Michael Prescott's Blog

A great debate

In contrast to the sometimes silly debates that occupy those of us in the pro-paranormal camp, check out a recent exchange between two serious people, George P. Hansen and Dean Radin.

Hansen criticized Radin's statistical methods. Radin provided a detailed response.

I'm no mathematician - I don't even balance my checkbook - but it's nice to see a debate about psi conducted at this level of sophistication and seriousness.

For want of a nail ...

... the kingdom was lost.

It seems odd to me that the crew wouldn't have forced open the locker to get the binoculars. Still, an interesting story.

Moses and Ramses, together again

A reader pointed me to the Montague Keen Web site, one of the stranger afterlife sites I've seen. Keen himself was a well-known researcher into the paranormal, and though I have my doubts about some of his investigations (notably his seance with David Thompson), I never doubted his seriousness.

His posthumous site, on the other hand, is hard to take seriously. It consists, in part, of messages supposedly delivered by the discarnate Keen. The messages are taken down by his widow, Veronica, through automatic writing:

These communications are as letters Montague writes to me at 3pm every Sunday, I check through two mediums what has been written, such as 'who did Montague show me clearly?' and and I asked the meaning of the 3rd scene he showed me. One was a man highly respected in history, who is now part of what Montague calls the 'Network'. He wanted to show me the calibre of the people we are working with. I am not allowed to divulge this information as yet.

In the latest message, "Montague" claims to be assisted in his afterlife adventures by both Moses and Ramses the Great. Since these rather noteworthy names are given, we can only speculate as to the even more noteworthy name that was withheld. I'm guessing Jesus.

The post also contains this none-too-veiled reference to an afterlife researcher:

The dishonest ones will no longer be able to control the field in which we work. All that is needed now is patience for G.S. to slip up and expose the fraud that he is. Our Foundation will step forward as a Centre of Influence to bring people together as never before.

The G.S. in question is presumably Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona, with whom Veronica had a much-publicized falling-out.

Great events are promised for September, though the nature of these events is left unspecified.

Then there's this political message:

Man has lost his way completely, the gun-culture is taking over and yet Governments continue to fail to deal with it. Violence must be removed from T.V., films and magazines etc., they have succeeded in brainwashing our children that violence will bring respect and rich rewards. The people who exploit the young with drugs and guns should be severely dealt with. We hope to show a better way forward, things will have to change. How many more killings must there be before action is taken?

Hey, wait a minute. I write violent stuff. I don't want some busybodies from the afterlife messing with my livelihood, even if they are Moses and Ramses! (And by the way, weren't Moses and Ramses archenemies? Well, time heals all wounds.)

I glanced through some of the earlier messages. It appears that the afterlife community is very much behind Hillary Clinton's candidacy - talk about having friends in high places! One message waxes enthusiastic about the brave new world:

Yes my dear Ban-Ki-Moon is certainly living up to our expectations, he is such a good man, he is a leader who can communicate with confidence, he knows and understands what needs to be done.  Just think what he will achieve when Hillary Clinton and Nancy Polosi [sic] work with him, that is the political triangle we in Spirit have chosen to heal the World.

(Ban-Ki-Moon is the current UN secretary general.)

Incidentally, one would think that if the greatest minds in history have gathered together in the afterlife to support Nancy Pelosi, they would at least learn how to spell her name.

Then there is this foray into science:

You are experiencing in your World an escalation of floods and Natural Disasters and it will continue, we have pointed out several times the WORLD IS OFF BALANCE, all you need is for it to be degree out and you will get all those problems that are occurring. Your scientists know this and try to rectify it but the problem stems from NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS moving the Earth off balance and if they are not careful they will push it right off balance and send it swirling out of control. That is why you have winters and summers all mixed up.

Nuclear explosions have moved the Earth off balance? It sounds like Veronica is channeling Sylvia Browne (also known for her oddball weird-science claims).

From the same post, more politics:

I return once again to HILLARY CLINTON, yes she would bring STABILITY, PEACE and HARMONY. So many countries hate the U.S. because of their greed - they have taken what is not rightfully theirs. We must look to WOMEN to bring SANITY to your World.

This is followed by an anti-Israel screed. It appears that the afterlife is heavily influenced by the Daily Kos.

All of this is interspersed with grandiose claims of huge developments in the offing, though specifics are never given. Allegedly, the "Network" - twelve high-level discarnates, including Moses, Ramses , and Montague Keen himself - are working to produce some great spiritual revelation in the near future. One can only imagine that it will be world-shattering.   

Earlier predictions have not panned out. On February 20, this prediction was posted:

For the record, we are expecting something big and significant to happen on February 22, 2007. More on this soon.

Despite the promise "More on this soon," there appears to have been no follow-up. Nor do I recall anything of great significance happening on February 22. A Google News search turned up no big events. One news story did report:

First BanCorp described the material terms and conditions of the Stockholder Agreement in a Current Report on Form 8-K that was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 22, 2007.

Maybe the filing of this form with the SEC was the "big and significant" "something" that was scheduled for the 22nd?

Okay, sorry for the snarky tone. I once spoke to Veronica Keen on the telephone, and she was very gracious and kind and utterly sincere. I don't like being nasty to her. I'm afraid, however, that I have little patience with the vague and doubtful claims posted on the Montague Keen site, and I suspect (or hope) that Montague Keen would have felt likewise.

