Signature of Controversy: Reply to the critics of the book Signature in the Cell by Stephen Meyer

Signature of Controversy is a free eBook with contributions by David Berlinski, David Klinghoffer, Casey Luskin, Paul Nelson, Jay Richards, Richard Sternberg and Stephen Meyer. It contains responses to critics of Stephen Meyer's book Signature in the Cell.

Download the PDF ebook here. (expires soon)

Richard Carrier on Alex Rosenberg article The Disenchanted Naturalist Guide to Reality (Part 5)

Let's to examine another of atheist Richard Carrier's objections to Alex Rosenberg's essay on the actual and consistent implications of the naturalistic worldview.

Carrier's objection 7 to Rosenberg's article is this:

(Objection 7) Similarly, Alex errs in claiming “there is no self, soul or enduring agent, no subject of the first-person pronoun, tracking its interior life while it also tracks much of what is going on around us” based solely on the premise (and this much is entirely true) “this self cannot be the whole body, or its brain, and there is no part of either that qualifies for being the self by way of numerical-identity over time.” Because what is essentially a person is the pattern of arrangement of the brain that causes us to exist and be as we are, and that pattern can persist even as its underlying material is constantly replaced, it follows that persons do endure as first-person agents. And, in point of fact, they are located behind their eyes and in between their ears. Their memories and personalities and skills and perceptual apparatus certainly doesn’t reside in their toes or their spleen. Destroy the brain, and you destroy the person. Sustain the brain, and you sustain the person. This brain, consisting of real data (real desires, memories, beliefs, personality traits, skills and reasoning abilities, etc.), generates a real model of that data (conscious experience), but the model is not us (for example, we don’t cease to exist when we sleep, all that data remains physically intact, we just stop building models of it for a while). The “subject of the first-person pronoun” is that arrangement of data in the brain. Thus, Alex is wrong to claim no such subject exists. He is also wrong to claim the brain doesn’t track what this arrangement does over time. And though we do change as persons, we share a causal history, and memories and other persisting features, with our past selves, and it is in that sense that we are the same person as before, not in the sense of being exactly identical (which you don’t have to be a naturalist to see is obviously never the case). Science has not undermined any of these conclusions. To the contrary, it continues to reinforce them.

Let's to examine Carrier's objection in more detail:

Carrier criticizes Rosenberg by arguing that no self exists (if naturalism is true). Carrier (mis) constructs Rosenberg's argument like this: "there is no self, soul or enduring agent, no subject of the first-person pronoun, tracking its interior life while it also tracks much of what is going on around us” based solely on the premise (and this much is entirely true) “this self cannot be the whole body, or its brain, and there is no part of either that qualifies for being the self by way of numerical-identity over time"

What's in blue are Rosenberg's words; what's in black are Carrier's words.

In Carrier' straw man, Rosenberg argues from the "sole" premise that the self is not the body (or part of it) to the conclusion that there is not self. But this is not the case.

To correct Carrier's straw man, let's to read Rosenberg's entire argument: "We have to realize that there is no self, soul or enduring agent, no subject of the first-person pronoun, tracking its interior life while it also tracks much of what is going on around us. This self cannot be the whole body, or its brain, and there is no part of either that qualifies for being the self by way of numerical-identity over time. There seems to be only oneway we make sense of the person whose identity endures over time and over bodily change. This way is by positing a concrete but non-spatial entity with a point of view somewhere behind the eyes and between the ears in the middle of our heads. Since physics has excluded the existence of anything concrete but nonspatial, and since physics fixes all the facts, we have to give up this last illusion consciousness foists on us. But of course Scientism can explain away the illusion of an enduring self as one that natural selection imposed on our introspections, along with an accompanying penchant for stories. After all it is pretty clear that they solve a couple of major design problems for anything that has to hang around long enough to leave copies of its genes and protect them while they are growing up" (emphasis in blue added)

Note that Rosenberg's argument includes the idea that to make sense of the existence of the self, we need to believe in the existence of a concrete but non-spacial ENTITY with a point of view. But, given that such entity doesn't exist according to physics (which fixes all the facts in naturalism), then the belief in a "self" is a pure illusion.

Which is Carrier's reply to that argument?

As usual, instead of refuting Rosenberg's actual argument, Carrier begs the question by assuming what needs to be proved. He says: "what is essentially a person is the pattern of arrangement of the brain that causes us to exist and be as we are, and that pattern can persist even as its underlying material is constantly replaced, it follows that persons do endure as first-person agents"

Note that Rosenberg identifies the person or "self" with a concrete non-spatial entity with a point of view, while Carrier identifies the person with a "pattern of arrangement of the brain". So Carrier is not refuting Resenberg's view but simply ASSERTING a personal alternative on the conception of the person. He assumes his own alternative to be true, instead of refuting Rosenberg's. He didn'd address Rosenberg's argument at all.

