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    Once a hoaxer always a hoaxer?

    The guys on the Paracast often speculate that contactees like Adamski may have had genuine paranormal experiences at the beginning, but that they then found themselves enjoying the fame and money so much that they started faking stuff to try to keep it going. For the skeptic, of course, we...
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    Do they really read each other's stuff?

    I've always had a suspicion that people in the skeptic/atheist/materialist world don't actually read the likes of Sheldrake and Radin, and that people in the New Age/paranormal world don't read authors like Dennett and Dawkins. Rather, both sides just seek out quotations and passages here and...
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    Utopianism

    I sometimes accuse certain people on this forum of being utopian, but here I want to talk about exactly what I mean by this term. As I see it, utopians generally think that we just need to do one simple thing, and then everything will be OK. This thing could be getting rid of capitalism...
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    Paranormal Podcasts

    I have to admit, I'm a big fan of a lot of the paranormal podcasts out there right now, especially the Paracast, Mysterious Universe, Binnall of America and Radio Mysterioso. One thing I like is that, while they say (rightly) that skeptics, atheists and materialists often tend to be very...
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    real but unimportant? 

    Before the forum went down, I suggested that psi phenomena and the afterlife could be real but not actually very important in terms of ethics and the meaning of life. Somebody challenged me by saying that the fact that I and so many other people spend so much time talking about these things just...
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    I Love You, You Big Dummy

    OK, let's assume for the sake of argument that people who've had NDEs have been told the truth about ethics and the meaning of life. Apparently, they're often told that we should love everybody unconditionally. The first problem is, the idea that we should all just love each other is incredibly...
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    Still Stuck on Stupid

    I've just listened to the latest episode of Skeptiko with David Lane, and my favourite part of the whole interview was when Lane silenced Alex with the question "What's wrong with being made of matter?" Lane also deserves great credit for suggesting that the violence in the world has more to do...
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    Ethics and the Afterlife

    In his essay 'Ordinary Morality Implies Atheism', the philosopher Steven Maitzen argues that only atheism can make sense of our ordinary ideas about value and ethics. I don't agree with everything he says in the essay, but I think his main point is basically correct, except that it would be...
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    world-views and agendas

    It's noticeable that Alex doesn't talk so much any more about there being a close connection between atheism and philosophical materialism on the one hand and consumerism, militarism and technology worship on the other. I'm very glad that he's no longer saying these things, but what could...
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