I'm also none too fond of defamatory attacks on Gary Schwartz, even though I have my own criticisms of some of his work. If the good people at the Montague Keen Foundation have evidence of impropriety and misconduct on Schwartz's part, they should present this evidence publicly. If they have no evidence, then they should stop smearing him by innuendo.

And maybe they should climb off the Hillary bandwagon while they're at it. Even Hillary's most enthusiastic supporters in the U.S. don't say she is going to save the world.

Critical thinking is a virtue. We need to encourage it in the field of paranormal investigations. That's what Montague Keen tried to do, and it's the best - and only - way to carry on his true legacy.

A brace of links

Frequent commenter Eteponge has started his own blog. His most recent post goes into detail about "psychic detective" Dorothy Allison. There's a lot of info here. Check it out.

Also, The Daily Grail observes a certain inconsistency in James Randi's criticism of a famed medium of yesteryear.

Beam me up

While thumbing through John E. Mack's Abduction, which concerns alleged alien abductions, I remembered reading a detailed and persuasive analysis of one such case in George P. Hansen's excellent book The Trickster and the Paranormal. His treatment of what he calls "the Linda Napolitano hoax" sheds considerable light 0n the abduction movement. After we look at it, I'll add some personal thoughts on how this topic may relate to the ongoing micro-controversy about David Thompson's sittings with Victor Zammit.

Hansen begins with an overview of the case. (All quotes are taken from pp. 249-267 of The Trickster and the Paranormal; citations omitted).

The purported UFO abduction of Linda Napolitano is truly exotic, even for a UFO abduction. Government agents were involved; the UN Secretary General was a key witness; Linda was kidnapped in the interest of national security; the CIA tried to discredit the case, and the ETs helped end the cold war. Or so the story goes....

The chief investigator of the case, Budd Hopkins, is the most active spokesperson advocating the physical reality of UFO abductions.... His most illustrious supporter and colleague is John E. Mack, M.D., former head of the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School and a Pulitzer Prize winner.

From the time he first went public with the Napolitano case, Hopkins made it clear that he considered it to be the most important evidence for the physical reality of UFO abductions.... The case's significance is strengthened by the support he received from leaders of the two largest UFO organizations in the US.

Hansen then tells the story of the alleged abduction of Linda Napolitano (a.k.a. Linda Cortile) at 3:16 AM on November 30, 1989, when "a large, brightly lit spaceship was witnessed hovering over her apartment building in lower Manhattan, and Linda and three small beings were seen float floating up into it." Supposedly, the secretary general of the United Nations and his two bodyguards, Richard and Dan, also witnessed the event when their motorcade stalled nearby. These three witnesses were themselves abducted, and, like Linda, were later returned unharmed.

What followed was a strange thriller-movie sequence of alleged events in which Richard and Dan sent various communiqués to Budd Hopkins and to Linda, though they refused to speak with Hopkins directly. In April of 1991 they supposedly kidnapped Linda, questioned her, and let her go. A few months later Dan kidnapped her again, this time with homicidal intent; Richard pulled off a rescue in the nick of time.

Linda claimed to have had an x-ray taken of her head which showed a small object embedded in her nose, but apparently Hopkins never saw the x-ray, and, as Hansen dryly notes, "The aliens apparently abducted Linda and removed the object because a later examination found no trace of it."

The story ventured even further into movie-fantasy territory when Linda began to have an affair with Richard and "the two came to realize that they had been abducted together many times since their early childhood. As they grew up, the aliens arranged sexual liaisons, and Richard believed that he had fathered Johnny, one of Linda's children."

That, in essence, is the story. Hansen, well-known as a writer on the paranormal with extensive knowledge of the field, became involved in an investigation. He notes,

A number of elements raised suspicions. The story was outlandish on the face of it. No credible, multipli-witnessed abduction had ever been documented. The purported involvement of the UN Secretary General made the claims even more unlikely. Anyone familiar with ufology knew the field to be rife with fraud and hoaxes, and the implausible aspects alone should have been cause for great concern. An added twist came when our colleague Vincent Creevy told us about the science fiction novel Nighteyes by Garfield Reeves-Stevens. This was first published in April 1989, and it contains many striking parallels with Linda's story (including alien-arranged sexual liaisons between a government agent and the female protagonist), suggesting that the hoaxers had based some of their ideas on it....

Small details of the case also provoked questions. Why had Richard and Dan written to Hopkins before they contacted Linda? They knew the location of her apartment but would have had no reason to think Hopkins was involved. A most amusing detail was that Linda had not reported the kidnappings or the attempted murder to law enforcement authorities, even though she made the allegations publicly in front of media representatives and hundreds of other people at the 1992 MUFON [Mutual UFO Network] convention.... Her failure to make the allegations official made the case extremely dubious....

We toured Linda's neighborhood in order to become more familiar with the location of the events. Her apartment complex had a guardhouse that was manned 24 hours a day, and video cameras were positioned at various locations around the complex. We discovered that the New York Post had a loading dock two blocks away that was open until 5:00 a.m. We talked with the guards and people at the loading dock and others in the vicinity, but no one knew anything about the UFO event....

