Are spirits real?

Spirits are a staple of mysticism and magic all over the world but our modern society tends to regard spirits as fantasy and delusion. This view of spirits and the spirit world tends to come down to the assumption that they just aren't "real." Of course when we say "real" here we mean it in the materialist sense of physical existence, strings and pulleys, visible causation.

What about the mind though? It should come as no surprise to any mystic or magician that the mind is the fundamental tool of the occult arts. The mind is also how we perceive and interpret our world. I think most people would agree that the mind is very real even though it's rather hard to quantify in the materialist sense. Does something happening in the mind or being perceived solely through the mind make it any less real? The mind has a level of "real" all its own.

Most spirit communication relies on an altered state of consciousness or a level of trance in order for it to take place. These very altered states that make working with spirits possible are the same things that make spirit communication seem so improbable to most people. We've been conditioned to believe that our minds are fallible, cannot be trusted, and are prone to leading us astray. All of this may be true to a point but it cannot be absolutely true as we experience everything through our minds and most of us have come to a consensus about things that are true and real despite being perceived through the mind. The fallibility of perception and the mind is an easy way to explain away things we don't want to exist or are difficult to accept while still relying on our perceptions to understand the more desirable parts of our reality or the things that just can't be ignored.

So do spirits need to have an objective material presence to be considered real? I would say not considering that the very label of "spirit" has connotations of an incorporeal existence in the first place. We've just been conditioned to accept anything not solid, material, and objectively verifiable as being false. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, this skepticism toward unverifiable claims or experiences. However, belief in objectively unverifiable phenomena or the belief that phenomena that happen solely in the mind are still real are not threats like they seem to be perceived in some arguments and debates.

In my opinion, just interacting with an entity or intelligence that could be considered a spirit, whether it exists outside of the mind or is just an expression of the mind, makes the spirit real. Charging a spirit with a task and then reaping the desired outcome makes the spirit real. Whether the outcome was coincidence makes no difference from a pragmatic perspective. This isn't going to satisfy staunch materialists but those are the types that usually aren't going to delve into this area of study in the first place.

Believing in a spirit world or in the existence of spirits does not undermine empirical evidence or scientific achievement. The very unverifiable nature of spiritual phenomenon, how illogical it seems to be, means that science and those that tout it as a superior epistemology shouldn't be all that concerned with it anyway. Whether it's "real" or not doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. People will continue to have experiences with spirits, work with spirits, and espouse the existence of a spiritual world whether the materialists like it or not. Hopefully this musing has given you something to think about.




I think it should also be noted that it's been one year to the day since I started this blog. Thank you to everyone that stops by to read my posts. It's the readers that have kept me going with this project whenever I'd thought I'd run out of things to say or when I wondered if it mattered at all. My only hope is that whatever I have to say gets others thinking about these subjects and maybe inspires them to take the information further.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake is a hero.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist and a well-known figure in the field of parapsychology, recently did an interview at Skeptiko.com.  The interview at first deals with the controversy surrounding Richard Wiseman's latest book and his attempts to misinform the public.  However, the truly interesting stuff is in the discussion that stems from talking about the controversy in which Dr. Sheldrake goes on to give a beautiful and poignant observation of a huge problem in modern science.  What is that problem?  Dogmatic materialism and how it has stifled progress.  Dr. Sheldrake says it so much better than I ever could so I'll just link you to the interview.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake on the Persistence of Richard Wiseman’s Deception

You can read the transcript, you can listen to the interview, or you can even download the interview to listen to later.  Whichever way appeals to you, I highly recommend that you take a look at this if you love science as well as the paranormal.  It's like Dr. Sheldrake took everything I've had floating around in my head on the subject and laid it down neatly and plainly for all to see.  He is a hero for saying what few seem to be willing to say and he has my respect for that.  I only hope that by writing about this interview here that his views and work get the attention they deserve and we can all move on to finding real answers and truly exploring reality without the limits of a particular philosophical stance smothering us.

I think it's suiting that this will be my one hundredth blog post.  It's the fact that people from all over the world are reading what I write that has kept me going with this experiment for so long.  It's my love for all of the subject matter that I cover that inspired me to start this blog in the first place and I'm very happy that I've kept writing about it.  This blog is for everyone that wonders about the strange things out there and those that want to find answers for themselves instead of just buying a ready-made explanation.  Thanks to all of you that keep coming back to read my thoughts and opinions.