Having made that, Carrier continues: "And, in point of fact, they are located behind their eyes and in between their ears. Their memories and personalities and skills and perceptual apparatus certainly doesn’t reside in their toes or their spleen. Destroy the brain, and you destroy the person. Sustain the brain, and you sustain the person."

The emphasis in blue is the typical materialist position, which implies that if the brain is destroyed, the person will be destroyed too (because after all, the person is nothing but a certain pattern of arrangement of the brain)

And this argument is interesting, because it is evidence of Carrier's logical inconsistency. When he needs to contradict Rosenberg, he assumes the typical materialistic position mentioned aboved. But when he needs to argue for the "virtues" of naturalism, he defends the idea of inmortality and the afterlife.

In his book, Carrier wrote:

Your mind-pattern can in principle be formed out of many different materials, not just the one we happen to be made of, so it remains possible that we might be able one day to “transfer” our minds to a more durable, enduring medium, like an electronic brain, and thus achieve immortality that way. This would indeed be a life after death—the death of our original bodies and, to borrow a phrase from Christian theology, a resurrection in a new ‘more glorious’ body" (Sense and Goodness Without God, p. 158. Emphasis in blue added).

Note that if the "mind-pattern" might survive after the death and destruction of the body and brain, then Carrier's claim that "Destroy the brain, and you destroy the person" is FALSE (because the person could, in principle, continue to exist after the destruction of the brain).

And if it's true that destroying the brain, you destroy the person, then it's false that "Your mind-pattern can in principle be formed out of many different materials, not just the one we happen to be made of, so it remains possible that we might be able one day to “transfer” our minds to a more durable, enduring medium, like an electronic brain, and thus achieve immortality that way"

On the other hand (and note this carefully), in Carrier's reply to Rosenberg, Carrier defines a person as essentially a "pattern of arrangement of the brain". But if we stick consistently to that definition, how the hell can the "mind-pattern" be "in principle be formed out of many different materials"?

If essential to the definition of a person is that it's a "pattern of arrangement of the BRAIN", then it's false that in principle such pattern could exist (and survive after death) in extra-cerebral materials. In such case, the person wouldn't exist anymore.

You cannot pose the brain as part of a definition of which a person "essentially" is, and then to claim that a person can exist in a non-cerebral medium (like a computer).

In this point, Carrier's only defense is to argue that what is ESSENTIAL to be a person is to have a certain "mind-pattern" or "patttern of arrangement" (independently of whether such pattern is realized in the brain or in another medium like a computer). But making that move refutes Carrier's own definition of person in his reply to Rosenberg and specially and straightforwardly refutes his assertion "Destroy the brain, and you destroy the person".

Therefore, Carrier's position is demostrably INCOHERENT. Instead of replying to Rosenberg with a bunch of logical fallacies and self-refuting incoherencies, Carrier should to have addressed Rosenberg's actual arguments.

The fact that Carrier didn't address Rosenberg's actual position is evidence that he cannot refute Rosenberg's argumentation. Naturalism HAS the implications that Rosenberg has explained in his article and for this reason the objections against it won't (consistently) work.

In my opinion, the reason why naturalists, atheistic materialists and pseudo-skeptics in general consistently stick to these fallacious arguments and defend obvious irrationalities, is that naturalism is false. And you cannot defend falsehoods coherently. In order to defend falsehoods, you need to change your methodology constantly (in an ad hoc way to avoid objections), use double standards, misrepresent other people's arguments, use lies, be straighforwardly inconsistent and dishonest (like arguing that naturalism is not a worldview in order to avoid certain objections, while openly defending an organization which explicitly defines naturalism as a worldview) and in general be a smart and seasoned sophist.

But astute and informed readers will catch you.

Let's to mention a final example of this straightforward inconsistency and irrationality typical of naturalists and atheistic materialists. Richard Dawkins has explicitly defended the following beliefs:

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good (River Out Of Eden. p.155. )

However, Dawkins is famous by his anti-religious documentary entitled "The root of all evil?". Any rational person would formulate the following question: if there is no evil and no good in this universe, how the hell can religion (or any other thing) be the root of all "evil"?

