Modal Argument: The Mind is Not the Brain

[Brakeman]

Yeah I don't know why she would act like such a jackass either. Must be something in the water here. That said, I claim nothing "with fervor". Yes, there are no scientism churches. But people are adherents of scientism. Ie, they don't just think science is useful and it works. They go further, believing science is the ultimate source of knowledge. This is the kind of belief that used to be held among intellectuals during the fifties, except it was called "logical positivism". But it was self-refuting then and it is self-refuting now. It's irrational nonsense.

Which explains why so many atheists believe it.

Could you elaborate on how it self refutes? I don't see that.
What is an "ultimate source of knowledge?" Are you defining that as the "Best" source, the "only" source, or the source from which all other sources derive?

I googled the tenets of "logical positivism" and of course had to pour through a mess of marshmallow vague-speak that philosophers like to hide in.
Here I found a reasonably clear posting.
http://www.loyno.edu/~folse/logpos.htm

THE MAIN PHILOSOPHICAL TENETS OF LOGICAL POSITIVISM.

According to logical positivism, there are only two sources of knowledge: logical reasoning and empirical experience. The former is analytic a priori, while the latter is synthetic a posteriori; hence synthetic a priori does not exist.
..
A statement is meaningful if and only if it can be proved true or false, at least in principle, by means of the experience -- this assertion is called the verifiability principle
..
Metaphysical statements are not empirically verifiable and are thus forbidden: they are meaningless. The only role of philosophy is the clarification of the meaning of statements and their logical interrelationships. There is no distinct "philosophical knowledge" over and above the analytic knowledge provided by the formal disciplines of logic and mathematics and the empirical knowledge provided by the sciences.

Rewording to layman's terms as I read it:
A logical positivist believes that:

1. Knowledge comes from experience and reasoning. Exceptions are not considered true knowledge.

2. A statement is only to be relied upon, ergo meaningful, if it can be tested.

3. Spirit world "woo" is not considered knowledge as it cannot be tested, logically reasoned, or experienced.

So if these are indeed the tenets of logical positivists, then I would say there are a great many of us here. However, few of us would self-identify ourselves as "logical Positivists" as we have no use for the name. We don't want to play in the philosopher's mental masturbation pool of wispy definitions of societal segregation. I would better describe these folks as smart guys that don't like the wool being pulled over their eyes.