Emma Restall Orr believes animism is more logical and coherent than scientific materialism — she may be right.

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On this episode of Skeptiko…

Emma Restall Orr: …that’s the sadness about so much of science, because it’s taken us from where Christianity, and in our British culture Christianity was so thick — and it laid in the authorities, and it told everybody exactly what to think, what to feel, how to behave — and then science has taken over done exactly the same thing, and that was a problem in Christianity, and it’s a problem in science.

Stay with us for Skeptiko…

Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science and spirituality, with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics.

I’m your host Alex Tsakiris, and I suppose I rail on and on about the absurdity of mainstream science’s position [regarding] consciousness — that is that it’s an illusion, a product of the brain… biological robot… meaningless universe — all that stuff you’ve heard a million times. But the real absurdity is that we still debate it. It’s still respectable for mainstream science, intellectual types, academia types to kick those ideas around and mull them over and really dig into them, when it’s just ridiculous.

So, it’s quite refreshing when someone who’s totally on the outside, and has the dubious distinction of being a prominent member of the Neo-Druid, Neo-Pagan community, let alone the fact that she’s a woman, it’s just fascinating when someone like that can step forward and just kind of kick the shit out of materialism, very succinctly, very concisely and does so in a way that brings us back to that question that I always ask — how can this be?

So, Emma Restall Orr is our guest today, she’s the author of many very interesting books, extremely articulate, an excellent writer. Of course, we didn’t agree on some things, but agreed on many more and it was certainly fun and delightful to have her on Skeptiko and to [have] her join me in this conversation.

 

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Alex Tsakiris: Today we welcome Emma Restall Orr to Skeptiko. Emma is the author of several books including The Wakeful World: Animism, Mind and the Self in Nature, in which she suggests that animism, this idea that everything, even rocks, trees, stars, are alive with consciousness. Well, she dares to suggest that this radical, crazy idea is actually a coherent alternative to scientific materialism.

Anyone who’s listening to this show knows that I’m saying that tongue in cheek, because we all know that scientific materialism has been shown over and over again to be many things, but at its core, just bad science. I don’t think that’s going to be surprising to you,