Michael Prescott's Blog

The French objection

Conservative writer David French recently penned an article for the National Review website called “Post-Christian America: Gullible, Intolerant, and Superstitious.” I thought it was worth commenting on.

French begins by criticizing the view held by many secular humanists that if Christianity is defeated, society will become more rational. He writes:

Many of the best-educated and least-religious people I knew weren’t all that reasonable. They held to downright irrational views about reality. I remember an elite-educated secular friend in Philadelphia who scoffed at my wife’s Christian faith; this friend was also convinced that her child had an “indigo aura” that imbued him with special gifts. I recall conversations with Harvard Law School classmates who laughed at the New Testament but thought reincarnation was “cool.” And how can I forget the strange sight of Harvard students walking in and out of the neighborhood witchcraft store?

He goes on to cite a New York Times story reporting that “America’s less religious citizens are far more likely to believe in things such as ghosts and UFOs than people who attend church.” The Times writer locates the motive for such beliefs in “the pursuit of meaning. The less religious participants [in a series of studies] were, we found, the less they perceived their lives as meaningful. This lack of meaning was associated with a desire to find meaning, which in turn was associated with belief in U.F.O.s and alien visitors.”

French ads that “post-Christian Europeans have their own tendencies to believe in elves, trolls, and mental telepathy.”

After some musings on the deleterious consequences for national politics and civil discourse, French concludes:

Human beings are hard-wired to search for meaning and purpose. As we conduct that search, will our nation and culture continue to value and respect the faith that grants hope of redemption, patience through present suffering, and a means to discern between good and evil? Or will it continue to shun the way, the truth, and the life in favor of a grab-bag of ghosts, UFOs, and wishful thoughts? The choice isn’t between reason and religion. It’s all too often between religion and superstition. Post-Christian America will be a less rational place.

There’s a lot to unpack here.

First, French is not wrong to say that people – or at least very many people – have an innate need to find meaning in life. While there do seem to be individuals who never give a thought about any higher purpose and just go through life from day to day, they are probably an exception to the general rule.

Second, it seems pretty clear (as French suggests) that some people have merely taken the Christian hope of a Savior descending from on high to redeem our beleaguered planet, and have reimagined it as benevolent ETs descending in spaceships, like Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still, to rescue us from ourselves. 

Third, it’s true that Christianity has developed a complex and erudite theology that can serve as a comprehensive explanation of good and evil, happiness and suffering, and the ultimate purpose of human life. Meanwhile, popular alternatives do not offer anything nearly as intellectually nourishing or sophisticated.

That said, some of French’s other views stand on less solid ground.

For one thing, he seems to assume that people could find what they want and need in Christianity, but that they perversely turn away from it and seek less satisfying alternatives. What’s more likely is that they have tried Christianity, or at least looked into it, and found that it simply does not satisfy them. It’s not that they’re searching for meaning because they’ve given up Christianity; it’s that they gave up Christianity because it didn’t answer their quest.

Undoubtedly, people who open themselves up to non-mainstream spiritual options are at risk of accepting dubious or outright silly ideas. But this is simply the price paid for exploring unfamiliar terrain.

More important, it’s an error – in fact, a logical fallacy – to lump together all unorthodox beliefs as equally baseless. “Elves” and “mental telepathy” do not occupy the same position on the spectrum of empirical evidence and scientific research. As far as I know, there's no evidence or research regarding elves, while there is more than a century of evidence of and research into mental telepathy, including such robust and massive studies as the ganzfeld and autoganzfeld experiments. Even such an outspoken Skeptic as Richard Wiseman has stated:

I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven, but [this] begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do.

Wiseman later clarified that he didn’t mean to single out remote viewing but was speaking about psi in general: “It is a slight misquote, because I was using the term in the more general sense of ESP – that is, I was not talking about remote viewing per se, but rather Ganzfeld, etc as well. I think that they do meet the usual standards for a normal claim, but are not convincing enough for an extraordinary claim.”

Nobody could say that by the standards of any other area of science, the existence of elves has been proven.

Or take French’s conjunction of indigo children and reincarnation. The notion of indigo children is trendy in certain New Age circles, but I don’t think it’s supported by any hard evidence. On the other hand, reincarnation is supported by surprisingly powerful evidence, mainly in the form of the spontaneous recollections of past lives by young children. Thousands of such cases have been identified and documented worldwide, some of them extremely striking.

While the current spirituality movement undeniably lacks the intellectual heft of Christianity, with its legacy of world-class thinkers like St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, it is still in its early days. It’s arguable that we’re experiencing a paradigm shift from traditional religion to a new, more empirically grounded spiritual outlook that will require new philosophical insights and explications. Transition periods are always uncomfortable and messy, but in the long run, they can result in progress.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that, for all the admirable theological complexities of Christianity, the religion is ultimately founded on stories like this:

After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”

“Yes, he does,” he replied.

