Sharing this bit on OCD because it's a subject that's important to me:

“My OCD attacked whatever was most important to me. […] It wasn’t always just a dull agony. Quite often it ramped into a shrill, turbulent nightmare. Overwhelming, engulfing terror would swallow me whole.”

— taken from

http://jackieleasommers.com/2013/02/11/ocd-torture/

only human

[NOTE: I will eventually update this post with specific examples to illustrate the point]

Maybe I have unrealistic ideals and standards, but I find it really disheartening (although not surprising given human limitations) to witness well-educated, experienced, and otherwise reasonable scientists and scholars allow preexisting ideology to cloud their judgment and imprison their minds; to see academics shift from being “cool as a cucumber”, in one area of inquiry, to stunningly closed-minded in another area of inquiry. And not merely closed minded, but also irrationally emotional – resorting to derision/mockery/sarcasm/etc. as substitutes for critical thinking, making glib hand-waving dismissals without even attempting to engage in deeper analysis, and being deliberately ignorant of the issues (i.e. refusing to look beyond the surface of an issue). Ironically, those stuck in unreasonable and irrational modes of thinking often proclaim themselves to be more reasonable and rational than their interlocutors. From their perspective, they’re being perfectly reasonable and sensible, and it’s everybody else who needs to wake up.

Of course, it’s disappointing when anybody is like this, but extra disappointing (at least for me) when it’s a veteran academic. Similarly, it’s gut-wrenching when an innocent person is murdered, but it’s extra gut-wrenching (at least for me) when the killer is a police officer. Reasonable people can and do disagree with each other without having emotion cloud their judgment. However, many academics do have foggy judgment and you can see it in the literature and speeches on atheism vs. theism, evolution vs. creationism, consciousness studies (especially when it comes to some of the more taboo areas within that field), competing theories and drugs in medicine, “in-house” debates among religious scholars who are broadly on “the same side”, etc.

For me, delving into those issues is a powerful reminder that nobody is a dispassionate fact-calculating machine; we’re all raw human beings with complex and nuanced needs, motivations, and reasons for thinking the way we think. I never want to be unknowingly trapped in a bubble of selective irrationality, oblivious to flaws that are obvious to everyone else. Reflecting on this inspires me to scrutinize my ideas more intensely than my toughest critics would.

"Ghost Hunters"

[QUOTE] The member list included some prominent... spiritualist followers. These members professed to agree with the plan for skeptical research. But it now appeared that they hadn’t meant for the word ‘skepticism’ to be taken quite so literally. Many spiritualists remained angry over the perceived negative findings in Nora’s analysis of ghost stories. Some quit in outrage over the exposé of Madame Blavatsky. The mediums in the organization were infuriated [...] It wasn’t just Nora who was antagonizing the membership. Richard Hodgson was back in England, cheerfully adding fuel to this already smoldering sense of resentment [...] There were no spirits in these séances, merely fast hands, hidden devices, distraction— and a wish by those participating to believe in magic. Following hard after the SPR’s earlier exposé, this struck the spiritualists as a gratuitous attack. [...] Even Alfred Russel Wallace was drawn into the fight, taking the side of the spiritualists and making it obvious how far he had fallen from the Darwinian mainstream for the moment. [...] Across that intractable Atlantic, the psychical researchers suffered through no such dramas, but then, their best work was being done in careful secrecy. [– End of quotation. See “Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death” (Blum, 2006)]

I absolutely adore Deborah Blum’s 2006 book “GhostHunters”, which chronicles the events surrounding the 1882 formation of the British Society for Psychical research (SPR) (as well as its American branch in 1885), a non-profit organization dedicated to conducting impartial research into claims of the paranormal. Members included Sigmund Freud, William James, Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, F.W.H. Myers (who coined the word “telepathy”), several Nobel Laureates, a Prime Minister, and many other note-worthy people. In my judgment (without going into much detail now) “Ghost Hunters” has some flaws in it, but it’s still a great introduction for anyone interested in the history of parapsychology, which is the scientific study of allegedly “psychic” abilities (to the extent that such abilities can be studied empirically). In the tradition of the SPR, identifying as a parapsychologist (or a “psychical researcher”) does not imply either acceptance or denial of the existence of psychic abilities. Instead, it merely signifies that one conducts experiments to test whether these abilities ever occur, regardless of whether the results are positive or negative.

There’s actually a rich history of psychical research carried out during the Victorian Era by otherwise respected scientists and scholars with differing opinions and varying degrees of confidence (or lack thereof). Some were mega skeptics, some were fence sitters, and some were “believers” – although even many of the believers were cynical; in a letter to William James, Edmund Gurney complained that 95% of cases were obvious fraud and that only 5% of cases were “worth” looking into.

