Michael Prescott's Blog

Weighty matters

Here's a trivial thing I noticed a while ago. For some reason it stuck in my mind. In a comments thread at a political website, people were arguing about whether or not Mitt Romney's religion would affect his chances in the primaries. I'm not getting into that. What interested me was a comment left by one of the participants:

All religions have strange beliefs. Belief in a invisible massless soul is as strange as you can get.

Apparently we are meant to understand that a belief in something invisible and massless is inherently ridiculous. But why?

Certainly there is nothing inherently crazy about the idea of something invisible. All sorts of things are invisible to the human eye, yet they surely exist. And some things are just invisible, period. As far as I know, there's no way to obtain a visual image of a quark, but there seems to be no doubt that quarks exist.

The key word, then, is not invisible but massless. Yet here too, it seems unreasonable to assert that nothing can exist without mass. After all, until recently it was assumed that the subatomic particles called neutrinos had no mass. I remember Isaac Asimov going on at some length about the strange massless property of neutrinos in one of his popular science books. This was the conventional wisdom for many years, although recent observations have suggested that neutrinos do have some slight, barely detectable mass, after all.

If, for decades, it was perfectly acceptable for neutrinos to be both invisible and massless, and nobody ridiculed scientists for believing and asserting precisely this, then why should the concept of an invisible, massless soul be any more risible?

The answer, of course, is that science - considered by many to be the ultimate arbiter of the facts of reality - has stamped its imprimatur on the idea of the neutrino, but not on the idea of the soul. In fact, some of science's more militant propagandists have asserted that there is not and cannot be a soul, though their arguments are more ideological than empirical. (They simply assume that materialism is true, then draw the conclusion that nothing nonmaterial can exist. This is circular reasoning.)

In sum, we were expected (until lately) to accept the reality of an invisible massless neutrino, but to reject and ridicule the reality of an invisible massless soul. All because science "says so."

What this amounts to is an appeal to authority. Strictly speaking, this is a logical fallacy, but it might be acceptable if science were the relevant authority in this matter. Is it? Science is a tool of investigation supremely adept at ferreting out the truth about things like quarks and neutrinos but, arguably, not at all suited to dealing with matters of consciousness and spirit.

And by the way, what kind of visibility and mass are possessed by consciousness? How do you weigh a thought, or see an emoti0n? You may be able to map corresponding brain states or weigh parts of the brain, but this is not the same as seeing and weighing the content of consciousness - which is, of course, ineffable, yet real. One might even argue that the content of consciousness is the most real thing we know.

In any event, it's interesting to see how the skeptical position sloppily accepts an obvious double standard. Invisible and massless entities are accepted without demur if they are consistent with the materialist worldview, but rejected out of hand if they contradict materialism.

It's an argument that, like the humble neutrino itself, doesn't seem to carry much weight.

Penny in my hat and a cold armadillo

When I first glanced at this story about the discovery of a new fossilized species, I was unimpressed. "So what?" I said. "It's an armadillo."

Then I read that the critter in question weighed two tons and was "the size of a Volkswagen Beetle."

Now I'm impressed.

That's one big armadillo.

--

P.S. The title of this post is an in-joke for readers who remember the sitcom Just Shoot Me. You know who you are.

Hamlet's journey

Did literature's most famous character have a near-death experience? Literally, no. But figuratively or symbolically, maybe yes.

I'm talking about Hamlet, the title character in William Shakespeare's greatest tragedy. About halfway through the play, Hamlet is shipped off to England by the perfidious King Claudius. Unknown to the prince, but revealed to the reader or spectator of the play, Claudius has enclosed letters of instruction with Hamlet that will result in the young man's execution when he touches English soil.

After this unsettling development, Hamlet disappears from the play for the second half of Act Four. He does not die, of course -- not yet. But his extended absence from the stage, coupled with a recurring motif of close shaves with death, powerfully suggest that he has symbolically died and been reborn. In fact, he may be said to "die" three times.

His first death -- or near-death -- involves the aforementioned letters. They are meant to seal his doom, but by a lucky accident (or stroke of fate) he discovers their contents and deftly substitutes new letters which ensure the death of his companions, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. That's his first escape.

Next, his ship is set upon by a pirate vessel, and in the fighting he -- and he alone -- is taken prisoner. Most prisoners of marauding pirates would be executed without delay, but these pirates recognize that Hamlet is of noble birth, and not wishing to get themselves in trouble with the Danish crown, they deposit Hamlet unharmed on the shore of Denmark.

