From church apologist to neuroscientist and physicist

[drumdude]

Dan has taken to defending all of his positions without evidence in an ingenious way. The lack of evidence is a feature, not a bug! You see, God wants there to be “epistemic distance” so that you have to make a choice based on insufficient knowledge.

If there was actually evidence for out of body experiences, it would force you to believe in God and deprive you of the blessing to be able to choose incorrectly and end up in Mormon hell.

Isn’t Mormon God wonderful?

[Kukulkan]

If there was actually evidence for out of body experiences, it would force you to believe in God and deprive you of the blessing to be able to choose incorrectly and end up in Mormon hell.

Isn’t Mormon God wonderful?

Wait so you are telling me the Israelites who supposedly witnessed first hand a plethora of miracles are going to Mormon hell? Even the early Saints who also supposedly witnessed miracles are going to Mormon hell?

[drumdude]

If there was actually evidence for out of body experiences, it would force you to believe in God and deprive you of the blessing to be able to choose incorrectly and end up in Mormon hell.

Isn’t Mormon God wonderful?

Wait so you are telling me the Israelites who supposedly witnessed first hand a plethora of miracles are going to Mormon hell? Even the early Saints who also supposedly witnessed miracles are going to Mormon hell?

No, they’ve got a guaranteed ticket to the CK. For some reason God decided they didn’t need any epistemic distance. They were probably tested in the pre-existence or something.

[Kukulkan]

No, they’ve got a guaranteed ticket to the CK. For some reason God decided they didn’t need any epistemic distance. They were probably tested in the pre-existence or something.

Oh that pesky Mormon God! Him and all his unwritten and indiscernible rules!

[Physics Guy]

I don’t know what the betting odds are on Peterson having read Carroll’s book after Billy Shears pushed it on him. The point Carroll makes is decisive and nothing which ignores that point is worth anything on this topic. If Peterson doesn’t see why that is so, it only means he hasn’t read the book and is relying on an impression of physics that is about eighty years out of date.

The stuff about quantum fields is not any new discovery by Carroll. He deserves credit for providing another explanation of it to a lay audience, and maybe he even deserves some credit for noticing the implications of quantum field theory for spirit as substance. All the physics is now at least five decades old, though, and massively supported with theory and observation that are both extremely precise. At least on this point nothing Carroll is saying is novel or controversial.

It’s textbook stuff—pretty advanced textbook stuff, but by now it’s a tool, not a topic. Exotic forms of matter appearing as collision products just because they interact with normal matter, and then getting detected via those interactions, isn’t a speculative hypothesis. It’s how particle accelerators work. It’s what they’re for. And they’ve been doing it for decades.

[Billy Shears]

I don’t know what the betting odds are on Peterson having read Carroll’s book after Billy Shears pushed it on him. The point Carroll makes is decisive and nothing which ignores that point is worth anything on this topic. If Peterson doesn’t see why that is so, it only means he hasn’t read the book and is relying on an impression of physics that is about eighty years out of date.

The stuff about quantum fields is not any new discovery by Carroll. He deserves credit for providing another explanation of it to a lay audience, and maybe he even deserves some credit for noticing the implications of quantum field theory for spirit as substance. All the physics is now at least five decades old, though, and massively supported with theory and observation...

What's frustrating about this is that we absolutely know that Peterson won't concede this in his presentation. I don't know what he will say, but I know he will not explain that physics has concluded with a superlatively high degree of certainty that there isn't a ghost in the machine and that so-called out of body experiences simply must be a process of the brain.

Here is another Sean Carroll quote:

"Our conviction that green cheese makes up a negligible fraction of the Moon's interior comes not from direct observation but from the gross incompatibility of that idea with other things we think we know."

In exactly the same way with evidence that is commensurately strong, we know there isn't a ghost in the machine.

But Peterson won't tell the truth about this. He can't. So, my best guess is instead of talking about the evidence and the strength of the evidence, he's going to talk about when scientists have been wrong in the past, and will extrapolate that as an excuse to disbelieve what they say now.

[drumdude]

"Our conviction that green cheese makes up a negligible fraction of the Moon's interior comes not from direct observation but from the gross incompatibility of that idea with other things we think we know."

Those damn dogmatic anti-cheeseists! Such hubris to think we know anything about the interior of a heavenly body we have barely begun to explore.

They just keep repeating their baseless assertion that the moon can't be made of cheese, haven't they read a single book advocating for a cheese filled Moon?

[Philo Sofee]

Dan has taken to defending all of his positions without evidence in an ingenious way. The lack of evidence is a feature, not a bug! You see, God wants there to be “epistemic distance” so that you have to make a choice based on insufficient knowledge.

If there was actually evidence for out of body experiences, it would force you to believe in God and deprive you of the blessing to be able to choose incorrectly and end up in Mormon hell.

Isn’t Mormon God wonderful?

Such an idiotic mode of thinking... but apologists are the masters of it.

[Philo Sofee]

If there was actually evidence for out of body experiences, it would force you to believe in God and deprive you of the blessing to be able to choose incorrectly and end up in Mormon hell.

Isn’t Mormon God wonderful?

Wait so you are telling me the Israelites who supposedly witnessed first hand a plethora of miracles are going to Mormon hell? Even the early Saints who also supposedly witnessed miracles are going to Mormon hell?

Oh its worse than that... the apostles in Jesus' day who actually SAW the Lord are doomed since they are forced to believe in Jesus now. No wonder today's apostles, Special Witnesses to Jesus' holy, sacred name are blessed with NOT seeing Jesus or hearing Jesus or even KNOWING Jesus. It would kill their faith, and God cannot bless anyone who knows, only one who has faith! The More I study Mormonism the more idiotic it is actually seen to be. It astonishes me no end these days.

[Symmachus]

Perhaps the moon is made of cheese. I don't really care, and have no problem with someone who believes that. It's a magical belief, but really, most people who get aggressive about "belief" in science don't themselves know a thing beyond jack sh!t about any scientific topic. It is functionally a magical belief for most people. Personally, I have never even seen a molecule, or even a germ. Also doesn't interest me, but I still wash my hands because that's what I've always been told to do, and the story about germs seems believable, particularly when people endowed with authority recite it.

I would, however, find it a bit odd if a moon-cheese person were to lecture on what modern physics gets wrong about cosmic cheese. Why would they care what physicists think anyway?

I would find it strangest of all if a physicist were to lecture on what Mormonism gets wrong about cheese. Peterson lecturing on modern physics is in that basket of weird.