Is there a concerted effort to suppress evidence of the paranormal?

In my studies of the paranormal I have noticed what seems to be an effort by some to obscure, hide, or debunk the most convincing evidence.  I'm not talking about Men in Black silencing people that have UFO encounters; I'm talking about supposed "skeptics" making attempts to debunk evidence for things that they are ideologically opposed to, whether it be UFOs or ESP.

One example might be the controversies surrounding the Mars Effect.  Another example might be the extensive debate surrounding the results of the ganzfeld and auto-ganzfeld ESP experiments.  Perhaps the best examples of this kind of bias against evidence for the paranormal would be "rational skeptics" and the endless attempt to debunk anything and everything that may lend validity to the field of the paranormal.  The James Randi Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge is a component of this effort (but not the extent of it) and it should be noted that not just anyone can participate in the Challenge.

Of the rules listed in the application for the Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge I find number twelve to be particularly suspicious.  The "media presence" aspect is what I find suspicious and Randi has a history of going after prominent paranormal performers.  Going after public figures and exposing their fraud is commendable, but not when that is taken as some kind of strike against the paranormal as a whole.  I think that Randi wishes to draw out challengers and then publicly humiliate them in an effort to support his anti-paranormal agenda.

But is there a concerted effort to suppress evidence of the paranormal?  I don't think that it's a "concerted" effort.  I don't think there's a huge conspiracy to keep people from knowing the truth.  I think that the reason why most people aren't aware of the significant evidence for the paranormal is because most people don't like to read academic papers and to a lot of people the paranormal is seen as taboo.  When it comes to academics, it seems that any suggestion that there may be truth to paranormal claims is met with harsh criticism.  When no evidence of fraud or methodological error is found, those that cannot accept that precognition may be a reality, or find the idea of psychokinesis to be absurd, will often resort to simply ignoring it or attempting to discredit the researcher(s).  Worse still is the halfhearted attempt at replication that doesn't use the original protocol but claims negative results that bear on the validity of the original experiment.

My opinion is that these people are just trying to preserve their worldview.  It's really no different than creationists doing everything they can to cling to their belief.  If one has a totally materialistic and secular view of reality then something like ESP can really shake things up.  They really can't be blamed in this sense as everyone participates in this kind of behavior whether we admit it or not.  Does this mean that I like this kind of pseudo-skepticism?  Not at all.  I do, however, accept that the reasons for it don't seem to be any more sinister than simple fear of what we don't understand.

The Mars Effect - More evidence in favor of astrology?

The Mars Effect is the purported statistical correlation between certain positions of Mars at the time of birth and athletic prowess or aptitude.  It was first reported by Michel Gauquelin, a French psychologist and statistician, in 1955.  As you can imagine, this was highly controversial and people immediately set out to examine the claims.

As seems to typically occur, attempts to debunk the Mars Effect were made and when the initial replication (begun in 1956) was a success it was suggested that it was an artifact of unspecified demographic errors.  In a second attempt at replication (done in 1975 at the behest of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, or CSICOP) the original data was called into question when the results came out in Gauquelin's favor.  This "questioning" consisted of splitting up sample groups to the point of making a comparison pointless.  There was even internal protest against this fudging of the numbers within CSICOP, seen as nothing more than shifting the subject of the experiment in order to appear in favor of CSICOP's investigation.  Naturally, the detractor was booted from the committee in a less-than-transparent vote.  A concurrent study of US athletes came up negative for the Mars Effect, but the study was carried out with seemingly no regard for the specifics of the effect as found in Gauquelin's initial study.

The above examples are just the first of the attempts to strike down Gauquelin's results.  There seems to be something inborn that is opposed to the notion of the stars having any sway on human events at all.  This probably hearkens to the idea of free will and one having control of their destiny (and free will, or the lack thereof, is a completely different discussion in itself).  The idea of astrology is very threatening to so-called free thinkers because it might mean that they aren't as free as they think.  In my experience, most people that are so ferociously opposed to the idea of astrology usually have the least understanding of the practice.

Enough of my ranting though; take a look at the Wikipedia page for the Mars Effect if you want all the gory details.

Skepticism and the paranormal.

If you're a student of the paranormal then seeing the word "skeptic" probably causes you to recoil a bit.  Skeptics are seen as those debunkers and deniers for which no evidence is good enough.  I am pleased to inform you that these people are not skeptics.  These people give skepticism a bad name.

