Double Nought Spy
May I please go back to the zoo now?
The ignore button works for me. Life is too short, and so on.
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Cosmonauts and the Space Whisper
- Thread starter DaveM
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The ignore button works for me. Life is too short, and so on.
DaveM
Paranormal Adept
Actually Jeff you went off on me because I said you would have to pay a dollar and some change and you found that offensive for some reason. You aren't cheap Jeff. You are a generous, giving soul. I hope that makes you happy now.
By the way... I expect you will be apologizing for cursing me and hurling insults at my good name.
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smcder
Guest
And perhaps not. I think most of us are interested in pursuing the second possibility, and if so it seems clear that we need to begin, not with what passes for explanation in currently dominant materialist/physicalist presuppositions in science and philosophy, but by surveying as much as we can of accounts of anomalous experiences in order to recognize the extent of the database of these experiences.
not with what passes for explanation in currently dominant materialist/physicalist presuppositions in science and philosophy
Orthodoxy ... Dennett or Dawkins talked about the "universal acid" 0f Neo-Darwinism, that it could explain everything (especially human behavior) away. I think it was Dawkins echoing Huxley that evolution finally allowed for an intellectually satisfied atheist. When was the last time someone offered to explain everything to your full intellectual satisfaction? Was it on a Sunday?
Periods of normal science reduce the primary activity of science from an adventure of open inquiry into a series of puzzles. And the enduring fallacy is that when we get all the puzzles solved we'll have complete knowledge, announcing the end of science is a cottage industry in the popular press. Some time in the late 1800s it was thought that all that would be left for future scientists would be to carry out the computations a few more decimal places.
There is initial enthusiasm in the puzzle stage and this stage is very important, it's what science is between paradigm shifts - there's a lot to do to flesh out the new paradigm. But "normal" every day science is a temporary situation and paradigm shifts are just as normal and natural and ... they come along just about the time you get settled in. And we are well and truly settled in.
Trying to explain everything in terms of a paradigm draws certain types of minds. The inner guard maintains the status quo but never endures because they are always in a state of contraction - when a regime changes the inner guard is retired, dismissed ... or shot. It's a sci-fi trope: the rogue scientist or General who refuses to accept the change in paradigm.
I think it's the restless nature of the intellect that drives us on from paradigm to paradigm. We need stories but some minds can only endure so much repetition. Some of the old guard can even be relieved to be relieved, having clung for so long with increasing effort to convince themselves of what obviously is no longer true.
So the old guard is relieved by the innovator and a new inner guard is set up while the puzzle minds go to work on the normal period of science. If the innovator is smart, he'll move on to the next new field of inquiry, because few innovators are good at the everyday work of writing a new story.
So I think we are at this point in several fields of inquiry - whether there will be a sweeping revolution across all of them, who knows but even if the paradigms hold for a while longer, it's honorable work poking holes in them ... and it's a lot of fun, to boot.
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smcder
Guest
(biblehub.com will lay out various translations for comparison, these are KJV)
These are some notable descriptions of Angels in the Old Testament ... the other appearances may not be described, or be a voice or have a human appearance, for example Jacob's wrestling match - apparently this one knew some kind of martial art:
Genesis 32:22
22 And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok.
23 And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over that he had. 24 And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. 25 And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him.
Now, if that's not a description of some kind of jitsu ...
OK, so some interesting Old Testament references:
Genesis 3:24
So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
Ezekiel 1 and following is a vision of God - but there are descriptions of Cherubim too bearing the throne and again in Chapter 10: (of course often cited as an early UFO sighting and early Kansas inspiration)
4And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire. 5Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man. 6And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. 7And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot: and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass. 8And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings. 9Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight forward. 10As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle. 11Thus were their faces: and their wings were stretched upward; two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies. 12And they went every one straight forward: whither the spirit was to go, they went; and they turned not when they went. 13As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps: it went up and down among the living creatures; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning. 14And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning.
And now it gets really weird:
15Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces. 16The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl: and they four had one likeness: and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. 17When they went, they went upon their four sides: and they turned not when they went. 18As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four. 19And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. 20Whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go; and the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels. 21When those went, these went; and when those stood, these stood; and when those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up over against them: for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.
Isiah 6 - Isiah's calling is also notable - he was the only one to see the Seraphim (burning ones) - they are the closest to God:
1In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. 2Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
3And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.
4And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.
5Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.
6Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: 7And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.
There's New Testament and Apocryophal scripture as well as later Jewish and Christian literature.
Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
No, what the Nexus article proves is that using the imaginary shape of the wind you can make claims to facts that may not even exist. It is how paranormality creates its own mythos and then sustains an imaginary dialogue. One day these illusions will be taken for truth. It will be reposted in a not too secret forum nearby and reblogged from there. Your own biblical quotes will be used to verify how the Nephalim gave birth to evolved hybrid angelic human lifeforms that turned Cosmonauts into time travellers to create Ezekiel's UFO wheel of fire
"We could continue to explore its many possibilities and how it weaves in and out of faith-based belief systems, but to what end beyond inflating those angelic wings mentioned in all the writing around this event?"
Yes, absolutely, but in this case there is no peer reviewed place to even begin with. The whole thing begins with the trace of an illusory story that is then tabloided and retabloided, a false circulation through history.
I do see the value of alternative investigations, new methods, the disruption of past paradigms through new fact finding - especially in fuddy-duddy sciences like psychology which has its clinical roots in the same methodology used do determine whether or not somone is a witch.
Dean Radin himself is a bit of an anomaly. When we look at the totality of what is called paranormal research it seems to me that the witch finder general protocols are still in operation and mostly celebrated. If characters like Ed and Lorraine Warren are seen as fact finders and Steven Greer's version of science makes him an ambassador for earth then there's a lot of holes in that paranormal research bucket. For every one Chris Rutkowski there are how many self-appointed purveyors of exorcisms, Venusian dog hair & Bigfoot carcasses - too many to begin to count.
What's very unfortunate is that the many fields of experimental research and paranormal inquiry are so muddled by forged science (B.L.T. anyone?) that it beehooves one to be very, very suspicious of anything paranormal reported as fact. It's a big messy house and hardly anyone who lives there is interested in cleaning.
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Tyger
Paranormal Adept
There is considerable back-story here. First off, the Russians are very mystical as a natural bent, which is why the atheism stuff was always a disconnect for them. Anyway, backstory: travel back to the late 1800's and you find Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Russian), Nicholas Konstantinovich Roerich (Russian), George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (Russian/Armenian) - and there are more.
The 'lineage' (using the term loosely, as things go) from Blavatsky goes: A.P.Sinnet, Theosophy, Annie Besant, Krishnamurti, Alice A. Bailey and Djwhal Khul, Rudolf Steiner (seen as a separate Stream) and Anthroposophy.......the 50 or so years from about 1875 to about 1925 have to be looked at in total for a strong cluster of ideas that streamed into general awareness about this time. To get a flavor of these ideas Alice A. Bailey's work is an excellent entrée as she was a superlative writer. Here in Bailey's work you will encounter the broad based ideas (seminal in the Sanskrit) of successive ascents of existence inhabited by evolving beings. Russians will be very familiar with these ideas - their mystical tradition remained vivid and extant even under the Soviets. Talking about them would appear natural to a Russian.
At the beginning of the 20th century there were some powerful channeled works that represented these ideas of greater beings that had once been human but had progressed beyond the human stage - one being 'The Urantia Book' that came to general light in the 1950's, but had been around in manuscript far before that (originating in the early 20's, I believe). Most esoteric works have as a priori the idea of both a spiritual reality and beings of those realities.
Then there is the whole stream of Science Fiction as a genre of speculation. A seminal writer in this arena was Olaf Stapledon ('Odd John', 'Star Maker', 'Last and First Men') writing in the 1920's/30's who influenced such writers as Arthur C Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and so many, many more. [I am always intrigued that Roger Zelazny's 'Lord of Light' - a take on the Hindu Pantheon - came out a few years before Von Daniken's 'Chariot of the Gods'. Makes sense to me that Zelazny's unique twist coupled with the magnum opus that is The Urantia Book would have inspired Von Daniken's thinking. I'm not saying they did, I am just looking at the ideas floating around at the time these things come to manifestation in the general culture. There has to be others, too.]
The idea of Atlantis would have been a rich treasure trove of these kinds of ideas, too. Ignatius Donnelly being one prime source. In the 1880's we have the teenager Frederick Spencer Oliver writing A Dweller on Two Plants, or, the Dividing of the Way which described a secret city inside of Mount Shasta, and in passing mentioned Lemuria. What is unusual about this book is the description of the transportation system, of flying machines that would become the staple shape of UFOs sighted later. Hollywood factored into this swirl with films such as 'Shangri-La' from the 1930's. The idea of advanced human beings living at another level of existence is found in many modes - like the hidden city of Shamballa in the Gobi Desert. So it goes.
