I’d forgotten how silly other sites could be

I was looking over the comments on my article at Salon, and realizing that we’re in a privileged position here. The kooks don’t last long in the searing heat of the Pharyngula comments section, so we only rarely see the woo peddlers confidently blithering away…but there they are, spouting inanities as if there are no fierce hunters of woo in the neighborhood. But we are watching. Some critics are responding intelligently over there, but they’re outnumbered, I think.

So here are a few excerpts for your amusement.

I brought up the subject out of curiosity because if Myers is a telepathy denier, then he is a shade dogmatic. My own experience has convinced me that telepathy happens, most often on the level of feelings, but sometimes including mental content. Unlike NDE’s, of course, nothing can be claimed to follow from this about survival after death.

Show me the evidence. “Feelings” are not evidence.

I’m not reporting a scientific experiment, just a belief – a conclusion – reached on the basis on personal experience. It’s not a belief I wouldn’t absolutely *never* give up, but it would take a lot to dislodge it.

Several people made comments like this: NDEs aren’t “science”, therefore you can’t disprove them with science. They’re complaining about me, though, not Beauregard, who’s trying to claim he has scientific evidence for the phenomenon. Why weren’t they telling Beauregard to get out of town in his original post?

Here’s another example of this double-standard.

I find it hilarious how up in arms you guys are getting about this. I never got the impression that Beauregard was making any definitive statements in either of his articles. He was writing about some things that may or may not have happened, and it is up to the reader to decide what they want to believe. The fact is, you don’t know, Dr. Myers. Don’t act like you do, because absolutely no one in the scientific world can explain NDE’s definitively.

Except Beauregard, apparently.

What hilarious nonsense, though: “He was writing about some things that may or may not have happened”. Right. Shall we just say they didn’t happen as he described and be done with it?

This person then goes on with a strange tirade about science.

I understand getting offended by something you consider pseudo-science, but your entire profession is based on theories that are constantly up for debate and can ALWAYS be proven wrong. I would like you to say something positive about this subject, because as of yet you have not made a single statement that confirms you have any interesting ideas about it. To brush aside so many people’s accounts of similar experiences AND the positive effects they have had on people’s lives is arrogant, and frankly pretty unscientific. There will always be, and should always be, things we can’t explain in this world. Deal with it.

I didn’t brush those experiences aside, of course. I explained them: NDEs are the product of psychological confabulation. I know, my answer doesn’t mention ghosts, though, so he rejects it.

You can trust him, though. He’s a scientist.

Dude, I have an M.S. in Biology from a well-respected university, where I studied under a University Fellowship. I do think I know what it means to be a scientist.

Heh. He has a Masters Degree…in Science!

I would be far more impressed with Myers’ overheated insistence on how scientific he is if he weren’t so keen to use such emotional and emotionally charged words and phrases such as “very silly article,” “feeble,” “some very, very strange beliefs,” “babbling piffle,” “nonsense,” and the like. Why does Myers care so very much that some people are open to the ideas that Beauregard espouses? Because he clearly cares a great deal. I’m sorry, I’m not buying the “I care because I’m a scientist!!” meme. He clearly has an emotional investment in people not believing that there could be life after death. His side of the aisle loves to use the argument that people WANT to believe that there is life after death, so that negates their entire argument. But if someone like him WANTS to believe that there isn’t, then that doesn’t disprove their position, nooooo, oh no. I find this rant disturbing, not scientific. I’m not in any position to evaluate the science of the original article, but if Meyers is so scientific, then he could have given his rebuttal in a cool and unemotional way instead of resorting to insults. Give me a break. My understanding is that scientists are openminded. Myers’ stance in this rebuttal clearly does not fit that very basic criterion. His mind is made up. I would wager that it wouldn’t matter what evidence was presented, he wouldn’t accept it.

Awww, tone troll is sad.

Myer’s should just blast holes in the research but he is ranting and raving like a lunatic. Editors at Salon- Can you get some qualified columnists to discuss these topics? I’d suggest Dean Radin for one side and someone other than biologist Myers on the other. Maybe a physicist?

Then follows several comments where they talk about how I ought to be replaced with a physicist. Of course, it must be a physicist who is sympathetic to magic.

