On 5/2/2008 4:26 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: > Harry Veeder wrote: > >> Did Dawkins say exactly that? [about child abuse] > > Dawkins says a lot of things. Some, taken out of context, sound > pretty extreme. But mainly he is a typical witty, British academic > intellectual -- nothing to be afraid of. > > >> I saw him interviewed on the BBC late last year and he said he >> objected to the religious labelling of children, as in "My child is >> Catholic" or "That child is Jewish". >> >> He said they should be free to self-identify with a particular >> religion when they are old enough. > > He says that more often, more seriously, and he has a good point. > > Dawkins has a misplaced belief in the open mindedness of science. He > thinks that scientists are easily willing to give up beliefs in the > fact of evidence that contradicts them. He obviously does not know > the history of cold fusion. Brian Josephson has a link to a document > showing that Dawkins is not as dispassionate and objective as he > thinks himself to be: > > http://www.sheldrake.org/D&C/controversies/Dawkins.html > > This is a common failing among scientists. No doubt all of us are > guilty of it, but I think it is better for a person to admit his > failings, and to agree that he is dogmatic about some ideas, and > incapable of objectivity. For example, I admit that no amount of > historical or sociological proof (such as the book "Collapse") would > convince me that the human race cannot overcome global warming and > prevent a catastrophe. I know how bad things are. I know that we > might destroy ourselves. But I cannot believe catastrophe is > inevitable. I cannot believe that we are automatons without free > will, doomed to keep repeating stupid, wasteful, destructive acts > until we kill ourselves. We do seem that way at times! Perhaps free > will is an illusion, but it is one that I cannot free myself from believing. > > - Jed >
I see Sheldrake was talking about telepathy. A few years I had an idea for a telepathy experiment for telepathically challenged people like myself. The experiment would consist of an image sender and an image receiver, the internet and a collection of digital images. The image sender would view a supplied digital image and then intentionally send the image to an image receiver. However, a devilish program would be allowed to randomly intercept the image and replace it with a different image. The task of the image receiver would be to guess 'yes' or 'no' if they received the same image as sent by the image sender. The receiver is not expected to visualise mentally what the sender sees. He is also not expected to match the senders image with an image from a set of images before him. If telepathy is entirely a myth, you would expect the receiver to guess correctly 50% of the time in the long run. The number of image senders and receivers could also be varied to see if telepathic effect is intensified by the number of participants. Harry Veeder.
