BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!

Subject: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 07:01 PM

Chopra vs Dawkins. Battle of BS!!

Deepak Chopra: "I am pissed off by Richard Dawkins' arrogance and his pretense of being a really good scientist. He is not"

---

Link repaired by mudelf.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 07:17 PM

Say goodnight to the folks, Gracie.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Ed T
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 08:11 PM

Jack TS, where have you been and what have you seen?
It has been awhile;)

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Bill D
Date: 13 Sep 14 - 11:50 PM

Oh, Dawkins is quite arrogant....even about things he's right about...

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 14 Sep 14 - 03:22 AM

Jack: Can you justify the pejorative adjective you have chosen to deploy in the thread title, please?

Bill: Maybe; but surely the 'rightness', if we agree it is there, outweighs the 'arrogance' -- which may be a bit of a subjective concept anyhow: vehemence in postulation of one's truly held beliefs does not necessarily constitute arrogance (he said arrogantly!)

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Musket
Date: 14 Sep 14 - 03:27 AM

The little boy who shouted that the emperor has no clothes was described as arrogant and precocious.

It'd help if we recall that anybody who defends reality against superstition is normally accused of quoting "Dawkins memes " by our Jack, who has difficulty understanding that dismissing perpetuation of superstition is accepting reality , even if it does make his faith look silly at times.

Eyup Jack.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Sep 14 - 11:20 AM

Jack: Can you justify the pejorative adjective you have chosen to deploy in the thread title, please?

No, he can't, nor will he.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,Marianne S.
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 02:57 AM

Does the title mean a pseudointellectual has smacked someone down or someone has smacked down a pseudointellectual? Clarity please.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,Sapper twidling his thumbs in Greenhill Loop
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 08:51 AM

Marianne, perhaps it's a pseudointellectual being slapped down by a pseudointellectual??

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 09:05 AM

No, someone who merely thinks he's an intellectual will get so far up the nose of anyone real he'll not so much be smacked down as be smacked squarely in the chops into the middle of next week.
The thought of smacking the Dorking into that distance in disproof of his entire space-time continuum is quite appealing, given the way his mates have been disposed of lately.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Mrrzy
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 06:16 PM

Dawkins may be an actual intellectual, but he's still a pompous ass who could use some smacking, down or otherwise.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Greg F.
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 06:24 PM

Pompous yes - but that don't mean he's wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 07:08 PM

Whatever sort of scientist Dawkins is, he gets more press for making inflammatory statements than he ever got for his real work. And even his inflammtory statements get him less press than anything a Kardashian does. Even Rob Kardashian.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 08:17 PM

Translator's note: "making inflammatory statements" means "cutting through the religious bullshit".

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: michaelr
Date: 15 Sep 14 - 09:03 PM

Chopra is a charlatan. Dawkins is an asshole.

Chopra sells snake oil. Dawkins sells truth.

I don't like either of them much, but it's plain to see which is wronger.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 02:14 AM

Actually, he makes inflammatory statements about all kinds of things that have nothing to do with religion. He even manages to offend atheists sometimes. Not the smartest thing in the world to go against your base.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Musket
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 02:26 AM

Atheism isn't a base.

It is a word used to describe not having a base so far as superstition is concerned.

He does stick to science. He berates those who dismiss discovery because it can't be referenced in a book of fairy tales.

I'd be frustrated too if my branch of science, if I had one, was dismissed out of hand by ignorant superstition.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 09:02 AM

The trouble is, even Science has bencome a religion. Just look at the history of science books, they have the greatest of difficulty in recognising:
1. that science existed before Newton
2. that Newton wrote twice as much on esotericism as on physics
3. that the founding fathers of modern science were almost to a man Masonic, bound together by a proto-religion recognising a divine ergos.

And you get exactly the same tactics used by the Churches from them:
1. Anti-heretical discrediting
2. The full Shakespearean panoply of disinformation extendin to outright lies, to a degree which should if their own rules of debate were accurately observed, discredit them through every trick of fallacious logic.

The simple fact is that the base of agricultural science was in place by 1300, and metallurgy by 1500. Cosmology has a direct line of dewscent from 1400. And much of that earlier thinking was somewhat guided by religion, into the bargain, which is why the Royal Society isn't prepared to go there.

