get emails from Woerlee; his latest argument being the effects of midazolam and how if the soul exists (separate from the brain), why can't people remember anything when he's loaded them up with it...and therefore I'm deluded. 

When I point out that there are numerous cases of people having veridical memories during their time under anaesthesia, he insists that they were either awake and the anaesthesiologist wasn't aware of it, or they acquired the information some other way. I very rarely respond.

(As I keep trying to tell you) I don't think you need to be concerned about what some sceptic somewhere might think, Omni. If they come into your territory,  then fair enough, but you have to realise it's very important (to them) that their view of the world is correct. 

They really don't want it, believe me. I still get emails from Woerlee; his latest argument being the effects of midazolam and how if the soul exists (separate from the brain), why can't people remember anything when he's loaded them up with it...and therefore I'm deluded. 

When I point out that there are numerous cases of people having veridical memories during their time under anaesthesia, he insists that they were either awake and the anaesthesiologist wasn't aware of it, or they acquired the information some other way. I very rarely respond.

That's despicable behaviour on Woerlee's part. So his arguments boil down to 'those professionals were deceived/aren't as smart as I am' or 'they just somehow acquired it' even though anaestheisa is supposed to 'turn off someone' and cases of anaesthesia awareness is often rare, AND is often described as more of a terrifying, horrific experience with very few, if any, similarities to NDEs. Does he still insist that the both of the actual surgeons on Reynolds, the ones who were there at the time and interviewed her, were somehow mistaken? Also, that's not very professional of him to insinuate that you're deluded. 

Also, I think it is also important that this blogging 'expert' on 'so many fields' hasn't written anything on any phenomena possibly indicative of consciousness survival or a soul, and thinks his theory on the chaos of virtual particles is a groundbreaking explanation of the origins of the universe (so he's probably deluded). Honestly, the hypocrisy he had to call Hoffman a deluded know-it-all guru, when he himself is the one who is convinced he knows the answers to the greatest mysteries known to man and refuses to consider any flaws or criticism in his thinking or logic. Pathetic.

That's despicable behaviour on Woerlee's part. So his arguments boil down to 'those professionals were deceived/aren't as smart as I am' or 'they just somehow acquired it' even though anaestheisa is supposed to 'turn off someone' and cases of anaesthesia awareness is often rare, AND is often described as more of a terrifying, horrific experience with very few, if any, similarities to NDEs. Does he still insist that the both of the actual surgeons on Reynolds, the ones who were there at the time and interviewed her, were somehow mistaken? Also, that's not very professional of him to insinuate that you're deluded. 

Also, I think it is also important that this blogging 'expert' on 'so many fields' hasn't written anything on any phenomena possibly indicative of consciousness survival or a soul, and thinks his theory on the chaos of virtual particles is a groundbreaking explanation of the origins of the universe (so he's probably deluded). Honestly, the hypocrisy he had to call Hoffman a deluded know-it-all guru, when he himself is the one who is convinced he knows the answers to the greatest mysteries known to man and refuses to consider any flaws or criticism in his thinking or logic. Pathetic.

It doesn't bother me in the slightest, Omni. I've had hundreds of email exchanges with him, some really interesting. He's not nasty or anything like that, it's his sense of humour, I suspect. And yes he does, with no evidence to support it either.

His behaviour in the denture case was particularly bad though, it has to be said.

I understand your point though Tim, it's inevitable that pseudo-skeptical folk will have their own blogs and stuff, and they do get criticism thrown their way of course, even the Centre for Inquiry. The modern skeptic 'community' seem to lack a notable degree of self-awareness or humility, while retaining a groupthink. 

The best example I can think of is the moronic pseudo-skeptical 'psychic and religion debunker' Holy Koolaid. According to that 'Answers in Reason' blog, he's recently started his own 'website'/'blog', which is nothing more than a desperate attempt to get even more attention, since it's been obvious for a while now that he's been losing subscribers. His blog is, for 99% of it, nothing but reuploads of his old videos with nothing else included. Not only is that beyond lazy, but it reeks of desperation. He constantly requests donations as well on his media (why he needs it is beyond me) and dedicates an inordinate amount of time in trying to condescendingly debunk psychics and expose their methods (and yes, by psychics he means only mainstream modern ones you see on TV, and he doesn't know the difference between the types of them either, conflating fortune tellers for mediums for example). Some of you may remember him from the debunking of his NDE video that several Skeptiko users did. Others, like myself, know about him from Near-Death.com, who exposed him as not only uninformed and a liar, but a fraud who faked his own NDE for profit! Not only that, but he thought that the AWARE study somehow debunked NDEs and that folks like Jeffrey Long, a doctor who is actually qualified to talk about the subject, is 'probably wrong'. Oh how poorly that has aged.  

It's interesting to me that these skeptic/militant atheist YouTube channels are clearly dying out. At least 90% of them now only talk about politics, conspiracy theorists, flat earthers, anti-vaxxers and creationists, realising that they've run out of ideas and very few people give a damn about religious bashing anymore. One of the oldest, Mike Dillahunty's controversial and criticised show 'The Atheist Experience', barely garners more than a couple thousand views now. 

Something that made me chuckle though is the fact that there are several sites that this Holy Koolaid/Thomas Westbrook linked as 'supportive resources' for Atheists that make me roll my eyes.The most silly one I saw is that there is a genuine website for finding therapists who won't 'shove religion onto you' and are usually atheists. And I have to ask...why? Therapists and councillors aren't supposed to force their beliefs onto you or discuss them unless you want to, so why on earth is such a thing necessary? 

