(2018-06-27, 08:50 PM)malf Wrote: Sci’s point looked more general than that. Maybe I’ve become over sensitive to that type of strawman appeal to the cheap seats. I clearly wasn’t the only one confused by the sentiments.
Is the author of that OP article a “skeptic”?
Would you like to clarify who's in the cheap seats, malf?
I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.
Freeman Dyson
My response to the point (which I nearly posted, and then didn't bother to) was that psi sceptics (like psi proponents) are such a tiny band in comparison with the armies of professional scientists that it's a bit unfair to expect them to keep science sound.
We could ask whether psi sceptics devote sufficient attention to the shortcomings of mainstream science compared with psi. But as I'm a liberal, that line of attack doesn't appeal to me. I think people should be free to choose which windmills to spend their time tilting at, so long as their choices don't become so perverse that they amount to hypocrisy.
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What is the stated mission of "skeptics"?
To safeguard us from bad science or to evangelize those metaphysical faiths that preclude Psi, God, souls...
And if it's the former rather than the latter, how have they not completely missed the forest of bad science while trying to cut down a particular tree whose potential fruit is God, souls, Psi, etc...?
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
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