[irrelig]So in honor of Halloween, we decided to take a break from making fun of religious folk and start making fun of folk who believe they are haunted by ghosts. Case in point: A Haunting in Georgia, which is about a little girl who sees dead people, and the Oxford-trained parapsychologist, 2 psychics, and fat pastor who fail to help her.
Yes, after all that “help,” the house is still haunted and the little girl still sees dead people. It’s almost as if she never really saw dead people all along.
Check out the episode here.
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13 Responses to “39: Haunting in Georgia”
Thanks for the argument from ignorance comment. I have been wondering what to say when people insist that since something they saw is unexplainable then clearly x must be true, x usually being something supernatural and completely unverifiable (like god.) I assume I will be using it often when I go back to class in a couple of weeks.
Maybe we should do a whole show on logical fallacies. One of the fun things about arguing with creationists is that they seem entirely unfamiliar with valid reasoning vs logical fallacies, so when you point out one after another — “that’s tu quoque, that’s a hasty generalization, that’s affirming the consequent — you can watch them get more and more frustrated.
A lot of people get caught up in fallacy mongering.
Pointing out where an argument goes wrong is useful, every freethinker should be aware of fallacies, why they result in poor arguments, and how best (this is overlooked and often forgotten) to construct the strongest variation of the argument you are arguing AGAINST.
Simply saying, “Oh, that’s a non-sequiter” does not defeat the idea being presented, only the form.
A show on fallacies would be great, I would even suggest you do a show on the Problem of Induction and the many attempts at fixing it, especially Popper’s creation of falsification.
Fallacy-mongering is one of my favorite pasttimes.
I’ve always wondered on the things that aren’t visible. Would you know anything that would have to do with the different ranges of the Electromagnetic spectrum and what is available to us? Visible, Radio, Micro, Gamma, and the different lenses used to observe?
The electromagnetic spectrum is one of the things I think Wiki did really well with.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum
Tons of info with separate pages for each piece of the spectrum.
Glad you finally got rid of that Walkswithjesus guy, what a dick! Anyway…
I wanted to add not only are people more readily able to believe in ghosts and whatnot when they are religious, but that they are also more readily able to not believe in things that are evidenced supported. But only if it supports, as in the former case, or conflicts, as in the latter, with their belief system. So ghosts and demons are heartily welcomed into their worldview, but a global warming space monster would be ridiculous, as well as real global warming.
I just want to say that despite the worry of fallacy mongering I would be down with a show about fallacy mongering. I read a bit about it but it is too complicated and juicy to not be covered because I am lazy and enjoy hearing you guys make fun of each other while explaining complicated topics I am too lazy to read about on my own.
http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2006/08/lack-of-critical-thinking.html
But I wouldn’t go so far as to reject continental drift. Some people are just plain stupid.
SGU already does a really good series on logical fallacies:
http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcast.aspx?mid=2
Still, lacks the irreverence and misogyny that you guys could lend to the subject…
Sweet. I really have to start listening to that podcast.
Lots of podcasts have fallacy segments but Irreli… Chuck and Layto… Leet… Chuck and the gruff but lovable guy would bring their touch which I think would be highly enjoyable.
I personally love Chuck’s laugh right before he tucks into a story. You know it signals “they’ve out looned themselves this time.”
hey, get back to work!
Yes I agree with Matt…get back to work! Going cold turkey is not a nice thing, and I jonesing for a fix.