The meeting [with Hopkins and some of his associates] revealed much about Hopkins' methods and the mentality of ufology's leaders. We asked Hopkins if he had checked with the apartment complex guards or with the New York Post loading dock personnel to see if they remembered seeing a UFO. He hadn't. We learned that Hopkins didn't even know the weather conditions the night of the abduction. He had done nothing to verify the most rudimentary facts. During questioning, Linda admitted that she had lied about several aspects of the case, and Penelope Franklin, one of Hopkins' closest collaborators, staunchly supported her in doing so.

[Coinvestigator Jospeh] Stefula brought along a colleague who had years of experience in dignitary protective services. He made an independent, detailed presentation on motorcades carrying important political figures. He explained that in such operations checkpoints are established, and if they are not passed on time, several authorities are notified. If even one car stalls, a whole network of people is informed. At the end of his presentation he suggested that Hopkins ask Richard and Dan the meaning of several specialist terms. If they were whom they claimed, they would know the definitions. Hopkins apparently never asked them the meaning of the words.

At the meeting we played our trump card. We suggested that Linda report the kidnapping and attempted murder to the police, and we stated that if she didn't, we were prepared to file a request for a federal investigation.... At that, Hopkins [and the others] all appeared to panic. They said that a worldwide government conspiracy may be attempting to suppress knowledge of earth's visitation by ETs. If the crimes were reported, we might never learn the truth about the Napolitano affair.... This reasoning was silly, but revealing. Even if there was such an effective, orchestrated conspiracy, Hopkins had already widely publicized the case, including the alleged crimes, and any report from us would amount to nothing.... There was nothing to lose....

To force the issue, and up the stakes, I wrote to the office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Treasury and Stefula called the Secret Service requesting an investigation of Linda's allegations.

The Secret Service did interview both Hopkins and Linda but apparently did not pursue the matter any further. This is hardly surprising, but what's interesting is Hopkins' reaction, and the reactions of his fellow UFO enthusiasts.

Hopkins was furious, and I received a letter from the Hyneck Center [a UFO research organization] rebuking me ... I gather that their private mythology had just collided with real-world considerations, and that was none too pleasant for them.

After Hansen and his colleagues published their highly critical report of the Napolitano affair,

Hopkins and his supporters wasted little time in replying. The March/April 1993 issue of the Hyneck Center's magazine International UFO Reporter was almost entirely devoted to personal attacks on us. Hopkins made a number of false statements about us, and though we informed him and the magazine of them, no apology or correction ever appeared. Nevertheless I found his vehement denunciation, including profanity, quite hilarious.

One of Hopkins' diatribes concluded, "the soul of George Hansen is, essentially, the soul of a hater."

Hansen observes,

After our exposé, Hopkins seemed even more firmly committed to the case.... For several years, the Linda case captured the imagination of ufologists and garnered endorsements from many of them. By the time Hopkins' book [Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions] appeared in 1996, their interest and support had faded.... Some reviewers even appeared slightly embarrassed, and a number of ufologists seemed to want to forget the affair....

Some have objected that the hoax explanation is not plausible because there is no reasonable motive for such an extended effort. This is a common refrain, and in my investigations of other paranormal deceptions, I've often heard the questions "Why would anyone perpetrate a hoax? What motive could there be?" After a few experiences investigating them, I discovered that motives are often difficult to discern and comprehend.

I admit that the motives in the Napolitano case are a mystery, but some speculation might ease concerns about them. Perhaps Linda began with a relatively innocent tall tale that got out of hand.... As the case became known, Linda was mentioned in magazines, invited to conferences, appeared on TV, was provided a bodyguard, and even dined with royalty (the Prince of Liechtenstein was friendly with Hopkins)....

The Napolitano affair is an important example because the field's leaders vetted the case and committed their views to writing. Hopkins shared his evidence with them, and subsequently Walter Andrus, Jerry Clark, David Jacobs, and John Mack all supported the integrity of Linda and her story....

Hansen then addresses the question of how seemingly sophisticated investigators like Hopkins could get "hoodwinked." He observes that the UFO researchers already held beliefs that were only confirmed and reinforced by Linda's story. Moreover,

grandiosity frequently accompanies conspiratorial thinking and paranoid belief. That occurred in the Linda case, and the hoaxers capitalized splendidly on it. One of Hopkins' abductees was chosen by the aliens for their demonstration of power to earth's political leaders. Hopkins was thereby cast in a central role in the drama, and his colleagues would share in the glory of proving to the world the reality of the ETs. This would be the ultimate accomplishment for any ufologist. Even if there was only a slim chance of the case being proven, the payoff was extraordinary, and it would make their lives' work worth all the effort.

There is another reason that Hopkins and his supporters failed to critically examine the evidence. At some unconscious level, they must have recognized their hopes and beliefs to be unrealistic. To the extent that they vaguely understood this, it was to their credit. Had they pushed for a federal investigation, and Linda was proven to be lying, they would have looked silly. If they firmly believed in a vast government conspiracy, they might have joined a survivalist anti-government group. It was to their benefit that they did not act in accordance with their expressed beliefs.

Despite the indications of their unconscious doubts about the case, they made ludicrous statements supporting it, and that remains puzzling. The victims' actions suggest that they were almost playing along with a hoax. They seemed to unconsciously subscribe to the agenda and carry out their roles, sometimes with great vigor....