But I don’t count. See, I’m just a biologist, not a neuroscientist.

Leaving aside the sarcasm and nonsequiturs in your “response”, how exactly are you qualified to evaluate the work of Beauregard? You state that you are a biologist, not a neuroscientist or psychologist. Are you an expert in life forms with or without brains?

Well, actually, I have a Ph.D. from the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Oregon, but I’m not playing credential games. You just to be competent and aware of the basics of the scientific method to see that Beauregard was babbling bullshit.

Also, the references to some “primordial matrix” may seem odd at first, until you realize it sounds very similar to Jungian theory. And there are many things empirical science has still not been able to explain that are commonplace. We still do not know why women menstruate per the lunar cycle unlike other mammals, or why bumblebees can fly. Yet they do, and always have.

You had me laughing at Jung. But I have to correct you: women do not menstruate on the lunar cycle, and in fact the phase of the moon pretty much has nothing to do with reproductive physiology. We also know how bumblebees fly; google “clap and fling” for lots of links to the details of the aerodynamics.

Wouldn’t you know it, but someone has to trot out vibrations. It’s always vibrations and quantum with these weirdos.

Again, paranormal “events” and and realities exist in a frequency range beyond current measuring tools. Arguing that they should is silly and about as productive as the old joke about the guy looking for his keys under the lamp post.

Before radio and TV was invented, the frequencies for them existed. If you told someone like Myers in 1300 about them he would have burned you at the stake.

This rationalist-reductionist viewpoint is an archaic dinosaur. In 50 years people will look back and wonder at the cache of such a primitive, mundane world view.

Many of the materialists here are progressives politically but don’t realize in this debate you are the right wing.

You either get it or you don’t. And since its a karmic issue, no one is to blame.

What exactly is that frequency, Kenneth? Be specific. I can look up the electromagnetic spectrum as well as anyone (well, as anyone but you), and I don’t see the mysterious gap that we can’t measure.

I’m not a burny kind of guy, so you probably wouldn’t have to worry, even in 1300. But then as now, I’d ask you for your evidence for radio waves and psi waves or whatever silly stuff you’re going on about. Got any? Or are you just talking out of your ass? I can show you instruments that record radio waves and give us good reason to believe they are there. No one can do the same for your paranormal powers, so until you do, those beliefs should be rejected.

One last example, then I’m done. My karma is full up right now.

I understand what Meyers is saying but I was watching a PBS documentary on the sun. They explained why the sun doesn’t burn out and why it doesn’t fly apart. I just want to know how they know that for a fact.

Complex answer: the sun is a massive nuclear fusion engine. Gravity compresses the core causing the fusion of hydrogen atoms into helium, which generates energy and heat, which causes the expansion of the star. These forces of compression and expansion are currently in balance. (Yes, I know, stellar nucleosynthesis is more complicated than that.)

Simple answer: Look up during the day. There’s the sun. It’s still burning, and it hasn’t flown apart. You can tell by looking at it.

But what do I know? I’m just a biologist.

“First class problems”

I think I’m beginning to understand why the airlines have that nonsensical demand that we all shut off our electronic devices during takeoff (it’s very annoying when you’re using your iPad just for reading or listening to music) — and I’m beginning to think that maybe they ought to enforce the rule as soon as you step aboard the plane. The reason: have you ever noticed those assholes in first class who order a Scotch as soon as they sit down and then fire up their smart phones? Have you ever wondered what they were doing? They’re apparently doing an inebriated Neandertal in a locker room act.

Some Chicago newspaper columnist named Joe Cowley used that interlude on the runway to unleash his inner jerkwad over twitter. Apparently, he’s sexist and racist.

I’m more likely to see a Squatch before I see a hot flight attendant. Then again, I think the airlines are hiring Squatch’s to do that job.

Chick pilot. Should I be OK with that or am I just a sexist caveman?

Kid next to me looks like “Short Round.” Think I’ll give him a dollar to say to me, “You cheat, Dr. Jones!” #firstclassproblems

It always sets me back a bit to discover that people actually think like that, and worse, that they’ll openly babble that way. At least Cowley has learned that the latter is not OK — he has now deleted his entire twitter account.