When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?”

“From others,” Peter answered.

“Then the children are exempt,” Jesus said to him. “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”

(Matthew 17:24—27)

French tells us that the choice is “between religion and superstition.” It may be more correct to say the choice is between age-old superstitions codified as respectable theologies on the one hand, and, on the other, challenging new approaches based on present-day observation, experience, and research. 

The Internet vs. the Zeitgeist

Many years ago I read an odd little book called The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, by Leonard Shlain. It’s one of those desperately magisterial tomes like Julian Jaynes’ Origin of Consciousness — an overview by a nonspecialist attempting to assimilate a raft of information from disparate disciplines into a new overarching theory — and like Jaynes’ book, it’s worth reading even if most of its conclusions are probably wrong.

Shlain’s theory is that the advent of widespread literacy, especially in alphabetic languages, brings about changes in brain function, shifting the dominant hemisphere from right to left. He believed that the right hemisphere is associated with “female”traits while the left is associated with “male” traits; thus, the switch from one hemisphere to the other precipitated societal changes that worked to the disadvantage of women. In the original period of alphabetic literacy, the old goddess religion, matriarchal and pacific, was suppressed and replaced by new god-centered, patriarchal, militaristic faiths. In the much later period after the invention of the printing press, when literacy was rapidly extended to much of the population instead of being limited to an elite, there were further reactions against women, including the witch-burning manias that flared up unpredictably around Europe. Finally, Slain speculates that the rise of movies, television, and the Internet — all of which place more of an emphasis on visual information — will cause a shift back toward equality of the sexes and a more peaceful world.

I am skeptical of the gender assignments given to the two sides of the brain, and even more skeptical when Shlain extends his thesis to the cells of the eye, distinguishing between “male” cones and “female” rods. I am also skeptical that the goddess religion, as he describes it, even existed; while fertility statuettes with exaggerated female features turn up in many prehistoric sites, it’s a bit of a stretch to infer a matriarchal society, much less a time of Edenic peace. We don’t even know if these female figures were goddesses or simply charms, perhaps used to ensure a favorable pregnancy.

Though Shlain’s thesis is far from proven, one aspect of it has stuck with me – the idea that changes in communication technology can rewire the brain, with destabilizing societal effects.

Which brings us to what’s going on today.

Throughout much of the developed world, and certainly in the United States, we see intensifying polarization between increasingly extremist and uncompromising ends of the political spectrum. On a daily basis we’re treated to public displays of hysteria – wild outrage expressed by both left and right, though for different reasons. No area of life is off-limits. Escapist movies about comic-book superheroes give rise to charges of racism and sexism. Twitter and Facebook have become ideological battlegrounds. Restaurants offering ethnic foods are flashpoints for controversies about “cultural appropriation” (as if all culture is not appropriated from somewhere). Sports shows and teams are boycotted for political reasons. Everything is a hot button issue.

Many explanations for this new intensity in our political life have been advanced. It is said that the middle class is being “squeezed”; yet statistics indicate that while both middle-class and lower-income shares of the population have shrunk over the past 35 years, the percentages of Americans defined as upper-middle class and rich have grown – suggesting the middle class is contracting mainly because some of its members are migrating to a higher tax bracket.



Source: Urban Institute study

Or it’s said that middle-class affluence simply has less to offer us than it once did. But this seems to be a case of looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. Recently, in doing research for a time travel novella that takes place in 1972, I was intrigued to discover how much lower the standard of living was for middle-class people in that era. Houses, for example, were significantly smaller and had fewer amenities, while many ubiquitous modern-day items would have been considered science-fiction. A computer you carry in your pocket, which connects you to databases throughout the world and incidentally serves as a videophone? Household robots that vacuum or mop your floor? Wall-size flatscreen TVs with hundreds of channels, many commercial free and uncensored, in high definition? Self-driving cars, prosthetic limbs almost indistinguishable from the real things, medical treatments using genetic engineering to target specific cells, an orbiting telescope that sees to the ends of the universe …?

No matter how you look at it, our opportunities for leisure, recreation, and discovery are greater than ever. And the average middle-class American today lives like a sci-fi character in a '70s TV show  

It is also claimed that people are frustrated by unchanging social problems such as race and gender discrimination; but again, this claim doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. There is far less discrimination in the developed world today than in any previous generation. As an example, a newspaper article I came across from 1972 reported casually that the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks had just voted to reaffirm their policy of not admitting blacks as members, a policy that was only rescinded in 1976 under intense legal pressure. The same newspaper regularly published the names of divorced couples in what I took to be a sign of the social stigma attached to divorce. (Mary Tyler Moore's groundbreaking sitcom of that era was originally intended to depict her as a divorcée,  but the network balked at anything so controversial.) Interracial relationships were illegal in many states and virtually unheard of anywhere. Gays had to remain closeted or face ostracism and abuse, including physical attacks. And on and on. No matter how you look at it, society has grown much more open and tolerant. A black president, a serious female presidential candidate, gay marriage – all would have been completely unrealistic 40 years ago.

