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Is THIS your best shot? A response to New Scientist’s recent hit piece on non-materialist neuroscientists

A few days ago, a friend alerted me to an interesting development: In its Perspectives section, New Scientist – the National Enquirer of popular science magazines – had published a hit piece on the non-materialist neuroscientists, including Mario Beauregard, my lead author on The Spiritual Brain. (“Creationists declare war over the brain” Amanda Gefter, 22 October 2008)

Non-materialists, essentially, think that your mind really exists; it is not simply an illusion created by the buzz of neurons in your brain. In fact, your mind is one of the key factors that shape your brain. On the medical side, non-materialist neuroscientists use this fact to alleviate illnesses such as obsessive compulsive disorder and phobias. They have good evidence for their case, and that is addressed here in an introduction to a recent symposium at the UN in New York. This post, however, will focus on the hit piece.

For me, the New Scientist piece was a gift. I sometimes teach non-fiction news writing. And it struck me as an excellent teaching opportunity (“the structure and function of the irresponsible hit piece, unpacked”). Of course, I mean to discourage my students from investing time or energy in such enterprises.

This piece is especially useful for two reasons: As Beauregard’s co-author, I happen to know about non-materialist neuroscience already. So I need no research project to uncover the misrepresentations. Second, this piece is a very conventional example of the “hit” genre. That means I don’t need to keep stopping and saying, “But, students, please note that this particular feature is rare.”

Best of all, if I unpack this story now for interested Mindful Hack readers, I can save time in June by just dusting it off for Write! Canada. So, let’s have a look.

Sections
1 Scare their pants off before they even start reading: The art of the panic headline Read More ›

Selected moments from the Beyond the Mind-Body Problem symposium – morning

“Mind-Body Connections: How Does Consciousness Shape the Brain?”, the morning panel of the Beyond the Mind-Body Problem symposium (September 11, 2008), sponsored by the Nour Foundation, UN-DESA, and the Université de Montréal, featured some interesting exchanges featuring a number of non-materialist neuroscientists. Non-materialist neuroscientists think that your mind is real and that it helps shape your brain. It is not a mere illusion created by the workings of the brain.

(Both panels were televised and can be viewed here.)

Non-materialist neuroscience is practical

French philosopher Elie During led off the first panel ( Mario Beauregard, Esther Sternberg, Henry Stapp, and Jeffrey Schwartz, in order of speaking) by noting that the French mathematician Descartes – who believed that the mind was real – was, in a sense, the unlikely father of materialism because he tried to separate the mind entirely from the body: Read More ›

McDowell-Dembski Tag Team

Sean McDowell and I did a tag team event in Southern California this weekend. For a description and audio, go here. The focus was on our book Understanding Intelligent Design.

How to Be an Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (Or Not)

It’s out! To order go here. Book Description: Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, writes Richard Dawkins, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. This little book shows that atheism must seek intellectual fulfillment elsewhere decisively demonstrating the need for intelligence in explaining life’s origin. This is the best overview of why traditional origin-of-life research has crashed and burned and why intelligent design is necessary to explain the high-tech engineering inside the cell. Author William A. Dembski worked closely as an advisor with the producers of the Spring 2008 documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed starring Ben Stein. How to Be an Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (Or Not) is the intellectual argument that helped inform significant Read More ›

Doing Science Backwards?

I just read an Insights article in the July 2008 edition of Scientific American. In a nutshell, biochemist Jeremy Nicholson billed as one of the world’s foremost experts on the metabolome (the collection of chemicals in the body which are byproducts of metabolic processes) is screening thousands of individuals to establish baseline amounts of different metabolites and then compares differences between individuals looking for consistent correlations between those differences and various kinds of diseases. Seems like a good research plan to me. The noteworthy part that prompted the subject line of my article here is in the last paragraph of the first page of the SciAm article: It is kind of like doing science backward: instead making hypotheses and then Read More ›

Materialist death watch: Is Steve Pinker also among the prophets?

Things are changing.