It’s too bad his brain is probably still broken.

The NDE delusion

Salon has had a redesign, which is fine; they seem to do this periodically just to confuse us. I’ll adjust to that, but what I don’t like is that the first thing I saw highlighted was an article so full of woo that for a moment I thought I’d stumbled onto the Huffington Post. We are now supposed to believe that science has explained near-death experiences (NDEs), and the answer is proof of life after death. It’s all nonsense; some editor somewhere needs to learn some critical thinking, because this article is filed under “neuroscience” when it ought to be in a category called “bullshit”.

The first clue that this is going to be bad is the author, Mario Beauregard. Beauregard was co-author with Denyse O’Leary of one of the worst, that is most incompetently written and idiotically conceived, books I’ve ever read, The Spiritual Brain. It’s not just that he thought it sensible to team up with a well-known intelligent design crank, but that the content is unreadable and the “science” is gobbledy-gook — Beauregard is a well-established kook, and here he is, writing for Salon.

NDEs are evidence of nothing but the creative power of the human mind. NDE proponents are constantly trotting out the same tired old anecdotes and the same tired old bogus misinterpretations, and this article is just more of the same. If you’ve ever looked into the NDE literature, you’ll know that two cases that are repeatedly brought up are the 20-30 year old stories of Pam and Maria’s Shoe; they have become something close to legend. These stories are poorly documented — “Maria”, for instance, can’t even be found in any hospital records, despite a story that details many medical details. Beauregard blithely recounts this anecdotal story as evidence that NDEs are real.

Maria was a migrant worker who had a severe heart attack while visiting friends in Seattle. She was rushed to Harborview Hospital and placed in the coronary care unit. A few days later, she had a cardiac arrest but was rapidly resuscitated. The following day, Clark visited her. Maria told Clark that during her cardiac arrest she was able to look down from the ceiling and watch the medical team at work on her body. At one point in this experience, said Maria, she found herself outside the hospital and spotted a tennis shoe on the ledge of the north side of the third floor of the building. She was able to provide several details regarding its appearance, including the observations that one of its laces was stuck underneath the heel and that the little toe area was worn. Maria wanted to know for sure whether she had “really” seen that shoe, and she begged Clark to try to locate it.

Quite skeptical, Clark went to the location described by Maria—and found the tennis shoe. From the window of her hospital room, the details that Maria had recounted could not be discerned. But upon retrieval of the shoe, Clark confirmed Maria’s observations. “The only way she could have had such a perspective,” said Clark, “was if she had been floating right outside and at very close range to the tennis shoe. I retrieved the shoe and brought it back to Maria; it was very concrete evidence for me.”

The case is touted as a clear example of veridical perception. “Veridical” is one of the favorite words of the NDE/OBE crowd; it simply means an observation that aligns with reality, so they’re always babbling about people wafting about in a ghostly disembodied state and seeing things that no earth-bound human could possibly have seen, which are later confirmed. Unfortunately, all we get are second- and third-hand accounts full of embellishments, and tall tales whose highlights are depressingly mundane, such as seeing a shoe on a ledge. It’s always trivia that gets reported. It seems that all dead people want to do is hover.

And, of course, Maria’s story has been totally demolished. The little details are all inflated; for instance the claim that details of a shoe on a ledge could not possibly be discerned has been tested on that hospital building, and it turns out that a shoe on the ledge actually is really easy to see and jumps out to the eye of people passing beneath.

So, a few well-worn exaggerations are all these guys have to go on. I don’t think Beauregard can claim science has had any “shocking results” when this is the best he’s got.

Furthermore, Beauregard, who is supposed to be a neuroscientist, says some awesomely stupid things.

This case is particularly impressive given that during cardiac arrest, the flow of blood to the brain is interrupted. When this happens, the brain’s electrical activity (as measured with EEG) disappears after 10 to 20 seconds. In this state, a patient is deeply comatose. Because the brain structures mediating higher mental functions are severely impaired, such patients are expected to have no clear and lucid mental experiences that will be remembered. Nonetheless, studies conducted in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and United States have revealed that approximately 15 percent of cardiac arrest survivors do report some recollection from the time when they were clinically dead. These studies indicate that consciousness, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings can be experienced during a period when the brain shows no measurable activity.

