Awesome Dream Channel

[ebenbrooks]

I had one of the most kick-ass dreams in recent memory last night. This might take a while to transcribe, so bear with me.

Unlike a lot of my dreams I wasn't a participant, but just an observer, like I was watching a movie. The setting was a fantasy world something like a cross between that of The Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age. I was following a

Comments

[psybelle]

*laughs*

Love you, hon, but from my vantage-point of a career in science, 30 years in biomedical research… "hard-line skeptic" is generally code for "devout rational materialist" and that is contrary to the empiricism that's at the heart of the scientific method - there's an unwillingness to even consider testing things that don't fit into the current paradigm.

(Most discoveries start out with looking at what actually happened after shouting "THAT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN THAT WAY!")

[ebenbrooks]

Well, then it's obvious to me that our definitions of "hard-line skeptic" are different from each others'. Would you consider Richard Dawkins to be your definition of "hard-line skeptic"?

Also, when extraordinary results occur in experimentation, then extraordinary amounts of verification are required. Remember when neutrinos were thought to have traveled slightly faster than light? Everyone was saying "Wow, this is amazing if, in fact, the experiment wasn't somehow fundamentally flawed. We need to do it again and again and see what happens." Scientists were skeptical, and rightfully so ... because it turned out that one of the clocks was wrong! Skepticism, too, is at the heart of the scientific method. That's why peer-review exists. It's also why, when a vast majority of scientists agree on something, I tend to agree with them, too--and should something come along that disproves them, and through experimentation and verification and peer-review, those same scientists change their position, then I will as well

[psybelle]

Dawkins? Is an asshole, regardless of whether he's a rational materialist or a hard-line skeptic…. The point I failed to make is that there's a difference between the folks who are skeptical of [whatever] and the folks who proclaim themselves to be ultra-rational and deeply skeptical of [whatever]. There's a certain anger and emotional fervor attached to the label that just doesn't agree with the claimed rationality.

I'm not accusing you of being an asshole, just letting you know that you're using terms that I associate with folks I tend to leave alone.

(I don't have skin in that game as I'm not a Yawehist of any flavor. But, yeah, if you want to make this about $Deity, go ahead and start here: https://explorable.com/falsifiability .)

[ebenbrooks]

I agree with you that he's an asshole, but I agree with him that there is overwhelming evidence that the universe was NOT intelligently designed. And yes, I see that our definitions of "hard-line skeptic" are, in fact, different. I did not mean to trip a trigger run afoul of a bad association for you, and for that I apologize.

EDIT: I realized after I hit "send" that I used the wrong phrase. Apologies again.