[Chris Noble]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

I think anger is a big give-away, and you can see it with certain skeptics here. They are reduced to coarse language and pointless assertions that certain people don't know what they are talking about. They would obviously love to be able to point out serious flaws in the various experiments, and if they could, all their anger would disappear. Maybe these individuals have not made careers out of it, but they have perhaps invested a lot of mental capital in their positions, and to see the evidence from countless experiments weighing against their beliefs must be infuriating! I suppose it is a bit like putting money on a favourite horse, only to see it slip relentlessly back in the race.

So far the message from believers on this webboard have been that skeptics are dishonest, close minded and possibly even stupid people who are deeply, deeply scared that their world view will be destroyed by the ever promised proof of psi that is always just around the corner. If you can't see why some people might find this insulting then you are not as open minded as you claim to be.

Even Alex seems to have backed off from the ridiculous strawman position. In his last podcast he was much more nuanced than before.

We've even had some people claim that "materialism" makes you immoral. Not only is this ridiculous but it is deeply offensive.

If anyone's world view is threatened by science it seems to be the "psi" proponents here. I've constantly heard the refrain that if we're just a pile of atoms then life can have no purpose, conciousness is just an illusion and we can have no morals.

There is no question that people do get attached to scientific ideas. I remember as a kid feeling quite put out when I read that the gas laws were inexact, and realising that even their replacements were probably not exact either! I am sure there must have been many that were appalled by the idea that Newtonian gravity was in need of replacement.

This is ridiculous. Every scientist that I know of dreams of making a ground-breaking discovery. Everybody wants to be a Galileo or an Einstein. The intelligent ones also know not to fall into self delusion. The idea that scientists are a mindless bunch of sheeple has to be one of the stupidest, self-serving fantasies ever.