Hopkins' partisans have dedicated their lives to UFO research; they identify with the field, and others identify the field with them. These people are inseparable from those roles.... The leaders firmly believed in the value of ufology, despite its shabby treatment by establishment science.... Hopkins' associates tried to uphold ufology's reputation and defend its institutions. In contrast, Stefula and I ... were seen as outsiders and troublemakers trying to besmirch its status. That perception was not altogether wrong.... My role was that of an outsider, and I had no commitment to the field as it was formally organized in the U.S. Our side had no institutional affiliation to defend. Our opponents understandably viewed us as people who could not be trusted.

I am not saying they consciously weighed and evaluated their social roles when they supported Hopkins. The victims were unable to step outside their roles as defenders of ufology and examine matters in a more detached manner. This was probably exacerbated by the field's marginality. Marginal groups usually need members to strongly identify with them in order that the groups remain viable.... With marginality, paranoia can emerge, which may serve to draw the group together and unite it, but it can also undercut rational reality testing ...

Hansen goes on to make some comparisons between fantasy role-playing games and ufology. He acknowledges that there are important differences between the two areas, but observes that in both cases there are "liminal features" -- a "blurring of fantasy and reality," participation in a "drama," the use of "creative imagination," and the tapping of "archetypal images." In comparison with role-playing games,

Ufology is more unstructured; there are fewer rules about what is and is not possible, and the powers of the otherworld figures are almost unbounded. The UFO phenomena can happen without warning, at any time or any place. The ETs can be anywhere, and some ufologists believe that ETs tag certain people and track them for their entire lives. There is no escape. Paranoia is rampant, with a fear of the ETs or the government, or of ETs and government working together...

Both ufology and [Dungeons & Dragons] allow direct, immediate involvement with powerful otherworld beings and mythological motifs. Both endeavors have been known to engross the participants. Most "players" are able to successfully detach themselves from involvement, but occasionally the "game" becomes obsessive and interferes with real-world pursuits. The problems are far more severe with UFO phenomena than with [fantasy role-playing games]....

The Napolitano case is essentially an unbounded version of Dungeons & Dragons. The victims interpreted the hoaxers' handiwork as due to beings with virtually unlimited magical powers. They believed that ETs could pass through walls, make themselves invisible, and even control world events. The magical beings included not only the ET aliens, but also the pantheon of agents of an unreachable, evil government conspiracy determined to prevent humankind's knowledge of the ETs. Thus the interactions of Hopkins, et al., with the hoaxers conform with those between humans and gods. Humans question and provoke the gods only at the greatest peril. The proper approach is to appease, mollify and supplicate them. It should be no surprise that the simplest reality tests of the Napolitano story were not made. Hopkins' failure to search for witnesses actually makes sense in this context....

Observers might now see Hopkins and his supporters as deserving only scorn and derision. That would not be completely fair. Hopkins should be given credit for daring to study matters shunned by orthodox science. His efforts, writings, and life provide abundant material for analysis. Further, Hopkins has a true interest in aiding UFO abductees, and he has spent enormous time and effort in that. Unlike professional therapists who profit from the afflictions of others, Hopkins assists abductees without charge. He is exceptionally dedicated, and his good intentions probably made him more vulnerable than he otherwise would have been.

Almost all leaders of U.S. ufology remain oblivious to the phenomenon's nature. But this has nothing to do with their IQ, education, or professional achievements in other areas. Actually, high accomplishment in established fields may make them more vulnerable, as they may assume that the rational methods effective in those areas will yield results on the UFO problem. When they pursue the UFO topic, they enter an unbounded, liminal domain, unaware of the dangers.

I don't want to confine this discussion only to UFOs, a subject I know (and care) little about. I think many of the same points are applicable to issues that more frequently crop up on this blog. One of those issues is Victor Zammit's ongoing investigation of the medium David Thompson.

To be clear, the points made in this part of the essay are solely my own, not George Hansen's; I have not discussed the matter with him and am speaking only for myself. It does seem to me, however, that several strange features of the Zammit-Thompson matter can be illuminated by the above analysis.

Note that in both the Linda Napolitano case and the David Thompson case, certain obvious avenues of investigation were not followed. No eyewitness reports of Linda's abduction were sought, just as no escape-proof methods of restraining Mr. Thompson have been tried.

When outside critics suggested contacting the police in the Napolitano case, the insiders were horrified and panicky, probably because bringing the police into the affair would threaten their elaborate, shared fantasy. Similarly, when an outside critic (namely, me) suggested bringing in an escape artist to properly secure Mr. Thompson, Mr. Zammit responded with vitriol and denunciations.

The ufologists in the Napolitano case no doubt hoped that it would prove the existence of ETs to a skeptical world, vindicating their lifelong efforts. Mr. Zammit has said repeatedly that his work with Mr. Thompson constitutes the most important evidence ever produced for life after death, that it will have "world shattering" repercussions, and that it will convince "hundreds of millions" of people, having effects comparable to the Copernican Revolution.

Budd Hopkins and others responded to critics of the Napolitano case with personal attacks, psychologizing ("the soul of a hater"), and childishly vehement language, a pattern unfortunately repeated by Victor Zammit in his responses to me, Marcel Cairo, and others.

Other ufologists rushed to Hopkins' defense because it was seen as important to create a common front against skeptical outsiders, just as some afterlife partisans seem to have defended Mr. Zammit because they regard him as an important, high-profile figure that the movement cannot afford to lose.

