Cosmonauts and the Space Whisper

[smcder]

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.

Unethical human experimentation in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia





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[smcder]

"So were the others at Los Alamos. With the war in Europe obviously over (the Germans never came close to producing a bomb), the only enemy left was the Japanese. Many of the scientists behind the bomb project were Jewish refugees from Hitler, and while they saw Japan as the enemy of their adopted country, they did not have the same moral outrage against Japan as they did against Nazi Germany. Some also worried about the morality of dropping the atomic bomb on a civilian target without warning.

Szilard proposed a petition at Los Alamos opposing the looming attack. For years Teller maintained that he opposed use of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that he only refused to sign the petition at Oppenheimer's behest.

In fact, according to Stanford history Professor Barton Bernstein, Teller did not oppose Hiroshima. In a July 2, 1945 letter to Szilard, Teller wrote: "If you should succeed in convincing me that your moral objections are valid, I should quit working. I hardly think that I would start protesting." He said actual use of the atomic bomb in combat "might even be the best thing, [for it] might help to convince everybody that the next war would be fatal."


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[Burnt State]

And as you said, we all can do our part where we can.

 

[Constance]

I'll take option c), Constance, the one that favours the rigorous, peer reviewed work that you and Steve champion.

Good, that's done and dusted then.

... where I do see the doom and gloom is in the construction of belief systems based on purported facts which in fact never existed.

Seems to be endemic among humans, doesn't it, in many subject areas.

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 . . . .

Yah, we see that all over the place too, don't we?

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.

You won't get an argument from me about all that. But what does it have to do with psychical and parapsychological research, the study of human consciousness, the philosophy of mind?

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.

Whose belief system? You're talking about the researchers now?

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.

Ah, you're talking about the confused, uneducated, unwashed crazies. I agree that "the value of paranormality in our lives" is a mixed bag, but so are we.

 

[Constance]

Continuing to Burnt.

You wrote: "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 think we need to think more about the possible sources of what you refer to as "a human need for beliefs in superior and unknown forces supposedly at work in our lives." The fields we need to explore in pursuing this question are archaeology and anthropology. The source of what becomes belief might not be a human need for 'belief' in another or a larger world so much as a human sense {evidently going back 50,000 years to the Neanderthals} of a larger context of lived human experience, a context generally invisible but in some cases seen and reported by shamans, mystics, and others. In other words, experiences come first, and 'beliefs' -- a great variety of them in human history -- follow, develop, in the process of reflecting on, thinking about, what those experiences might signify. In other words, our present-day casual speculations and shallow explanations might be approaching the question from the wrong end of the stick.

What kinds of experiences might generate the sense of a reality beyond the visible world in primitive people? I think out-of-body experiences would surely be one; experiences of telepathy or mind to mind communication and also of precognitive knowledge of events might be others; apparitions (in sleep or waking) of a deceased family or tribe member would be another.

I mention OBEs first, not only because I experienced a spontaneous one at 21 (which if I knew more at the time would have inspired me to investigate the subject of paranormal experience), but because these are widespread in humans. Yesterday I read the following in an article in the Journal of Scientific Exploration:

"Neurological Correlates of Out-of-Body Experiences and Autoscopy" was written by Dr. Olaf Blanke, from the Department of Neurology, University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland. It is a review of empirical studies literature and reports of out-of-body experiences (OBEs) with the aim of offering a neuro-scientific account of OBEs. Dr. Blanke argues that it is important to understand OBEs because such experiences do not occur only in "neurological populations, but [they appear] in approximately 10% of the healthy population and across all cultures" (p. 213).” JSE Volume 20, 2006."

". . .Dr. Blanke argues that it is important to understand OBEs because such experiences do not occur only in "neurological populations, but [they appear] in approximately 10% of the healthy population and across all cultures."

I, like a primitive human, had never heard of OBEs at the time I experienced mine. I think only someone who has experienced a spontaneous OBE can understand the inexplicable nature (and shock) of finding oneself (i.e., one's consciousness/mind) suddenly relocated at a distance from one's body, observing that body from behind and above its location, where it is apparently still occupied in what the formerly unified 'self' was doing (in my case apparently still reading a book at a desk across a large room). Experiencing such anomalous happenings (even less dramatic ones apparently contained entirely within a unified 'self') produce a breach in what has so far been taken to constitute a unified reality, a bounded world. I think that it was paranormal experience that first generated what has to be called ontological thinking in humans -- the questioning of what exists beyond the formerly evident, visible, boundaries of 'normal', everyday existence. And that over time this questioning led to various forms of primitive rituals (group attempts to access altered states) and eventually to the formations of religions as such through the agency and influence of prophets and Seers. Today 'religion' has a bad name, effectively replaced by the word 'superstition' (even "primitive superstition") by the high priests of materialist science. But its roots are complex, going far back in our evolution, and I do not think we can understand it as a phenomenon without exploring its deep past in the prehistory of anomalous human experiences.


I'm looking online for the following paper and will post a link if I find it:

RICHARDS, D. G. (1996). Psi and the spectrum of consciousness. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 90, 251-267.
Abstract: "Humanistic and transpersonal psychology seek the highest in human potential. Do psychic phenomena have a place in this quest, and can parapsychology aid in understanding the role of these phenomena? The contemplative or mystical traditions view psychic phenomena as consequences of higher development, yet tend to see these phenomena as by-products of the spiritual path rather than as goals. Parapsychologists, on the other hand, have observed these phenomena in animals, children, and the mentally ill, as well as in individuals with normal adult ego development They have often seen psychic abilities as need-motivated and as developmentally and evolutionarily primitive. This paper reviews the evidence that psychic phenomena occur across the entire spectrum of consciousness. It discusses methodological issues relevant to understanding the place of psi, including experiments, and narrative and longitudinal approaches to experiences and meaning."