The ignorance of Ph.Ds

[JesusHChrist]

It's troll Thursday!

2015 is off to a rip roaring start.

[I_am_not_mafia]

You may be convinced that your spirits are real, but how would you unequivocally prove to someone else that they are?

You can't. But evidence suggests that taking those meds will make your symptoms disappear.

[Esquilax]

James Randi offers $1,000,000 for proof of the paranormal (with the catch being lab tactics that don’t work with the sacred).

Wow, that's very convenient for you and your unsubstantiated claims.

The point is it is quite important of a topic to many people on earth, so why the brushing it aside as “oh it’s worthless craziness”? I walk in and say here doc is a way to study spiritual phenomena scientifically and the response is kind of “that’s nice, here is a pill to make it all go away”.

Rather than try to make Goddess/God go away, the real scientist should have the natural attitude of “wow, fascinating, I need to get this to the lab and do some studies!”.

So, essentially you're upset because scientists and your therapist won't enable your medically diagnosed delusions by playing into them for you? And you can't, at any point in this conversation where you tell other people what's logical and what isn't, see why your therapist might want to avoid doing that, in good conscience, considering her job and your diagnosis?

Let's say you're exactly right, that you do have something going on that's supernatural, but that you can't control and won't show up for testing. Let's play the empathy game, and place you in your therapist's shoes: this is a court appointed visit, you said? So I assume there's some form of court oversight going on here too? Your psychiatrist has been hired to get you well, is probably issuing progress reports to somebody up the line, and then she has you, her patient, claiming that you're not really sick, you've just got magic happening to you. Even if you're right, what the hell do you expect her to do? You keep pulling your claims back from the suggestion of testing, so there's no way to actually establish that what you're saying is true; from the outside looking in, your therapist taking you seriously on this looks exactly the same as her enabling the exact illness that she was brought on to treat. At best, you're asking her to lose her job because her believing something you can't demonstrate would make you feel better.

Why would you want that?

I find this same problem with atheist scientists who are ignorant. Ignorance isn’t confined to one group of people, but in the atheist genre there is the consensus in the philosophy (kind of circular reasoning) that because God doesn’t exist God should not he studied. Because nothing paranormal exists anything claiming as such should be written off as unscientific, or basically a pile of shit.

Look, when you start off by saying that your supernatural claims can't be tested under laboratory conditions, you can't then wonder why nobody is trying to test your claims under laboratory conditions, and start calling everyone else ignorant because they won't take the claims you say can't be tested seriously. You're essentially calling us stupid because we won't take you at your word.

[Simon Moon]

How would you go about determining if any of the things you experience are a product of your mental issues, and therefore just internal to your mind, or some real external phenomena?

What kind of test would you design to differentiate?


My brother-in-law's brother is a schizophrenic. He blames his medication being thrown away on aliens.

What method should we use to determine if he's relaying something that is happening in reality, or a product of his schizophrenia? Could we use the same method on your claims?

So, because there is no sincere curiosity, no science will ever develop, and the cycle will continue of “I don’t believe in it because there is no science and there is no science because I don’t believe in it”.

Open your minds ye over skeptical! Don’t let your skepticism border on ignorant!

Scientists are extremely curious people. Why do you think they become scientists?

As soon as you have some repeatable, verifiable, demonstrable phenomena to study, it will be studied.

If by 'over skeptical' you mean that we do not believe things until they are supported with demonstrable evidence and reasoned argument, then count me as an avid member of that group.

[robvalue]

I'm sad to say that general "spiritual" claims, along with religion, must make it harder to diagnose actual hallucinations and mental problems. The descriptions given tend to be very similar. Spirituality, and religion, are socially acceptable delusions. Permitted madness. And it's not surprising that the saturation of all this mythology and spiritual ideas causes them to filter into an unwell mind.

[popeyespappy]

How would you suggest science study your personal subjective experience?

In this case I suggest vivisection.

[JesusHChrist]

One bit of pedantry to the OP --

Psychiatrists, at least in the US are MDs. They may also have PhDs of course, but usually the MD is more than enough lernin' for one lifetime.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

From the story, I'd still rather have a PhD and be ignorant than just ignorant.

And as someone else has said, to be a medical doctor you need an MD, not a PhD.

James Randi offers $1,000,000 for proof of the paranormal (with the catch being lab tactics that don’t work with the sacred).

And literally the only conclusion we can infer from that is that you will never get $1m as a result of your 'spiritual' beliefs, at least not from Randi.

[Minimalist]

You may be convinced that your spirits are real, but how would you unequivocally prove to someone else that they are?

My spirits are real. I have several bottles of them.

[Tonus]

James Randi offers $1,000,000 for proof of the paranormal (with the catch being lab tactics that don’t work with the sacred). I won’t confront Randi due to the fact that I have no control over what Deity does. Basically, if God/Goddess wants to give me a telepathic or clairvoyant experience at random that is up to It’s discretion, I have nothing to do with it, no free will in the picture at all. The gifts are given not taken. As Jesus says don’t be a thief about it, get it offered freely.

By "lab tactics that don't work with the sacred" I assume you are referring to the tactic known as "observe and record." If you are the only one who ever experiences these events, and if for some reason they never occur when others are there to observe and/or record, why would it surprise you that people are skeptical?

This is something we see here from a number of theists of various stripes: that they experience things that cannot be verified to/by anyone else because 'god doesn't perform on demand' or some other reason, and we have no choice but to take their word for it. Well... no. I don't have to take anyone's word for it. No one does, until god or zeus or the ghost of your aunt Matilda decides to make a public appearance and settle the issue.