Ere we were two days old at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on a compelled valour, and in the grapple I boarded them: on the instant they got clear of our ship; so I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with me like thieves of mercy: but they knew what they did; I am to do a good turn for them.

That's his second escape.*

Having cheated death twice, Hamlet is reunited with his friend Horatio in time to see the funeral of his beloved Ophelia. During the burial, he impulsively leaps into Ophelia's grave and struggles with her brother, Laertes. The fight is broken up, and Hamlet emerges from the grave saying dejectedly,

I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum.

It appears to be the first time he has realized that he truly loved her.

Many readers have wondered why Hamlet engages in this rather melodramatic action. "He is mad," Claudius says, but is he? Perhaps the main reason for this bit of business is that it serves as a visual dramatization of the idea of death and rebirth. He enters a grave, then leaves it.

In short, three times we are confronted with the same idea: Hamlet is effectively dead yet somehow still alive. His time off stage seems to involve more than a simple respite for the fatigued actor, though doubtless it serves this purpose as well. It is as if, by hiding Hamlet from us for a while, Shakespeare wishes to convey the idea of his temporary departure from this earth and then his reappearance.

If this were all there was to it, the motif of close shaves with death -- or near-death experiences, as I would prefer to call them -- would be only a meaningless gimmick. But there is something more. In Act Five, Hamlet is a markedly different man than he was when we last saw him. He seems considerably older, even though in "real-time" only a few weeks have passed. More important, he seems wiser, more philosophical, more fatalistic, and less prone to the self-doubt that hampered him throughout the first three and a half acts.

It is in Act Five that Hamlet delivers his famous lines about destiny:

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.

He considers the briefness of life:

It will be short: the interim is mine;
And a man's life's no more than to say 'One.'

But instead of being discouraged by this fact, he takes it in stride:

Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?

He has come to a calm acceptance of his own mortality, a subject that tortured him in previous scenes, most notably in the famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy. He also has a new perspective on the meaninglessness of worldly affairs -- whether they are the conquests of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar or the pretenses of courtiers like the fawning Osric.

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe,
Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw! ...

He [Osric] hath much land, and fertile: let a
beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at
the king's mess: 'tis a chough; but, as I say,
spacious in the possession of dirt.

Kings and conquerors are, in the end, only "clay," and the estate of an ambitious courtier is but "dirt." Here is the rejection of all material striving.

Finally, just before his climactic duel with Laertes, Hamlet apologizes with obvious sincerity for having wronged him.

Give me your pardon, sir: I've done you wrong;
But pardon't, as you are a gentleman.
This presence knows,
And you must needs have heard, how I am punish'd
With sore distraction. What I have done,
That might your nature, honour and exception
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness....
Sir, in this audience,
Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts,
That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house,
And hurt my brother.

Now, if we think about it, Hamlet's new vantage point on matters of life and death, destiny and fate, ambition and revenge, is surprisingly similar to the change of heart often reported by near-death experiencers.

People who have undergone a near-death experience will frequently say that they no longer fear death, that they believe in a higher purpose for their lives and for the universe, that they are less concerned with material things, and that they seek to atone for their earlier wrongdoing. They are often described as exhibiting newfound serenity and philosophical detachment combined with sincere compassion and uncharacteristic outpourings of love. And they seem to be older and wiser than their years.

Just like Hamlet.

What are we to make of this? Is it only a coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe the author of Hamlet had a close brush with death himself -- even an actual NDE -- and emerged from the experience altered in the same way that modern near-death experiencers are altered.

Most scholars agree that Hamlet is Shakespeare's most autobiographical play and that the protagonist is, in some sense, a stand-in for the author himself. If so, and if the author had a life-changing experience like an NDE, then this is the play in which we would expect to see some evidence of it.

And I think that possibly -- just possibly -- we do.

-----------

*For those who, like me, are partial to the theory that the true author of Shakespeare's works was the Earl of Oxford, Edward De Vere, it is worth noting that, upon his return from Europe, De Vere himself was captured by pirates. Like Hamlet, he was faced with the prospect of immediate execution until his noble status was discerned. At that point, the pirates made the prudent decision to land him on English soil. This is only one of many remarkable parallels between incidents in Shakespearean plays and in the life of Edward De Vere. See Mark Anderson's superb biography of the Earl of Oxford for further details.

