Precognition Causality Quantum Theory and Mysticism

LindaLou tells us that 5 million trials have taken place and that the results for telepathy are undeniably and overwhelmingly positive. If this is true the fact of telepthay is one of the most objectively evidenced phenomenon known to science. If this is true the scientific community must be engaged in a monumental conspiracy to suppress and deny the truth of this paranormal phenomenon. I fully expect LindaLou to shortly be releasing a film called "Expelled: No Telepathy Allowed" and to be canvassing the Kansas state board of education to teach the controversy.Are these comparisons of Sheldrake's work and Intelligent Design justified? Well the parallels are not restriced to assuming a huge conspiracy on the part of the scientific elite. Nor are they restricted to assuming that the materialist dogma of science is on the verge of collapse as we are forced to recognise the evidenced reality of immaterial and spiritual truths. Nor do the parallels stop at the replacement of Goddidit as a dead end answer with the equally pointless somethingsupernaturaldidit as already discussed. Sheldrake's morphic fields are ethereal fields of information underlying the creative process of nature. I have already discussed Sheldrake's pseudoscientific abuse of terminology in Message 66. But the ambiguous use of the term "information" should be familiar to anyone who has taken on the ID argument.Sheldrake is ultimately little more than an IDist with new-age knobs on. Sheldrake on materialismScience doesn't claim to know all the answers to anything. Ultimate or otherwise. I thought the only people who claimed to know the answers to the "ultimate questions" were theologians? Anyway whilst some may consider fiction to be "freer - and more fun" I personally prefer the phrase "Truth is stranger than fiction".Sheldrake seeks to introduce spirituality and mysticism into the science laboratory in exactly the same way that Intelligent Design seeks to introduce the supernatural into the science classroom. Both are acts of misguided folly.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Or.....Maybe those humans most genetically prone to telepathy found that dogs were their natural soulmates. Thus those genes responsible for human telepathy were lost to us as a species for reasons that I will leave to your sordid imagination.

You repeatedly claim open-mindedness but you are the least open minded person here regarding Sheldrake. For whatever reason you seem to have some sort of personal investment in this guy that no argument, no exposure of bad experimental practises and no demonstration of him intentionally misleading using fake terminology (see Message 66) will ever overcome.I stand by this more than ever: Message 205***sigh***Which is exactly what I keep telling you is the problem with Sheldrake's methodology in the telepathic dogs experiments. Blinded experiments with specific predicted results rather than post-hoc criteria, interpretation and after-the-event statistical analysis. Increased objectivity helps achieve nothing but the truth. Until Sheldrake seeks objectivity rather than mass citation of repeatedly poor experimental methodology he will persuade no-one but the pre-converted and the scientifically illiterate. No doubt complaining about the injustice of it all in his lectures and books as he struggles all the way to the bank. I only repeat things when you refuse to answer them.If you think telepthy is so overwhelmingly evidenced should we "teach the controversy" to science students? Why will you not answer this simple question if you have genuine belief in the evidence you are citing?The parallels of your argument with ID are truly uncanny: Message 216Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Well I notice that you still won't answer my question regarding whether or not you consider telepthy to be evidenced enough to teach to school science students. Why is that? Bias isn't a problem in experiments? Wow! And yet at the same time you claim it is skeptical bias that results in telepthy experiments giving negative results when conducted by skeptics?So now you have experimental results for telepthy that only believers can replicate and an explanation for this phenomenon in the form of morphic fields that are empirically undetectable. And this is science? OK LindaLou have it your way.If you want to ignore the fact that Sheldrake is misusing terminology to intentionally make his spiritual ideas sound scientific to the public so be it. If you want to believe that Sheldrake is some sort of visionary who is pioneering a radical new paradigm against a conspiracy of denial on the part of the dogmatic doctrine of empirical-only science then so be it. If you want to believe in telepathy on the basis of some post hoc stats and a dog that sits near a window at certain times of day so be it. If you so desperately need to believe that there is "something more" out there that you are willing to fall for this guy's "science for the people" approach and accept his pseudoscientific morphic fields as even a potential explanation for anything, then............... So be it. So you assert. But if you swap the immaterial and empirically unknowable intelligent designer with ethereal and empirically unknowable creative fields of information there really is very little to seperate the two. Message 216

Well if it genuinely works we need to investigate how it works. But does it genuinely work? Oh. So it seems we have another one of those phenomenon that only works if you believe it works, that cannot be tested by skeptics, that has no scientific theoretical foundation as to how it even could work and that is essentially irrefutable in the eyes of those who believe in it. Sounds familiar. Well obviously. The obligatory pseudoscientific explanation. Millions of dollars spent and people's lives at stake. It is incredible that people can get away with this stuff. Not to mention thoroughly depressing.

This has already been mentioned here Message 66Didn't some of us propose a naturalistic possibility for some form of telepthy based on brain activity in this thread a while ago? Message 112. How come we weren't embraced into the ranks of the "open minded"? Confident control of nature? I think not. Where do you get this stuff? Maybe you are not as open minded as you think you are? Message 205Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

This was in todays Guardian newspaper. Dowsing for Bombs