Hopkins and his colleagues viewed the ETs and the government agents as almost magical beings of unlimited power, who had to be handled with extreme care. Similarly, Mr. Zammit and his Circle of the Silver Cord seem to view the spirits who work through Mr. Thompson as immensely powerful and somewhat unpredictable beings whose every demand must be honored, lest the phenomena be discontinued. When the "spirits" told the circle to remove a large number of audio files from the circle's Web site, the circle immediately complied. Infrared photography is not used in the seances because the "spirits" will not allow it. Audio recordings of the seances indicate that the sitters are extremely reluctant to press the "spirits" for detailed answers or to pursue unsatisfactory answers that the "spirits" provide. To paraphrase Hansen:

Thus the interactions of Zammit, et al., with the spirits conform with those between humans and gods. Humans question and provoke the gods only at the greatest peril. The proper approach is to appease, mollify and supplicate them. It should be no surprise that the simplest reality tests of David Thompson's mediumship were not made. The circle's failure to ask hard questions, use infrared, or hire an escape artist actually makes sense in this context....

I should add that George Hansen's paragraph in praise of Budd Hopkins can apply just as well, in my opinion, to Victor Zammit: He should be given credit for studying these matters; he has a true interest in supplying evidence for the afterlife; he has made no money for his efforts, and indeed has spent a large sum; he is "exceptionally dedicated, and his good intentions may have made him more vulnerable than he otherwise would have been."

Of course, role-playing and self-delusion (or shared collective delusions) are by no means limited to the paranormal community. Similar psychological dynamics can be found in skeptical organizations. We might even ask whether all of our activities constitute role-playing (and even delusion) to some extent.

But that's a topic for another day.

---

Hansen et al's critique of the Napolitano case is here.

Another investigator weighs in here.

A supporter of Linda's claims writes about the case here.

George P. Hansens maintains a blog here.

Abduction introduction

I'm not very interested in UFOs or alien abductions, and I'm inclined to treat the latter, in particular, with a high degree of skepticism. Nevertheless, at a used bookstore sometime ago, I picked up a copy of John E. Mack's controversial bestseller Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, and recently I started looking through it.

Regardless of what anyone thinks about alien abduction claims or the people who make them, Mack showed considerable courage in taking their reports seriously and risking his academic prestige in the process. (He was a psychiatrist at Harvard and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize.) In his introductory remarks to the 1995 paperback edition, Mack addresses skeptical criticisms of his work, which are quite similar to skeptical critiques of other paranormal claims. What he has to say is worth reading -- and so, in abridged form, here it is:

----

The most archetypal expression of the cry of anti-science came from science writer James Gleick in a review in the New Republic magazine (Gleick 1994). Gleick called the "alien-abduction mythology" a "leading case of the anti-rational, anti-science cults that are flourishing with dismaying vigor in the United States." He lumps the alien abduction phenomenon together with "paranormals who bend spoons, parapsychologists who sense spiritual auras, crystal healers, believers in reincarnation" and "psychic crime-solvers" as well as "tarot readers and crystal ball gazers."

In a similar vein psychoanalyst Sandford Gifford, in a review of my book for a psychoanalytic journal (Gifford, in press), called it a "subversive assault on psychoanalysis as a science" (he assumes that the phenomenon must be some sort of product of the unconscious mind), and wrote of the abduction experiencers as individuals "holding irrational beliefs that are not shared by the 'compact majority.'" In that sense, he continued, "they are 'crazy' in the same way as believers in Creationism, faith healing, thought transference, or the end of the world on a specific date."...

I believe these critiques reflect a misunderstanding of the nature of rationality and reason, and even of science itself. For what the worldview implicit in these statements requires is the a priori exclusion of vast amounts of data simply because that information is in conflict with that point of view. This, I believe, is a far more irrational, and even dangerous, approach to knowledge than to allow information from every possible legitimate source to come into our minds before applying rationality and reason in assessing this information once we have "let it in." To exclude data because it does not fit a particular view of reality can only, in the end, arrest the progress of science and keep us ignorant.

The worldview that Gleick, Gifford, and [others] espouse is what is usually called the "materialist paradigm." According to this view, which until recently has dominated mainstream science (although now it is increasingly being questioned, even in contemporary physics), there is only one hard reality, namely that which is observable through the sensory/empirical mode. This dualistic approach would separate cleanly the observer from the observed, subject from object. In so doing, all of the information about other or "unseen" realities that has become available to us through anthropology, comparative religion, parapsychology, consciousness research, and various uses of nonordinary states inside and outside the laboratory -- to name but a few sources of data -- would, of necessity, have to be excluded. This worldview and its accompanying restrictive epistemology would, in short, eliminate human consciousness and experience as legitimate ways of knowing about reality.

Of the many responses which were more open to my material, Kathryn Robinson's reaction to Gleick's review (Robinson 1994) was one of the most telling. Addressing the restrictiveness of the worldview that Gleick's assault reflected she wrote, "scientific discovery is not a matter of jamming data into existing categories; it's about supporting new ones. It's about admitting how much we don't know -- in marked contrast to the hubris of a rationalist such as Gleick, who argues that any phenomenon that's not available to his senses must therefore be a sham. Gleick's arrogance," she notes, "would perhaps approach respectability if there were no mysteries left to science." Psychologist William James made the same point a hundred years ago. "The ideal of every science," James wrote, "is that of a closed and completed system of truth... Phenomena unclassifiable within a system are therefore paradoxical absurdities and must be held untrue (James 1896)."...