Crime is down, too. Way down. Parts of New York City that were virtual no-go zones four decades ago are thriving now. Remember the scene in 1973's Live and Let Die when James Bond nearly gets killed in Harlem? That's right - in 1973, Harlem was too dangerous for James Bond. 

And let’s not forget that in 1972 draftees were being sent to fight and die in Vietnam. The casualties that the US accepted in that unpopular war were far higher than US losses in any recent conflict (58,209 American deaths in Vietnam vs. 4,497 in Iraq and 2,356 in Afghanistan), yet the war dragged on for years, and those who opposed it were labeled traitors.

America of forty years ago often seemed to be spiraling into chaos, with assassinations, urban riots, war, Watergate, the energy crisis, sky-high homicide rates, skyjackings, rampant prejudice and closed-mindedness, cult movements, apocalyptic predictions of the End Times, and TV fodder consisting almost exclusively of mind-numbing pap ("the glass teat," Harlan Ellison called it) ... and if we think our present conditions are worse, we are only fooling ourselves. 

But if the external circumstances – the economic, social, political, and cultural climate – have not worsened, and have in fact improved by any objective standard, then why are people becoming so upset about everything, to the point where it can reasonably be argued that we’re experiencing a “cold Civil War”?

People often point to cable TV and the Internet, both of which feed news consumers a steady diet of inflammatory stories while encouraging people to confine themselves to channels or websites that reflect their own biases; as a result, people become trapped in an echo chamber or bubble that reinforces and amplifies their opinions. This is clearly true. But I’m not sure it’s the whole truth, and this leads us back to Leonard Shlain and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess.

It’s at least arguable that the advent of the Internet poses as big a social and psychological challenge as the advent of literacy did for previous societies. I’m not sure anyone yet understands how the brain is affected and changed by the constant processing of online information – not only when one is sitting at a computer, but when one is using a smartphone or any web-connected device. It may not be too far-fetched to think that literacy altered brain function by making the left brain more dominant. Is it possible that the Internet is altering brain function in some new way?

What if the intuitive process of clicking on links and following one link to the next while chasing down snippets of information tends to activate the intuitive faculties of the brain, popularly supposed to reside in the right hemisphere? Perhaps this very process, endlessly and obsessively repeated, has the effect of deemphasizing or inhibiting those qualities associated with the left hemisphere — notably logical reasoning, goal-setting, and objectivity. There is a widely publicized claim that Internet usage correlates with a decline in attention span; though this study may be junk science, it’s hard to deny that the rapidity and convenience of the Internet can make it intolerably frustrating to plow through the pages of a book in search of information. There may be other, more subtle changes in neurological/psychological functioning that are not yet understood or even recognized. Could the surge in diagnoses of attention deficit disorder, autism, and Asperger’s syndrome be related to widespread neurological reprogramming?

Let’s suppose so. Even if most of us aren’t affected that profoundly, we may still feel as if things are somehow getting out of control. The changes in our mental processing may bring on the same kind of anxiety, confusion, mania, and hysteria (think of the witch burnings) that Shlain sees as the historical result of rapid advances in literacy.

In other words, it’s just possible that we are undergoing a massive transition from one mode of consciousness (developed as a result of general alphabetic literacy) to a new mode of consciousness (currently developing in response to the new technology of the Internet). And because we experience this change as something alien, we look for a cause outside ourselves, even though actually it is the inner workings of our mental mechanism that are directly responsible. Feeling confused and lost, we latch on to any convenient bogeyman to explain our chronic insecurity. We don’t hunt witches, but we do harass anyone who thinks differently than we do. Alt-right types mock and insult their critics and spread vicious memes. “Social justice warriors” define anyone who disagrees with them as racist, misogynistic, fascist, etc. The problem is always Someone Else.

By getting wired up to an endless supply of digital information, we may be rewiring our own brains – and experiencing all the unintended side effects that go along with a neurological remodeling job. The trickle of information from books and magazines that we perused in our spare time has become a spurting garden hose of facts, opinions, memes, urban legends, “fake news,” lies, distortions, slanders, and insults, illustrated with vivid images and sounds, 24 hours a day. And our beleaguered brains are melting under the strain.

