tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post6871004508300348106..comments2024-03-28T12:34:14.649-07:00Comments on dangerous idea: Electrons and faithVictor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.comBlogger209125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-24748290280582197792013-07-28T00:39:03.264-07:002013-07-28T00:39:03.264-07:00none-too-bright: "I'm not exactly sure wh...<b>none-too-bright:</b> "<i>I'm not exactly sure what Ilion means by this syntactically-tortured sentence ...</i>"<br /><br />See Bo(o)b. See Bo(o)b read. Read, Bo(o)b, read. Read. Read.<br /><br />Bo(o)b can read. Bo(o)b can read words. Bo(o)b can read <i>sentences</i>. But not big sentences. And maybe not the word 'sentence'.<br /><br />Bo(o)b likes little sentences. Bo(o)b likes tiny sentences. And words. Bo(o)b doesn't like big sentences. Bo(o)b doesn't like complex sentences. Bo(o)b thinks most sentences are complex. Bo(o)b thinks that last sentence is complex. Can you say 'complex'? Can you say 'Bo(o)b'?<br /><br />============<br />And what was that "syntactically-tortured sentence", again? What was its context?<br /><br /><b>Bo(o)b:</b> "<i>Many people on this website have noted the bizarre similarities between literalist, fundamentalist Evangelical Christians and the New Atheists.</i>"<br /><br /><b>Torturer_of_Sentences:</b> "<i>Uh, no.<br /><br />Certain Rah-Rah-Catholic fools have "projected" some of their own behaviors related to shielding some of their more odd beliefs from rational evaluation onto "fundies". <br /><br />Asserting that “fundies” and Gnus reason (or “reason”) alike doesn’t make it so, and doesn’t make it a “noting”.</i>"<br />Ilíonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15339406092961816142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-68786800980120382482013-07-26T07:08:52.400-07:002013-07-26T07:08:52.400-07:00"Do you pray for me as well?"
Actually,..."<i>Do you pray for me as well?</i>"<br /><br />Actually, I do - in Latin, no less.<br /><br />As to your first sentence, are you unaware that for the vast majority of your postings, (bad) style is all there is? There aren't any "arguments and findings" to concentrate on. And listing off a bunch of scientific disciplines without context does not an argument make, nor does a blind faith punting to an imaginary future in which everyone will think like you equal a finding. As Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, California, "There's no there there."B. Prokophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10548980245078214688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-54915949979035642722013-07-26T06:57:21.331-07:002013-07-26T06:57:21.331-07:00Bob, you should concentrate on the arguments and t...Bob, you should concentrate on the arguments and the findings, rather than on my writing style.<br /><br />So the substance of the research in psychology, sociology, psychiatry, anthropology is all simply bumpf when it comes to explaining religious belief, right? It is all just opinion, right, with no basis in fact? Because psychologists and anthropologists and sociologists are not experts in Catholic theology and praxis they have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to understanding the supernatural origins of religion, right?<br /><br />I think your sadness for me is deeply misplaced and woefully misguided. Do you pray for me as well?<br /><br /><br /><br />Papalintonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03818630173726146048noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-25141876966318662672013-07-26T04:53:30.452-07:002013-07-26T04:53:30.452-07:00Thanks for that response, Hyper. It will help me k...Thanks for that response, Hyper. It will help me know where you're coming from in any future conversations, and prevent potential misunderstandings.B. Prokophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10548980245078214688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-62459087966051117232013-07-26T04:08:05.188-07:002013-07-26T04:08:05.188-07:00F is a bit extreme and H & I are just silly. A...F is a bit extreme and H & I are just silly. A doesn't explain everything so I'd replace it with 'the women saw the wrong tomb and somebody played on them and apostles so the person they thought was Jesus wasn't really Jesus'. B to G seem pretty reasonable yeah.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09695856427586801682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-86979152943195192802013-07-26T03:54:23.956-07:002013-07-26T03:54:23.956-07:00That should read "over all" in the first...That should read "over all" in the first paragraph.B. Prokophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10548980245078214688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-17885659076471041562013-07-26T03:53:09.801-07:002013-07-26T03:53:09.801-07:00" at those times when you reflect a degree of..."