The problem is, how much noise is in the scientific machine? I know, for example, that between 1968, when I stopped chemistry in secondary school, and 1975, when I had to restart it as an ancilliary subject studying management in a scientific university, the entire structure of the periodic table was recast, and some fundamental axioms I was taught as certain then were replaced by others which are very different yet apparently every whit as certain.

Let's look at the Higgs Boson as an example. The only evident case for spending a pharaonic sum of money on the Large Hadron Collider is that there seems to be a gap in the table, that it looks "right" that there "should" be something there. Or perhaps there just is a gap? The periodic table demonstrates the real atomic world isn't nice and square, the lanthanides and actinies all occupy the space just one element in each instance would normally fill if it were all neat and tidy. It is now starting to look as if in a very similar way, the model was wrong, that we not only have a Higgs Boson, but a whole crew of Higgs particles, from Powder-Boy to Admiral. So much for the use of religious arguments to justify science, then, and for science as an objective argument in and of itself alone.

Which rather demolishes the Dork's purist arguments, methinks. Where's Savonarolo when we need him?

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Greg F.
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 09:17 AM

Science has bencome a religion

Oh, please - not that tired old saw.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 09:40 AM

Atheism is a base. There are lots of self-identified atheists who organize themselves into groups to forward their ideas, to provide mutual support, and to act in concert against the ills of the world. A lot of them subscribe to Dawkins tweets.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 11:23 AM

Is there such a thing as a pseudo-intellectual? Does anybody willingly decide to be such a thing?

I think that if A has a bigger vocabulary than B, and if A tussles with difficult subjects, while B can't be bothered but feels he SHOULD be bothered, then B sneers at A as a pseudo-intellectual.

The last person that I've heard use the term 'pseudo-intellectual' was Spiro Agnew, vice president (for a while) under Richard Nixon.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 12:57 PM

You'd maybe expect an expert to be able to spell "pretence".

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Musket
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 01:15 PM

Rather ironic that this thread begins with pseud...

Private Eye have an occasional column that some of the tripe here could fit into rather neatly.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 04:44 PM

Dawkins is something like the Katie Hopkins of pop philosophy.
He might be an OK scientist, I don't know, but he's a damned awful dick-head.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 05:50 PM

You'll have to do better that that in refutation, Greg: I'm simply saying neither is reliable. Christianity, for example, was supposed to have replaced the Jewish rulebook: so what has Rome spent the last 200 years doing? Writing a new one. And Science does the same, Ohm's Law breaking down with superconductors, for example.
A pragmatic engineer keeps one eye on common sense.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 07:55 PM

In another thread, pete-the-archetypal-thicko-insulting-ignoramus claims that science is a faith position. In this thread, some lunatic claims that science is a religion (incredibly unoriginally, of course). Well, these are the last desperate clingings-on of the religion that, fearfully, sees the world as ever more yielding to explanation by science and not by its silly doctrine. The irony is that proponents of this argument don't see that they are demeaning their own position, fatally, by making such fatuous claims. They want, seemingly, to drag science down to the level of religion. That's hilarious, is that. Liverpool won tonight, by the way. Even the Reds have God on their side.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 16 Sep 14 - 10:17 PM

The one thing that you miss, Shaw, is that the religious fundamentalists don't care. The don't much like the modern science-based world, and they feel like they don't fit, and so they create a world they like better. Can't really blame them for that. Our world is a bit of a mess.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: banjoman
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 05:51 AM

I thought from its title that this thread was about WWE Wrestling which is on every Friday evening (UK)and certainly expounds loads of Pseudointellectual thoughts.
Dawkins is, and always has been, an asshole.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 05:59 AM

No, Shaw, you've got the cart before the horse: logic is theorised common sense, common sense is not applied logic. Science models the real world, sometimes appallingly badly, you must always differentiate between the theory of science and the pragmatics of the real world, if science doesn't match it, then iit's science which is wrong, and not the other way around.
Another domain which makes the same mistake is the Law: it has preempted Justice, lex mala sed lex, with the result that almost all Law is bad: when two people face each other in Court, it's not a zero-sum game because the lawyers parasitise them, so even if you win you lose.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 07:51 PM

The one thing that you miss, Shaw, is that the religious fundamentalists don't care. The don't much like the modern science-based world, and they feel like they don't fit, and so they create a world they like better. Can't really blame them for that. Our world is a bit of a mess.