Diehard “skeptics” and “believers” alike will enjoy Blum’s book.

gays and tattoos

(Above image taken from this site)

To be fair, it’s possible that Leviticus 19:28 is referring to a nearby idolatrous “pagan” practice of tattooing oneself at funerals to obtain postmortem favors, in which case the man in the picture is not being an ironic hypocrite. Some try to argue that Leviticus 18:22 is similarly culturally limited with (in my judgment) varying degrees of success.

But, for now, let’s forget about all of that. My interest in the picture goes much further than the verses in question. What I find more disturbing (and also more interesting) is that many people sincerely believe that Leviticus and the rest of the “Old Testament” books truly and unequivocally dictate the will of God without exception and that is what I will focus on here. Many people sincerely believe that God -- the Ground of Being/ that which all of reality (apart from that Ground of Being itself) is completely reducible to and dependent upon-- actually uttered the words that are attributed to “him” by the authors of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, etc.

I assume the man in the picture holds that view, or at least something close to it. (If not, no worries. He inspired me to reflect on the issues I raise below, but one needn't apply the issues to that man.) If so, I wonder if he would be willing to get a tattoo of one or more of the following:

    (1) Leviticus 20:18, which forbids men from having sex with women who are on their periods. It may seem gross, but I know many Christian men who oppose same-sex eroticism but have nevertheless had sex with a woman during menstruation and intend to do it again.

   (2) 1 Samuel 15:2-3, which quotes God as telling the Israelites to 

attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, CHILDREN AND INFANTS, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys[!]

This text could not be any more barbaric than it already is. To make sure we get the picture, God (through the author) tells them to kill the “infants” too. And, for some reason, God didn’t like their camels or donkeys either. Please note that this vicious military order (according to the text itself) came from God himself. Either the author was right or he was wrong; there’s no middle ground here. If the author was wrong – if God did not tell the Israelites to murder innocent infants – then this text does not reflect the will of God. Which is it? 

    (3) 2 Kings 2:23-24, in which Elisha curses 42 children “in the name of the Lord”, which results in two bears appearing and tearing the children “to pieces”. Why did the two bears butcher those children “in the name of the lord”? According to the text, it’s because the children were mocking Elisha for being bald...   


   (4) 2 Samuel 12:11-14, which quotes God as threatening to take David’s wives and hand them over to his “neighbor”, who will then “lie with” David’s wives “in broad daylight.” Please note that the text quotes God himself.

    (5) Exodus 31:14, which demands the death penalty for anybody who “worked on the Sabbath” (“Keep the Sabbath holy. You have six days to do your work, but the Sabbath is mine, and it must remain a day of rest. If you work on the Sabbath, you will no longer be part of my people, and you will be put to death.”) In other words, relax and take a break or else I will kill you...

    (6) Deut 21:18-21, which commands parents to have their consistently disobedient sons murdered out in the open by “all the men of the city”. Here’s the passage:

 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

Forget Rescue Nanny 911. If your bratty son won’t listen to you, eh, just have your neighbors murder him by smashing him with rocks. That way you can “purge evil from your midst”.

    (7) Deut 22:13-21, which commanded the Israelites to murder women who weren’t virgins when they got married. Even worse, it was supposed to take place right in front of “the door of her father’s house”! On the other hand, if husband’s accusation is false – if the woman really was a virgin when they got married— then the husband must pay the woman’s father “a hundred shekels of silver”.

    (8) etc.

I don’t get any pleasure out of flaunting these darker passages. Instead, my point is that many people who mindlessly use the OT as a weapon against gay human beings seem unaware of what else the OT says.

 Many people really believe that the creator and source of time itself and the cosmic engineer who “finely tuned” the “constants” of physics and sparked inflation --and perhaps also the creator of countless other space-time manifolds-- actually inspired all of the aforementioned passages. The anti-gay verse of Leviticus 20:13 is bad enough, but people should also be talking about all of the many other nasty passages and commandments in the Hebrew scriptures.