<i> at those times when you reflect a degree of anxiety and ambivalence</i>"<br /><br />No, Linton. It's when your normal obtuseness rises to a degree when it becomes simply breathtaking. No ambivalence - no anxiety, just sadness overall that potential gone to waste.<br /><br />And it's such a shame, because I think you really <i>could</i> be intelligent, if only you were to be freed from the self-made mental prison that you yourself have constructed and locked yourself into.<br /><br />And I'm perpetually amazed that you can't even see it. Why, your very sentence structure gives it away. You've tied your mind up into a pretzel, and it comes out in syntactically distorted phraseology and entirely unnecessary verbiage. Your defensiveness is palpable in such postings - even when on the surface you appear to be on the attack. You pile word upon word like French revolutionaries building barricades in the streets of Paris. You weave a dense screen of mutually subordinate clauses about your thought processes so as to shield your mind from the threat of any outside thought getting in. A shame, really.B. Prokophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10548980245078214688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-30465081294577096762013-07-25T18:58:01.322-07:002013-07-25T18:58:01.322-07:00Bob, I understand and appreciate you are a rusted-...Bob, I understand and appreciate you are a rusted-on believer in supernaturalism, and that is your prerogative. I have no truck against that. However research has genuinely found that the drivers and reasons for supernatural belief are very different from those you imagine are true and correct. I know it is difficult to square the evidence from research findings in psychology, sociology, psychiatry, anthropology and corresponding fields of study [all expressing a common and consistent narrative despite coming from very different fields of study and analysis] against the presuppositions of theology and its concomitant apologetics. This is made all the more disconfirming when one's education and experiences have been singularly predisposed to a particular religious frame of reference. Reading the research evidence of why it is we possess this strong predilection towards belief in a supernatural otherworld does have an unsettling effect no matter how much one wishes to deny or rail against it, or attempt to rationalize it, as you do. <br /><br />You probably did not bother to read the site on recent research into the drivers of religious belief but I would encourage you to do so. Like you I too once had strong convictions that the religious perspective was the only one that had a semblance of meaning and reason, and believed it was based on actuality. But it is and remains only a semblance, although there are many positives for religious belief, just as we know conclusively of the efficacy of the placebo effect. One of the more interesting insights in that report notes:<br /><br /><i>"Of course, while religion brings some people together, it continues to cause deep divisions, says Atran, who has worked as a negotiator in several hotspots around the world, including Israel. “The problem is, the more you look inward toward your religious group and its claims of virtue, the less you look outward and the more distrustful you are of others,” he says.<br />That distrust causes much of the world’s strife and violence and is one of the reasons the “new atheists,” including British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, PhD, and neuroscientist Sam Harris, PhD, want to see religion disappear. But that will be difficult if not impossible if religion is a byproduct of the way our brains work, as much of the recent research suggests, says Atran. What could work, says Norenzayan, is to replace religion with secular communities built on a common moral foundation. He suggests that Denmark’s society is successfully doing this with its large welfare state, its national ethic of hard work and its strong attachment to political freedom and individualism. But such societies will still need many of the components of religion, including a belief that we’re all part of the same moral community and, therefore, should make sacrifices that benefit the greater good.<br />To get there, researchers need to continue to fine-tune their understanding of religion, says Barrett. “As the research matures and we bring in other areas of psychology, I think we’ll have a better window into the nature of religion and where it might be going.”"</i><br /><br />I know on occasion you resort to branding me a troll, at those times when you reflect a degree of anxiety and ambivalence [and quite some pique despite your protestations to the contrary], when information on religiosity that clearly demonstrates a very naturalistic explanation for such belief rather than the misguided attribution to some external supernatural origin, as theology would have us want to believe, solely as a matter of faith. Papalintonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03818630173726146048noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-17143486366032089712013-07-25T14:14:31.585-07:002013-07-25T14:14:31.585-07:00some liar: "... and thereby claim for himself...