That flippin' coin

I've been sadly derelict in following David Thompson's shenanigans of late, but one noteworthy incident recently came to my attention.

Apparently, some time ago, the sitters at a Thompson seance were promised that Harry Houdini, a frequent ectoplasmic visitor, would apport (i.e., materialize) an object he had owned in his lifetime. In a later seance, a coin was produced, said to have belonged to the great Houdini himself. This exciting development was trumpeted as mind-boggling, earthshaking, paradigm-shifting proof that Thompson is for real.

Ah, but the course of true love never did run smooth, and neither does Thompson's star-crossed mediumship. Ere long, embarrassing questions were raised.

But why should I tell the story when a participant in a Spiritualist Chat Room thread has done the heavy lifting for me? (To read the thread, go here, register for the site, then navigate to the Spiritualist Experiences topic, and choose the thread titled "Victor Zammit." This particular post appears on p. 10 of the increasingly long - and very interesting - discussion.)

JimW, a senior member of the forum, reports on the controversial coin as follows:

Let us consider the strange case of Harry Houdini and his personal possession....

HH comes to a COSC circle [i.e., the Circle of the Silver Cord, Thompson's "investigators" - MP] and promises that something personally belonging to him will be apported in the UK to be taken to the Magic Circle (which strangely he confuses as being in New York not in London).

The next stage comes at the COSC first seance in the UK where some special USA guests are attending. HH apparently materialises and a hand appears on the luminous planchette producing a coin.

Attendees keep quiet so that Victor and COSC can pronounce this major event and it is publicly trumpeted about the coin appearing, a commemorative coin of HH. This then appears on the COSC site.

It seems even at the earliest stage, when it should have been obvious that no commemorative coin was struck in HH's lifetime, no one questioned that this was not the long awaited truth. 

Then shock and horror - the coin was minted well after the date of HH's death and was probably a copy anyway of an original. So clearly not a personal possession of HH.

As an empiricist what would be my conclusions to this? Why on earth would HH "apport" something like this in a seance?

It is probably one of the singly most troubling events in the whole chain of concerns.

As for me, your humble correspondent, I'm long past being troubled in any way by David Thompson. I only wonder what he's going to apport next.

May I suggest a DVD of the Tony Curtis biopic Houdini, an item which - like the commemorative coin itself - was surely owned by Houdini in his lifetime?

The secret Gardner

A while ago I discussed skeptic Martin Gardner's remarkably ill-informed debunking of the famed medium Leonora Piper. Shortly afterward, Greg Taylor of The Daily Grail emailed me with some pertinent remarks. I meant to post these at the time, but it slipped my mind.

Well, better late than never.

Greg wrote,

Came across something when reading an SPR journal which is a decent response to one of Martin Gardner's accusations against Leonora Piper. Thought you'd probably be interested in it:

Gardner: "Mediums in a city know one another. Those who patronize one medium usually visit others. At the time there were scores of mediums in Boston, forming a network of scoundrels who passed information freely back and forth."

SPR Journal: "That Mrs. Piper should have worked up the dossiers of all the sitters some time before was practically impossible. No doubt it was permissible to assume a freemasonry amongst professional mediums, and that any information obtained by one of the fraternity would be at the disposal of all. But a considerable proportion of Mrs. Piper's sitters were not even numbered amongst the 500 odd Members and Associates of the A.B.S.P.R. ; and very few had ever been to a professional medium before." ...

Also, as you mentioned the simultaneous voice and writing communication in your original blog, I thought it worth pointing out this passage from Michael Sage's book on Piper. [Free e-book can be downloaded here - MP.] Fascinating aspect of the phenomenon IMO:

"The voice may keep up a conversation with a sitter while the hand keeps up another in writing with someone else on a wholly different subject. If the sitter who is talking with the hand allows his attention to be distracted by what the voice says, the hand recalls his attention by its movements. When anyone is speaking to the hand control, it is necessary to speak to the hand, and close to the hand, or there is a risk of not being understood. In short, one must behave as if the hand were  a complete and independent being.

"Observation of this phenomenon suggested to Dr Hodgson that by using the left hand he could perhaps obtain three communications on three different subjects. He tried and succeeded, although imperfectly; no doubt because, in the normal state, the left hand is not used to writing...