A non-existent evil cannot have any root at all. It is simply non-existent. (Do you see why I'm convinced that many atheistic materialists and Dawkins' followers in particular are irrational and that their minds don't function properly?)

It's simply irrational, logically incoherent, self-refuting. But this is the typical modus operandi of naturalist ideologues, materialists and pseudo-skeptics. Their minds have been destroyed by the false beliefs and fallacies inherent in naturalism, and they cannot think logically (i.e. in a consistent and coherent way) anymore. Their minds are not rational, don't function properly in order to find and discover true propositions or examine the evidence.

Another example:

Dawkins has said too: "If I say something is wrong, like killing people, I don't find that nearly such a defensible statement as 'I am a distant cousin of an orangutan... I couldn't, ultimately, argue intellectually against somebody who did something I found obnoxious. I think I could finally only say, "Well, in this society you can't get away with it" and call the police. (in this interview)

If the above claim is true, in which "intellectual grounds" are you going to argue that religion is evil (or atheism is good)? How are you to argue that "killing people" is bad? If ultimately, you're not equiped to argue intellectually against something you found obnoxious, then you can only oppose it on non-intellectual grounds (i.e. irrationally). Therefore, you're conceding that your moral position, decisions and judgments are IRRATIONAL.

Dawkins' position, like Carrier's position, like Hebb's position, like Lewontin's position, like Wolpert's position, like Atkins' position, like Hitchens's position, etc. are demostrably incoherent and irrational (and potentially dangerous, if followed and believed consistently). Therefore, no rational, sane and honest person would accept or support it.

But naturalist ideologues cannot see such irrationality, because they take their position (naturalism) for granted. And if naturalism is true, then even fallacies, inconsistencies, irrationalities, moral atrocities, and self-refuting arguments in favor of naturalism (and against religion, spirituality, God, parapsychology, afterlife, etc.) will be justified and permitted.

This is why I have no intellectual respect for these individuals. And this why I think any person of good will will oppose (provided she knows these facts correctly) the ideological agenda advanced by these people.

Such a naturalist ideology is not only an intellectual fraud. It's a moral abomination that people of good will is ethically, spiritually and intellectually obligated to reject, refute and expose in order to avoid the destruction of society and the spiritual, moral and intellectual corruption of the young people.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Part 1 of this series here.

Part 2 of this series here.

Part 3 of this series here.

Part 4 of this series here.

Keith D. Wood on G.M. Woerlee and Steven Novella skeptical critiques of NDEs

Keith D. Wood has written some criticisms of recent skeptical attempts to explain NDEs in materialistic terms alone.

You can read Wood's critique of Gerald Woerlee in this link.

Wood's critique of Steven Novella's skeptical opinions on NDEs can be read here.

Alex Tsakiris has commented on Novella's views "Dr. Novella isn’t just a little bit wrong, he’s completely at odds with the large body of published research on near-death experience… the science of researchers we’ve interviewed like, Dr. Jeffrey Long, Dr. Peter Fenwick, Dr. Penny Sartori and others like Dr. Bruce Greyson and Dr. Sam Parnia and Dr. Michael Sabom, Dr. Pim Van Lommel, and many, many others all point in the opposite direction"

John W. Loftus review of David Reuben Stone's book and Stone's reply.

In my previous post, I commented on the lastest book by David Reuben Stone entitled "The Loftus Delusion". Recently, I've learned that Loftus has reviewed the Stone's book in his blog, and Stone has replied to Loftus in his website.

Perhaps you should read Stone's book first, before considering Loftus' reply and Stone's rebuttal. (Otherwise, you won't know if the contents of the book have been misrepresented or interpreted uncharitably).

The Loftus Delusion: Why Atheism Fails and Messianic Israelism Prevails by David Reuben Stone: A Christian response to John W. Loftus

David Reuben Stone's lastest book entitled The Loftus Delusion: Why Atheism Fails and Messianic Israelism Prevails is a Christian response to online atheist and former Christian John W. Loftus.

I haven't read this book yet, but given David's excellent previous book "Atheism is False", I'm looking forward to read carefully his lastest one.

Loftus is a kind of hero for many online atheists, but given my reading of some of his works, I'm not much impressed. However, Loftus is far better atheist apologist than other atheists like Dawkins or Hitchens, so his works deserve a careful critical and objective examination, specially by Christians.

Given that Loftus' main target is Christianity, David's book is intended as the definitive critique and response from a Christian perspective of Loftus' anti-Biblical atheism, along with a advanced defense of theistic occasionalist metaphysics and conservative Biblical theology.