<b>some liar:</b> "<i>... and thereby claim for himself that his judgments of others are an extension of Christ's.</i>"<br /><br />... asserts the hypocritical fellow (with the psyche of a junior high school girl).Ilíonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15339406092961816142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-42635320392651822892013-07-25T11:14:44.745-07:002013-07-25T11:14:44.745-07:00CONT: ... and thereby claim for himself that his j...CONT: ... and thereby claim for himself that his judgments of others are an extension of Christ's.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12030785676230758243noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-81167551270998683962013-07-25T11:13:01.930-07:002013-07-25T11:13:01.930-07:00I wonder if Ilíon notices that the image of Christ...I wonder if Ilíon notices that the image of Christ he's fashioned is an extension of his own, narcissistic self. (Surely Ilíon wouldn't go so far as to say that it's the other way around, viz., that he is a creature whose image conforms to Christ's, even if the conformity is an approximation.) If such <i>weren't</i> the case, i.e., if Christ <i>weren't</i> merely an extension of Ilíon's desires, Christ wouldn't come to condemn all the very same people whom Ilíon does--unless of course Ilíon wants to go ahead and claim apotheosis for himself.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12030785676230758243noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-77166098282603590362013-07-25T10:04:40.460-07:002013-07-25T10:04:40.460-07:00Making_my_point_for_me: "... Because Mr. Wils...<b>Making_my_point_for_me:</b> "<i>... Because Mr. Wilson claims to know what he is talking about, and accuses those who disagree with him of being ignorant, delusional, or worse. For him to not be able to defend his beliefs beyond "I was told to believe this" is, in the words of another frequent poster to this site, "intellectual dishonesty" (trademark).</i>"<br /><br />Indeed. It is Linton's <i>behavior</i> that allows one to know that he is intellectually dishonest, that he *will not* reason properly about these matters.<br /><br />At the same time. your <i>behavior</i>, in general and right here in condemning Linton, is demonstrating *your* hypocrisy, both with respect to morality and with respect to the intellect and reasoning (hypocrisy with respect to reasoning being what 'intellectual dishonesty' is, after all).<br /><br />Contrary to the lies you people like to spread about me, I do not call anyone intellectually dishonest just for disagreeing with me. When I decide finally to call someone intellectually dishonest, it is because (at a minimun) he has made it clear that he *will not* reason correctly about some matter. Ilíonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15339406092961816142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-76014870805334140292013-07-25T10:00:37.087-07:002013-07-25T10:00:37.087-07:00So, Hyper,
Here are the Usual Suspects for "...So, Hyper,<br /><br />Here are the Usual Suspects for "alternate explanations":<br /><br />A. Women went to wrong tomb.<br />B. Apostles stole body.<br />C. Half-dead Jesus revives and walks out before later collapsing.<br />D. Mass hallucination.<br />E. Apostles were out-and-out liars. (They knew Jesus was dead, dead, dead, but said he rose anyway.)<br />F. There never was a Jesus to begin with, and the whole thing is made up.<br />G. Gradual mythification over time (Gospels being written, under this scenario, generations after the event).<br />H. Apostles were misunderstood. They never meant "Resurrection" to be taken literally. It was all allegory/symbolism/whatever.<br />I. Jesus was a space alien who tricked everyone with his super science into thinking he performed miracles. (Variations on this one include time travelers, extra-dimensional universe-hoppers, etc.)<br /><br />Have I missed any? So which of these do you consider "more probable" than a literal Resurrection?B. Prokophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10548980245078214688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-16373316796471700102013-07-25T09:49:17.391-07:002013-07-25T09:49:17.391-07:00You had me at "junior high girls".You had me at "junior high girls".B. Prokophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10548980245078214688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-77742958733589385422013-07-25T09:38:11.451-07:002013-07-25T09:38:11.451-07:00Me: "Their objection to me isn't my "...<b>Me:</b> "<i>Their objection to me isn't my "god-awful tone", it's that I oppose (and point out) intellectual dishonesty no matter which "side" it's found on.