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BY ELSA COOK
When I was in my thirties, I used to visit a psychic that specialized in Tarot Card readings. She was a skilled reader and most of her readings were spot on. The last reading I had with her, at times weighs heavily on my mind. She predicted the divorce that followed and also told me that I would remarry and have 12 wonderful years with a new husband. She also mentioned that I would die before he at the age of 52. In September, I will be 52. Am I frightened? Not really. Having read Tarot for many years myself, I know that the foretelling of death doesn't always mean physical death. It can mean the death of an old existence or mode of living or thinking giving way to rebirth. That is how I choose to look at this now. At first, the idea that someone could divine my death left me feeling vulnerable and out of control, the victim of some inscrutable force. Later on I felt a giant wave of skepticism. From this experience I recognized why some people may be repelled by and fear the feelings of uneasiness brought about by the paranormal.For some people the fear of the paranormal is the equivalent of the fear of the irrational. "Rationality" in our modern scientific world consists of rules invented to tame the wilderness of our reality. I think the paranormal adds some twists and turns to our very existence which at it's core (cosmological theories aside) "is" irrational.Some critics of the paranormal, have dismissed the ideas of parapsychology to be "essentially those of magic." If magic means belief in the sheer power of mind over matter-then parapsychology does qualify as a science in quest of magic. J. B. Rhine's dice-throwing experiments were attempts in a controlled, secure lab setting to demonstrate the power of what witches call "magick spells" or theists prayer. Magic, in short, is belief in the unmediated power of intention. It's a belief that might stir the fires of paranoia, for it would imply that we are vulnerable to the sheer intentions of others (including our enemies). One might reasonably prefer, not to believe in "magic" or not to believe in such strange powers. To some, the world of magic is a frightening world.If there is indeed anything to the paranormal, all sorts of strange entities, thought to be dismissed from the world by science, would return to our midst, newly validated and certified by parapsychology. Talk of ghosts, angels, fairies, phantoms, demons, and aliens might be based on some of factoid paranormal reality. Instead of a tidy universe, we would have a "multiverse" with plenty of things "that go bump in the night".There is also the fear of life after death. The paranormal isn't just implicated with magic, it's full of reports that force us to reexamine our ideas of our own mortality. One could surmise that resistance to the paranormal is actually resistance to the idea of life after death, which is so entangled with religious ideas we thought we had outgrown with the rise of science and the European Enlightenment. After all, if there is a psychic factor in nature that somehow escapes the confines of physical law, maybe that's what makes an afterworld possible. In that afterworld, the heaven and hell that frightened us as children may very well be real. The disturbance to our world as we know it now from the mere implication of an afterworld would be monumental.Another fear is the fear of gnostics or what I call mystic know-it-alls. There have always been people in history who claimed they knew what they knew-flat-out-by gnosis, inspiration, revelation. (Harold Camping comes to mind.) In short, by paranormal means. Fear of the paranormal is the praiseworthy fear of the mystifying dogmatist, the prophetic con-artist. Scientific certification of the paranormal might give this type of person more intellectual ammunition than might be desirable. It would be much tougher to weed out the charlatans who capitalize on the vulnerable.The paranormal might also give rise to the fear of fatalism. Suppose we could really know the future? Would we be stripped of our free will? Not necessarily. Assuming the psychic Tarot Card reader saw my future, she would not then see what I must do but merely what I shall do. The former would impinge on my freedom; the latter wouldn't. Still, logic seems defeated here; how could anyone see what has yet to occur? The fear now is that our sense of time gets disrupted. Suddenly, backward cause and effect becomes possible; the future casts shadows on the present. This upset in our idea of time leads to the last and most compelling reason that I think paranormal is feared.The paranormal can significantly can take our world view by surprise Catastrophe theorists work on the "science of surprise".Extreme surprise can cause a great deal of anxiety, especially when it involves shock to our basic sense of reality. A universe with minimal surprises is probably a lot easier on the nervous system. In a rapidly changing world such as ours, the paranormal just adds to our general cognitive chaos, and to the instability of our collective mental health. As humans we gravitate toward what we know. In short, if the paranormal is real it would force us into overturning our paradigms of our entire existence on a monumental level.There are reasons to fear the paranormal: loss of privacy, loss of control, the irrational, magic, strange entities, heaven and hell, mystic know-it-alls, fatalism, and anxiety-producing surprise. Commonly these reasons remain motives to disbelieve in the paranormal; but the fact remains-they are not arguments against its existence. I believe that Carl Sagan expressed it best:"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
Only a cold hard body will do...
