I want to believe. Let's just get that out of the way first. I hope we're being visited by advanced beings, that consciousness somehow survives death that minds can be read and spoons can be bent. I hope there's a god or gods, even if most evidence suggests that any such beings must be either insane or indifferent. I wish cold fusion was real. I hope that something interesting happens in 2012. I hope the government is sitting on a vast storehouse of alien technology from crashed saucers. These things make great stories. They are strange and they appeal to me in the same way that good science fiction does, or popular explications of quantum weirdness. If these things are real, the story of the world is mysterious and strange and interesting.
I fear that the real story is more mundane. Nearly all of the evidence for the paranormal comes down to eyewitness testimony and that just isn't enough to make me a believer. I think that people lie, exaggerate, make mistakes and misinterpret their perceptions.
People lie because it's fun to fool people. It's fun to perpetrate hoaxes. People lie to promote the truth of their worldview. As a little kid I remember believing -- knowing -- that Santa Claus was real. Arguing with a skeptical friend, I made up a story about seeing Santa in my living room distributing gifts and magically disappearing when he noticed I was watching him. I considered this a justifiable fib in the service of a greater truth. I believed Santa had to work something like that, so I made up the story to help my friend know the truth too.
People exaggerate because human memory is an unreliable kludge of evolutionary Rube Goldberg designs and because exaggeration makes their stories more interesting. People misperceive. When I was a teenager I used to read everything I could get my hands on about UFOs. Once in the middle of a pitch-black country night, I looked out a bathroom window and saw bright lights in the sky over a nearby lake. There were three or four of them, white with a slight green-yellow tinge and they pulsed on and off while they maneuvered around each other and above the lake. I believe I was reading a lot of Ivan Sanderson around that time and was already semi-convinced that UFOs originated (or at least spent a lot of time) in our oceans and lakes. These lights seemed to dip into the lake now and then and had to be fairly sizeable given the distance to the lake and their intrinsic brightness. Adrenalin shot through me. I was actually seeing this and Sanderson was right. With continued observation, the lights turned out to be three or four fireflies hovering around about a foot from my face, on the other side of the window screen. For one brief shining moment, UFOs were real and I'll never forget the thrill of that knowledge. I want it back, please.
I listen faithfully to the Paracast every Sunday night because it makes me think about things that are fascinating. The ideas are not proven in any way, just thrown out there in the form of stories and speculation. Nothing wrong with that. Stories are fun and connect-the-dots speculation is an amusing exercise. Sometimes the guests or the hosts claim evidence that's "compelling" but I haven't seen any yet and frankly no longer expect to see any. But I keep listening, hoping for that one piece of unambiguous hard evidence. Because I want to believe. The evidence will have to be extraordinary: no amount of eyewitness testimony will do. I do not believe that Mohammed ascended to heaven riding a horse in front of hundreds of witnesses. I do not believe that thousands witnessed the sun dancing around that rainy day in Lourdes, no matter how many witnesses swore to it. I don't believe that Whitley Strieber has had more weird things happen to him than me, I just think he has a better imagination and more realistic dreams. I don't think there's a huge human face carved into the surface of Mars, but isn't it fun to think about what that might mean if true?
In short, I love listening to the Paracast for the stories. For me, it's a version of swapping tales around the campfire, surely one of the most primeval and compelling of human activities. But that's all it is. I'm close to certain that none of it is objectively true. And hope I'm wrong.
I fear that the real story is more mundane. Nearly all of the evidence for the paranormal comes down to eyewitness testimony and that just isn't enough to make me a believer. I think that people lie, exaggerate, make mistakes and misinterpret their perceptions.
People lie because it's fun to fool people. It's fun to perpetrate hoaxes. People lie to promote the truth of their worldview. As a little kid I remember believing -- knowing -- that Santa Claus was real. Arguing with a skeptical friend, I made up a story about seeing Santa in my living room distributing gifts and magically disappearing when he noticed I was watching him. I considered this a justifiable fib in the service of a greater truth. I believed Santa had to work something like that, so I made up the story to help my friend know the truth too.
People exaggerate because human memory is an unreliable kludge of evolutionary Rube Goldberg designs and because exaggeration makes their stories more interesting. People misperceive. When I was a teenager I used to read everything I could get my hands on about UFOs. Once in the middle of a pitch-black country night, I looked out a bathroom window and saw bright lights in the sky over a nearby lake. There were three or four of them, white with a slight green-yellow tinge and they pulsed on and off while they maneuvered around each other and above the lake. I believe I was reading a lot of Ivan Sanderson around that time and was already semi-convinced that UFOs originated (or at least spent a lot of time) in our oceans and lakes. These lights seemed to dip into the lake now and then and had to be fairly sizeable given the distance to the lake and their intrinsic brightness. Adrenalin shot through me. I was actually seeing this and Sanderson was right. With continued observation, the lights turned out to be three or four fireflies hovering around about a foot from my face, on the other side of the window screen. For one brief shining moment, UFOs were real and I'll never forget the thrill of that knowledge. I want it back, please.
I listen faithfully to the Paracast every Sunday night because it makes me think about things that are fascinating. The ideas are not proven in any way, just thrown out there in the form of stories and speculation. Nothing wrong with that. Stories are fun and connect-the-dots speculation is an amusing exercise. Sometimes the guests or the hosts claim evidence that's "compelling" but I haven't seen any yet and frankly no longer expect to see any. But I keep listening, hoping for that one piece of unambiguous hard evidence. Because I want to believe. The evidence will have to be extraordinary: no amount of eyewitness testimony will do. I do not believe that Mohammed ascended to heaven riding a horse in front of hundreds of witnesses. I do not believe that thousands witnessed the sun dancing around that rainy day in Lourdes, no matter how many witnesses swore to it. I don't believe that Whitley Strieber has had more weird things happen to him than me, I just think he has a better imagination and more realistic dreams. I don't think there's a huge human face carved into the surface of Mars, but isn't it fun to think about what that might mean if true?
In short, I love listening to the Paracast for the stories. For me, it's a version of swapping tales around the campfire, surely one of the most primeval and compelling of human activities. But that's all it is. I'm close to certain that none of it is objectively true. And hope I'm wrong.