</i>"<br /><br /><b>Making_my_point_for_me:</b> "<i>No, it's your tone. Full stop. You actually say things quite worthwhile every now and then, but in such a "god-awful" manner that you invite disagreement even where there is none.</i>"<br /><br />Translation: <i>You don't tickle our ears and stroke our egos, THEREFORE, even though you constantly say worthwhile things, we are justified in acting like a clique of (junior high) girls, and:<br />1) lying about what you do;<br />1a) faulting/condemning you for what you don't do that we falsely say you do;<br />1b) even though we *do* do these things ourselves;<br />2) faulting/condemning you for what you do, in fact, do;<br />2a) even though we also do these things ourselves;<br />3) *disputing* anything you say;<br />3a) just because;<br />3b) you'e an ol' meanine!</i><br /><br />Goodness! How are you people going to react to Christ? He *also* is not going to tickle your ears and stroke your egos. He *also* is not going to "give you a break" on faulty reasoning. He *also* is going to call you liars and hypocrites when you <i>insist</i> upon engaging in faulty reasoning. Ilíonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15339406092961816142noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-57101861341161194942013-07-25T09:22:42.233-07:002013-07-25T09:22:42.233-07:00I've answered your question dozens of times. I...I've answered your question dozens of times. I outlined a number of hypothesis which explain the relevant facts. I'm not particularly committed to any of them (except that I think they're more plausible than the resurrection). Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09695856427586801682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-90689659122765941782013-07-25T09:07:55.158-07:002013-07-25T09:07:55.158-07:00"Why doesn’t [the Church] apply this view to ..."<i>Why doesn’t [the Church] apply this view to resurrection when it’s obvious that there are numerous natural explanations for all the facts?</i>" (cont.)<br /><br />One could just as easily ask, "Why do you believe in the "government" account of the events of September 11, 2001, when there are alternative explanations available?" or "Why do you believe that man landed on the moon when I can show you various ways that it could have been a hoax?"<br /><br />If I were to choose never to accept any account as factual as long as someone could put forward a conflicting narrative, I would never believe anything. Like I said in an earlier posting, at some point we have to <i>choose</i> to not be insane, and accept some things as fact without 100% proof. <br /><br />Hyper, I asked you earlier in this thread to explain what you believe actually occurred on Easter Sunday of A.D. 33. It's a useful exercise. Don't hide behind, "Well any number of things could have happened." Let's hear what you think <b>DID</b> happen (even if you can't know for certain).B. Prokophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10548980245078214688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-7147048229877325022013-07-25T08:23:21.637-07:002013-07-25T08:23:21.637-07:00"Why doesn’t [the Church] apply this view to ..."<i>Why doesn’t [the Church] apply this view to resurrection when it’s obvious that there are numerous natural explanations for all the facts?</i>"<br /><br />Excellent question, which happens to have an excellent answer. Which is: Ever since the First Century, that is <b>exactly</b> the way the Resurrection has been approached by the Church. And the conclusion has always been that <b>none</b> of the naturalistic explanations offered up come even close to explaining what was witnessed by the Apostles. <b>Even using the tools of methodological naturalism</b>, the only reasonable explanation for events is that Christ literally and bodily rose from the dead, appeared to the persons mentioned in the New Testament, and offered convincing proof of His having done so. The Church has testified to this Grand Miracle from its very inception. Give me a good reason for it to stop doing so now, solely on a basis of the passage of time since the event. If it was true then, it remains true now. What has changed, other than the date?B. Prokophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10548980245078214688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-31308869057051223912013-07-25T08:09:04.649-07:002013-07-25T08:09:04.649-07:00Looking back at this discussion I think we’ve reac...Looking back at this discussion I think we’ve reached an impasse. Once you seriously entertain miraculous explanations for something like the resurrection (which is alleged to have occurred 2000 years ago) then we have to seriously entertain miraculous explanations for all sorts of everyday phenomena. You can get round by saying you prefer naturalistic explanations to events where you can get them and I’d agree. I just think there a number