For your consideration here is a definition:

skepticism (uncountable)

   1. (US) The practice or philosophy of being a skeptic.
   2. (US) A studied attitude of questioning and doubt
   3. (US) The doctrine that absolute knowledge is not possible
   4. (US) A methodology that starts from a neutral standpoint and aims to acquire certainty though scientific or logical observation.
   5. (US) Doubt or disbelief of religious doctrines
(From Wiktionary.)

To me, the overall meaning of skepticism, based on this definition, is that of one that considers evidence and then makes a decision accordingly.  This means not jumping to conclusions and, most importantly, not dismissing something out of hand.  It is unfortunate that modern skepticism has been co-opted by dogmatic thinkers who are no better than the dogmas they are so proud of opposing.  I tend to think of modern skepticism as making a negative assumption, whereas belief is a positive assumption.  They're still both assumptions though.  Belief is "Mental acceptance of a claim as truth regardless of supporting empirical evidence." (Again from Wiktionary.)

If a negative assumption is a belief just the same as a positive assumption then what is the difference?  Well, as any skeptic will be sure to point out, the burden of scientific proof is on the person making the claim and they are exempt from this because a negative cannot be proven.  This leads me to my point:  If a negative cannot be proven, why hold a negative assumption about something?  To make a claim and then fail to back it up without any evidence sounds ridiculous to those that are expected to believe it no matter what the claim is (unless those people have faith).  If there is no evidence to support a positive claim then there is obviously no evidence to support the negative claim either.  So why assume the negative position?  Why not simply say "I don't know," or "We don't know"?

In the case of paranormal claims that have some evidence, whether it be eyewitnesses, photographs, videos, etc. the "neutral" claim is that it must be trickery or illusion.  Why?  This is not to say that all such things should be believed because many of these things do turn out to be frauds or hoaxes, or less sinisterly, misunderstood natural phenomena or optical illusions.  Perhaps this is why some people immediately jump to the conclusion that all such activity is fake.  This is perhaps not so bad.  The bad part is that when a natural explanation is not forthcoming and no evidence of trickery or illusion is discovered, the pseudoskeptics still cry hoax.  What is the difference between this kind of clinging to faith and the clinging to faith of one who continues to believe in a proven fraud?

Then we have events that are seemingly supernatural but can be replicated by trickery.  We can present a scene from the Civil War on the big screen, complete with big-budget CGI.  It looks like the Civil War but it is not the genuine article.  Some propose that the telekinetic feats of Nina Kulagina can be replicated with string.  Big deal.  Knowledge of the principles of multiplication can be replicated by simply memorizing multiplication tables.  My point is that just because something can be emulated through trickery does not mean that it was trickery to begin with.

We must also take into account how many things are known to exist that were previously unknown to us because of the limits to our knowledge and technical capability.  X-rays were once denounced as a hoax by Lord Kelvin but with more demonstrations X-rays became accepted and understood and now the majority of people have some understanding of something that perplexed the greatest minds of that time.  Did X-rays not exist before they were demonstrated?  While a possibility, this seems unlikely and I think most self-styled skeptics would agree.

A key tenet of the scientific method is that a hypothesis must be falsifiable.  You must be able to show that the hypothesis is true or false in definitive terms.  I can say that the entire universe is contained within an invisible snow globe, but there is no way to prove this.  This is not a testable hypothesis and therefore not a valid one as it doesn't allow us to gain any further knowledge or understanding.  The lack of existence of something is not testable, so how can we say with any certainty that something does not exist?  At best we can say that it has not been conclusively proven to exist.  The belief that something does not exist because we can't detect it is just that:  a belief.  It is an assumption upheld by faith.  It is impossible to prove a nonexistence, so how can any skeptic possibly claim with certainty that something is nonexistent?

I am not advocating credulity.  I am also not advocating denial.  I'm fully aware that nothing I've written here will stop the ongoing battle between believers and nonbelievers.  My intention is to get you to think about why you believe the things you believe.  There is nothing wrong with belief, but we must be prepared to examine our beliefs as objectively as we possibly can from our subjective human perspective.  This includes accepting that sometimes that awesome ghost photo or that UFO sighting is a fake or a hoax.

If you would like to read more eloquent observations on skepticism and the paranormal then please see this article written by the true skeptic Marcello Truzzi.  I believe you will like it.  If you would like to report your thoughts on what I've written above then leave me a comment below.  See you next time.