"The writing often looks like that on a lithographic stone, and can only be read when reflected in a glass; this writing, which is called mirror-writing, is produced as rapidly as ordinary writing, though Mrs Piper, in her normal state, would be unable to write in this way. This mirror-writing has been often observed in subjects who write automatically; the cause for it is still to be found."

The ectoplasmic chickens come home to roost

I haven't said anything about everyone's favorite materialization medium in a while, because there's really been nothing to say. But recently, commenters Gaylord Pompledinkler (!) and J Richards pointed me to a discussion about David Thompson at the Spiritualist Chat Room. (To see the thread, you need to register with the site, then click on "Spiritualist Philosophy" and then on "Spirit Guides.")

It's fun stuff.

First, David Thompson himself enters the chat room to talk about his spirit guides:

I have a few guides that work with me, my main friend and contact is:

William Charles Cadwell, who passed in 1897.

(William was check up by the SPR when Monty Keen did his report into my mediumship and was found)

Timothy Booth.

(he helps draw out the ectoplasam for the physical seances)

White Soaring Bird. (Door Keeper) ...

Jack (Surname unknown) ...

Dr Theobold Slavinski (Cardivasculor surgeon) helps with healing and psychic surgery.

Shortly afterward, someone named Leo joins in. He is not at all skeptical about Thompson and reports that he's looking forward to an evening with Thompson.

Next week I am visiting a Dave Thompson psychic surgery evening..... a Dr Slavinski.... think I got that right.... comes through him.... I have googled the doctor's name wondering if he has lived on earth under that name, but found nothing.... not that it matters, I am still looking forward to the experience.

But Leo's perspicacity in Googling the good doctor's name is an ominous sign of things to come. Soon, like the title character in one of those Poltergeist movies, he's baaaack ... asking about Thompson's claim that the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) verified the earthly existence of his main spirit guide.   

I wonder, would David be so kind as to produce an extract from the SPR report that refers to the finding of William Charles Cadwell. I am curious to know about what was found of this guides life and death and how it might have confirmed his existence.

Now, I've read Montague Keen's report on the Thompson seance he attended, and it says nothing about verifying the existence of William Cadwell. (You can read it, too. Right here.)  So it would appear that the SPR did not, in fact, check out William's identity.

On his next visit, Leo describes himself as "a rather dispirited Spiritualist."

When I wrote last time I was quite excited by David Thompson's remark about his main spirit friend and contact William Charles Cadwell who passed in 1897 and that this William Cadwell had been checked out  by the SPR and Monteque Keen and was found to exist. 

I had a look around and found that William Cadwell was according to David Thompson's website born in 1830.

I thought I would try to find out more and so looked at the Government Record Office Death Registrations (what used to be called the St Catherine Deaths Index) and I also looked at the Census records for 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881 and 1891.

There was no point looking for a birth registration because it was not until the second half of 1837 that such registration came into effect. Without a known place of birth it would be very difficult to establish the church where a person was baptised in 1830.

Anyhow, I have decided to let people on the Spiritualism Chatroom know what I found. 

In brief - NO William Charles CADWELL died in 1897, nor did a William Cadwell or a Charles William. 

No such person died the year before or after either.

In the 1841 census records there was NO William or William C Cadwell born 1830 anywhere in England. Because in the 1841 census records ages were rounded down (eg 43 would be recorded as 40, 47 as 45 etc) I next checked the 1851 census and found just 8 William Cadwell - NONE were born in 1830.

There was one William Charles Cadwell found in the 1851 census records - he however was born in 1843 in Chelsea. Sadley he died in the December Quarter of 1865 in Chelsea - so cannot be considered a possible for David Thompson's William Charles Cadwell.

The subsequent census records also do not show any William Cadwell born 1830 - so all such records fail to show this purported guide who plays such a vital role in David Thompson's physical mediumship and seances.

Feeling frustrated I took a look for Tmothy BOOTH the child guide who is said to play an important role in the seances. He is said (on the circle of the silver cord website) to have been born in 1899 and died in 1908.

Oh dear!!! There were NO Timothy Booth's born in 1899 anywhere in England. There were NO Timothy Booth's who died in 1908....

Are these personalities just alter-go's? Is David Thompson being duped by spirit entities? Is he too a fraud? ...

Once again I ask David Thompson to provide the Spiritualism Chatroom with the evidence found by the SPR and Montegue Keen that would refute the evidence of my research into this matter. Should I wait in hope of an early response or expect a deathly silence?

