Psychobiological theories do not explain Near Death Experiences

Near-Death Experiences Between Science and Prejudice by Enrico Facco and Christian Agrillo:

Several studies have proposed psychobiological interpretations of near-death experiences (NDEs), claiming that NDEs are a mere byproduct of brain functions gone awry; however, relevant facts incompatible with the ruling physicalist and reductionist stance have been often neglected. The awkward transcendent look of NDEs has deep epistemological implications, which call for: (a) keeping a rigorously neutral position, neither accepting nor refusing anything a priori; and (b) distinguishing facts from speculations and fallacies. Most available psychobiological interpretations remain so far speculations to be demonstrated, while brain disorders and/or drug administration in critical patients yield a well-known delirium in intensive care and anesthesia, the phenomenology of which is different from NDEs. Facts can be only true or false, never paranormal. In this sense, they cannot be refused a priori even when they appear implausible with respect to our current knowledge: any other stance implies the risk of turning knowledge into dogma and the adopted paradigm into a sort of theology.

The full article provides supporting information.

Copyright © 2012 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Charles Darwin was not an atheist, he believed in a form of Intelligent Design

I've updated the Eminent Researchers page on my web site to include a section on Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin discovered the theory of evolution by natural selection. He was not an atheist, he was agnostic. He believed that one could not know if God existed or not. Darwin also believed that natural laws resulted from design which indicates that he believed in a form of Intelligent Design.

Wikiquote

Charles Robert Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist who achieved lasting fame by outlining the theory of evolution and proposing that evolution could be explained through natural and sexual selection. Prompted by awareness that Alfred Russel Wallace was developing similar theories he published his own sooner than he had originally intended. This theory is now considered an integral component of biological science.

darwinproject.ac.uk

In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God.— I think that generally (& more and more so as I grow older) but not always, that an agnostic would be the most correct description of my state of mind.

Wikipedia

Agnosticism is the view that the truth values of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—are unknown and (so far as can be judged) unknowable.

Wikiquote

With respect to the theological view of the question: This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars or that a cat should play with mice... On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.

Copyright © 2012 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

UFO Secrecy and Spirituality

Scientists who have tried to calculate the likelihood of aliens evolving on other planets and coming to the earth have consistently concluded that aliens should be here. Recent discoveries of extrasolar planets have only increased the odds. Many people say they have seen alien vehicles and aliens themselves. This is not accepted by mainstream society most likely because the aliens and the government are trying to keep the presence of aliens secret. The fact that SETI has not detected alien radio communications is not necessarily surprising. Aliens would probably have technology far superior ours, why should we expect them to use the same communication methods we use?

It seems probable that intelligence agencies in the US (and maybe other governments) keep their knowledge of UFOs and aliens so secret and so well compartmentalized that even the highest elected and appointed officials do not have access to the information. This would protect and prevent the information from being be released by political means. There isn't just one reason the information might be protected so securely by the intelligence agencies there are many reasons:

• Some aliens seem to be abducting people and there is nothing the government or military can do to stop it. If acknowledged by the government, this could cause panic, and make the government look incompetent. Simply admitting the existence of aliens might not be too disturbing, but saying that some aliens are abducting people and hybridizing with them (raping them), could be very disturbing to many people. Some of the things the abductees have said they were told by the aliens, (imminent wars, disasters, alien invasions that never seem to really happen) if given credence by governmental acknowledgment of an alien presence, could cause panic.
  

• It is rumored that the US government (President Eisenhower) made an agreement with some of the aliens to receive advanced alien technology in exchange for permission to carry out abductions. Since there was no way to stop the abductions it seems to be more of a surrender than a pact. If true, this would be a huge embarrassment if it become public knowledge.
  

• People who claim contact with aliens consistently report alien predictions of imminent natural disasters, wars, and alien invasions that never seem to occur. If the aliens could make these predictions in person to all of humanity, it could cause world wide panic and social disruptions.
  

• Some aliens may look just like humans. This could lead to chaotic situations where some humans claim to be aliens and take advantage of the fear and gullibility of other people. Or, it could lead situations where some humans are accused of being aliens and are persecuted. It also creates the possibility that the highest levels of the government are infiltrated by aliens. It would be very embarrassing for the government to have to admit this as a possibility or a fact.
  

