"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it." -VoltaireLately, Egnor, the brain surgeon, has been demonstrating his ignorance on another issue you'd think he'd have at least a snippet of knowledge about: The brain.
A number of science bloggers have covered this in depth, like PZ. I don't think it'll take much effort for you to find others. He's dipped very far into dualism to the point of being a mirror of grand woomeister Deepak Chopra. I will not be surprised if Egnor winds up taking the title.
Egnor's dualism is standard woo: There's material stuff, and immaterial stuff. The immaterial is walled off from science, material causes can't explain it because he says so for no reason, and the brain is just a 'receiver' to some invisible signal, and damage to it causes results exactly like the much more parsimonious hypothesis that brain damage damages consciousness because the brain is the cause of consciousness. The latter requires no invisible, undetectable stuff.
Neurology is a complicated field, so naturally we don't know everything about it. Lack of knowledge in some areas is no reason to assume that we'll never know, or that our current research methods are futile.
It looks like I made a good move comparing Egnor to Homsar.
3 comments:
Egnor even recycles the old creationist 'argument from ignorance'.
He's not the only one. It's actually pretty typical creationist belief. See JP Moreland and his belief about out of body experiences, etc.
I dunno, I strongly doubt Egnor was raised by a cup of coffee. A doorknob and a rototiller, perhaps, but certainly not my precious steaming stimulants!
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