This is another common claim. The subject, they say, was flat-lined during the incident — the heart was still and there was no brain activity, and yet, they claim, the subject was experiencing detailed perceptual events during this period of material inactivity. What they gloss over is the simple fact that, while there was definitely a period when their brain was functionally inert, they are describing these events afterwards, in a period when their brain is fully active. Beauregard is making the ignorant mistake of assuming that our consciousness is a continuous stream of recorded mental activity, and that a remembered event must necessarily have actually occurred.

That’s not how memories work. Our brains don’t tuck away a movie of our experiences somewhere in our temporal lobe; they store a few little details away, with a web of associations, and basically reconstruct the event when we try to recall it. This is why eyewitness testimony is unreliable — memory is dynamic and constantly being modified by later experience. When we lose conscious awareness and later recover it, the brain has absolutely no problem inventing a continuous narrative to fill in the blanks, and in fact, the way our minds work, we want that narrative. To consider that we didn’t exist for an interval of time is something we linear creatures tend to shy away from.

So when someone claims that a report of a recollection from a time when they were clinically dead is evidence of a mind functioning during that period when the brain was non-functional, you should know…they’re full of shit. It’s evidence of no such thing.

I also have to add that all of the accounts of NDEs and other such out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are peculiar in their attachment to ordinary patterns of perception. They claim to become a non-corporeal, immaterial, invisible entity that floats around, but somehow, they use the same mundane senses they do in the body. How do invisible eyes capture photons? How do immaterial minds detect physical vibrations in the air? Sensory transduction is a real problem for beings that lack hair cells and photoreceptors, I would think. It’s much more likely that they are using those fleshy sensory organs (or even more likely, the memory of using those organs), while experiencing an illusion of detachment from their body.

No reservations trouble Beauregard, though. He blindly charges on to claim revelation.

These findings strongly challenge the mainstream neuroscientific view that mind and consciousness result solely from brain activity. As we have seen, such a view fails to account for how NDErs can experience—while their hearts are stopped—vivid and complex thoughts and acquire veridical information about objects or events remote from their bodies.

NDE studies also suggest that after physical death, mind and consciousness may continue in a transcendent level of reality that normally is not accessible to our senses and awareness. Needless to say, this view is utterly incompatible with the belief of many materialists that the material world is the only reality.

As I’ve said, the recollection of vivid and complex thoughts while the heart is stopped is not only easily explained, it’s pretty much the default understanding by neuroscientists of how the brain works. The acquisition of veridical information would be more difficult to explain…if it had ever occurred. Trundling out the same hoary folk tales and anecdotes is not at all convincing that it has.

He is right that this idea of minds existing independently of brains is incompatible with materialist views. It’s also incompatible with the existing evidence, and he has presented no counter-evidence. His extremely badly argued article is yet another piece of evidence, though, that Beauregard is a crank.

P.S. It’s a shame that tripe got published in Salon, but don’t read the comments, or you’ll discover why it got published. There sure are a lot of mystically-inclined, quantum-woo-spouting diddledingles fulminating away in their readership.

Philosotroll covers a few other points.

Irish Catholic perspicacity

I can still be astounded at what the religious say. In Ireland, Michelle Mulherin provides an astonishing insight into a pressing problem.

Fornication was the single greatest cause of unwanted pregnancies in Ireland.

Good to know. I’m going to suggest a few other revelations for Ms Mulherin.

Driving was the single greatest cause of auto accidents in all of Ireland.

Drinking was the single greatest cause of alcoholism in all of Ireland.

Living was the single greatest cause of dying in all of Ireland.

Catholicism was the single greatest cause of ignorance and stupidity in all of Ireland.

Deal with it.

“Undeniable” denial

I didn’t attend the Christian “Undeniable” event that was supposed to happen in Federation Square in Melbourne last night. They were dishonest and boring.

The gang of Christians did show up outside the Melbourne convention center after the Global Atheist Convention, and commenced chanting and howling: they passed a microphone around and bellowed their thanks to Jesus at a loud volume, while their fellows closed their eyes and waved their hands at the skies. They looked awesomely foolish. There was no attempt at conversation; they couldn’t, they just had their scripts to recite. But as has been typical of all the religious demonstrations at the GAC, they just amplify their own voices and ignore everyone else, which kind of defeats the point, I would think.