Just recently, Richard Dawkins  conceded that a serious case can be made for a deistic God. (= A God Who Used To Be There)

Plus, Tom Wolfe has distanced himself from “Sorry, but your soul just died.” Apparently, it didn’t die, despite everything you did to kill it.

Now, Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker – well known for a materialist view of the mind – defends freedom of expression in Canada.

All I can say is, well, of all people!

Regular blog readers will know that I have rarely been kind to Pinker, either at The Mindful Hack or The Post-Darwinist (examples linked), or in The Spiritual Brain.

I find his hard core materialism juvenile – after all these years he still doesn’t know that his show left town a while back, as Thomas Wolfe has noted.

All that said, P. M. Jaworski notes at The Shotgun Blog (of the Western Standard) that Pinker recently said something in defense of intellectual freedom in Canada that makes a lot of sense to me:

I was aware of the Steyn/Maclean’s case.

It’s truly shocking that a supposedly democratic government has arrogated to itself the power to censor speech because some judge or bureaucrat thinks it may “expose a person to contempt.” This could outlaw any criticism of a practice that is statistically more common in some groups than others, such as slavery, polygamy, child abuse, ritual torture, gay-bashing, and so on.

It allows haters to decide who gets to say what — all they have to do is say, “So-and-so’s essay made me show contempt,” and So-and-so gets fined or jailed. And it opens the door to the government banning speech that upsets anyone, anywhere — as all-important speech is bound to do.

This is an atrocity against the ideal of free speech, and will make Canada a laughing stock among lovers of democracy and enlightenment. (October 24, 2008)

But Pinker is, alas, mistaken on two points:

1. The criticized practice does not need to be statistically common. Prosecution of the critic requires only that the “human rights” commissioner believes that the critic may “expose a person to contempt.” Statistically uncommon practices are more likely to do so.

2. Second, given that many countries have – or are contemplating – similar laws, we are kidding ourselves if we think that Canada – or American university campuses – are making themselves “a laughing stock” by enforcing censorship of opinion.

Many earnest, humourless people who know that they are “victims” or that they represent “victims” will only rest easy when they have permanently shut down all thought that gives them anxiety. As they are not likely to be free of anxiety any time soon, dislodging them will hardly be easy.

Also just up at The Mindful Hack (O’Leary’s blog on neuroscience and spirituality): Read More ›

Expelled DVD # 1 in documentaries, #11 in DVDs

The Expelled DVD was released October 21, distributed by Vivendi. When I checked early that morning (around 3:30 am), it was doing well for a documentary about the intelligent design guys that almost every legacy film pundit knew he had a duty to trash – if he was going to eat lunch again in Shallow Waters.

By then, there were 241 reviews, and the vast majority of the ones I scrolled through were attacks, voted up by hundreds of people. But the film was also #30 in DVDs Amazon. (Note: As of October 22, 2008, at 6:30 am EST it was #14*, with 256 reviews.)

As I now write this (October 23, 2008 about 7:30 EST), Expelled is

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #11 in Movies & TV

Popular in these categories:

#1 in Movies & TV > Documentary
#2 in Movies & TV > Comedy
#4 in Movies & TV > Kids & Family

And there are now 260 reviews. More of the reviews I am seeing are not just Darwin cultists venting auto-hate. They include non-cultists engaging with the subject. Read More ›

Dawkins vs Lennox – Oxford University Debate

Melanie Phillips, writing in the Spectator, offers her thoughts on the second debate between John Lennox and Richard Dawkins; this one held at Oxford University Natural History Museum – Tuesday evening 21st October 2008. Melanie Phillips asks – Is Richard Dawkins Still Evolving? and makes some pertinent points of her own. Science and Values

Focusing on ID at UD

The presidential election has loomed large here at UD over the past several weeks. After discussion with key UD administrators, we’ve agreed to set the election aside and put the focus here back on ID (and on topics directly pertinent to ID). Short of the presidential candidates raising ID, the election will no longer be a topic of discussion on this forum.

