I wouldn’t give a logic prize to either Egnor or Novella.

I think a reason that Egnor is such a denialist is that his default position is dualist. In his rhetoric he goes along the lines of, “convince me of this newfangled materialism I’ve been hearing so much about.” Unfourtunatley he does not understand/accept the evidence, or so he says…

Taking a rather dim view of this man, it may be fair to say that nothing is going to convince him ever… and that his charade of questioning the evidence is just the propaganda of the DI.

Give it a few decades, we’ll get thet better correlation he wants. The great thing about the internet is that blog posts last for ever!

also the original study reminded me of the work bengimin libet did along a similar vein in the 60s and 90s. Pretty interesting to see how the field has progresed since then if anyone fancies a read.

Thanks for that. For those of us outside the US it’s useful to be reminded about what motivates these people. I live in New Zealand, but grew up in England where even the local vicar was faintly embarrassed talking about god and the bible. The depth and breadth of religious fundamentalism in America is hard to fathom from the outside.

Clearly Novella/Egnor relations are at a pretty low ebb currently so this is looking increasingly unlikely, but wouldn’t an interview on the podcast be delicious….?

No, the Egnors and other IDiots don’t care about the evidence (except where it can be twisted to appear to support their jihad). The game is to engage mainstream medicos and scientists in ‘debate’ wherever possible, but not towards any goal of winnowing out the wheat from the chaff of a given problem. They are just posturing for those who aren’t quite yet members of the ID choir, or for those who might be backslidin’ a bit in their firm grip on ignorance. Egnor gets to look (to the ID target audience) like a peer of actual scientists, Dr. Novella in this case, and his audience – most of whom are ignorant of science – will assume Egnor’s kicking butt. How would they know any different? A ‘knowing’ intellect doesn’t help or even matter when it’s your heart (religious belief) guiding your choices as to scientific findings.

Within the fundy end of Christianity, it is considered a high attribute, an enobling act, to Stand Firm against the non-believers, the heretics, to Fight the Good Fight for God and Country. Being factually correct has little to do with it -not a requirement. God did it, the Bible said it, and that settles it. Don’t pester us with evidence. Egnor comes off as a tin lion (hollow, an intellectual coward) to me, but to his audience, he’s a Hero, Defender of Truth, Justice, and the Christian Way. His audience is not difficult to please.

I support Dr. Novella wholemindedly (heh) in his engagements with the egnorance-mongers of the world, but were it me (and it ain’t) I think I’d drop interaction with a ‘debate’ opponent once it was clear he wasn’t willing or able to do so to a certain threshhold of capability, with sincerity being a requirement. If an opponent doesn’t know enough on a given topic, or isn’t sincere in desiring an honest, productive debate, or is clearly just pretending to debate, posturing for choir recruitment, and using me as a recruitment poster bad guy, I’d opt out. Let him find some other straw man to knock down for the enjoyment of his people.

The materialist position would predict that increasing fidelity results in better correlation, asymptotically approaching 100%, while the dualist position would predict that increasing fidelity approaches something less than 100%, presumably covering the “material component” of the dualistic mind and excluding the “non-material component”.

Jason

Egnorant and his acolytes are horrified at the idea of their audience of Christian dullards being exposed to anything that may stimulate critical thinking.

Does anyone know of other blogs who don’t accept comments? Personally, I’ ve never come across a single one.