If you're a Christian, you shouldn't miss the chance to read David's lastest work. If you're agnostic or atheist, but curious about a Christian reply to Loftus' atheist works, you should to get a copy of this book too.

Finally, I'd suggest you to watch this debate on the existence of God between Loftus and former atheist and now a Christian philosopher David Wood.

Bruce Greyson on Near Death Experiences

Marilyn Schlitz: The Art and Science of Transformation Interview by Iain McNay

Edward Feser on naturalism, materialism, true belief and natural selection

One of the problems of evolutionary naturalism (=metaphysical naturalism + natural selection) is that it doesn't explain the origin of the reliability of our cognitive faculties to produce true beliefs. Even worst, it gives a defeater (roughly, a belief that refutes or undermine another belief) to the basic belief (shared by naturalists and non-naturtalists alike) that our mental faculties are reliable (i.e. that they produce mostly true beliefs)

(Note that in this context, "reliable" means "able to produce mostly true beliefs" (reliable doesn't mean "perfect" or infallible mental functioning))

The reason is that natural selection (if correct) favors only adaptive behaviour (behaviour that helps the organism to survive and reproduce), but that mechanism, by itself, doesn't imply or entail the favoring of mostly true beliefs and rationality in order to survive and reproduce (in fact, plants and animals like lions, birds, bats and worns have survived through natural selection too, but these animals are not rational nor have mostly true beliefs. So rationality and reliable cognitive faculties to know the truth are not necessary conditions to survive and reproduce under the natural selection mechanism. Therefore, given the fact of the biological survival of human beings, we cannot infer the rationality nor reliability of our minds to know the truth).

In a footnote of his excellent book The Last Superstition, Thomist philosopher Edward Feser briefly explains this problem (note that Feser is not a defender of Inteligent Design; in fact he's a critic of it, as you can read in this Feser's post):

It might be suggested that true beliefs have greater survival value, so that natural selection would favor them and thus ensure that our thought process are reliable. But there are two problems with this reply. First, there is no reason to think that true belief always have greater survival value; there might be some truths that it would be dangerous for us to know, so that natural selection shapes our minds in such way that we are kept from believing them. Secondly, even if true beliefs did always have greater survival value, there is still no way that natural selection could favor them. For a belief's truth or falsity is tied up with its meaning, and as we have seen, on the materialist's account meaning plays no causal role whatsoever in any of our thought processes. Hence truth and falsity can play no causal role either. That entails in turn that when our behaviour is caused by our beliefs, truth or falsity of the beliefs plays no role in causing it. And since natural selection could weed out false beliefs only by weeding out the behavior caused by them, it follows that it cannot weed out false beliefs (p. 288. Emphasis in blue added)

The above argument is based on the naturalist's own premises, not on the premises of "intelligent design", theism or "creationism" (or whatever other red herring that naturalist ideologues try pose to avoid the objection and cause confusion). In fact, Charles Darwin himself realized this problem (in a intuitive, crude and philosophically unsophisticated way):

"With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been devel-oped from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"(Letter to William Graham, July 3, 1881)

So, note that this objection is not based on a religious axe to grind or idiosyncratic hostility to naturalism (an hostility which could be justified given the naturalism's immoral, irrational, negative and anti-spiritual character). It's based on the own premises of naturalism plus natural selection. And this is why some naturalists themselves have recognized it.

But let's to return to Feser's argument:

Meaning, being a conceptual property of beliefs and propositions, is as such non-physical, and therefore cannot be causally efficacious on the physical world if materialism and naturalism are true (since that a basic principle of naturalism is the causal closure of the physical world, and the belief that NO non-physical cause can affect the physical world). Therefore, meaning as such is INVISIBLE to natural selection, so the meaning of a proposition (which is a necessary condition to makes it true or false) cannot be selected or favored by natural selection. So it's false and self-refuting (to naturalists) to claim that natural selection favors true beliefs over false beliefs.

If you see a naturalist claiming that natural selection favors true beliefs in virtue of their conceptual, propositional and semantic contents (i.e. in virtue of their having meaning) , you'll know for sure he's an ignorant, a charlatan or an ideologue (or all of these things together). If he explicitly or implicitly accepts that concepts (and their meanings) are causally efficacious on the physical world (e.g. efficacious to cause certain biological behaviors), then he's admitting that non-physical causation exists (and therefore, that the causal closure of the physical world and naturalism ARE false). And if he says that what causes behaviours is not the concepts and meaning as such, but their brain correlates (i.e. brain processes), then he cannot claim that natural selection favored true beliefs as such, i.e. in virtue of their meaning and propositional content (because true beliefs are conceptual and dependent on meaning, not on physical processes qua physical processes).