In the article Bigfoot: Fact or Fiction as a sidebar to They're on a mission to find Bigfoot in California, Michael Shermer, persistent uber skeptic, had this to say:
"Show me the body," says Dr. Michael Shermer, executive director of the Altadena-based Skeptics society. "No one names a new species based on anecdotal evidence such as something spooky they heard in the night."
Anecdotal evidence is still evidence however, and valid evidence. It isn't enough to shout to the world Sasquatch exists, but it's a start. That isn't what has me shaking my head in a moment of surreal cognitive dissonance ; it's the following comment by Shermer in response to Dr. Jeff Medlrum's plans to start an on line journal (The Relic Hominoid Inquiry,") devoted to discussion and research on the topic:
Such efforts, Shermer says, are an exercise in futility.
Yes, but isn't looking for something not yet proven to exist kind of scientific and all? If you want to find out if a thing exists, and you reject anecdotal evidence, why reject other avenues of exploration? Particularly avenues of exploration from your colleagues? (Yes, Mr. Shermer, Dr. Meldrum is too a scientist.) Isn't making available and encouraging discussion of the thing you want to find out about a right step on the road to scientific discovery? Or at least inquiry?
Do faux skeptics even want Bigfoot to be found?
Let's do it the uber way for a moment; going about it following the proper channels of the Scientism Code of How We Do Things. Anecdotal evidence, out! Okay. So the only other way to see if Bigfoot exists is to go out and look for it, right? And take castings of prints that could be, might be, of the big hairy darling. And chronicle the associated events in the context of Bigfoot encounters/sightings; wood knocking, rock throwing, scents, calls. Gather data.
And even encouraging other scientific individuals -- instead of the average Joe these pathological skeptics dismiss with such snooty rejection -- to communicate with each other.
And yet, confusingly, the Shermers of the world don't see these endeavors as good things, or even well meaning but misguided things. Their minds seem to be made up, even while making dramatic demands: don't waste time looking for Bigfoot or seriously studying the topic, but do please bring me a dead body.
Mr. Shermer seems more concerned with the evils of the imagination than looking for Bigfoot:
People have genuine experiences. The question is - what do those experiences represent?" Shermer says. "People have incredible imaginations. We're really good at just making stuff up."
Let's play their game and ask for proof, or at least really good evidence, that this is so. Shermer made a statement, now let's see him prove it. Why and how do we make things up, and to what end? Why would the Bigfoot encounters share similarities? How does that all work; how and why do our minds create a big ass hairy monster in the woods? And why is that this hallucination, for lack of a better word, appears to more than one person at times (multiple witnesses) ? If we are to use the stale and often abused Occam's Razor, Shermer's "explanation" seems the less likely one. Are we to seriously accept that people, particularly those that live in rural and remote areas, are so unfamiliar with the local flora and fauna, so out of touch with the natural rhythms of their environment, so distanced from the behavior and personalities of their own pets and animals (cattle, sheep, etc.) that they have to "make stuff up?"