This book provides the most detailed accounts we have today from people who report abduction experiences. These reports, I believe, raise profound questions about how we experience the world around us and the very nature of that world. The information that I obtained during the several years of this investigation has been communicated in case after case with such power and consistency that a body of data formed which seemed to point clearly to the experiential truth of the abduction phenomenon, whatever its ultimate source might prove to be. The fact that what the experiencers are describing simply cannot be possible according to our traditional scientific view would, it seems to me, more sensibly, yes rationally, call for a change in that perspective, an expansion of our notions of reality, rather than the "jamming" of "data into existing categories" that some critics would have us do.

John E. Mack, M.D., Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens (1995 paperback edition)

It's alive!

Here's a strange little article from the Associated Press. Why strange? Let's take a look.

The article's headline proclaims that artificial life is "likely" within three to five years. Then there's a quote from Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of a chemical firm:

"Creating protocells has the potential to shed new light on our place in the universe," Bedau said. "This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role."

This is the first oddity. How does designing artificial life in a lab remove a fundamental mystery of creation? Are we supposed to assume that life originated on Earth in the same way that it originated in the petri dish? But this is clearly incorrect. The molecular biologists working on this project are consciously designing this new life. They are planning it out and putting the pieces together in a deliberate way. As fascinating as this work may be, how can it shed light on what is presumed to be an accidental, non-designed, unplanned event - namely, the origin of life on this planet?

The quote also contains a second oddity in the phrase "one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in our universe." One of the few? It seems to me that the deeper we look, the more mysteries we find. There is not only the mystery of life's origin as a purported result of random processes. There is also the mystery of the basic laws of nature and the cosmic constants - how they were determined and why they are so curiously "fine-tuned" to produce an orderly, stable, habitable universe. There is the mystery of quantum mechanics, which seems to show that the mind impinges on physical reality in bizarre ways, and may even call into question the nature of physical reality as such. (Is it just a projection of the mind? A few physicists think so.) There is the mystery of consciousness and its relationship to the brain, the so-called "hard problem" of neurology - how do electrochemical impulses become thoughts? How does a physical system give rise to a nonphysical phenomenon like consciousness? And there is the ultimate mystery, existence itself. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why does anything exist at all? And why are our minds capable of understanding it, of formulating laws and equations that express basic cosmological relationships so elegantly?

It seems doubtful that laboratory-created life will resolve any of these mysteries.

Next we are told:

Bedau figures there are three major hurdles to creating synthetic life:

* A container, or membrane, for the cell to keep bad molecules out, allow good ones, and the ability to multiply.

* A genetic system that controls the functions of the cell, enabling it to reproduce and mutate in response to environmental changes.

* A metabolism that extracts raw materials from the environment as food and then changes it into energy.

Here is the third oddity. We were informed that artificial life is likely in the very near future, but these "three major hurdles" sound pretty formidable. In particular, how is the "genetic system" going to be put together from scratch? The DNA of even the simplest life form contains thousands of genes in highly specific patterns that are by no means fully understood.

One of the leaders in the field, Jack Szostak at Harvard Medical School, predicts that within the next six months, scientists will report evidence that the first step -- creating a cell membrane -- is "not a big problem." Scientists are using fatty acids in that effort.

To me, this is yet another oddity. From what I understand, the cell membrane is an extremely complicated affair. One molecular biologist has made the argument that the membrane, rather than the nucleus, should be considered the true brain of the cell, because it serves as a gatekeeper, selecting which molecules are admitted and which are kept out. The admitted molecules, in turn, activate specific genes in the DNA molecule, which would otherwise remain unexpressed (dormant). Fatty acids certainly play a role in all this, but the system is immensely complex.

Szostak is also optimistic about the next step -- getting nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, to form a working genetic system.

His idea is that once the container is made, if scientists add nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution could simply take over.

"We aren't smart enough to design things, we just let evolution do the hard work and then we figure out what happened," Szostak said.

This is the fifth and, to me, the oddest oddity. Apparently the hope is that the nucleotides will arrange themselves into the correct genetic sequences through "Darwinian evolution." How this is supposed to happen is entirely unclear to me. Darwinian evolution involves competition among living organisms for survival. Nucleotides are not living organisms and are not competing for survival. Now, I know that some people have theorized that the equivalent of Darwinian evolution takes place at the molecular level, but even if this is true, it would not necessarily result in a meaningful genetic code. It would simply result in maximizing the numbers of the hardier molecules and minimizing the rest. There is, I would think, a vast difference between a competition that thins out the molecular herd by disposing of the less viable molecules and a competition that actually creates a genetic sequence.

Remember that DNA is, essentially, encoded information. It is a storehouse of blueprints, in effect - blueprints that tell the cell how to build new proteins, which in turn are used to repair cell damage, power cell metabolism, eliminate cell waste, etc. It will be interesting indeed to see if just "add[ing] nucleotides in the right proportions" will be enough to produce a genetic library of this kind. It is a little like dumping a large number of letters from the alphabet into a box and expecting them to form themselves into words, sentences, and paragraphs. (Actually, to duplicate the informational content of a DNA molecule, they would have to form themselves into the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.)