Reflective and honest naturalists have realized some of these problems. An example is naturalist philosopher Alex Rosenberg, who arguing about naturalism and its justification of the ontological status of "beliefs" (and hence of true beliefs), wrote: "It is of course obvious that introspection strongly suggests that the brain does store information propositionally, and that therefore it has beliefs and desire with “aboutness” or intentionality. A thoroughgoing naturalism must deny this, I allege. If beliefs are anything they are brain states—physical configurations of matter. But one configuration of matter cannot, in virtue just of its structure, composition, location, or causal relation, be “about” another configuration of matter in the way original intentionality requires (because it cant pass the referential opacity test). So, there are no beliefs"

Note that Rosenberg's solution is to reject the existence of beliefs! (instead of rejecting naturalism!). But if beliefs don't exist, then the belief "naturalism is true" is non-existent too and being non-existent, cannot be true!; therefore, "believing" that naturalism is true is self-refuting. Moreover, if beliefs don't exist, then they cannot be causally efficacious; therefore, they cannot have any effect on survival and thereby cannot be selected by natural seleciton.

By the way, if "there are no beliefs", how the hell can natural selection favors (nonexistent) true beliefs over (nonexistent) false beliefs? It would be impossible, since that "nonexistent" entities , properties or traits cannot be selected at all.

At least Rosenberg is honest enough to recognize these problems implied by naturalism (even if his "solution" is absurd and obviously self-refuting). But any position that implies a self-refutation is, by that reason, FALSE. Therefore, if Rosenberg is right, naturalism is false.

In contrast with Rosenberg and other honest naturalists, naturalist ideologues try to hide these serious (and fatal, in my opinion) problems, in order to cause the public image that naturalism is rational (and to convince themselves that they're rational too). It's part of a PR strategy to spread atheism, materialism and pseudo-skepticism as an anti-spiritual worldview. It's also a clever and efficacious way of self-delusion caused by wishful thinking.

Note that these problems have been pointed out by both naturalists and non-naturalists alike (see the book Naturalism in Question for a discussion by naturalists themselves of the flaws of naturalism), even though (as expected) Christian philosophers have dedicated more time to explain and develop these intrinsic problems of the naturalist ideology.

For example, Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has explained in this brief video why naturalism is irrational (or more specifically, why to believe in naturalism is irrational) based on Alvin Plantinga's argument against naturalism:



You can read Plantinga's critical paper on naturalism in this Christian website.

Another argument against naturalism (different from Plantinga's, but based on the naturalism's premises too) is this paper by naturalist David MacArthur's entitled "Naturalism and Skepticism"

It's essential that you keep in mind that all of these arguments are based on the basic premises of naturalism itself, not on religious premises (and this is why naturalists like Rosenberg or MacArthur have defended arguments like those, because they fully realize the logical implications of naturalism and, not being strongly committed to a lawyerly defense of naturalism or its public image, they're not afraid of critically and honestly discussing the problems and implications of this worldview)

So, if you're an atheist, an agnostic, a pantheist or a Christian theist or are a believer in any other belief-system, and provided you're a TRUTH SEEKER, you can fully understand these arguments on their own merits and see the problems they actually pose to naturalism (It's up to you to decide if they're convincing or not)

Don't waste your time discussing these matters with ideologues, professional lawyers/propagandists for naturalism and faith-based uncritical believers in naturalism, they cannot be moved by reason or logic, nor want to.

Seek the truth for its own sake, not to convince ideologues.

What Gorilla?: Why Some Can't See Psychic Phenomena by Dean Radin, PhD.

What Gorilla?: Why Some Can't See Psychic Phenomena by Dean Radin, PhD.

Imagine you're watching a basketball game. Your favorite team is wearing white and the other team is in black. In the midst of the action, someone in a dark gorilla suit calmly walks to the center of the court, waves to the crowd, then walks off the court. Do you think you would notice this peculiar event? Most people might say yes. Most people would be wrong.

Our perceptual system unconsciously filters out the vast majority of information available to us. Because of this filtering process, we actually experience only a tiny trickle of information, by some estimates a trillionth of what is actually out there. And yet from that trickle our minds construct what we expect to see. So when we pay attention to our favorite white-shirted basketball team, the likelihood of clearly seeing darker objects moving about is substantially reduced. That includes even obvious objects, like gorillas. Psychologists call this phenomenon "inattentional blindness," and it's just one of many ways in which our prior beliefs, interests and expectations shape the way we perceive the world and cause us to overlook the obvious.

