The discussion above has nothing to do with the opening post. Salim is the one responsible for this. He/she has quickly derailed this thread first, by complaining about other ID blogs and personalities and second, by trying to start up fights with other TT members. This type of behavior tends to degrade a blog over time.

Sorry Mike!

An encounter with the Overwhelming evidence writers could derail any conversation. I must stop reading that site.

That's okay. Like I said, Salim is the one who is responsible. We'll soon see if his Dawkins-like sense of morality entails the ability to apologize for such misdeeds.

So who would win in a fight between Richard Dawkins and Denyse Oleary? No, no, only joking.

But how about you make a thread specifically for discussion of these "paranormal" claims. I'd love to see your opinion on the subject. And what about some space devoted to a deconstruction of Oleary's theories. They at least merit discussion, wouldn't you agree?

My apologies for contributing to such completely off-topic discussion.

I think Aagcobb displays a healthy sceptical attitude. He admits he's not an expert and wants to wait until the grandiose claims made by some people have been verified and accepted by mainstream science

No, that's not what he said at all.

He said these things absolutely are not real:

If psi powers were real, by now they would have been harnessed so that we could be having this conversation without having to rely on computers and electricity.

Although perhaps now he has thought better of that level of dogmatism regarding a subject he knows almost nothing about and is backing away from that position. . . That certainly would be prudent of him.

"I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud." Dr. Carl Jung

"The greatest skeptic concerning paranormal phenomena is invariably the man who knows the least about them." H. H. Price

Another tedious debate over the reality of the "paranormal". The issue is whether or not to passively put up with the pervasive ignorant skepticism regarding parapsychology and the paranormal endlessly perpetuated by dogmatic skeptics, especially skeptic scientists. These are 100% closed-mindedly certain that all claims violating the established scientific world view are false regardless of so-called evidence, are deeply offended by such heresy, and tend to aggressively attack any proponents. This has continued in official Science and the public the myth that there is no valid evidence for paranormal phenomena, and that the only people believing in them are kooks, wierdos and other credulous people taken in by con-men.

Suggestions that psi phenomena are real are rejected out-of-hand by closed-minded materialists, who "know" that paranormal claims are false (without wasting a lot of valuable time looking at evidence) because they violate the supposedly immutable Laws of Science.

This thread seems to rather clearly show the underlying sceptic metaphysical world view, namely

For something to be real it must be measureable (positivism).
To be measurable and therefore real something must consist of matter and energy, and
the only valid way to investigate and form theories about it is science and the scientific method (metaphysical reductionist materialism). All else can be grouped under the general description of "imaginary" and be dismissed.

It is probably a waste of my time for minds completely made up on this subject, but I should at least mention some of the better sources for the truly wide range of scientific evidence for paranormal phenomena that has accumulated, evidence that simply can't reasonably be dismissed as fraud, trickery or self-delusion. Of course you are free to simply scoff and ignore this information since you know it can't be valid.

- The Conscious Universe by Dean Radin
- Best Evidence: An Investigative Reporter's Three-Year Quest to Uncover the Best Scientific Evidence for ESP, Psychokinesis, Mental Healing, Ghosts and Poltergeists, Dowsing, Mediums, Near Death Experiences, Reincarnation, and Other Impossible Phenomena That Refuse to Disappear
- Journal of Scientific Exploration, published by the Society for Scientific Exploration
- Mind At Large: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Symposia on the Nature of Extrasensory Perception (Studies in Consciousness) by Charles C. Tart, Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ (Editors)
- The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death by Gary R. Schwartz
- Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation by Ian Stevenson
- Near Death Experiences in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands by Dr. Pim van Lommel, in British medical journal The Lancet, Dec. 15 2001

I can cite plenty of well-designed studies carried out by researchers at respected institutions which have produced real evidence for the reality of ESP. The results are often more impressive than the outcome of clinical drug trials because they show a more pronounced affect and have greater statistical significance. Here are a few examples:

- Telepathy: 1988-1989 Honorton Ganzfeld ESP Studies. Conducted under very strict guidelines recommended by arch ESP critic Dr. Ray Hyman of University of Oregon. The test procedures were signed off on by two "mentalist" magicians who specialized in simulating ESP. Replicated in a number of studies by other laboratories.