Someone named IceBlue repsonds thusly:

If william isn't who he says he is,how would this make david a fraud?If montegue keen found the info so can we,but iam sure david will enlighten us.

Hmm. Well, if William isn't who he says he is, then why should we think he's anything other than a persona created by David Thompson to fool people in the dark? As for Montague Keen, there is no reason (other than Thompson's assertion) to think that he found out anything about an earthly William Cadwell.

Eventually we hear from David Thompson again. He is quite above it all.

Oh! dear how people speculate and put on public forums there thoughts that are not always right.

So for the very last time for.

1. Monty Keen did a report that can been see on the website Zerdini published on these threads.

2. the report was also done with Guy Lyon Playfair who did the checks on William and found him, I will ask the lady who is a member of this site to put up the recent email she recieved from Guy Lyon Playfair regarding William and his exsistance.

3. Am I a materialization medium, to be honest judge for yourself or listen to others, up to you.

To be honest, when I joined SCR it was a great site with a lot of nice people, but now it seems to have turned into a bitchfest on everyone.

Please now feel free to say what you will about me and my mediumship and to be honest I dont really care, this will be my last post here.

So it seems the disgruntled medium is taking his baseball and going home. Prickly types, these mediums. I guess that's why they're called "sensitives." Rather than answer a straightforward question, Thompson spins excuses and then quits the group.

Leo will not let him off the hook quite so easily, though.

Well it was a pleasure  to see Mr Thompson give a reply to what I had written about William Charles Cadwell though I notice that he fails to mention young Timothy Booth claimed to have been born 1899 and died 1908 who also did not exist!

Let me say it again, and please do anyone on the list that is still in contact with DT pass this on, NO William Charles Cadwell died in 1897 as DT has claimed for a long time. 

There was indeed a William Caldwell [note the different spelling of his last name - MP] who died in 1899 aged 67 so born 1832/3 not 1830 and please note everyone he was not recorded as William CHARLES Cadwell and if that had been his name that is what the death record would have said!!!

Now let DT ask his so called guide who his parents were and whether he married and what his wife's name might have been.

And let him explain why we suddenly have  the name Guy Lyon Playfair appearing now as the source that found William Charles Cadwell and how this connects to his statement that it was the SPR and Montague Keen who found William Charles Cadwell.

As to Dt's comment: Oh! dear how people speculate and put on public forums there thoughts that are not always right. 

Firstly, let me respond by saying what I wrote was not speculation it was fact. Second what I wrote was not my thoughts it was cold hard evidence and it IS RIGHT.

By all means let the lady who has the email from Playfair put it up. All it can say is what I have already said above: a William Caldwell died in 1899 in the registration district of Leigh Vol 8c page137. Not William Charles Cadwell. Not 1897. Not born 1830.

So DT has a guide who doesn't know when he was born and doesn't know when he died. What else doesn't he know I wonder.

Again I say to DT what about young Timothy Booth?

Of course, DT has, having thrown in his spurious information, spat the dummy and run away.

I have not taken part in what he calls a bitchfest. I have merely stated the truth. If the truth causes DT a problem then there has to be something wrong.

Yes, indeed. Let's quote that last sentence again:

If the truth causes DT a problem then there has to be something wrong.

Now I suppose we might give David Thompson the benefit of the doubt and say that "Caldwell" is pretty close to "Cadwell," and 1832 is pretty close to 1830, and 1899 is pretty close to 1897. It's a stretch, though. Why couldn't "William" get the facts right? Was he wrong about his middle name, too? 

Then there's the total absence of Timothy from the records. Well, maybe he was a street urchin whose death went unrecorded. Maybe ...

But what about Thompson's claim that Montegue Keen verified William's existence? And his claim that Guy Lyon Playfair verified it, as well? I have not seen any evidence to support these assertions. The least Thompson could do is point us to a magazine or Web site that includes the relevant articles. (My Google search for "Guy Lyon Playfair" + "David Thompson" turned up nothing relevant - no indication that Playfair has written anything about Thompson at all.)

Most interesting of all was David Thompson's reaction to a few serious questions from an admirer.

He ran away!

