Not content with attacking evolution, the Discovery Institute and its cultural allies are taking aim at psychology. Believing that any naturalistic approach to psychology is inherently biased against religion they seek to overturn the "materialist paradigm" in neuroscience and replace it with their own version of mind-body dualism. For the second part of a two part series, the doubtcasters are joined by Dr. Steven Novella, author of the Neurologica Blog and host of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Novella refutes ID nonsense by showing how successful the naturalistic approach in neuroscience has been.To download this or any previous Reasonable Doubts episodes click here. Find the episode you want and right click the "play now" link and select "save target as..."
4 comments:
Fabulous Episode as usual guys! I just wanted to share that Charles Taylor (Liberian Child-Soldier-User Extraordinaire) has recently been linked to Pat Robinson in his trial for crimes against humanity.
http://www.slate.com/id/2253842/
This seems like it may be news for all your listeners.
Keep up the good work!
Triston
Kawasaki, Japan
A lot of this episode was great as usual, but the part where you talk about David Chalmers and the so-called hard problem of consciousness was absolutely awful. You don't show any respect at all to the "academic" discipline of theology, why do you feel the need to show respect to philosophy? I'm familiar with Chalmers' arguments, the fact is he is just as much of a crazy anti-scientific idiot as anyone at the Discovery Institute, and should be treated as such. When you take him seriously like this you only hurt the cause of science and science education.
The combination of my heros from SGU and RD was very cool. It was interesting to hear Dr. Novella in the interviewee's seat for a change.
Regarding Frank Bellamy's comment:
For those not familiar with Chalmer's arguements, there is value in hearing a deconstruction of them. In addition: Even a crazy idiot will occasionally hit upon a good arguement or at least one that seems good until someone helps you see through it. Being a crazy idiot doesn't mean one is necessarily wrong. Many of us learn something when ideas and beliefs are attacked. Most of the time, I think we gain little by attacking the purveyor. Which also gives them the opportunity to claim to be oppressed by the scientific-establishment.
Chalmers' ideas on consciousness are interesting in the "Name That Logical Fallacy" sense, anyway.
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