- Perception At a Distance (clairvoyance):
1984-1993 Government(CIA)-Sponsored Remote Viewing Studies. Experimental designs provided extremely tight conditions evolved from extensive criticism of earlier methodologies. The CIA-commissioned final review in 1995 had a large scientific committee including skeptic Ray Hyman. The review concluded that "anomalous cognition" (primarily remote viewing) had unequivocally been demonstrated and had been replicated in various forms in a number of laboratories.

- Psychkinesis: Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory Experiments.

- Mental and Faith Healing: Futterman Study on the Effect of Mind on the Human Immune System; 1988 Study on Distant Healing of AIDS Patients.

- Near Death Experiences: The Pam Reynolds case, documented by cardiologist Michael Sabom.
The van Lommel Netherlands NDE Study published in The Lancet, Dec. 2001.

- Evidence suggestive of reincarnation: The researches of Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia, documented in a number of books including Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect, and Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation. This area of research inherently excludes laboratory experiments because of the nature of the phenomena, but it is also totally unreasonable to dismiss it as "unscientific". Stevenson has personally investigated hundreds of cases of spontaneous recall of apparent past life memories, primarily by young children. He visits the town where the child grew up, interviews the family, looks for witnesses, attempts to independently confirm that the apparent previous life memories correspond to a real deceased person (usually in a distant city), and makes sure that the subject could not have gotten his information through normal means. Stevenson has concentrated much of his investigations on birthmark cases where the mark closely corresponds to the wound causing death to the remembered past personality/physical body.

As indicated above, quite a number of well-credentialed professional scientists have successfully demonstrated various paranormal phenomena. There are quite a number of well-credentialed professional scientists who are determined advocates of the reality of psi phenomena - look at the editorial board of the the Journal of the Society for Scientific Exploration. I hope you don't claim that all of these and many other workers in the field are incompetent, deluded or dishonest.

Another objection is that if psi is real, why aren't people exploiting it big time to make millions, maybe billions of dollars?

The reason this isn't happening is the basic nature of psi effects. Although most certainly real, as I have shown through a citing of just the tip of the iceberg as far as evidence is concerned, these phenomena are elusive, generally weak in magnitude, and except in unusual cases not much under conscious control.

It appears to me that most of the effects are too weak to be of much potential use in technological applications, where you presumably need strong, easily controlled and repeatable phenomena. Entrepenourship apparently has been going on for a while in trying to exploit psi, but there is nothing obvious resulting from it in the civilian or military market.

The scientific method works because it allows for the inherent untrustworthiness of people. Its not a question of who I trust, its a question of whether claims prove to be verifiable and repeatable. If there are fringe scientists who you believe because they tell you what you want to hear, you can believe them if you want to, but I'm going to wait until a consensus develops in the scientific community that the claims are holding up to scrutiny, especially in a field as rife with fraud and wishful thinking as psychic phenomenon

You did not answer my question. Consensus, by whom? Physicists? Biologists? Archeologists? Parapsychologists? You seem to dream up images of 'Science' as a single body with one united voice, no such thing exists.

As for "the" scientific method, no such method exists either. Every discipline has their own methods of investigation and analysis. Philosophers of science pretty much agree on that, how's that for consensus, eh?

The scientific method works because it allows for the inherent untrustworthiness of people. Its not a question of who I trust, its a question of whether claims prove to be verifiable and repeatable. If there are fringe scientists who you believe because they tell you what you want to hear, you can believe them if you want to, but I'm going to wait until a consensus develops in the scientific community that the claims are holding up to scrutiny, especially in a field as rife with fraud and wishful thinking as psychic phenomenon.

the mainstream scientific community finds the evidence for psychic phenomenon

What does this mean, Aagcobb? Does the "mainstream scientific community" (what the heck is this and who is in it?) make pronouncements on all things scientific before claims are accepted? Or does it mean no more than this: 'I will believe it when the scientists *I* trust tell me it is true'.