Of course, I'm no biochemist, and maybe in three to five years the promised artificial life forms will appear. But I would suggest that if and when the news media report this event, you very carefully check the fine print. More than fifty years ago the Miller-Urey experiment showed that the building blocks of life, amino acids, could be created in a lab. It was confidently assumed that further steps, from amino acids to proteins to cells, would follow in due course. This has not happened. As molecular biologist Robert Shapiro points out, it's a long, long way from creating amino acids to creating proteins (complex chains of amino acids) ... and a very long, long way indeed from creating proteins to creating DNA (or RNA) and life.

Shapiro writes:

My own PhD thesis advisor, Robert B. Woodward, was awarded the Nobel Prize for his brilliant syntheses of quinine, cholesterol, chlorophyll and many other substances. It mattered little if kilograms of starting material were required to produce milligrams of product. The point was the demonstration that humans could produce, however inefficiently, substances found in nature. Unfortunately, neither chemists nor laboratories were present on the early Earth to produce RNA ...

The analogy that comes to mind is that of a golfer, who having played a golf ball through an 18-hole course, then assumed that the ball could also play itself around the course in his absence. He had demonstrated the possibility of the event; it was only necessary to presume that some combination of natural forces (earthquakes, winds, tornadoes and floods, for example) could produce the same result, given enough time. No physical law need be broken for spontaneous RNA formation to happen, but the chances against it are so immense, that the suggestion implies that the non-living world had an innate desire to generate RNA. The majority of origin-of-life scientists who still support the RNA-first theory either accept this concept (implicitly, if not explicitly) or feel that the immensely unfavorable odds were simply overcome by good luck.

We may be only five years away from artificial life ... or we may be seeing an example of the increasingly common trend of overpromising and overhyping in the realm of genetics. Time will tell.

No lights, camera, action!

Here's something from Victor Zammit's site. It was posted on August 3, but I didn't notice it till now.  In his typical understated style, Zammit reports:

GUARANTEED: A WORLD SHATTERING TELEVISION EXPERIENCE!

The most sensational interview in television history: some time in the near future, for the very first time in television history, a professional, open minded skeptic television investigator - with a professional track record of successful television interview shows, will be interviewing a materialized entity from the afterlife. Imagine: someone on earth interviewing someone from the afterlife who has been physically dead for over a hundred years! Imagine hearing a clear male voice from the afterlife! Imagine the interviewer asking the afterlife entity about the conditions in the afterlife. Imagine the critical information coming from someone who is in the afterlife with full consciousness, who has high intelligence and is able to articulate verbally the information coming directly from the afterlife. This is a world-first, something that will shake the world out of its materialistic complacency. Any nonsense that it is fraud will be seen as ridiculous because it is intended to get professional psychologists and empiricists with the highest credibility as witnesses. We will let hundreds of millions of viewers around the world experience for themselves the world shattering dialogue coming directly from the afterlife. We will let the viewers around the world be the jury to decide about the sensational interview; we will let YOU the viewer decide for yourself about the messages that come directly from the afterlife. We want YOU, not others who want to make the decisions, to do the thinking for you - but YOU decide about the most devastating afterlife evidence ever presented on television. More about this sensational experience later on.

Well, we'll see. For now, I only want to point out a couple of things.

First, unless this broadcast attracts the same audience as the Super Bowl or the World Cup, it will not be seen by "hundreds of millions."

Second,  Zammit says, "Imagine hearing a clear male voice from the afterlife!" But we allegedly don't have to imagine it, since he has been taping such voices and making them available online for over a year. How does the voice become more convincing just because it's part of a TV show?

Third, I have to assume that David Thompson, the medium, will be operating in complete darkness as usual, with no infrared photography permitted. How then, can the "professional psychologists and empiricists with the highest credibility" serve as effective witnesses, when they won't be able to see anything?

Zammit has been proclaiming these seances to be "world shattering" events for more than a year. So far, the world remains unshattered. Until the controls are tightened, few people are going to be convinced that the materializations are more than just a trick.

Instead of arranging TV interviews for Thompson, Zammit would be better advised to hire an escape artist to secure the medium in escape-proof bonds. This is the obvious next step. Why hasn't it been taken? What is David Thompson afraid of?

Angels & demons

Yesterday was Sunday and I wasn't in church. Not being a member of any religious denomination or any particular faith tradition, I have no church to attend.

From what I hear, church attendance is down throughout much of the Western world, and there is a looming shortage of priests and ministers. No doubt the various church scandals are partly responsible for these developments, as is the predominantly secular tone of our time. But perhaps another reason may be found in an unlikely place -- the Reading Guide included in the Catholic Study Bible (1990 edition), intended for believing Christians.

Here are some excerpts from John J. Collins' discussion of the Book of Daniel:

The stories of the fiery furnace and the lions' den, like all miracle stories, are meant to arouse a sense of wonder. They are not realistic stories.

Another trademark of the apocalypse is the presence of a mediating angel.... The presence of the angel emphasizes the supernatural character of the experience and adds to the sense of mystery.

