Talk:Susan Blackmore/Archive 1

Odds and ends
I've removed what looks to be a genuine message from Susan Blackmore ffrom the main body  of the text: (''Not sure about that last bit.' 'It's true - but I have done much more TV on ghosts, ESP and out-of-body experiences in the unenviable role of "Rentaskeptic", and presented a show on alien abductions too - SB) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Two16 (talk • contribs) 06:57, 13 January 2003


 * But... but... the bit that Susan Blackmore contributed is the most reliable part of the whole article! Obviously it needs rewording to make it fit in, but I was going to get round to doing that eventually... Oh, okay, I'll do it now... -- Oliver PEREIRA 16:07 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)


 * Just before Christmas I emailed Adam Hart-Davis and told him about Wikipedia. I received a nice reply the same day as these edits by 80.192.14.184. So I suspect they are genuine. Mintguy — Preceding undated comment added 16:49, 14 January 2003


 * Aha! So Dr. Blackmore's input is quite likely all thanks to you. Well done! Did you mention that it was me who started the articles on them both? ;) -- Oliver PEREIRA 23:22 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)


 * I know thats why you saw the summary. Memes need the right ______(?) in order to survive. Incidentalist S.B. put her note right in the text. If somebodyelse had seen it, and not seen a meme, it might have got Lockdown Sv Rule unseen in a history for along time. Somebody might of seen only vandalism. Its form is pretty stable, so it would hold the potiential to reactivate if anyone ever saw it again. I'm glad we were here to help. This story is a meme and it is history and it is the residue of S.B.'s artistic fasion. (or is that experiment.)

This might be the best place (all the keeners are here :-) ) to say that the article meme should reflect more of Susan Blackmore's analysis. It amplifies and modulate. I'd love to see Roman Catholism analysed as an example. ;-}

Dawkins is part of meme history. Lots of people work in the field now, so the thinking is tighter. Memes mutate faster and can be evolved fastest in an oral culture.

User:Two16

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.229.11.35 (talk • contribs) 00:22, 20 January 2003

Religious racism of S.B
If one read Susan Blackmore (e.g. "Avakening from the meme-dream") he/she must see she is an ideological and religious racist. So please don't revert my edits, I'll revert if you revert. Gubbubu 10:05, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * WTF is a religious racist? WTF is "prejudications"? There is 0% chance of me not reverting this edit in this form. - Nat Krause 12:57, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I gave my resources. So please prove I'm not right before you revert. you can see our talk about the topic with Gnomon here. Read it please. Thanx. Gubbubu


 * Please present arguments in English for use on the English Wikipedia. However, I doubt that it really matters in this case -- your edit right now is not close to NPOV. - Nat Kraus[[User_Talk:Nat

Krause|e]] 13:07, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * She wrote that (I translated it back to english from hungarian, but please look for it in her works):
 * I want to tell that these religious memes not survived for hundreds of years because they are true, or because they are useful for genes, or because they make us happy. I believe that they are false in fact, and they are causes of the most terrible distresses of the human history. Not - they survived because they are selfish memes ...

But this is only a sentence of her unscientific and one-sided works full of anti-christian and anti-religious hate speech. If you know her works, maybe you could look for more. She hates religions, this is evident. I bolded for you that sentence what is indisputably example for hate speech, rash and baseless generalization. Please imagine that we write "jews" instead of "religious memes", so I think you may catch what i speak about - that would be a simple example for simple nacism ("every problem caused by the jews etc. etc.). So she is clearly a religious racist. But I haven't wrote this into the article. I wrote only that she was one-sided in all her works and she hated christians. But the worst is that she liars a lot in all her works (her every second sentence is a liar). I repeat that this is undisputable. So please don't delete this sentence from the article. Gubbubu 18:18, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Regardless of whether you have a valid point, it must be worded in a much more neutral way.
 * I think you're right, I've done it finally; made some corrections on the article what are more NPOV. Gubbubu 10:48, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * The current version by Steinsky is an enormous improvement. In any event, it is not clear what the quote above proves. The expression "religious racism" is nonsense and I have no idea what it means. Contrary to your suggestion, the passage above would make no sense if you substitute "Jews" for "religious memes", e.g.: "I want to tell that these Jews have not survived for hundreds of years because they are true, or because they are useful for genes, or because they make us happy." She is discussing ideas, not people, and she has every right to do so, even if you disagree with her, without it being derided as "hate speech". - Nat Krause 04:18, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't mind If you add your oppinion in some-sentences (proportionately), but I won't accept simply deleting the quote and my changes on the article. But I quoted only one sentence of her. This is only the top of the iceberg, she liars a lot anyway. She has the right to discuss ideas, but I have the right to say she does hate speech if she did it. And my term (what is not in the article) isn't nonsense, it is used; see here and here and here etc. etc. So please get used to this term. Religious, ideological or spiritual racism means if one hates an intellectual system causeless, thinks his/her mind is higher-class then all the lower-class infected minds. A religious racist can lie a lot and develop pseudosciences to "prove" this and can try to stuff everybody up that this is science, and can make baseless generalizations based on his/her prejudications but not on the facts. This features to some fighty materialists like Sagan or Dawkins ("I known this little girl even so her father's volition will be charged of by some latin catholic nuns. What is she be for there?" -a quote from Dawkins: you can see he feels paranoid antipathy of nuns, maybe this is a nunophobia? :-). Sagan declares materialist natural sciences as higher-class spiritual systems above all religions. Etc.  Do you mind? These are facts what I've quoted. But sayings and writings of S.B  like I quoted, are not facts. I don't mind what is her oppinion about religions (she uses expressions "I believe" ... "I think"  etc.), but telling that this is science, makes me laugh.  Gubbubu 08:25, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I wrote the critics about S.B. in extraordinary NPOV form, using expressions "there are oppinions". Please don't delete it, I will revert it then. You can deny "she is a religious racist", but you can't deny "there are oppinions she is". Gubbubu 08:36, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A quote from here:
 * "Darwin's theory, stretched and distorted in various ways, was also