We tend to be unaware of the social history of the recent past. The influence of occult and esoteric works/ideas on the general intellectual life at that time was strong across the whole of the academic/avant garde world. One just has to study the life stories of people like Tesla, Mark Twain and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to get the drift. The idea of an ascending order of evolution that extended up beyond just a physical/materially based evolution of forms into the spiritual layers of the cosmos was almost a given for those literate at the time. The Russian's sensibility - and his comment - comes out of this context.
In many ways our current (main stream) ignorance, or active push-back, of such ideas is unique and idiosyncratic to our time.
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smcder
Guest
It's lead to this discussion. I know your time is limited, but in order to address your concerns, I recommend starting here for a peer reviewed discussion:
http://www.deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm
Under General Overview and Critics, start with the Utts paper.
Then we can look at Jessica Utts home page (Dept of Statistics - UC Irvine) - the math gets a bit heavy-going, but that's good news, isn't it?
JESSICA UTTS' HOME PAGE
My Research Interests
I am interested in applied statistics, and have published most extensively on the use of statistics in parapsychology.
I am also interested in statistics education and literacy.
I have provided some of the most commonly requested papers here.
In the Fall of 1995 Professor Ray Hyman (University of Oregon)and I prepared a report assessing the statistical evidence for psychic functioning in US government sponsored research. The report was part of a review done by the American Institutes of Research (AIR) at the request of Congress and the CIA. It received wide-spread media coverage.
My report and related reports:
- An Assessment Of The Evidence For Psychic Functioning
- Professor Hyman's report.
- Utts' reply to Hyman's report
- Response by Dr. Edwin May, the lead investigator for the government-sponsored work and Director, Cognitive Sciences Laboratory
Utts, Jessica (1999). The Significance of Statistics in Mind-Matter Research, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 13(4), 615-638.
"The Paranormal: the Evidence and its Implications for Consciousness" published in the [London] Times Higher Education Supplement, Apr. 5th. 1996, page (v), with Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson
Actually, the Utts material on her page is an excellent starting point.
For those who want a high level overview, she links to this FAQ:
Frequently Asked Questions - The Parapsychological Association
Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
I think almost all of that content I've previously visited, Steve, either through the C&P threads or via Radio Misterioso who introduced me to Radin many moons ago. And as I said this work is momentary and in the minority when you look at the scope of total 'research' in these areas over the last 50 years. What would you estimate to be the percentage of influence detailed and rigorous research is having on the paranormal field as a whole? How many of these focussed folk continue to complete and write up such research in a consistent manner?
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smcder
Guest
http://deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm
Dean Radin:
"The following is a selected list of downloadable peer-reviewed journal articles reporting studies of psychic phenomena, mostly published in the 21st century. There are also some important papers of historical interest and other resources. A comprehensive list would run into thousands of articles.
The international professional organization for scientists and scholars interested in psi phenomena is the Parapsychological Association, an elected affiliate (since 1969) of the AAAS, the largest general scientific organization in the world.
Commonly repeated critiques about psi, such as “these phenomena are impossible,” or “there’s no valid scientific evidence,” or “the results are all due to fraud,” have been soundly rejected for many decades. Such critiques persist due to ignorance of the relevant literature and to entrenched, incorrect beliefs. Legitimate debates today no longer focus on existential questions but on development of adequate theoretical explanations, advancements in methodology, the “source” of psi, and issues about effect size heterogeneity and robustness of replication."
The majority of research published in any field is never cited or replicated.
I think we have an opportunity here to discuss the good, published research that does exist. We can do that or we can focus on the negative.
There are about 100 papers on the site if I remember correctly. There are several categories including over views, response to criticism (with exchanges between skeptics and researchers) and methods. The studies are distributed over time with the most current published in 2013, nine papers published in 2012 and 2013. So work is still going on.
Utts has presented as recently as 2005 on the paranormal and there are several repeat authors on the list.
When you say you've "visited" most of this material ... what do you mean? There was never what I consider a detailed discussion on the C&P thread ... one person showed some interest but never followed through.
I posted several summaries and then decided that if people were interested they need to do the work themselves. Particularly on the nitty gritty detail work on statistics and experimental design. That takes some time and effort and a background in statistics and it's not easily summarized.
Which studies did you read?
I would be particularly interested in discussing Utts work on meta-analysis. Are you familiar with it?
I'm interested because meta analysis is widely used and critiques of the methods are relevant to results in many fields.