Some modern Christians find the prominence of angels and demons in apocalyptic literature to be a problem.... Most people in the ancient world believed that the heavens were peopled with supernatural beings... The modern secular world, with its scientific approach to the heavens, has little us for such beings. An apocalypse, however is not a scientific treatise but a work of imagination.... Angels provide a vivid way of dramatizing providence or divine control. To understand an apocalypse, we should ask, not, "Do these angels exist?" but, "What do they stand for?" and especially, "If we imagine a world with angels, what effect does this have on the way we view human life?"

The problem is that the apocalyptic view of the world is no longer acceptable. Angels and demons are not part of our universe ... Much of the "information" provide by an apocalypse is now incredible if taken literally. It still has value, however, if we regard it a symbolism ...

Intimidated by secularism, Christianity's intellectuals apologize for the tenets of their faith, saying in so many words, "We don't really mean it, we know it's all fairy tales and fables that no educated person could believe." Then they wonder why their churches are empty and the seminaries are running short of applicants.

No, I'm not saying that all Bible stories should be taken literally. I think large parts of the Bible are fiction. But what Christianity does need to take seriously are the spiritualistic elements of its religious tradition. It makes no particular difference whether or not Adam and Eve were real people, or Jonah was swallowed by a whale; such stories can be read symbolically, as was (I suspect) their authors' intention. But when miracles, angels, and demons are denied, what's left of the faith? Only a remote, intellectualized, and deracinated conception of God, which may be philosophically sophisticated but which offers little by way of practical consolation.

The irony is that there is good evidence for miracles, for angels, and for demons -- evidence in the form of paranormal phenomena. Psychic healing is a kind of miracle, as are clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition, and psychokinesis. Mediumship and other forms of after-death communication, as well as deathbed visions and near death experiences, offer evidence of nonphysical beings that could be classified as angels or, in their more mischievous or malignant forms, demons.

It is not necessary to interpret every miracle story or every tale of a premonitory dream or an angelic visitation as a factual record of a real occurrence. What is necessary, if the Judeo-Christian tradition is to be taken seriously at all, is not to dismiss such stories should out of hand. Some of them probably are recollections (perhaps garbled or embellished) of real events. Others were probably invented, but were cast in their current form because of a general acceptance of psi phenomena in the culture in which they originated. To say that all of them are fictitious and symbolic, and that none of them represent anything that the modern mind can accept, is to peremptorily surrender to secularism.

And you don't fill the pews by waving a white flag.

---

P.S. I should probably add that I regard the Book of Daniel itself as fictional. It was apparently written in the second century BC but "backdated" to a much earlier era.

Collins' remarks, however, apply to more than just this one book. They apply to Biblical writings generally. 

Getting in touch with our inner idiot

I think it was Arthur Ellison who compared the subconscious to an idiot savant. His point was that the subconscious has vast abilities but limited intelligence. Basically, the subconscious is like a rather stupid child who believes whatever you tell him. This is true even if you don't consciously believe what you're saying.

For instance, one way I motivate myself to write is to tell myself that I have to do just two paragraphs. Two paragraphs, that's all. Hardly anything. A postcard might be longer than that. No excuse not to do two little paragraphs.

Now, consciously I know that I am playing a trick on myself. I know that my real intention is to write more than two paragraphs. I know that once I have written two paragraphs, I will probably be on enough of a roll to keep going and write two or three pages. So I know I am lying when I promise that my output will be only two paragraphs, nothing more.

Nevertheless, the trick works. I do feel motivated, do start writing. My subconscious buys it - every time.

The same approach can have negative consequences, too. Suppose you try to motivate yourself by saying, "This work I've done just isn't good enough." Consciously you're trying to get yourself to do better. But your subconscious does not grasp such subtleties. It hears, "This isn't good enough," and concludes, "It's no good." Then it makes you feel depressed. Instead of getting pumped up, you feel deflated - all because your subconscious is so literal-minded.

If your subconscious is dumb in some ways, it has prodigious talents in other areas. It's well known that if you can't remember a certain fact, the best thing to do is tell your subconscious to retrieve it, and then consciously forget all about it. In a short time the answer will come to you - delivered by your subconscious, which has just sorted through millions of bits of data to find the one item you requested.

The real power of the subconscious is most apparent in cases of hypnotism. I think that when a person is deeply hypnotized, he basically allows the hypnotist's consciousness to substitute for his own. In other words, the hypnotized person's consciousness is shut down, and his subconscious is responding directly to the hypnotist's suggestions or commands . That's why hypnotism can be so powerful. If the hypnotist tells a person that his arm is rigid and immovable, then almost no amount of force will move the arm. If the hypnotist says that the arm is weak and helpless, even the slightest pressure will move it.

The subconscious, under hypnosis, can even persuade people they're feeling no pain during invasive surgery, without anesthesia. It really is an idiot savant - dumb and gullible, yet awesomely effective.

Are people who commune with "spirit guides" actually in touch with their own subconscious? Or do their guides speak through the subconscious simply because they encounter less interference that way? Or is the subconscious itself part of a larger spirit world that we enter only in meditation and dreams?

Can the subconscious alter physical reality? If what we call reality is, in some respects, a projection of the mind, then presumably altering our subconscious beliefs will alter reality. But maybe reality is a shared projection of many different consciousnesses, in which case changing our own subconscious may not have much of an effect on the whole. Or maybe reality is not a projection of the mind at all. Maybe the dualists are right, and there is a sharp division between mind and matter.

I don't know. I'll have to leave these questions with my subconscious and see what it comes up with.