Apologies if anyone here or anyone reading this is an atheist of course. I only really have issues with the vocal, outspoken, often rude militant atheists that seem to crop up almost everywhere online these days.

It doesn't bother me in the slightest, Omni. I've had hundreds of email exchanges with him, some really interesting. He's not nasty or anything like that, it's his sense of humour, I suspect. And yes he does, with no evidence to support it either.

His behaviour in the denture case was particularly bad though, it has to be said.

It’s interesting that he feels the need to continue the communication isn’t it? I’d take it as a compliment lol

You don’t need drugs to prove we don’t remember things in certain states of consciousness - I hardly ever remember dreams but I’m assured I dream every night - whether I have night nurse or not lol.

Clearly he’s making assumptions about how consciousness is “supposed” to work, and conveniently forgetting the evidence that doesn’t fit with it.

 The program for playing chess in a computer is not built up from individual components of hardware or software, each of which knows how to play chess a little (equivalent to the consciousness elements of qualia proposed by some). Instead, the ability to play chess is an emergent property of lots of lines of code and some data, interpreted as instructions by hardware.  That’s a model (a very simple model) for cognition in the brain. Paul Anless - ibid

Say what!!!!!!!!!    Lines of code that give instructions are NOT interpreted as instructions???????  They ARE instructions.  Who, or what the duck, is doing any interpretation as hardware?????  

Even worse, is the idea that logical processes are not the determining factor of the output.  It is enough to boil my tea.  Emergence is a sophisticated subject and I am no expert.  By in any technical way - formal emergence is not in play in chess.

The logical programming is manipulation of signs and symbols so that they represent (have measurable mutual information) the play of the game. It is objective structure that connects to real world probabilities.  Nothing emerges - as I understand the term.  Chess moves are backed by math relations that are well known.  They is no "bridge theory" to make computer driven moves - be some new event  - without a direct causal linkage.  The game of chess is, in itself, a programable entity.  No surprises and NO magic.

Paul is seriously confused.  

The best work on emergence (sorry S. Kauffman) is Devil in the Details by Robert Batterman.

He has found that in the asymptotic borderlands between such theories there emerge phenomena whose explanation requires in some sense appeal to a third intermediate theory. This is a claim (Batterman 2002) that when taken literally, has raised a number of hackles in the literature. However, understood in terms of the mathematics of characteristics and wavefronts, as was originally intended, the current author believes some of the debates are misdirected. The emergent structures (the rainbow itself is one of them) are not fully explainable either in terms of the finer wave theory or in terms of the ray theory alone. Instead, aspects of both theories (through asymptotic investigation of the wave equations) are required for a full understanding of these emergent phenomena.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-interrelate/

https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Details-Asy...0195314883

Say what!!!!!!!!!    Lines of code that give instructions are NOT interpreted as instructions???????  They ARE instructions.  Who, or what the duck, is doing any interpretation as hardware?????  

Even worse, is the idea that logical processes are not the determining factor of the output.  It is enough to boil my tea.  Emergence is a sophisticated subject and I am no expert.  By in any technical way - formal emergence is not in play in chess.

The logical programming is manipulation of signs and symbols so that they represent (have measurable mutual information) the play of the game. It is objective structure that connects to real world probabilities.  Nothing emerges - as I understand the term.  Chess moves are backed by math relations that are well known.  They is no "bridge theory" to make computer driven moves - be some new event  - without a direct causal linkage.  The game of chess is, in itself, a programable entity.  No surprises and NO magic.

Paul is seriously confused.  

The best work on emergence (sorry S. Kauffman) is Devil in the Details by Robert Batterman.




https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-interrelate/

https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Details-Asy...0195314883

Absolutely! It sounded like the monkeys and the typewriter scenario.

Absolutely! It sounded like the monkeys and the typewriter scenario.

Yeah Emergence seems like a "Something from Nothing" scenario to me.

And the very idea seems more supportive of an afterlife than against it.

I mean you have a first person PoV that is fundamentally unlike the reductionist physical world in that it's qualitative and comes to us as a wholeness binding all the senses. Plus this Self is capable of objectivity in the realm of maths/logic at the least.

Even Democritus, arguably among the first reductionist atomist materialists*, saw the problem:

Intellect: “Color is by convention, sweet by convention, bitter by convention; in truth there are but atoms and the void.”

Senses: “Wretched mind, from us you are taking the evidence by which you would overthrow us? Your victory is your own fall.”

Why shouldn't something so unlike the physical survive? At the very least there's no definitive reason why the Self, if it magically appears when you have the right arrangement of whatever "matter", "forces", and "energy" are, needs to vanish when those arrangements are no longer able to hold it.

*There are schools of thought, such as the Carvaka in ancient India, that posited everything mental could be reduced to the 4 (5 if we include Void?) elements, but AFAIK they were not atomists.

Something that made me chuckle though is the fact that there are several sites that this Holy Koolaid/Thomas Westbrook linked as 'supportive resources' for Atheists that make me roll my eyes.The most silly one I saw is that there is a genuine website for finding therapists who won't 'shove religion onto you' and are usually atheists. And I have to ask...why? Therapists and councillors aren't supposed to force their beliefs onto you or discuss them unless you want to, so why on earth is such a thing necessary? 

Because a good number of therapists are dealing with their own dramas, and can't help but introduce their own life experiences and beliefs squarely into the treatment, even when it is clinically detrimental. Though it's generally not advisable to make the focus of therapy the therapist themselves, it happens much more often than most people think it might.