After their circle jerk was over, one fellow started ordering people to get into small groups and march over to the square. He made the mistake of passing his microphone along, so I managed to ask him some questions.

“Why are you here at the atheist convention, rather than at Federation Square?” He answered that it just happened to be a convenient place to meet. He was a liar. Of course he was at that particular place because he wanted to testify to atheists.

“Who were you people talking to over your microphones?” He said they were just talking to each other. Again, a lie. It’s obvious that they were putting on a public display of piety. When I pointed out that their shrieking was all addressed to their god in the sky, he just shrugged. Someone else corrected me and said their god was everywhere. Which made me wonder why they needed to amplify their voices, and why they were all looking and raising their arms skyward. I guess God is hard of hearing.

“What do you hope to accomplish with this loud howling at your god?” And with that, they all scurried away.

I don’t see how I was supposed to ask them their story when all they were prepared to do is deny their purposes and scream at an invisible god. So I blew them off and didn’t bother to follow them to the square, where they’d just blindly babble anyway.

I don’t even understand the connections

Jessica Ahlquist got a nasty, threatening letter. Here’s what really bugs me about it: threats are common, and Jessica clearly pissed off a lot of Christians by insisting that a public school not promote religion … but this letter is full of sexual slander and rape threats. WHY? This is not a sexual issue. She’s a minor; the last thing you should be talking about is having sex with her.

So I’m just curious, misogynist scumbags of the world. When a woman cuts you off in traffic, or annoys you by taking too long at the grocery check out line, or any of a multitude of other trivial offenses, does that somehow immediately convert the offender into a prostitute, does it justify rape, and do you think any man would similarly be transformed into a sex worker who can be violently attacked?

I’m just trying to wrap my mind around how those people think.

I get email

Man, you guys don’t even know what shrill and militant means. I get some doozies in my mailbox.

Two days ago, on the Saturday prior to Easter, I attended a Memorial Service for a fine young man who died tragically. In attendance were his family and friends, many of whom spoke of his deep love for people, his zest for life, and his profound spiritual and intellectual curiosity. Afterwards hundreds of people gathered at the family home, consoling each other with stories about their beloved friend. As I watched them drinking and smoking their grief away, I thought of those Masters of Intellectual Malice, the college professors who teach these young people that their lives are purposeless and meaningless, devoid of rhyme or reason, filling them with nihilistic despair. I realized that these Darwinists are the true terrorists threatening our society and our world. For while our “War on Terror” targets those who allegedly threaten our physical safety, the Darwinist Demons, who mock God and demean His creation, fail in their duty to serve as role models for our young people and thus attack the very soul of America and the world that they poison with their fraudulent and misanthropic ideology.

Oh, gosh, caught me. I just checked my syllabus, and he’s right: there’s a section on apoptosis — death and despair. And then there’s the unit on signal transduction cascades, in which I teach them that the only purpose in life is phosphorylation. I probably squeezed something about nihilism into our discussion of genomic integrity, because that’s just the kind of guy I am.

Now what does my correspondent suggest we do about us “terrorists”?

So on Hitler’s Hebrew birthday, let’s all say “Heil God Creator of Heaven and Earth” and “Darwinists Sind Unser Unglück” [Darwinists are our misfortune]. Let’s see our schools, colleges, and universities made “Evolution-Rein”. Let’s implement a “Final Solution” to the Darwinist scourge against God and Humanity. Let’s find spiritual concentration camps to restore our relationship with our Creator God, where we can purify ourselves with God’s Holy Fire of the nihilistic and fatuous doctrines of Darwin, who sought to make his spiritual depression and alienation a universal norm.

Wait, really? The answer is to celebrate Hitler’s birthday on 10 April by implementing a Final Solution against college professors? He’s such a good Christian.

Let’s see all the world’s people set free this Passover and Easter from the Darwinist Pharaohs of deceit, deception, and despair.

Let our Children Go, and let God inside them Grow!

IN JESUS’ NAME, AMEN!

Oh. Letting god grow inside children…must be Catholic.