of plausible naturalistic explanations which explain the historical facts just as well. I think we don’t have any real basis for deciding between miraculous explanations and so the best thing to say is ‘I don’t know’. <br /><br />On the hand, the set of naturalistic explanations for any given event is also bound to contain some pretty crazy hypothesis. You can come with various principles to weed out the plausible from the insane but these principles are actually quite arbitrary (I mean really, why is external worldism a better explanation for your experience than solipsism?). And the kind of principles I just outlined could easily be adopted by a theist (e.g. the hypothesis that God tricked the disciples could easily turn into global skepticism and since nobody wants that, we’ll just exclude any such view from the set of plausible theistic explanations). <br /><br />So I suppose I now admit that it does boil down to intuition. Miracles just seem extremely weird to me and (in my experience) they are supported by very weak evidence. I have a strong preference for non miraculous explanations to miracle reports. It would take a lot of evidence to convince me of a contemporary miracle report and even more to convince me of a historical miracles. But I suppose someone with a different set of intuitions might see things differently. I really only started this debate to see if I could articulate that intuition into something stronger.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09695856427586801682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-18829831650453248442013-07-25T08:08:08.566-07:002013-07-25T08:08:08.566-07:00llion: No. Different probabilities are are attache...llion: No. Different probabilities are are attached to various possibilities. It’s possible for the Statue of liberty to dance its way to Africa. It’s just that the probability of such a thing occurring is very small indeed.<br /><br />Bob posted: ‘’But the really interesting thing is that it is not. No one* is using said reasoning to explain any absurdities. If that were indeed the case, we wouldn't see, for instance, the Catholic Church investigating reports of miraculous occurrences for years and years (sometimes for generations) before ruling on them. And even then, nine times out of ten the ruling is either in the negative or amounts to essentially "maybe". A positive ruling is the rarest of rarities.’’<br /><br />So the Catholic Church subscribes to a kind of methodological naturalism: where plausible naturalistic explanations can be given for a miracle report they make a judgement about whether it’s more likely that the miracle actually happened or whether people got wrong (or lied). Why doesn’t it apply this view to resurrection when it’s obvious that there are numerous natural explanations for all the facts? <br /><br />Crude: ‘’I disagree. I think we have a good deal of background information about them.’’<br /><br />We don’t even know if they were entirely sane. We don’t know what kind of impact Jesus’ death had on their mental well being. We don’t know if they were particularly honest (expect maybe from reports in the Bible itself which isn’t very impressive evidence). <br /><br />‘’No, where did I say anything like that? I explicitly made reference to information I'd use to decide between the possibilities. I simply recognize the sheer logical possibility that I'm wrong. That doesn't matter much in this situation.’’<br /><br />The information you’d use to decide between the possibilities is consistent with a vast number of miraculous explanations. <br /><br />‘’Also, are you under the impression that 'naturalistic' explanations are necessarily all normal and sane sounding? Last Thursdayism is a 'naturalistic' possibility. Solipsism is a 'naturalistic' possibility. Is it really all that much better if someone says the elephants just popped into existence due to a quantum event?’’<br /><br />Nope. But we can appeal to some general rules of thumb to narrow down plausible explanations from the set of naturalistic explanations. For example, some explanations are more probable than others (e.g. it’s more likely that the elephants escaped from the nearby zoo than that they popped into existence because of a quantum event), that we should not favour explanations that lead us to global skepticism (e.g. Last Thursdayism, solipsism), that we should prefer explanations which cohere with what we already know about the world and don’t introduce unnecessary entities, that bear all the marks of a good explanation (makes sense of all the relevant facts, not ad hoc etc) and so on.<br /><br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09695856427586801682noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-35219703747014878092013-07-25T07:14:32.366-07:002013-07-25T07:14:32.366-07:00Dan,
Rule Number Two of internet conversations:
...Dan,<br /><br />Rule Number Two of internet conversations:<br /><br />Never pity the troll.<br /><br />(Or is that Rule Number Three? Now that I think of it, isn't Rule Number One "Never mention Hitler" - that is, unless you are actually discussing Hitler?)B. Prokophttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10548980245078214688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-68436545077238269422013-07-25T07:00:49.214-07:002013-07-25T07:00:49.214-07:00No Bob. What it does demonstrate is humanity'...No Bob. What it does demonstrate is humanity's prodigious capacity to creatively imagine what it is we wish to be true. Revivified and levitating putrescent corpses and xenotransgenic entities are but two of the more interesting surreal mental pictures conjured up by a few billion people who ardently believe as being 'gospel truth' [ ;o) ]. <br /><br />It is inordinately sad in many respects that in the 21st C soothsayers continue the calculated and intentional promulgation of ignorance and unenlightenment. But it is also a very interesting phenomenon that psychology, sociology, psychiatry, anthropology and allied disciplines are now shedding enormously valuable and reasoned light on how and why we behave and function as we do. <br /><br />Reported in the American Psychology Association publication on recent research:<br /><i>"That said, most researchers don’t believe that the cognitive tendencies that bias us toward religious belief evolved specifically for thinking about religion. Rather, they likely served other adaptive purposes. For example, because people are quick to believe that someone or something is behind even the most benign experiences, they may perceive the sound of the wind rustling leaves as a potential predator. In evolutionary terms, says Atran, it was probably better for us to mistakenly assume that the wind was a lion than to ignore the rustling and risk death.<br />But this tendency also set us up to believe in an omnipresent God-like concept. Taken together, it’s easy to see how these cognitive tendencies could allow our minds to create religions built on the idea of supernatural beings that watch over our lives, says Atran, director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris."</i> <a href="http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/12/believe.aspx" rel="nofollow">Read the rest of it here.</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> Papalintonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03818630173726146048noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-16272782233772904832013-07-25T06:26:10.640-07:002013-07-25T06:26:10.640-07:00Crude,
Philosophically speaking, I don't make...Crude,<br /><br />Philosophically speaking, I don't make much ado about beliefs. They are, in Peirce's words, the demicadences in the musical phrases of thinking. In the case of me believing in muons, I wouldn't even consider my beliefs to be demicadences, but ornaments of the musical phrases of thinking; they're the equivalent of musical fluff.<br /><br />I understand the point about Linton, but I was moved to pity, or something like it, for him, so I spoke up on his behalf.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12030785676230758243noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-25232362162359934312013-07-25T05:49:32.712-07:002013-07-25T05:49:32.712-07:00Dan,
I myself have to take many things as true be...Dan,<br /><br /><i>I myself have to take many things as true because an authority on the matter says so, e.g., muons. I myself can't produce a shred of evidence for the existence of muons--I couldn't even recapitulate the experiments that produced the evidence for them. But some smart dudes at CERN tell me that they exist, so I believe that they do.</i><br /><br />Why not simply be agnostic about things you haven't investigated or don't understand?<br /><br />But more than that, I don't think this is an attack on reliance on authority figures - that's a different subject. The context changes when a person evidently knows nothing about the subject other than a vague awareness of what they think may be a scholarly consensus (and not in a scientific field, even) frantically denounces people who disagree with that perceived consensus (and who are actually aware of the arguments and evidence in favor and against that view) in various negative terms.<br /><br />If you went around angrily lecturing muon-skeptics that they were some shade of intellectually dishonest/lacking, I think their asking you to actually explain the evidence and rational behind inferring their existence would be fair game in the context of a conversation.Crudehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04178390947423928444noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-1667692378662574762013-07-25T05:41:46.622-07:002013-07-25T05:41:46.622-07:00I hope I get mentioned. I hope I get mentioned. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12030785676230758243noreply@blogger.com