Do call me Steve.

I haven't missed that at all. The thing is, just like me, you and everybody else, they are part of this world and would do well to espouse that fact. As a matter of fact, you may have noticed that these fundamentalists who "don't much like the modern science-based world", as you put it, make pretty good use of its technology. Even ISIS uses social media to put across their message, and, no doubt, to add to their billions. They may try to create, as you say, a world they like better. But they still use the internet in order to create it. I think it's about time you told them off.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 07:55 PM

No, Shaw, you've got the cart before the horse: logic is theorised common sense, common sense is not applied logic. Science models the real world, sometimes appallingly badly, you must always differentiate between the theory of science and the pragmatics of the real world, if science doesn't match it, then iit's science which is wrong, and not the other way around.
Another domain which makes the same mistake is the Law: it has preempted Justice, lex mala sed lex, with the result that almost all Law is bad: when two people face each other in Court, it's not a zero-sum game because the lawyers parasitise them, so even if you win you lose.

Well that's as clear as mud then. Perhaps you'd care to have someone translate your post into English. Make sure, though, that their punctuation skills are up to snuff.. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Ed T
Date: 17 Sep 14 - 09:55 PM

So called debates by folks like Deepak Chopra and Richard Dawkins are debates by definition-but in reality are "debating theater", combining the elements of debates in an entertainment arena.

While both these fellows have professional credentials, one should not forget that their main role in such debates, (and associated promotional exposure and products), is to encourage you to continue to be interested in their "entertainement venues".

While TV wrestling is totally scripted, do not rule out that these folks get paid well to plan and invest well to promote and maintain your interest in their form of entertainement.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 01:33 AM

Steve: Somewhere along the line, the architects of the modern science-based world decided it was important to make it possible for people to use technology who neither understand nor want to understand the science behind it.

That roughly parallels the fact that a long time ago, the architect of the universe decided that it was important to make it possible for people to use the progenerative process that neither understand nor want to understand the science behind it.

Choices were made, and we've got to live with them.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Musket
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 03:14 AM

Perhaps Banjoman watches too much American choreography, seems to have lost the ability to spell arsehole...

A mate was wearing a T shirt at our local folk club last night that said "Too thick to understand science? Try religion."

Of course, as much as the sentiment stands, science as a word includes the fascinating voyage of discovery, so understanding science would be as silly a proposition as understanding truth in scripture.

Understanding the aims and processes of science however demonstrates that religion just doesn't even get a pass in the foundation course, let alone be competent to take the first module.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: banjoman
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 06:06 AM

Sorry about the spelling mistake - I blame this modern and scientific keyboard which is the one that makes the mistakes.
I first saw Richard Dawkins years ago when he hosted the BBC Christmas Lectures. I found him to be offensive and using his position to expound his personal views. I recall him saying to a young audience " Don't Believe what others tell you - believe what I am saying" I think the real problem with him is that he has never really been challenged publicly by someone his equal in propounding their beliefs.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: DMcG
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 08:44 AM

I think the real problem with [Dawkins] is that he has never really been challenged publicly by someone his equal in propounding their beliefs

Well, it depends on what is meant by 'his equal'. To me, while some of his scientific writings are excellent, and his ability to popularise it is very high, when he comes to debating, his a*hole status (choose your preferred spelling) really comes to the fore. He uses no end of logical fallacies and other debating skill tricks that may be entertaining and persuasive at a superficial level but tend to leave me thinking 'Oh, come on, Dawkins - you know there are better arguments that that!'