Light a candle

One of my readers, floridasuzie, informs me of an event taking place around the world on Sunday:

Light a candle in memory of a child who has died....Compassionate Friends Worldwide Candle Lighting this Sunday, Dec. 9th, 7:00-8:00 p.m. your local time.....24 hour light wave across the world "so that their light might shine"....It’s been 3 yrs since we lost our 15 yr old son, so this will be the 3rd year we’ve lit candles in memory of Sam. It’s a huge comfort to symbolically include him in our holidays which can be a difficult time. If you or anyone you know has lost a child, please pass this info on to them so that they may find some comfort, too.

Ratatouille

So I'm halfway through this movie Ratatouille on DVD, and I just have to ask:

Am I the only one who's a little grossed out by the idea of a rat cooking people's food?

Science and the afterlife (further thoughts)

In a recent comments thread, a couple of readers - Michael H and Filip - recommended an article by Neil Grossman called "Who's Afraid of Life after Death?" which appeared in the journal AntiMatters. This link takes you to the table of contents where the article is listed. If you click on "PDF" next to the the title, the article will download in Adobe format.

It's a very interesting piece that makes some good points, but I disagree with parts of it, and I think that my areas of disagreement may help to clarify my doubts about the value of using the scientific method to explore the question of postmortem survival.

First, Grossman briefly recapitulates some evidence for the afterlife, concentrating on near-death experiences. He writes,

Consider, for example, the kind of case where the NDEr accurately reports the conversation occurring in the waiting room while his or her body is unconscious in the operating room. There is no way for the relevant information, conveyed in sound waves or light waves, to travel from the waiting room, through corridors and up elevators, to reach the sense organs of the unconscious person. Yet the person wakes from the operation with the information. This kind of case -- and there are lots of them -- shows quite straightforwardly that there are nonphysical ways in which the mind can acquire information. Hence materialism is false.

Now, I happen to agree that cases like this are legitimate and that information can be acquired by paranormal means. However, I don't think that such cases constitute irrefutable scientific evidence. A skeptic can always say that the case is merely anecdotal, and that anecdotes are not proper evidence. The fact that I think the sheer number of such reports, and the high quality of some of them, are indicative of an underlying reality is irrelevant in strictly scientific terms. My personal conviction is not the same thing as scientific proof.

Grossman then describes what he calls the "smoking gun" case of Pam Reynolds. Unfortunately, his description of this case is inaccurate and undercuts his argument. Like many other authors, Grossman is under the impression that Pam Reynolds had her near-death experience while her bodily functions had been stopped -- that is, while both her heart activity and brain activity were flatlining. In fact, however, the verifiable part of Reynolds' near-death experience took place before either her heart or her brain had flatlined. When Reynolds observed the procedures in the operating room, she was under heavy sedation, blindfolded, with molded earplugs in her ears -- all of which renders a non-paranormal explanation problematic. Nevertheless, she was not clinically dead. That part of the operation happened later.

After this, Grossman discusses the general reluctance of mainstream scientists to examine the evidence for life after death. He notes correctly that, all too often, scientists reject even the possibility of valid evidence in this area. He cites a conversation with a materialist who said that even if he had a near-death experience of his own, he would still believe that it was a hallucination because nothing could ever convince him that the mind can exist independently of the brain. As Grossman points out, this sort of person confuses science with materialism. Science is a method of inquiry, while materialism is a philosophical position. The two should not be conflated, but very often they are. Debunkers, Grossman writes,

believe that they are being "scientific" in ignoring and rejecting the evidence against materialism. They claim that the evidence is weak, that it is not compelling, that it can be easily explained away by the materialist paradigm. But when asked what kind of evidence it would take to convince them that materialism is empirically false, they are, like my colleague, usually at a loss for what to say. If they are not familiar with the data, they will come up with a criterion of evidence that in fact has already been met. When it is pointed out to them that there exist many well-documented cases that satisfy their proposed criterion, they will simply make their criterion more stringent, and at some point cross the line between the reasonable demand for scientific evidence and the unreasonable (and unscientific) demand for logical proof.

Grossman points out that an empirical hypothesis is never proven absolutely; it is simply shown to be more probable. For this reason, the demand for absolute proof in the area of the afterlife research is unscientific, because absolute proof of a theory is something that science cannot provide. He writes,

The fundamaterialists [i.e., hard-core, fundamentalist materialists] will not accept the hypothesis of an afterlife until it is "proven" beyond a logical possibility of being false. That is, they use a concept of proof that belongs in logic and mathematics, not in science.

