...and the insufferably arrogant text below:
"Trust me, neither you nor NDGT would like to see me debate him. He'd get beat worse than the Broncos in the Super Bowl. And BTW, science is not Truth. Scientific materialism is simply another worldview no different than the religious dogmas it and people like him seek to ridicule."If Mike is so confident of his chances against Tyson, we have to ask Why did he run away from a scheduled debate with Stuart Robbins??
23 comments:
I wonder of Mike's hubris is in some measure attributable to his association with Richard C. Hoagland.
The problem with Mike Bara is that Hoagland, to the gullible, can actually sound "sciency."
Bara on the other hand is simply a low class thug who has tripped over his own bootlaces and landed some airtime on shite TV and questionable internet radio.
Tyson would rip this chump several new arseholes in a properly moderated debate, as would Shostack, or Robbins.
I find it infuriating that such a man be afforded a platform to bleat regurgitated Hoagland tripe, whilst painting himself as a caring human being.
Bara is fake, everything about him is phony. His "credentials," his background, his worldview. All unmitigated made up hogwash.
As we say in Scotland, he is a prick. As we say in Glasgow, he's a fucking prick that needs a right good kicking.
Excuse my French.
Bara's problem is that he doesn't know what he doesn't know. He still thinks what Hoagland does is science. Since objective reality is heretical concept in Hoagie's world, it's hardly surprising that Bara would reject the concept. As Bara lacks Hoagland's gift for rhetoric, a debate with anyone scientifically literate would leave him on the floor. The funny thing is, he'd probably never realize he lost.
Chris, his arrogance is a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect!
Bara is a narcissist, a deeply insecure person who has a constant need to validate his own worth to himself. Hence the constant pics of himself, the comments about how well he's doing and the self-immortalising in the Tyson image we have here.
His conspiracy ramblings are yet more evidence of this inherent paranoia - everything's a cover-up, a deception, a trick, it's the yardstick by which he judges everything around him. It speaks volumes.
This aliens bollocks is a perfect topic for such people. It requires no diligence, no scientific process, no critical thinking and any claim can be made and asked to be disproven, rather than a conjecture raised and a hypothesis tested. In this way he gets to retain the all important control while absolving himself of taking responsibility as mature adults have learned to do.
Dr Robbins has destroyed their risible Cydonia numerology woo, and this blog and others have destroyed his posts, theories and his books. His books get apalling reviews with even hardcore fans asking WTF? Bara literally has nothing of any worth to offer anyone. While he keeps peddling pseudoscience we'll keep tearing it to shreds.
Neil deGRasse Tyson in the left corner and Mike theTosser Bara in the right corner... :-)
not that I'm so found of deGrasse's presentation techniques [bring back the Saganator] but I put my money on him in this fight :-)
However....Mike theTosser Bara is right about one thing though...."Scientific materialism is simply another worldview no different than the religious dogmas..."
A3
Well said, Chris!
A3: I can't agree. Religious dogma inevitably asks its adherents to accept certain things on faith, without requiring evidence.
Science expects to offer evidence for what it thinks is true. Science is open to modification of its truths if they no longer explain observed facts. When did Catholicism or Islam last change any of their dogmae?
Now he's trying to claim that the earth isn't spherical!
@expat, A3 mentioned scientific materialism but you answer him by defending general science or scientific method. But this looks like a category error. Materialism is considered a philosophy, like the Holy Book of Wiki says:
In philosophy, physicalism is the ontological thesis that "everything is physical", or that there is "nothing over and above" the physical. Physicalism, therefore, is a form of ontological monism.
See also:
physicalism
reductive materialism
But of course Bare isn't thinking of this at all. He wants just to blindly oppose "they" or "them" (here as reference to the movie "Conspiracy Theory") so he can promote his own narcissistic self. So he grabs some terms, as usual, to bash others over the head. That's his level of debate. Never seen anything beyond it coming from him.
Dee
He explained himself three years ago, like this:
"In my new book The Choice, I put scientific materialism to shame. There is no randomness in the Universe. There is substantive proof that the “laws of physics” which Hawking puts so much faith into, simply don’t exist. There is overwhelming proof of a new, little understood theory of physics, Hyperdimensional physics, which can explain everything without having to move the goalposts even once. But that theory and the evidence supporting it MUST be denied by the scientific materialists, because once you introduce the idea of a higher level of existence, the 4th dimension, you must also acknowledge something far more threatening to the scientific materialists; God. "
So he just wants to promote Hyperdimensional physics -- the mathematics of which he hasn't a hope of comprehending -- and make room for God.
His use of the terms "overwhelming proof" and "explain everything" is garden variety intellectual dishonesty.
Expat: "So he just wants to promote Hyperdimensional physics -- the mathematics of which he hasn't a hope of comprehending -- and make room for God."
Yes, interesting. One set of physics and mathematics (lying already beyond his ability to comprehend or visualize) is to be discarded in favor of yet another physics and mathematical model. But the difference is that this one makes room for them as main interpreters, as ghost busting "keymasters". A new priest class to overthrow another?
This is perhaps better understood in terms of power as Bara reasons really only in that way: look at "my book sales" or TV "appearances". That is power, to him at least like with Hoagland it were the fax campaigns, slots at late night radio and eventual NASA responses. No matter how superficial, short lived or laughable to people who matter, at least for the Expats of the world which are not the same as those mattering to Bara.
