Dean Radin's blog has a new post: My faith was broken ...
It's about criticism published elsewhere on the internet of the NPR story I blogged about a few days ago. The criticism argued that parapsychology is an attempt to use science to support religion.
I thought that was amusing.
To a Spiritualist, the idea that parapsychology is a means of supporting religion is comical.
While parapsychologists are struggling with small effect sizes and decline effects in their labs, and at the same time debating the merits of the the super-psi hypothesis to explain the evidence for the afterlife, spirit communication and spiritual healing are facts of every day life for Spiritualists.
The ancient Egyptians built the pyramids without scientists, the Romans built roads across Europe without scientists, the Chinese developed gunpowder, and movable type without scientists. Ships sailed across the seas long before Bernoulli discovered the principle which explained their motion. In certain fields of endeavor, science is not necessary. As any shaman knows, psi is one of them. In fact, our understanding of psi would be further advanced without Science because mainstream science has only hindered research on psi.
For 150 years, while Science has been ignoring psi, Spiritualists have been demonstrating psi, educating people about psi, and training people in the use of psi. During that entire period, Science has been trying to deny the existence of psi. When it comes to psi, there is more intellectual honesty in Spiritualism than mainstream science.
Parapsychology and psychical research are interesting and I hope eventually they will increase our knowledge about psi. But, even though you can find support for Spiritualism in psychology, parapsychology, and quantum physics, right now, Spiritualists are years ahead of the scientists when it comes to using psi. Parapsychologists will find more support for their science in a Spiritualist church than a Spiritualist will find support in parapsychology labs for many years to come.
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