Because of these blind spots, some common aspects of human experience literally cannot be seen by those who've spent decades embedded within the Western scientific worldview. That worldview, like any set of cultural beliefs inculcated from childhood, acts like the blinders they put on skittish horses to keep them calm. Between the blinders we see with exceptional clarity, but seeing beyond the blinders is not only exceedingly difficult, after a while it's easy to forget that your vision is restricted.

An important class of human experience that these blinders exclude is psychic phenomena, those commonly reported spooky experiences, such as telepathy and clairvoyance, that suggest we are deeply interconnected in ways that transcend the ordinary senses and our everyday notions of space and time.

Exclusion of these phenomena creates a Catch 22: Human experiences credibly reported throughout history, across all cultures, and at all educational levels, repeatedly tell us that psychic phenomena exist. But Big Science -- especially as portrayed in prominent newspapers and popular magazines like Scientific American -- says it doesn't.

Well then, is this gorilla in the basketball game, or not? One way to find out is to study the question using the highly effective tools of science while leaving the worldview assumptions behind. That way we can study the question without prejudice, like watching a basketball game without preferring either the white or black team. Neutral observers are much more likely to spot a gorilla, if one is indeed present.

This form of investigation has been going on for over a century, and despite official denials, the jury is in: Some psychic phenomena do exist. But like blindingly obvious gorillas, not everyone can see them. (Actually, like the majority of the general public, many scientists do have these experiences, but as in the parable of the Emperor's New Clothes, fledgling science students quickly learn in college that it is not politically expedient to talk about it.)

Here's an example of not seeing. In the July/August 2008 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer (the Playboy of the enthusiastic debunker), neuroscientist Amir Raz and psychologist Ray Hyman describe their impressions of an invitation-only scientific meeting held on "anomalous cognition" at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in July 2007. Anomalous cognition is a neutral euphemism for psychic or "psi" phenomena, one that avoids the connotation of séances and ghostbusting associated with the touchy p-words. I was a co-organizer of the UBC meeting. Sixty prominent scientists and physicians were invited to the meeting, including a couple of Nobel Laureates, representing a variety of disciplines and perspectives.

Not surprisingly, given the skeptical focus of the magazine in which their essays appeared, Raz and Hyman both concluded that they were not persuaded by what they heard at the meeting, that nothing interesting was going on, and that the scientific pursuit of anomalous cognition is akin to a misguided search for the Tooth Fairy (Raz's term).

Now, let me preface what I'm about to say by first noting that I respect Raz's and Hyman's opinions and I'm glad that they attended the UBC meeting. There is always room for critical debate in science; as President Dubya once said in another context, "Bring it on." But what I am concerned about is that sometimes holding a fruitful debate stalls before it can get off the ground because one side regards the topic as fantasy. And so to make a point I'll be ruthless in pointing out problems with these two authors' opinions.

One of Raz's principal complaints was that he would "be curious to see compelling scientific demonstrations of psi (i.e., a string of multiple successful experiments by several independent investigators producing lawful and replicable outcomes). Alas, I have found none to date."

When I first read that statement I felt like I increasingly do these days when driving past a gas station. What did that sign say? A gallon of gas costs what? Didn't we discuss several classes of repeatable experiments at the UBC meeting? For example, I presented an overview of "presentiment" experiments, an unconscious precognitive effect that has been independently and successfully replicated numerous times. (Nearly all of the 20 experiments I'm aware of to date have produced results in the predicted direction, and of those 10 were independently statistically significant.)

And among researchers who have closely studied the psi literature, the vast majority have little doubt that something interesting is going on, something not easily attributable to chance or to any known conventional artifacts. These effects are in principle no more difficult to demonstrate than the efficacy of new pharmaceutical drugs or medical procedures. Such effects tend to be small in magnitude, they are highly reactive to the psychosocial context and other environmental factors, and they take substantial amounts of careful data collection to overcome the statistical noise generated by dozens of poorly understood interactive factors. But they are real, and they are repeatable in the laboratory.

Real and repeatable, and yet what Raz meant by a "compelling" demonstration does not exist for him, at least not yet. When one regards evidence from a position where the claimed phenomenon is viewed as exceedingly unlikely, like a gorilla on a basketball court, then the evidence required to change one's mind must be super-powerful. Not merely a string of successful experiments by independent investigators, as Raz calls for, but effects that are robust enough to be easily repeatable by anyone, anywhere, any time, and highly stable over long periods of time. And better yet, the effect should be predicted by a theory that doesn't do much violence to orthodox dogma about how the world works.