Similarly, because of the criticism of parapsychology and because there is no paradigm to explain the claimed results - the quality of research can be extremely high and may include innovations in experimental design. You could think of this as the field's response to "extraordinary claims".
My overall impression is that there is either good scientific evidence for Psi or there are problems with existing scientific and statistical methods and what we call psi are those places where there are holes in our methods ... if this is trues mainstream science may also be affected (see for example the decline effect).
Both are good reasons to have a discussion.
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smcder
Guest
"No, what the Nexus article proves is that using the imaginary shape of the wind you can make claims to facts that may not even exist. It is how paranormality creates its own mythos and then sustains an imaginary dialogue. One day these illusions will be taken for truth. It will be reposted in a not too secret forum nearby and reblogged from there. Your own biblical quotes will be used to verify how the Nephalim gave birth to evolved hybrid angelic human lifeforms that turned Cosmonauts into time travellers to create Ezekiel's UFO wheel of fire."
it seems to me we could influence that outcome or at least try - people going for the lowest common denominator isn't limited to the paranormal.
Ask the average person on the street what the LHC does and how it works.
And anything is fair game for tabloids and bloggers:
“Anyone Who Thinks the LHC Will Destroy the World is a Twat.” | Astroengine.com
Apparently some of the physicists received death threats ...
On the other hand it's not like the public hasn't been lied to by the government or corporations or universities or politicians or doctors or pharmaceutical companies or scientists.
Or that even someone with an IQ of 200 can't make a mistake ... maybe a genius can make bigger mistakes, faster?
I'll have to look at the story but there was supposedly a fear at the Manhattan project that the Trinity test might set off a chain reaction in the earths atmosphere ... no one knew for sure what happened when you set off an atomic bomb.
Of course these are different situations but maybe it's not productive to call people twats and the fact that you feel you have to might mean you need better PR.
"It's a big messy house and hardly anyone who lives there is interested in cleaning."
Point is that a lot of what you say about the paranormal is true of any human activity. Right now would you rather tell people you are a US Senator or a paranormal investigator?
It's more pronounced as we move to the border areas of course - but it's already present in mainstream fields of science that don't bring a return on investment or that challenge existing industries. The science of climate change, for example.
And again, we could do our bit.
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We might be able to pull that up for you if we could read and translate Russian and had access to the reports of the cosmonauts' sighting/experience, reports and reviews written by their commanders, summaries of their medical and psychological tests after they landed, and likely even examinations of the cosmonauts by Russian parapsychologists. We have no idea of the extent of investigation of the event the cosmonauts experienced in space, and we'd probably need to know an insider at the Russian Academy of Science to find out. I second your implied motion that funds be found to employ parapsychologically trained researchers and translators by the score to gather all such documents and peer reviews of the lot done in all countries outside North America -- in Russia and everywhere else on the planet -- and to put it all up asap on the internet for us to read in English. In the meantime, anyone who is interested in reading parapsychology research in English can go to the lexscien website (linked at the Parapsychological Association site that Steve linked above) and for a reasonable yearly subscription fee spend the rest of their lives reading the material accessible there.
Whose fault is that?
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Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
Mostly ours - a perpetuation of mythology is the work of a collective.
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smcder
Guest
Is there a solution? Is discussing the work that has been done not worthwhile? It seems to me what you are talking about applies to much more than the paranormal - but that shouldn't stop disciplined pursuit in any field, should it?
The outcome of such pursuit might be the resolution of anomalies into "normal" science or to identify problems in existing methods or to actually validate such anomalous phenomena ... In my opinion all three are outcomes that justify such effort.
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smcder
Guest
Here's where discussion of the Radin page material began on the CP1 thread:
Consciousness and the Paranormal | The Paracast Community Forums
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Consciousness and the Paranormal | The Paracast Community Forums
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Tyger
Paranormal Adept
IMO it's a function of the tabloid press which is the human proclivity to like a good gossip over-the-fence - writ large. One can go back to - say - the Middle Ages - with the Great Plague (and by extension the Inquisition - carried forward by 'well meaning' folk as well as the calculating opportunist, the demented and those 'just doing their job'), to see that gossipy tendency laying waste (burning at the stake, drowning to 'test' for witchcraft) to whole swaths of people. We are not much different if our education has gone awry. It's why it all goes on - mainly now because there is a lot of money in such mis-direction. We should know better now, but money always trumps, and our baser selves.
