Yazata:
I don't recall ever saying that MR is deceived. I was expressing my own sympathy with what I take to be MR's motivations. I share them. MR wants to believe that the universe is still capable of being wondrous, that everything hasn't already been assigned into a nice little scientistic box. So he looks to phenomena that he thinks don't fit comfortably in the boxes.
I think you've fallen into the trap of believing that science is a dogma, and that its reductionist tendencies necessarily remove all wonder from the universe. You sound like you see science as a series of neat "boxes" - kind of like stamp collecting. It's not like that - at least not entirely. I think that mental image dates back to the late 19th century, when such a relatively small amount was known in certain fields of science (e.g. geology and biology come to mind) that basic data gathering was a very important task. Thus, many scientists worked to do the basic work of classifying things, noting similarities and differences. That's necessary before you can think about developing a theory about why
these things are like
that and those
other things are different.
You don't have to believe in fairies to wonder at the universe. There's plenty of wonder in nature. That's what gets many scientists into science in the first place. There's also more than enough mystery to get people excited about science. There's a lot we still don't know about our world.
I just happen to think that he's looking in the wrong place for that mystery and wonder. I find it in the realization that the intellectual underpinnings of our whole intellectual edifice are still shaky and uncertain. Some of the little boxes don't look nearly as robust when it's realized that their justification is still controversial.
Philosophy is important, and I'm rather a fan of it, as it happens. However, scientists tend to be rather more pragmatic than philosophers. Their guide is that if a theory "works" as an explanation, when tested against the real world, then it's probably a good theory (for now). They do not, as a rule, spend much of their time worrying about the Problem of Induction, or whether it is possible to know The Ultimate Truth, or such things.
I don't agree that all our knowledge is a shaky intellectual edifice, except in a very theoretical philosophical sense. I am aware of the central questions of epistemology. They are interesting to consider. But I think it is a mistake to live your life as if you believe that nothing can be known for sure - not who you are, or what the world is like, or any of that stuff. The only way to operate effectively in the world is to make certain basic assumptions - such that our senses are often reliable, that our processes of reasoning about the world are reliable and so on. And experience shows that most of us get along with our lives just fine, all the while making all those philosophically shaky assumptions.
One of the important differences between science and philosophy is that philosophy is all about thought, whereas science is empirical. You can do philosophy by sitting in your armchair and mulling over things to your heart's content. But to do science you have to constantly connect your theories with observations and/or experiments based in the real world. Scientists take for granted that there
is a "real world" that can be observed and experimented on, of course. And, most of the time, that assumption works out just fine.
What interests me just as much as MR's motivations are the motivations of those who fight him so violently. What's their motivation? Why is it so important to them to believe that everything is safely tucked away, that everything already fits into a nice little explanatory box?
I think you're reading in too much to the objections people have to woo.
The problem with the woo is that there's simply no convincing evidence that any of it is real, and lots of plausible reasons why it is probably not real. You can complain all you want that it has been put in a box labelled "bullshit", but that's where it best fits right now.
The door is never closed, though. You never know - one day some truly "compelling" evidence might come to light.
Why is it so intolerable that somebody disagrees? Why doesn't everyone who disagrees with MR just say "I disagree with that" much as I did up in post #996? Why all the combat? Why is everyone so eager to silence MR, to insult him, even to burn him at the stake (ban him) for heresy?
He's hardly being silenced. On the contrary, he is rather vocally selling his wares, shoddy as they are.
It would be nice if he could take a step back and examine his own views honestly, but apparently he cannot or at least will not.
The world no doubt will seem a less threatening place when everything is accounted for in one's world-view and all exceptions rendered impossible. People might even feel a sense of omniscience at second-hand, if they believe that they are associated with the sacred gnosis that explains everything, even if they can't understand all the reasoning and justification themselves. Certainly they will feel superior to all the outsiders (Fraggle's "retards") who don't stand within the charmed circle.
You misunderstand. It's not about being certain and accounting for everything and putting everything into neat boxes. It's about drawing on the available data to draw the most reasonable conclusion at the time, bearing in mind that such a conclusion is subject to possible revision in the light of new evidence.
How do you know he's lying to himself? You're sneaking in your own assumption that every intelligent person will naturally agree with you. So if anyone disagrees, they must be doing it knowingly and dishonestly.
I know he's lying to himself because he always veers away from directly examining any of his supposed "evidence" for the woo. He clearly is not interested in examining any possible perspective other than the one he has settled on,
a priori. He provides a rather neat example of confirmation bias at work.