This is what I call the "UFO landing on the White House lawn" type of evidence. Alas, such robust evidence is rarely available when dealing with phenomena at the bleeding edge of the known. And it's true that the evidence for psi today does not quite achieve the status of a Special News Bulletin interrupting the season finale of Lost by reporting a UFO landing on the White House lawn (would anyone believe such a story, even if it were true?). Instead, the evidence available today for psi is more like a formation of UFOs repeatedly flying over the US Capitol, captured on film and spotted simultaneously by radar, jet pilots, and hundreds of witnesses on the ground. Well, surely that would convince a few people.

Oh, wait. Such a UFO sighting actually did occur in Washington DC in 1952. All the major newspapers carried the story. But who remembers that today?

Perhaps Ray Hyman does. Hyman earned his PhD in 1953 at John Hopkins University, near Washington DC. Today, Hyman is a retired psychology professor who has been one of the premier academic critics of parapsychology for over 50 years. In his essay in Skeptical Inquirer, his major complaint was the lack of easy repeatability of psi effects. To support his claim he cited "a psi proponent reported a meta-analysis of [a class of telepathy experiments] with an average effect size that significantly differed from zero with odds of more than a trillion to one while another meta-analysis ... concluded that the average effect size was consistent with zero." (A meta-analysis is a quantitative review of many similar experiments.) He bolstered this assertion by citing a few parapsychologists who have acknowledged difficulties in producing "UFO on the White House lawn" form of evidence. From this viewpoint, he concluded that parapsychology does not deserve serious scientific attention. He's been repeating this opinion for 50 years.

Except there's a small problem. The parapsychologists mentioned by Hyman were expressing well known difficulties in producing robust repeatable effects on demand. But none of them doubt that the preponderance of evidence strongly indicates the presence of genuine anomalies. Hyman's selective reporting is akin to dismissing as worthless a clearly visible formation of UFOs flying over the US Capitol, because of a stubborn insistence that the only acceptable data are UFOs landing on the White House lawn precisely at high noon, followed by alien pilots emerging from their crafts, offering tea and biscuits to the President and Vice President of the United States, and then soberly shooting the VP in the face with a projectile weapon (due to regarding that act as a sign of diplomatic friendship, having unfortunately misinterpreted a news story regarding the Vice President's shooting his friend in the face -- but I digress).

There's another problem, one more substantial. Hyman's damning denouement was that not all meta-analyses of telepathy experiments were judged to be positive. By mentioning the meta-analysis where the "average effect size was consistent with zero," he reinforced his contention that telepathy experiments are slippery and unrepeatable, and not to be trusted. The study he cited appeared in a 1999 publication by British psychologists Julie Milton from the University of Edinburgh and Richard Wiseman from the University of Hertfordshire. They analyzed a selected subset of telepathy experiments, ended up with a positive but statistically non-significant result, and then quite reasonably concluded that nothing interesting was going on. Well, as I said, there's always room for debate. Except when conclusions are based on a mistake. It turns out that their analysis was miscalculated.

Jessica Utts, a professor of statistics at the University of California at Irvine, explained at the UBC meeting that Milton and Wiseman had employed a technique that underestimated the actual telepathy effect. If they had used the same (simpler and more powerful) technique employed in all of the other published telepathy meta-analyses, they would have reached the same conclusion that everyone else did: There is indeed significant positive and repeatable evidence for telepathy obtained under controlled laboratory conditions.

Hyman was in the audience during Utts' presentation. I don't know why he choose to ignore her analysis, although if he had acknowledged it that would have neutralized his own arguments. So perhaps its exclusion is not so puzzling.

Speculations aside, one thing is crystal clear: It can take a White House lawn party to overcome one's long-held beliefs, so if nothing obviously wrong can be found in a reported experiment, skeptics will still worry if the experiment was conducted by "believers," because they imagine that believers would not be as rigorously careful as "non-believers." Indeed, fervent skeptics are quite vocal in asserting that non-believers cannot get the same results in these experiments. Unfortunately, the fact is that skeptics hardly ever conduct these studies, and on the scant occasions when they do, they rarely publish them in sufficient detail to evaluate the results. So we really don't know whether the suspicion is justified or not.

That is, until recently. In 2005 two keenly skeptical psychologists, Edward Delgado-Romero from the University of Georgia and George Howard from the University of Notre Dame, conducted the same type of telepathy experiment under consideration here. To their chagrin, they not only obtained a significant positive outcome after conducting a series of eight studies, but their results were perfectly in alignment with the earlier meta-analytic estimates. That is, based on thousands of previous trials, it is possible to estimate the "hit rate" one should get when running a standard telepathy experiment. Delgado-Romero and Howards obtained exactly that value. To their credit, they published their results.