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The Intention of Perpetual Tiny bitR. LeeJuly 15, 2007The recent (July 13) Larry King program Are UFOs Real? on Roswell and UFOs had to a certain extent a panel: Roswell witnesses Jesse Marcel, Julie Shuster of the Intercontinental UFO Museum and research Spirit in Roswell and outcome of Walter Haut. (Haut was majesty information supervisor at Roswell and was responsible for the press release announcing a "crashed gang" had been improve,) ex-Arizona Official Fyfe Symington, who directly mocked the Phoenix Lights sightings but newly came out to say he himself saw the UFO, UFO, astronaut Boost Aldrin, (who seemed to resist a debunking course of his own, but that's worthy of an article all its own,) talk radio Coast to Coast's pioneer George Noory, UFO canvasser Stanton Friedman, UFO documentary producer James Fox (Out of the Outlandish,) and arch skeptic Michael Shermer, among others.lush story here:http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=32293
When the Obama administration launched its "We the People" petition program, they probably never expected to get a petition like this. Signers were promised that the administration would give a formal response to any petition gathering 5,000 signatures within 30 days. One of the very first petitions to qualify for a response was the so-called disclosure petition, whose title says "we petition the obama administration to: formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race - Disclosure."The petition was written by Stephen Bassett of the Paradigm Research Group, who also proclaimed July 8 to be World Disclosure Day. It states,We, the undersigned, strongly urge the President of the United States to formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race and immediately release into the public domain all files from all agencies and military services relevant to this phenomenon.This goes well beyond a request for simple "disclosure," to release all documents. It presupposes that the U.S. government is involved in ongoing contact with extraterrestrials, and demands that the Obama administration acknowledge that fact. However, the petition quickly gathered enough signatures to qualify, creating a dilemma for the White House. All they can do is deny that they are meeting with extraterrestrials on a daily basis, and the denial further inflames the conspiracy flames. For a government agency to address UFO claims in any way is an automatic no-win situation. If you say they're not a real mystery, and you get a controversy over that. On the other hand, if you say that they are mysterious and challenging, you stir up an even bigger controversy, and many people suspect (quite correctly) that you have been nibbling peyote or something. Read Lee Speigel's Huffington Post article on the petition dilemma.On Nov. 7, the White House finally issued its response to the Disclosure Petition, which reads, in part:Thank you for signing the petition asking the Obama Administration to acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye.As far as I can tell, this response is 100% correct and accurate. However, as you might imagine, this is not going down well in certain places. PRG states simply, "The response was unacceptable." They promise to have more to say about it soon.The White House's threshold for a petition response has since been raised to 25,000, but the change is not retroactive. However, Bassett was urging his followers to raise the signature count over 25,000 anyway, as a demonstration of their strength. The final signature count was 12,078.
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I recently heard a Radio One program in the UK that contained
an interview with a leading proponent of the popular "US Government has
aliens locked up and is experimenting with their spaceplanes" conspiracy
theory. However this particular individual sounded very reasonable, did
not make any outrageous claims, and further had some interesting facts
to disclose. In particular he mentioned several verifiable facts which
I would like some followup on:
Rockwell International and NASA were planning a *massive*
joint exhibition of space exploration this year (1991) but it was delayed
inexplicably until 1992. In the *official* prospectus for this exhibition,
one of the exhibits was clearly stated to be "an extraterrestrial space
craft". When asked about this by various individuals, all enquiries
were referred by NASA to the US DoD. An unnamed Pentagon spokesman speaking
off the record is meant to have indicated that they "had a number of such
vehicles to choose from..."
The Pentagon also held a press conference to deal with press
inquiries on this matter - and refused to answer any questions. In fact
reporters later said that the Pentagon had asked most of the questions,
and they all pertained to "what would be the public reaction if...".
The guy on the radio program referred extensively to two NASA
consultant engineers who claimed to have worked on alien spacecraft
studying propulsion systems for NASA - both had high level security
clearance in the States, were verifiably employed by NASA as senior
consultant engineers, and both were phoned in the States by the station
in a followup program (which I missed) the next day. The followup program
incidentally was only scheduled at the last minute due to record phone
calls from the public swamping Radio 1's 64 line switchboard...
He also claimed that a NSA official had told him off the record
that the NSA was in "electronic communication" with at least eight
extraterrestrial sources of intelligent communication...
He claimed that he possessed a recording of a telephone conversation
with an ex deputy director of the CIA (Casey's deputy as I recall), who
said that they (the CIA) had possession of quite a few alien artefacts,
including bodies, spacecraft and other miscellaneous bits and pieces.
He also verified on tape claims that several alien landings at US AFBs had
occured in the past, and in some cases were common knowledge amongst certain
groups of AFB personnel: "Hear what came in this morning, Joe?"...
Various farmers in a certain area of the US (I forget the state
that was mentioned) regularly discovered bloodless (drained) cattle in
various stages of dismemberment in the early morning. These animals had
had certain glands, body parts, or body fluids surgically removed with a
precision beyond the capabilities of all but the most advanced surgical
laboratories. This problem was so bad that in one place a farmer was in
danger of going bust due to loss of cattle. One explanation advanced was that
aliens were using these cattle as a convenient source of various rare
chemicals/tissues.
The technology in the latest black projects that have progressed
to flight hardware - Aurora, Strike, etc. - seems to be well beyond the
capabilities of current commercial (defense/aerospace) technology. In
particular ablative control surfaces and reliable flight control at speeds
in excess of Mach 4 are characteristics of such craft, sightings of which
are widespread in Nevada along with reliable evidence (supersonic boom
disruption?) of such speeds.
Any comments/hard info. on any of these assertions would be
much appreciated - please post as I am sure others are interested too.
