1. Debate between Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston

Comment #45703 by greatness on May 29, 2007 at 3:09 am

I´m sorry to be a little bit off topic but was there not supposed to be an mp3 published of the debate between Sam Harris and Chris Hedges that happened recently, does anyone know what happened to that?

Rock on.
Daníel.

2. Medical 'Miracles' Not Supported by Evidence

Comment #31857 by greatness on April 14, 2007 at 4:55 pm

Thank you Bremas.

I must say that I was disappointed with the levitating frog, the way he had described it to me suggested that the frog was walking on water and just milling about as frogs do:)

Rock on.
Daníel.

3. Medical 'Miracles' Not Supported by Evidence

Comment #31810 by greatness on April 14, 2007 at 11:32 am

Thank you Pathcell and Dr Benway for your replies and thanks again Veronique:)

I really enjoyed your article on uncyclopedia Patchell, Steve the Neanderthal made me laugh:)

Also in relation to your own conversation of a similar type whenever I asked him to clarify what he was talking about so I could understand, like when he started talking about a creator at some point. I asked him to define that creator because he was making all kinds of assertions based on a creator of some kind and he would get all defensive and indignant at having to clarify anything. He would say several times "why do I have to clarify anything." I replied in order for him to influence my opinion which I assumed was the basis of our conversation (which he originated) I would have to understand his claims. Then he would simply say that he did not want to influence my opinion. I always thought that the conversation was over when ever he said that which was a couple of times but then he would be off again.

I really often could not get a handle on what he was really saying.

I also could not believe as you Dr. Benway that he would refute that his idea was not original to him. I was really sort of flabbergasted and simply asked him if he thought that noone had ever thought of that idea before in our society. He ofcourse granted that but he disputed that that had influenced him in any way.

But has anyone ever seen the floating frogg?

Thanks again everyone for your replies.

Rock on.
Daníel.

4. Medical 'Miracles' Not Supported by Evidence

Comment #31705 by greatness on April 14, 2007 at 12:02 am

Thank you Veronique:)

I had forgotten about that quote and I will be sure to mention it to him the next time we have a conversation of this nature:)

Rock on.
Daníel.

5. Medical 'Miracles' Not Supported by Evidence

Comment #31702 by greatness on April 13, 2007 at 11:38 pm

Hello everyone, my first post here, love the conversations here and find it very intellectually inspiring.

Now this is very interesting in light of a conversation I had earlier tonight with a friend of mine regarding quantum physics.

Now my friend was pretty enamored with the title of a documentary which he apparently had not watched yet but still found exciting. It was the documentary what the bleep do we know. I had watched the first half of it turning it off because I found it boring and somewhat confusing.

Now this friend of mine (being a recently aquired friend) had never talked in these terms before and the conversation did get a little heated but we split amicably in the end neither having convinced the other and both being thoroughly confused about what we were arguing about sometimes.

What I wanted to get at in a long winded conversation was that he had this idea about quantum physics and electro magnetic energy that you could use that to produce an ESP like result. That is if you could attune the electro magnetic energy of a person to the electro magnetic energy of the earth and ofcourse the electro magnetic energy of another person they could somehow correspond through that in a psychic like manner and likely produce other supernatural things.

I personally told him that I thought it was unlikely and asked how he got the idea for that. Well he started talking about seeing some video of how some people were able to make a frog walk on water by producing an electro magnetic force field of some kind over the water for him to walk on.

I have ofcourse never heard of nor seen such a video and could not claim anything about the veracity of the video but questioned him on his thesis about ESP based on a frog walking on a force field.

Then came sort of the trump up his sleeve, the statement what the bleep do we know which he uttered so many times during our conversation.

But it geared off from there because he did claim many times that he was not religious but he did want to have an open mind for wonderous things in the universe. I seconded him there naturally having listened to and read Dawkins and telling him that those things might be wondrous to us but again the result of a slow incremental process.

Now the kicker in the conversation apart from the one above is that he started postulating that tomorrow you might open a door and walk into another world. At the same time he kept muttering that science was good and all but there was more than science. I tried to get him to be less vague on that but to no avail because what the bleep do we know. I then informed him that all we know is a result of science and that religious or mystical studies had never resulted in a real world application of any kind(that I know off) that can not be explained by science.

This seemed to irk him alot because I also claimed sort of sarcastically that even that idea about opening a door and walking into another world most likely resulted from knowledge gained subconsciously from society. And that those ideas had become a part of the memetic pool of ideas from science fiction writing resulting from the strangeness of Quantum theory.

He could not accept that and argued that the idea was original to him and I told him that I understood that he felt that but that the idea was probably in part formulated from subconscoius knowledge gained from popular culture. He did not want to accept that but in a strange way did so but only if it came from a religious source which he did not want to think of as being religious.

It all became very weird from there and confusing. He did not want to grant that the polyheistic religion of the gods of Valhalla was a religion. The strongest argument in his mind was that Thor and the other gods had at one time been men and that living men could go to Valhalla, that they didn´t have to die.

He also would not accept it as a religion because his idea of a religion was people in a church praying to god. The vikings did not do that and so it was not a religion. I simply stated that they were probably too busy raping and pillaging to go to church.

It was all very weird and he was also offended by my assertion that his idea about walking through a door to a different world was not original to him. We argued about that for a long time.

The worst part about it was that he wanted the whole time to have the conversation as open as possible with pseudo scientific claims based on mystical ideas and I could never sort of ground the conversation down to a rational level.

I´m sorry if this was a boring read to all but I wanted to share it and possibly hear what you think about the ESP idea that he has and if anyone here has see the video of the frog walking on a force field?

Rock on.
Daníel.