This cultist power of influence, response, followers, reaction and imagination is being asserted against any supposed "power" and critique of science, reason or debate. The ironical thing in this case is that the first one keeps using some of the language of the latter.
I think this dynamic forms a blue print for understanding a lot of similar scenes, many of which are way more successful than the Hoagland and Bara enterprises but less concerned with wrapping it into scientific language, otherwise you could fill twenty blogs about them.
Dee
@Dee
I've always said that Hoagie wants to be a cult leader, he just doesn't have the work ethic to pull it off. L Ron Hubbard's gift was that he could produce lots of (bs) product during the up phase of his manic depression. That tended to keep the believers interested. Hoagie's groupies have a much shorter attention span and their dear leader is too lazy to even try.
Bara on the other hand, can actually produce material, but that material just isn't very interesting or original. He's also quite awful at the public speaking thing, so those conferences aren't growing his fan base. So neither one of these guys is likely to start a religion anytime soon.
Yes Chris, you might be right with the laziness for RCH. Or perhaps it's procrastination or ADD. I could envision Hoagland side-tracking himself into many labyrinths of raw data and endless possibilities. But it also appears these days more as "milking it for what it's worth".
No actual religion indeed but both protagonists function in their own way as part of a larger "scene" which acts like a decentralized, consumer-centric type of religion. As if the nebulous cloud of the new age movement has bred with pseudo-scientific rhetoric, all topped with a creamy dash of cutting edge research or science news. But it's designed as milk shake really for audiences who have all their own reasons to drink it in.
It's a large pie to distribute and there's no good way to measure success and failure in this whole scene, not even amongst each other. Unless it's the question of how long one can hang on, claiming seniority and a string of old publications, having "decades" of experience, appeared on so-and-so and so on. For financial or personal survival (identity) -- it doesn't matter as some stage anymore.
Dee
How's this for procrastination?
The Heritage of Mars: Remembering Forever
Book project, first announced by RCH 17 November 2000. Announced again 2 April 2012.
And still no sign of it!
Take a look at Mikey's latest blog, if you haven't already, Expat.
Trekker: Yep, did already. My comment -- which won't appear -- was "Yeah, something isn't true just because a laid-off CAD technician says it is, either. Been to the intersection of Isis Ave and 33rd St lately?"
Of course Tyson isn't saying just because he says it's true something is true. He isn't even saying if many (or even all) scientists say something is true it's true. He's saying that the truth of a particular idea is not dependent on whether it is believed or not. The Earth revolved around the Sun even when the Church said it didn't. The Face on Mars is a just a mesa no matter what Hoagland or Bara choose to write.
The Universe is quite indifferent to what we want it to be. Our job as humans is to look at what the evidence points to and accept what it says, even if it takes the fun out of our fantasies. Because if we don't, reality is likely to bite us in the rear end when we least expect it.
Chris, I wish I could nail Mike Bara's eyeballs to what you just wrote.
Chris: "The Earth revolved around the Sun even when the Church said it didn't. The Face on Mars is a just a mesa no matter what Hoagland or Bara choose to write. "
The Church and even secular scholars of the day just followed the metaphysics and astrophysics of Aristotelianism. But the observations themselves were denied by no one and other scholars were still improving their models to try to account for all of them. There was even a lively debate! All those calls on holy scripture were only employed for what appears to be complex political reasons although historians do not agree much with each other here.
As for "Face on Mars is a just a mesa", I thought the claim was that it was a normal mesa with added artificial modifications, backed up by suggested comparisons with e.g. Marcahuasi and some maths like in "A Method for Searching for Artificial Objects on Planetary Surfaces" by Carlotto and Stein (1990). Does anyone by the way know what happened to that (peer reviewed) publication after the later image releases? Was it refuted or just disappeared in the dust bin of history?
Dee
It doesn't seem to be in the dustbin. It's been cited 31 times, most recently in 2007.
It is all fine and cosy to bash Mike theTosser Bara about his inaccuracies and rants when people address his flaws and his unpleasant narcissistic behavior......
Yes...you guest it right....there is a but coming....:-)
Since this about Neil deGrasse Tyson [ sounds like a cheap boxer name when you say it a few times does it not ;-) and Mike the Tosser Bara....
let administer the same to Tyson....
have you seen the rants and comments from him concerning the film Gravity...? Well...on that note the point go to him. The movie does have some flaws when it comes to gravity...especially when you call the movie Gravity wherein it is all about gravity.
But....why then does Tyson's imaginary spaceship makes a sound when it is doodling through space???
If he is so concerned about scientific details...he should start looking at his own presentations as in movies before climbing on his high horse...there are plenty of dogma's, biased crap and scientific inconsistenties to be found beyond sounds in spaaaaaaaace
A3
by the way...the other point is still open
- However....Mike theTosser Bara is right about one thing though...."Scientific materialism is simply another worldview no different than the religious dogmas..." -
I would like to improve that statement :-) namely....Mike theTosser Bara quoted correctly when he wrote "Scientific materialism is simply another worldview no different than the religious dogmas..."
thanks Dee for the support on the matter
A3, although I don't know which sound Tyson exactly made during his doodling but spaceships could generate all kinds of sounds from the perspective of a receiver inside the pressured hull of the same vehicle. The engine noises (eg "ignition transients") and other mechanical effects could create many "spacey" sounds in there, all transfered to a microphone or the human membrane. Of course this depends of the design of the engines, fuel lines, venting systems, vibration absorption and so on. The change that a microphone would he hanging in the depth of space itself remains rather small :-)
Example.
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