called upon by the Nazis as a rationale for genocide, and has been a staple of forced sterilization campaigns and racist propaganda".

You know this is true. But think that, could I say Darwin was a nazi, because his theories caused a genocide?
 * "Because in the name of Darwin some people killed - then darwinism is the worst thing in the world." (let's call this proposdition as A)

Do you seriously think this is logical and true? But this is the logic of S.B.
 * "Because in the name of christianity some people killed - then christianity is the worst thing in the world." (let's call this proposition as B)

I think you will agree that A is baseless generalization. So I've proved S.B.'s B and the A sentence are the same, with different particular terms. You have two way to choose now:
 * 1) To accept S.B.'s B. Then you must accept A "darwinism equals nazism" and we must write this into the articles; so S.B., who is a darwinist, a racist abd nazi then;
 * 2) Not to accept S.B.'s B and not A, too. Than I'm right and S.B. is a religious racist. Then what S.B. said in B wasn't right, so this is a baseless sentence.

So I'm right by all the way. Gubbubu 09:07, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I do not agree with your argument!
 * Statements such as "darwinism [or christianity] is the worst thing in the world" are rather meaningless, and certainly can't be a basis for deductive reasoning!


 * Let's simplify your statements to:
 * "Because in the name of Darwin some people killed - then darwinism is bad."
 * and
 * "Because in the name of christianity some people killed - then christianity is bad."


 * Well of course Darwinism is bad! It's one of those topicts that the profs get uneasy talking about because of all the racism and deaths that his ideas were (and still are) used to justify. If there was at least a slight inconsistancy with his theory of evolution, it would have been dumped long ago. And religion is bad for just the same reason, (following your deductive strategy,) but no one wants to accept that!


 * Let me give you an example: it's been proven that IQ varies between races because of differences in the gene pool, (just read any intro psych textbook.) However no one would say this outlound in public because of all the connotations and blood statements like these have attached to them after the war. Christianity and other religions have also had a lot of blood spilled over their doctarines, but (apart from some western european countries where people are begining to see the resemblance,) this fact seems to get left out and religios people are more pround of their religion than they ever were!


 * Furthermore while ideas of evolution cannon be discredited because of an overwhelming amount of evidence backing them up (ie DNA), most religions rely on extreme leaps of faith and go against any reasonable judgement...


 * Long story short - keep your "proofs by algebra" that God exists for pages on religion and not scientists. --129.100.216.37 23:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)


 * 1: The expression "religious racism" makes sense if and only if one imputes religion as some kind of inherent characteristic of a particular race. This is arguably the case vis a vis medieval Christendom and Islam, but it's certainly not what Susan Blackmore is doing. Therefore, it is nonsense in her case.
 * 2: You write: "you can't deny "there are oppinions she is [a religious racist]". Who has these opinions? You? If so, then you can't put that it the article, because it's original research. If some notable persons have these opinions, then they should be in the article cited as the opinion of those persons. - Nat Krause 07:09, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

removed copy/paste
I removed a copy/paste of a clumsy article attacking Blackmore. Xanthoxyl 14:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Photo - help please
I'm trying to add a photo of Blackmore which I uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. The link I'm trying is but it doesn't want to work. Can anyone help (and better still, say what I should have done if I've done something wrong)? Ta, --A bit iffy 07:40, 14 July 2006 (UTC) Works now. A bit iffy 11:45, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Free will / self
I know Susan Blackmore most because 'illusion' is her favourite word. And under these illusions, we have:

- Conscious will / free will - Self / agency

She's one of the biggest critics around today of these concepts, writing papers and books talking about these delusions (in her eyes). I think we need something in the article about them.

Also, if anyone knows how on Earth she gets a moral system of any kind whatsoever when removing these two seemingly crucial concepts, do add that to the new section.

81.131.72.156 22:35, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Maybe if someone is able to find that as an criticism that she answers, but then it probably shouldn't be added on this page (since this page is about the author, not the author's opinions). Ran4 (talk) 03:40, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Rentaskeptic
Wouldn't it be clearer as "rent-a-skeptic" instead of "rentaskeptic"? I know that's a quote from what Susan Blackmore wrote here, but when I first read that word, I honestly had no idea what it meant. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.215.68.106 (talk • contribs) 05:10, 22 April 2007