So far, so good. But when he gets deeper into the question of scientifically exploring the afterlife, Grossman begins to get himself into trouble, at least by my way of thinking. He writes,

I think even the most die-hard materialist ought to grant the following argument: If souls are real, that is, if nonmaterial objects exist, then it should be possible to study them, to acquire data about them, to construct generalizations and theories about them, and so on; which is to say, it should be possible to study them scientifically.

The problem here, as I see it, hinges on the word "real." Let us grant that "souls are real." I believe this to be true. But I believe it to be true in the sense that souls participate in an order or level of reality that is different from the reality we experience every day. In other words, souls belong to a higher, or at least different, plane of reality. And it is not at all clear to me that science, a set of empirical methods designed to explore this reality, is cut out to explore some other plane of reality that may be fundamentally different from our own.

Grossman then discusses the general resistance of philosophers to empirical evidence for the afterlife -- an interesting topic, but one that is not particularly germane to our discussion here. After this, he quotes William James on the logical fallacies committed by skeptics who, in their zeal to debunk the paranormal, throw their intellectual training out the window.

Asking why mainstream scientists are so eager to dismiss evidence of life after death, Grossman comes up with three factors: "resistance to paradigm change... intellectual arrogance... social taboo." He also implies a fourth factor, which I think is among the most important -- simple fear of the afterlife. Some people would rather just cease to exist than face the prospect of an unknown and largely unknowable future in some new and strange dimension. To these reasons, I would add another one -- the sense that the afterlife is simply "too good to be true." Many people, understandably enough, are skeptical of any claim that sounds impossibly wonderful. I suspect this goes back to childhood, when a small child discovers that in real life, things don't always end happily ever after and that there is no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, no Tooth Fairy. Some children, upon becoming acquainted with these facts, feel betrayed and cheated by the stories their parents told them, and they make the resolution that they will never, ever be fooled again.

In developing his points, Grossman presents a fictional scenario that he describes as "by no means far-fetched." And here is the heart of my disagreement with him. I'm afraid I find this scenario extremely far-fetched. He writes,

Further near-death research confirms in great detail what has already been established, many more cases of verified juridical perceptions while "out of body" are collected and documented, advancing medical technology makes possible many more "smoking gun" cases of the type discussed above [i.e., the Pam Reynolds case], longitudinal studies on NDErs confirm the already observed behavioral change in behavioral changes aligned with their newly acquired (or recently reinforced) spiritual values, and so forth. The studies are replicated in different cultures, with the same results. Eventually, the weight of evidence begins to set in, and scientists are ready to announce to the world, if not as fact, then at least as highly confirmed scientific hypotheses [that] there is an afterlife [with all that it entails].... When this happens, the fallout will be revolutionary.

Maybe I'm the one being cynical now, but I don't see anything like this happening in the foreseeable future -- and by the foreseeable future I mean my lifetime or the lifetimes of children being born today. The evidence that Grossman cites is certainly sufficient to persuade me that there is an afterlife, but it is not going to overturn the assumptions and belief structures of the scientific establishment. Even if "many more cases of verified juridical perceptions" are collected, skeptics will dismiss them as anecdotes. The "smoking gun" case that Grossman cited earlier is not as strong as he believes it to be, so collecting more such cases will not strengthen his argument as much as he hopes. There is no doubt that people who've reported an NDE do exhibit long-term behavioral changes, but to a skeptical mind this does not prove that the NDE itself was a metaphysically real event. Replication in different cultures will suggest, to skeptics, only that the same neurological or psychological factors are at play across the board.

In short, no amount of empirical evidence, no matter how carefully collected, is going to upend the apple cart of scientific materialism. The newspaper headlines that Grossman imagines are fiction. I might like to believe that such a paradigm-shifting event will occur, but I don't.

Scientists and scientifically minded amateurs have been collecting evidence of life after death for at least 150 years and have amassed an impressive library of case studies. But the mainstream scientific world remains unimpressed. Given this track record, I think is very unlikely that the situation will change anytime soon. Collecting empirical data certainly has its place. It can give some measure of respectability to the subject, and it can motivate people to explore further on their own. But it cannot shift the paradigm. Or at least, it hasn't done so yet, and I see few signs that it will do so in the future.

When a given approach has not yielded its objective after a century and a half of assiduous effort, it may be time to recognize that it's the wrong approach.