That's a convenient answer if your motive is a) to reject the subject matter entirely on the basis of an opinion that b) we humans are intrinsically doomed never to make progress in understanding the nature of 'paranormal' experiences. Thus, that all our species has accomplished over several millennia of recording such experiences and 150 years of scientific parapsychological research is to perpetuate a "mythology." Your declaring that we have nothing but 'mythology' to discuss is an example of how a single word choice can rhetorically poison an entire field of research in the minds of uninformed readers. Say it often enough and people will begin to believe it. Meanwhile Steve has demonstrated with numerous citations to academic parapsychological research that we are talking about a subject matter that cannot be dismissed as 'mythology'.
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Exactly. The far greater risk to discovery and increased insight into the nature of reality is this propagation of reductivist theories by a presupposition-bound materialist science whose practitioners claim far more than they can prove. Especially when that 'science' marginalizes and discourages all paths to knowledge other than its own.
So well said, Tyger. We have far less an excuse in this time of readily accessible information -- worldwide libraries as well as the internet. Modern Western culture is a culture manipulated by sound bites and short-circuited thought. And it has precisely been manipulated by the politico-economic PTB who own most of the news media and the popular media of radio and television, which in tandem have produced a dumbing-down and lack of curiosity in the majority of citizens.
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All made significantly worse, one should add, by the confusion, doubt, and ridicule sown by government-sponsored disinformation agencies particularly concerning ufos. It is a wonder that despite the history of those efforts a majority of people on the planet take the ufo phenomena seriously -- which I think is explained by the frequency of anomalous sightings around the planet for the last 65 years. Ultimately, the PTB really can't fool all of the people all of the time.
Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
I'll take option c), Constance, the one that favours the rigorous, peer reviewed work that you and Steve champion. I'm not out to dismiss paranormal inquiry, nor do I think we are doomed to failure in investigating it, at least not entirely doomed. However, where I do see the doom and gloom is in the construction of belief systems based on purported facts which in fact never existed. The more and more I've spent time on the forum over the years, and related inquiry, I've realized and grown a healthy skepticism in response to what I see as abuses of the human spirit in the name of claims for paranormal possiblity, reality & superiority.
Consequently, I've developed a real distaste for certain aspects of demonology as it relates to the spurious world of exorcism, poltergeist investigations that are fixed on young women, many aspects of alien abduction, the cultivation of fear in the masses as it relates to unproven phenomenon i.e. ritual satanic abuse and all cults related to paranormal & magical practices whose end result is centered around murder, exploitation, abuse and suicide.
What these all have in common is a kind of belief system that is willing to forgo the necessity of real evidence in favour of whispered stories, oft repeated suppositions, shaky claims and outright lies. Now I realize that some of the real paranormal joy comes from the outlandish tale, and I see no real problem with these in general until they start connecting with a human need for beliefs in superior and unknown forces supposedly at work in our lives. For in some cases the need is so strong that it may pull some people towards personal disaster or death - after all, what kind of person goes around repeatedly killing Bigfoot or exorcising their kids to death? The witch hunt is still on it seems.
I know, it all sounds so radically conservative coming from a proponent of magical thinking, but the actual human toll of these belief systems has really set me onto a different path altogether when it comes to thinking about the value of paranormality in our lives and where are its healthy borders and edges. And that includes a healthy appreciation for those who really embark on serious inquiry devoid of leaps of faith.
Consequently, I've developed a real distaste for certain aspects of demonology as it relates to the spurious world of exorcism, poltergeist investigations that are fixed on young women, many aspects of alien abduction, the cultivation of fear in the masses as it relates to unproven phenomenon i.e. ritual satanic abuse and all cults related to paranormal & magical practices whose end result is centered around murder, exploitation, abuse and suicide.
What these all have in common is a kind of belief system that is willing to forgo the necessity of real evidence in favour of whispered stories, oft repeated suppositions, shaky claims and outright lies. Now I realize that some of the real paranormal joy comes from the outlandish tale, and I see no real problem with these in general until they start connecting with a human need for beliefs in superior and unknown forces supposedly at work in our lives. For in some cases the need is so strong that it may pull some people towards personal disaster or death - after all, what kind of person goes around repeatedly killing Bigfoot or exorcising their kids to death? The witch hunt is still on it seems.
I know, it all sounds so radically conservative coming from a proponent of magical thinking, but the actual human toll of these belief systems has really set me onto a different path altogether when it comes to thinking about the value of paranormality in our lives and where are its healthy borders and edges. And that includes a healthy appreciation for those who really embark on serious inquiry devoid of leaps of faith.