Again, this is only a speculative hypothesis. It may be all wrong. It’s almost certainly at least partly wrong. But it just might be partly right. It could help to make sense of the rapid and baffling descent into hyper-partisanship, political polarization, and escalating demands for safe spaces and trigger warnings (on the left) and border walls and authoritarian crackdowns (on the right). In an era of relative peace and prosperity, when the West faces no true existential threat remotely comparable to the Axis powers of World War II or the USSR of the Cold War, it is truly strange that we find ourselves coming apart at the seams. We live in what should be seen as a Golden Age, yet we’re obsessed with apocalyptic visions and paranoid fantasies.

Instead of scanning the cultural and political trends of the modern world to understand our anxieties, perhaps we need only direct our attention to the softly glowing screen in front of our face.

Dream a little dream

Here’s some big news: our own longtime commenter Bruce Siegel has written a book – and it’s a good one!

The book is Dreaming the Future: How Our Dreams Prove Psychic Ability is Real, and Why It Matters, and it recounts Bruce's longtime experiment in precognitive dreaming. (The printed book is available now, and a Kindle edition will be out on July 15.) 

Bruce begins by explaining that until he was in his mid-forties he was a knee-jerk skeptic, though not of the militant variety. He simply dismissed all talk of the paranormal as irritating nonsense. But in the early 1990s, his worldview started to change. He writes:

I found myself becoming interested in certain ideas, experiences, and phenomena I had long dismissed, even ridiculed.

For one thing, I began to pay attention to the fact that some of my dreams seemed to correlate with later events in ways that were difficult to explain .…

But despite my newfound openness, I wasn’t blind to the laws of probability. I reasoned that given a large number of dreams and the potential for matching them with an even larger pool of waking events, striking similarities were bound to occur from time to time.

Inspired by J.W. Dunne’s famous 1927 book An Experiment with Time, Bruce decided to document his dreams and see how well they matched up with future events. Ultimately he logged 241 dreams. Remarkably enough, approximately one in four of them came true – “usually within hours.” Some came true almost immediately after waking. This success rate is far above random chance, especially considering the decidedly out-of-the-ordinary subject matter in many of these dreams.

A large part of the book concerns the methods Bruce used to remember his dreams and record them in detail, and the ways in which he improved his methodology. For example, he found that a dream, in order to be worth recording, had to involve something specific and unusual. A dream about eating breakfast had no value in his experiment, because he ate breakfast every day. Recurrent dreams were not helpful, because it could be assumed that, if he dreamed of the same thing over and over, eventually it would have to correlate with something in real life, if only by chance. He also developed precise criteria for distinguishing among dreams of no precognitive value, dreams that might or might not have had precognitive value, and dreams that were definite hits. He explains how he tabulated the statistical results, and how the results might vary if different criteria were applied.

Though Bruce describes a number of his dreams and the real-life observations that correlated with them, he recognizes that the reader is not likely to be completely convinced by someone else’s experience. That’s why the main focus of the book is to encourage us to carry out the experiment for ourselves. He provides a great deal of useful advice on how to get started.

The book inspired me to begin my own experiment. So far, I can’t claim results as good as one in four. I would say I’ve had one likely hit, one "maybe," and the rest have been duds. But I haven’t been doing it for very long, and I’m not yet skilled at remembering my dreams.

Besides the important contribution Dreaming the Future makes to the literature on precognitive dreaming, the book also offers Bruce’s reflections on the wider meaning of it all. In a chapter titled “The Real Subject Here is Consciousness,” informed in part by his study of near-death experiences and related phenomena, he suggests that

time and consciousness are inseparable. Time, in this view, is actually a dimension of reality created by consciousness within itself, so that we might explore certain kinds of experience.

And the same is true for what we call “space.”

Time and space, in other words, are props devised by Mind for much the same reason that storytellers and game designers devise the rules and frameworks that characterize their creations: to spawn worlds within which epic adventures can unfold .…

[I]n recalling these deeper truths, in discovering that we are more than we think we are, we find reason to trust that the difficulties we face in this life aren’t the whole story.

The book closes with an extensive list of resources for further study and several appendices fleshing out the dreams covered in the main text. Full disclosure: my name crops up a couple of times in the book, once in connection with a precognitive dream described in Chapter 9, which was validated by a comment Bruce read on this blog.

Beyond all the other admirable qualities of Dreaming the Future, the book consistently addresses open-minded skeptics in a friendly, non-confrontational way. Unlike some pro-paranormal writers who stigmatize all skeptics or simply ignore them, Bruce wants to reach out and gently persuade people to open up to the possibility of precognition and try it for themselves. He takes care to consider alternative explanations for the hits he describes, and although he's personally convinced of the validity of his findings, he understands that the whole idea of foreseeing future events may strike some reasonable people as impossible or absurd.

His basic attitude is: see for yourself. He believes there's nothing special about his own precognitive abilities, and that similar results can be obtained by anyone who tries.

I liked this book a lot, both for its content and its tone. I highly recommend Dreaming the Future.