For example, he often chooses to floor fundamentalist Christians by saying has they been born 2500 years earlier they would have argued as passionately for Zeus. I have yet to hear an opponent respond "Of course I would, yes. The concept of partial revelation is not obscure. What is your exact point?" Instead, they tend to collapse in a heap, because they are not as good at debating, not because his point is unassailable.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 09:02 AM

I think he had a hard time with john lennox.
he refuses to debate creation believing scientists, supposedly lest he gives them credibility. I suppose it never occurs to him, that if the creation position is so unscientific he could demonstrate that once and for all. or maybe he only takes on non science trained creationists because he knows he wont do so well with an equally matched creationist.
re steve,- even as a layman, I can see that making interpretations of the past is far from the observable, testable, repeatable science of the present. the latter produces the technology and inventions we benefit from , the former produces nothing of the sort, and I don't know of anything of practical use that needed evolutionism for its invention.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 11:07 AM

MGM, Fair question, though it has been answered well enough by Ed T and Stim and others. Bill D also made a valid, though not directly related, point about Dawkins.

Basically, though Dawkins is a scientist. His arguments about religion are very unscientific. Yet he veils them in pseudo-science debases his scientific credibility when he presents them. Chopra, misuses scientific terms to describe his own non-scientific thoughts and theories. I find the "debate" between these to be amusing, but not at all enlightening.

I find Musket's arguments to be more on point and reasoned than Dawkin's for that matter Little Hawk makes more sense than Chopra.

These are two men, Chopra and Dawkins, who are just BSing to sell books. They are doing a wonderful job of that.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 11:09 AM

I've been well Ed, just busy. This has been "clean up the flood and replace the water heater week." :-(

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Musket
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 01:35 PM

How can you discuss evolutionary biology with a professor of evolutionary biology on the basis of proving fairy tales contradict his findings?

You can keep saying god is something more than a need for a comfort blanket all you like, and good luck to you if that satisfies you and calms you, (I use sex and a bloody good pinot myself*) but you can't make fairy stories real just by force of argument or lemming logic.




* or is it masturbation and beer? I forget.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Greg F.
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 01:40 PM

creation believing scientists

Sorry, pete - another oxymoron.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 01:52 PM

it is obviously very dark in that hole you bury your head in, greg !

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Musket
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 02:59 PM

Ok then, what about calling them malicious liars and charlatans?

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Ed T
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 03:19 PM

""How can you discuss evolutionary biology with a professor of evolutionary biology on the basis of proving fairy tales contradict his findings?""

Thats the point, it is, and never was debate-though some excitable people thought it was so. It was merely entertainement-possibly scripted to some degree.

You call it entertainement, and people will love it -it has been done to death and the proof is in the pudding (no, not yours, Musket- what you do when you are alone is unlikely entertaining for anyone to consider).

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 18 Sep 14 - 03:56 PM

* or is it masturbation and beer? I forget.

You're right, but I would point out that it must be that way round. If you're over 60 at least.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 12:03 AM

I think that the point is that calling people names and ridiculing them is not debate. Dawkins is no more qualified to discuss the existence of God than any over person on Earth. His pretense of special knowledge is pseudointellectualism made manifest.


Don't confuse creationism with religion or science with ridicule.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Musket
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 02:15 AM

Notwithstanding creationism is a key component of most if not all religious cults whereas ridicule has no place in cold logical evaluation of evidence. Ridiculing the ridiculous is fair game though, hence when religion wishes to plug into the scientific process, this happens.

People claiming to be scientists but asserting make believe into their work, or creationist scientists as pete calls them. If they published such conclusions from evidence and applied their appalling excuse for logic in the medical world, they could easily be in court for endangering lives. They certainly couldn't get their logic chopping published in any respected journal.




By the way. I've just checked. Seems that it's sex and Pinot. 😀

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 11:14 AM

I quite agree that make believe should not get a foot in the door in medicine, musket. now, I wonder who people should sue for taking out perfectly good body parts because they were allegedly evolutionary leftovers, or back injury, from treatment derived from evolutionary ideas of ape ancestry ideas. then there is the delay in medical research because of the Darwinist belief that there are vestigial organs, and junk DNA. it turned out as creationists expected, but probably a surprise to the scientists that believed the Darwin story.
but never mind, they can publish their results in their respected journals because they can then claim it as another discovery for evolutionary science !.

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Musket
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 12:08 PM

😂😂😂

Subject: RE: BS: Pseudointellectual Smackdown!
From: Greg F.
Date: 19 Sep 14 - 12:41 PM

pete, now you're REALLY descending into idiocy & cloud cuckoo land.