A very interesting talk. Banned from TEDx

RUPERT SHELDRAKE, Ph.D
Biologist.
Author of more than 80 scientific papers and ten books.
A former Research Fellow of the Royal Society,

BANNED from TEDx! for his talk on the following scientific dogma's

Dogma 1
The universe is like a machine.

Dogma 2
Matter is unconscious.

Dogma 3
The laws of nature are fixed.

Dogma 4
The total amount of matter and energy is always the same.

Dogma 5
Nature is purposeless.

Dogma 6
Biological hereditary is material.

Dogma 7
Memories are stored inside your brain as material traces.

Dogma 8
Your mind is inside your head.

Dogma 9
Psychic phenomena like telepathy are impossible.

Dogma 10
Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that works.

Well worth the time. Very thought provoking.


HERE you can find why TED removed him from their main youtube channel. You can also read his response to their actions. All very interesting! I'd like to post it here but I suspect it would be removed.
Follow the link, its well worth the read.

Originally posted by VoidHawk
BANNED from TEDx!

Having heard about this before now (because it isnt news) I agree with the action of TEDx.

...we feel a responsibility not to provide a platform for talks which appear to have crossed the line into pseudoscience.

I would feel the same about a Uri Geller talk on spoonbending, or a professional psychic doing a talk about reading people's futures in tea leaves... if they frame their talk in such a way as to have people believe it is backed by scientific thought.

reply to post by alfa1

Well this wasn't about spoon bending.

Response to the TED Scientific Board’s Statement

Rupert Sheldrake
March 18, 2013

I would like to respond to TED’s claims that my TEDx talk “crossed the line into pseudoscience”, contains ”serious factual errors” and makes “many misleading statements.”

This discussion is taking place because the militant atheist bloggers Jerry Coyne and P.Z. Myers denounced me, and attacked TED for giving my talk a platform. I was invited to give my talk as part of a TEDx event in Whitechapel, London, called “Challenging Existing Paradigms.” That’s where the problem lies: my talk explicitly challenges the materialist belief system. It summarized some of the main themes of my recent book Science Set Free (in the UK called The Science Delusion). Unfortunately, the TED administrators have publically aligned themselves with the old paradigm of materialism, which has dominated science since the late nineteenth century.

TED say they removed my talk from their website on the advice of their Scientific Board, who also condemned Graham Hancock’s talk. Hancock and I are now facing anonymous accusations made by a body on whose authority TED relies, on whose advice they act, and behind whom they shelter, but whose names they have not revealed.

TED’s anonymous Scientific Board made three specific accusations:

Accusation 1:
“he suggests that scientists reject the notion that animals have consciousness, despite the fact that it’s generally accepted that animals have some form of consciousness, and there’s much research and literature exploring the idea.”

I characterized the materialist dogma as follows: “Matter is unconscious: the whole universe is made up of unconscious matter. There’s no consciousness in stars in galaxies, in planets, in animals, in plants and there ought not to be any in us either, if this theory’s true. So a lot of the philosophy of mind over the last 100 years has been trying to prove that we are not really conscious at all.” Certainly some biologists, including myself, accept that animals are conscious. In August, 2012, a group of scientists came out with an endorsement of animal consciousness in “The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness”. As Discovery News reported, “While it might not sound like much for scientists to declare that many nonhuman animals possess conscious states, it’s the open acknowledgement that’s the big news here.” (news.discovery.com...)

But materialist philosophers and scientists are still in the majority, and they argue that consciousness does nothing – it is either an illusion or an ”epiphenomenon” of brain activity. It might as well not exist in animals – or even in humans. That is why in the philosophy of mind, the very existence of consciousness is often called “the hard problem”.
en.wikipedia.org...

Accusation 2:
“He also argues that scientists have ignored variations in the measurements of natural constants, using as his primary example the dogmatic assumption that a constant must be constant and uses the speed of light as example.… Physicist Sean Carroll wrote a careful rebuttal of this point.”

TED’s Scientific Board refers to a Scientific American article that makes my point very clearly: “Physicists routinely assume that quantities such as the speed of light are constant.”

In my talk I said that the published values of the speed of light dropped by about 20 km/sec between 1928 and 1945. Carroll’s “careful rebuttal” consisted of a table copied from Wikipedia showing the speed of light at different dates, with a gap between 1926 and 1950, omitting the very period I referred to. His other reference (micro.magnet.fsu.edu...) does indeed give two values for the speed of light in this period, in 1928 and 1932-35, and sure enough, they were 20 and 24km/sec lower than the previous value, and 14 and 18 km/sec lower than the value from 1947 onwards.

1926: 299,798
1928: 299,778
1932-5: 299,774
1947: 299,792

MORE HERE

Uri Geller was unfairly maligned; here's a link to his very interesting Stanford Research Institute test tapes;

www.youtube.com...

reply to post by VoidHawk


He chose an unfortunate name with "science delusion". But he gets at some good points. Watch those assumptions! However I think some of it sounds silly. If red shift is caused by stars moving away from us, changes in the speed of light in the past should make stars change colors as we observe them, red shift going up and down, corresponding to historical changes in speed of light, right?

My problem is only small percentage swings can be proven scientifically. I need more then a 5% increase in heads over tails.