To be fair, there is no logical inconsistency between the proposition “God exists” (if we go by a minimal definition of “God”), on the one hand, and the idea that the OT texts unequivocally dictate the will of God without exception, on the other hand. I just want people to be aware of what that actually entails. It would make God petty and every bit as nasty as some of the war criminals and tyrants many Christians so love to despise. I’ll end by quoting a passage from the 2006 book “The God Delusion” by the zoologist Richard Dawkins:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.*

 (* For the record, I give “The God Delusion” 5 out of 10 stars and feel that it’s overrated in terms of its contributions to the philosophy of religion. I just get some guilty pleasure out of this passage from the book because it’s so eloquent and neatly-worded. It’s even fun to read aloud)

I hate that political identities can be so polarizing and misleading. There are republicans and democrats who hold views that the other side might be expected to have. For example, there are democrats who oppose same-sex marriage and republicans who favor it, democrats who oppose the legalization of marijuana and republicans who favor it, etc. It seems better to avoid political labels altogether and just discuss issues one at a time, although that wouldn’t be convenient at times when brevity is expected. Here’s a sample: I passionately support gay rights across the board (e.g. same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples), I believe healthcare is a right and that we ought to have a universal healthcare system, I think marijuana should be legalized (not just de-criminalized) and possibly taxed, I strongly oppose the teaching of creationism in public school, I support stem cell research, and I even think prostitution should be legalized and maybe taxed (which doesn’t mean I would ever make use of it!). Taken together, are those positions enough to give me the label of “liberal” or “progressive”? I usually identify as one of those, but for some people those labels imply an excessive disdain for anything /everything resembling the military and soft treatment of dangerous criminals. But despite the stereotype about liberals, I’m also fascinated by guns and the military and I strongly support military action in some circumstances. I think we ought to use violent military force against terrorists who pour acid over the faces of children, who blow up children, who publicly mutilate and beat defenseless women, who behead innocent people (sometimes by slowly sawing through their necks!), etc. We generally can’t reason with people who are so irrationally violent, and I support the use of force against them. Does that sentiment disqualify me from being “liberal”? 

Similarly, for some people, identifying as “republican” conjures up images of irrational religious bigots who do everything they can do oppress gays and support evil corporations. But there are self-identified republicans who support same-sex marriage, or support universal healthcare, or support the legalization of marijuana, etc.

We can’t assume that we have an adequate grasp of somebody’s political views just because they merely identify as “republican”, or “democrat”, or “conservative”, or “liberal”, etc.  And I haven’t yet mentioned or discussed “independents”, “libertarians”, etc.

There are similar problems with identifying as “religious”, “spiritual”, “Christian”, “Jewish”, “mystical”, “atheist”, “agnostic”, etc. To make it more complicated, political and religious identities often overlap with each other and political views often stem from certain religious views. And here there are also cases that we wouldn’t expect if we just went by stereotypes. There are some examples: some republicans are atheists, some democrats are evangelical Christians, some Christians are fiercely against teaching creationism or Intelligent Design (ID) in public school, some atheists favor ID being taught in public school (seriously!), some Christians deny an immediate afterlife (continuation of consciousness after brain death), some atheists believe in an immediate afterlife, etc.

Of course, those examples don’t exhaust the possibilities.  So I guess what I’m saying is that people are more interesting and nuanced than our everyday style of communication would have us believe. Let’s try to learn more and assume less. Rant over. KAPAW!

Gerry Woerlee VS Chris Carter Again

Chris Carter recently re-released his excellent 2007 book “Parapsychology and the Skeptics” under the new title of “Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics”. Well-known skeptic Gerry Woerlee posted a scathing review of the book here (after posting a scathing review of Carter’s book on NDEs, which I discussed here).


Gerry did not address the majority of the book’s actual arguments, so I replied to his review in the comment section here  (under the name C Casanova, even though my first name is Patrick… I don’t know how to fix that).


Gerry replied to me here


I replied back here

 

I haven’t received any additional replies from Gerry, but several other people continued the discussion.

The Man Who Doesn't Contact The Dead

Psychological illusionist and psi-skeptic Derren Brown investigated alleged medium Joe Power in a T.V. special called "The Man Who Contacts The Dead":

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5


Click here if you live in the U.K. and can't watch the Youtube videos.

I was disappointed that Joe Power refused to do the testing that Brown and Richard Wiseman suggested. His rationale was that he needs live interaction with the sitters, which is extremely suspicious. He's saying that he can't get good results unless he's in a situation where cold and warm readings can be done. Perhaps he means that he just needs some relevant human interaction. If that's the case, then why not use proxy sitters? Stranger X (who doesn't know anything about Y) could sit in for Y, although Y would still have to be largely unknown to Joe Power for the experiment to be worth doing. But I suspect that he would decline to do proxy sittings as well.

My impression is that Power is a fraud (and also kind of a jerk), but my opinion would change if he's able to reliably produce intimate hits under controlled conditions.