Atheist Anti-God Ad Campaign in England

Our good friend Richard Dawkins is on the march once again: The sides of some of London’s red buses will soon carry ads asserting there is “probably no God,” as nonbelievers fight what they say is the preferential treatment given to religion in British society. Organizers of a campaign to raise funds for the ads said Wednesday they received more than $113,000 in donations, almost seven times their target, in the hours since they launched the project on a charity Web site. Supporters include Oxford University biologist Richard Dawkins, who donated $9,000. The money will be used to place posters on 30 buses carrying the slogan “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” [Says Dawkins]: “This Read More ›

EXPELLED “Superbundle” through ARN

Ben Stein’s EXPELLED is finally out today on DVD. If you want to get it as well as a bunch of other nifty ID videos and Jerry Bergman’s new book, click here. Here’s a description of the superbundle: EXPELLED DVD and Super Bundle Available at ARN The EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed DVD featuring Ben Stein can now be ordered at ARN. In addition, ARN is offering an EXPELLED Super Bundle which includes the EXPELLED DVD, Slaughter of the Dissidents book by Dr. Jerry Bergman. And for a limited time when you order this bundle we will include free copies of the three of the best selling Intelligent Design documentaries: Unlocking the Mystery of Life, Privileged Planet, and The Case for Read More ›

Forget about global warming again? Me too…

Easy enough to do when like true things that are real problems are happening.

Nevertheless, we have a definite climate trend emerging – more and more climate scientists are admitting anthropogenic global warming is a bunch of crap. Read about some of them:

Lorne Gunter: Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof

Temp Trend

More goodies below the fold. Read More ›

Liberal fascism: What it is and why you should care

Recently, I read a book by an American political analyst Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism, which helped me understand a political landscape that I have watched with growing concern: increasingly authoritarian government and increasingly supine citizens.

Culturally, it reached the point recently where the term denialist began to characterize anyone who departs from a consensus – as if departing from a consensus were not part of the engine of progress in the Western world.

Goldberg calls the new mood “liberal fascism.” To interpret the political landscape correctly, we need to understand fascism clearly.

At present, most people think fascism is simply “the way the Nazis behaved.” While there is no question that the Nazis were fascists, it is quite easy to be at the opposite end of the traditional political spectrum and also be a hard core fascist. And so far as I can see, there are currently more fascists in North America at the leftward end of the political spectrum than the rightward end. That’s what Liberal Fascism is about.

So what is fascism?

Fascism is not a program in politics, it is a mood. It can be a mood of the right or the left.

It is the mood of an angry identity group. The group could be vegans, transgendered people, the losers in a war, members of an impoverished ethnic group …

In their view, they have been wronged – by members of another group. The government must make things right by giving them money, status, and power and punishing members of the evil group that has wronged them.

Typically, fascists thrive on crises. When they don’t have actual crises, they proclaim or even manufacture them in order to get what they want. Read More ›

Don McLeroy’s Full Op-Ed

It appears that the Waco Tribune abridged Don McLeroy’s op-ed on Texas science standards (that piece was cited a few posts back). Here is the full op-ed (reprinted with Don McLeroy’s permission):

Don McLeroy, guest column:
Biology standards and reasonable doubts

Sunday, October 19, 2008

COLLEGE STATION — Science education has become a culture-war issue. The battle is over the controversial evolutionary hypothesis that all life is descended from a common ancestor by unguided natural processes.

Texas is adopting new science standards. Scientists representing evolutionists and calling themselves the 21st Century Science Coalition say that creationists on the State Board of Education will inject religion into the science classroom. Should they be concerned? No. This will not happen.

They also say that the board will require supernatural explanations to be placed in the curriculum. This will not happen.

The National Academy of Sciences in its recent booklet Science, Evolution and Creationism, 2008, defines science as “the use of evidence to construct testable explanations and predictions of natural phenomena, as well as the knowledge generated through this process.” This definition should be acceptable to both sides. Read More ›