Sheldrake has been on the cutting edge of science pushing in to areas that would be considered heretical. I seem to recall the Vatican making the same accusations against Galileo, Da Vinci and Copernicus.
Because he challenges scientific dogma Sheldrake's research threatens centuries of scientific tradition. The truth lies wherever it is found and he is not afraid to follow where the evidence leads. I salute Sheldrake for his original thinking and perseverance in the face of establishment resistance.

reply to post by VoidHawk


that was a great presentation, kudos to him
truly brilliant, not in his understanding of the sciences but in his ability and desire to challenge the constants.

brings to mind a book i read in the early 90's "Chaos, the making of a new science".
Its the idea that within all these standards and constants are these "chaotic patterns", the unaccounted for changes in predictable models of science which, over certain periods of time would still amount to the predicted standard. However when viewed in smaller detail the patterns or constants would fluctuate.

also reminds me of an article i read recently on a change in the sun that was percieved to be causing fluctuations in radio carbon dating...
discovery.com 404'd...

found one that works,
naturalnews.com

This is the situation that faces researchers from Purdue and Stanford Universities as they try to draw conclusions from what appears to be a fundamental change in the nature of radioactive decay.

overall, just happy to see there brilliant minds out there challenging the standards!

Sounds like a cult to me.

Originally posted by tridentblue
reply to post by VoidHawk

 

He chose an unfortunate name with "science delusion". But he gets at some good points. Watch those assumptions! However I think some of it sounds silly. If red shift is caused by stars moving away from us, changes in the speed of light in the past should make stars change colors as we observe them, red shift going up and down, corresponding to historical changes in speed of light, right?

We would have to be observing at the time the (altered speed) light reached us, but good point.
Maybe this is happening and people write it off as a glitch in their data?

Originally posted by RadicalRebel
overall, just happy to see there brilliant minds out there challenging the standards!

It's a brave person these days who challenges anything!

Originally posted by Freezer
Sounds like a cult to me.

Well, I was going to sound off at you for not watching the vid, but your not getting at Sheldrake, your calling TED a cult!
Dont think "Cult" is really the right word but WOW!
I didn't know they treated people like that. Now we can understand why Sheldrake was unhappy.

Originally posted by signalfire
Uri Geller was unfairly maligned; here's a link to his very interesting Stanford Research Institute test tapes;

www.youtube.com...

Did you even watch the video. I don't see how that's any different than a magician's card trick. It's the same premises!

Good on Ted

Conspiracy people and loons hate TED because it's a forum for actual intelligence, a platform for really denying ignorance. It's in effect a party they're not invited to.

I love TED, and I'm glad the loons are being kept at arms length.

reply to post by boncho


Did YOU watch the others on the right, the entire tape series from SRI? Those tests were done under pretty strict controls and any variants where they could possibly debunk them were eliminated from the conclusions.

Debunkers don't seem to realize it, but Uri Geller aside for now, psi and ESP were proven a long time ago. It's been stated that human psi ability has been subjected to more stringent testing than anything medical we're on board with now, and found to be real without a shadow of a doubt except among the 'Amazing Randi' followers, who always seem to have an emotional component to their debunking.

Truth is, TED is just another ego thing for rich people; you pay money to go to the talks and get to brag about how you're a member and the organizers rake in the dough. Considering that Joe Rogan tape, it does seem to be a cult. Surely there's better ways to discuss human ideas than based on another money-making scheme? What's wrong with organically letting people connect, rather than turning it into a closed club with lots of idiotic rules?

Gee Boncho, I just noticed how many posts you've made on ATS since you first signed up. It works out to about 30 posts a day or so, day in and day out for more than two years. How do you find the time for actual, y'know, research, if you spend so much time here posting and none in other locales? Or are you being paid to be here 8 hours a day, 5 days a week? Seems like there's a bunch of posters on ATS who spend an inordinate amount of time here trying to sway opinions one way or the other, more than is reasonable for a normal person even if they're retired.

And I'm looking at you, Wrabbit, Boncho and Phage (of the 'I pretend to be a movie star' avatar). Care to explain how y'all find the time?

reply to post by signalfire

Geller admits, "Sure, there are magicians who can duplicate [my performances] through trickery."[45] He has claimed that even though his spoon bending can be repeated using trickery, he uses psychic powers to achieve his results.[45]

en.wikipedia.org...

Oh ya.... Sorry, all the other magicians are fake but he's the only "real" one... He uses real magic don't you know.



Some of us on ATS are not so entirely stupid.

I think it's a shame Sheldrake is considered a pseudoscientist.

Just because his work doesn't follow the hive mentality, doesn't mean it is of little relevance.

Sometimes, one open mind is all it takes to bring the unique out of obscurity and onto the world stage.

I hope one day this is true of Sheldrake.

reply to post by VoidHawk


Ḯ'm sorry, but this person does not deserve to be associated with TED.

reply to post by VoidHawk


Ya... a shock that creationism isn't considered scientific LOL

I'm not really a fan of these TED things, as they seem either dumbed down or very in the box, but these people that have no basis for anything they claim are just the same charlatans that go on coast to coast claiming to talk to Jesus or that the mother ship is coming for them when they re-align their vibrations. (there is the occasional good show on coast to coast - just sayin...)

Amazing!! Thank you O.P!