But their article also included an astounding twist: They ended up rejecting their own experimental evidence based on a single additional study they conducted, which they based on an ad hoc, untested design they proposed, and which ultimately resulted in a statistically significant negative outcome! Strong negative outcomes are just as important statistically speaking, and just as unlikely to occur by chance, as strong positive outcomes. Both indicate that something interesting is going on.

Another way of illustrating the invisibility of gorillas is by revealing an asymmetry in how psi experiments are reported in newspapers. In January 2008, newspapers around the world hailed the first conclusive test for telepathy conducted by two Harvard University researchers. According to the Boston Globe: "Brain scan tests fail to support validity of ESP. Research on parapsychology is largely taboo in academia, but two Harvard scientists recently set out to settle, once and for all, the age-old question: Is extrasensory perception, or ESP, real? Their sophisticated experiment answers: No, at least, not as far as they can tell using high-tech brain scanners to detect neural evidence of it."

Finally. Once and for all. A sophisticated magnetic resonance imaging brainscanner was used (technically, an fMRI), for the first time, to answer this age-old question. The high-tech "no" answer seems conclusive unless you read the actual article, which reported that one of 16 tests conducted showed a stupendously significant outcome exactly in alignment with what was predicted if psi were real. But the authors then took pains to explain why that result was probably an artifact, and so the newspapers didn't mention that one intriguing outcome. (It also makes one question why they employed an experimental design which allowed positive results to be explained away so easily.)

But the study was conducted at Harvard, for goodness sake, so surely that's the last word on ESP. After all, for the first time ever Harvard scientists used one of those expensive and mysterious fMRI brainscanners to peer deep inside the brain, and they didn't see any psi in there. End of story, no?

Well, no. Was this really the first psi study conducted using an fMRI? No, it wasn't even the second such study. Or the third. Or fourth. Or fifth. It was the sixth. And all of the earlier experiments, all conducted since 2000, showed significant evidence for psi effects. Somehow the newspapers overlooked this, despite the fact that most of those studies are freely available in an instant via PubMed.gov, the National Institutes of Health massive online bibliography of scientific articles related to health and healing.

I could continue along the same vein ad nauseum when it comes to how scientific evidence for psi is often ignored or distorted beyond recognition. Unfortunately, there are countless other tales of ignoring other invisible gorillas at the frontiers of knowledge. They include serious scientific arguments that global warming is not being caused by human activities, analyses suggesting that HIV does not cause AIDS, repeatable electrochemical-nuclear reactions once known as "cold-fusion," credible reports of UFOs, and so on. All of these ideas encounter strong sociopolitical resistance in academia, so credible counter-arguments are difficult to locate and even more difficult to discuss in scientific forums unless you have a phalanx of beefy bodyguards watching your back. One of the best sources of information about these "frontier" science topics is the Journal of Scientific Exploration, a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary journal published by the Society for Scientific Exploration.

Without belaboring the point, such tales expose a skeleton in the closet of Big Science. From the popular perspective, science is portrayed as a flawlessly rational enterprise, where accumulating evidence slowly but surely overcomes stubborn skepticism. In reality, science is like any other human activity, and as such, emotions always trump reason. There is as least as much pig-headedness and motivated inattention in science as in politics and religion.

Given the non-rational skeleton, will mainstream science ever be prepared to admit that psychic phenomena warrants serious investigation? I believe the answer is yes. Acceptance someday is inevitable. We are dealing with human experiences reported since the dawn of human history, experiences that do not go away in tightly controlled laboratory tests using the most sophisticated experimental tools and designs. So some of these phenomena will eventually become integrated into the mainstream. Exactly when I cannot say. Perhaps one to five decades.

Will this happen because the accumulated data will overwhelm skepticism? Probably not. As Max Planck, the physicist who dreamt up the idea of the "quantum" in quantum mechanics, once wrote, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Some of the 60 participants at the UBC meeting represented that younger generation, and while a handful of the older crowd are certain to remain mulishly skeptical to their deaths, based on the written opinions of many of the participants collected before, during and after the meeting, it was clear that the majority were more open to anomalous cognition after the meeting than they were before. I expect that trend to continue, and then one day a threshold will be crossed, and on that day some of the invisible gorillas in our midst will become a bit easier to see. The very next day no one will remember that this topic was once considered controversial.