• The technology the UFOs use for propulsion seems to be capable of speeds reaching thousands of miles an hour in the atmosphere without subjecting interior of the craft to extremely high acceleration forces. This technology might be theoretically obscure but it might not be difficult to construct with currently available materials. If this was acknowledged by the government, it could encourage all sorts of dangerous people (national governments and private individuals) to attempt to discover this means of propulsion. That could lead to the development of weapons like extremely fast missiles (long range or short range) that are impossible to defend against. The power source for the alien craft might also be adapted to produce a warhead for these missiles of unimaginable power.
  

• The technology used to power the alien crafts, if made available to the public could disrupt our fossil fuel based economy. Obviously the current power structure doesn't want to change the status quo. But less obviously, if all the people currently employed in energy industries became unemployed, they would stop buying things and stop paying taxes until they found new jobs. The ripple effects could cause a deep recession or world wide economic depression. The new alien technology could ultimately have huge economic benefits and be good for society in the long run, but the transition from fossil fuels could be chaotic and traumatic for many people.
  

• When secret military aircraft are accidentally observed by the public, the credibility of those observations can be damaged by misinformation ridiculing the observations as absurd reports of UFOs. Thus it would be harder to keep new and advanced military craft secret if UFOs were no longer a subject of ridicule.
  

• The aliens don't use money. If a technologically superior civilization was known to not use money, people all over the world would question the current economic system on earth. If people demanded we organize the world economy on the same lines as the aliens organize theirs, it would threaten the power of the current elite which depends on monetary wealth for maintaining its power and luxurious lifestyle. The powerful will do what is necessary to maintain the current economic system.
  

• The aliens may tell us the truth about the human soul or spirit and the truth about the history of human evolution and religion. This may contradict popular religions and scientific theories and could upset many people. Also, some people in the government might not believe this truth and consider the aliens to be demonic deceivers who should not be allowed to propagate heresy to the public.
  

• The aliens may want to avoid disrupting the current cultures on earth. In the past, contact with European explorers led to the destruction of native cultures all over the world. Some aliens may want to avoid something similar and some aliens might be working to keep their presence secret. For reasons that might be ethical or simply selfish some aliens may want to preserve the current cultures on earth. The government may agree that there is a danger to earth culture and cooperate in keeping the alien presence secret.
  

• If the presence of aliens is disclosed, no matter what the true alien agenda is (and there may be different groups of aliens with different agendas), some people will believe what the aliens say and some will not believe what they say. Some people will believe what the government says about the aliens, some people will not believe what the government says. Some people will benefit from the changes the aliens bring about, some people will find their own interests are harmed by those changes. No matter what the alien agenda is, it has the potential to cause intense social disruption. This could lead to fracturing of society into different factions and could lead to massive protests, boycotts, or other forms of resistance against governments, and could have significant effect on the world economy. Many people might feel a greater allegiance and loyalty to the aliens than to the human governments. Certain and factual knowledge of the alien presence is a grave danger to the status quo. Those in power benefit from the status quo and will resist change.
  

• Those people responsible for suppressing information about aliens may have committed crimes or violations of the US constitution in order to keep that information secret. They will be reluctant to divulge what has been going on because they could face criminal charges.
  

There isn't enough public information to make a correct judgment about whether the government's response to the aliens is good or bad. For example, there are purportedly many cases of military jets trying to intercept UFOs and recent rumors of US beam weapons being used on the UFOs. Is the government trying to prevent abductions or trying to discourage friendly aliens from making their presence known? Also, there could be different factions within the government doing different things with or without coordination or knowledge of each other. Some government actions might be good and some might be bad. It is not really possible for us to judge what is going on due to a lack of information.

Understanding the alien agenda also requires a spiritual perspective. We can't make a correct assessment of the phenomena unless we also know the truth about the human soul and human history on earth. There may be coordination in the spirit planes of aliens and humans on the earth plane, but we don't understand this while we are on the earth plane so we react with fear that is not appropriate. This is a very complicated subject but as an example to explain what I mean, suppose some aliens are hybridizing with humans as some abductees and abduction researchers claim. Where will the souls of the hybrids come from? What if there will be human souls incarnating in the hybrids? How can we tell if the aliens are invading the earth or helping humanity to evolve?

Copyright © 2012 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

How Physicists Might Discover the Spirit World

In an article on cnn.com, physicist and author Sean Carroll describes how the recently discovered Higgs boson might allow physicists to study dark matter. Dark matter is a form of matter that comprises five sixths of the total mass of the universe, however little is known about dark matter because it rarely interacts with ordinary matter. In his article, Carroll describes how scientists could use the Higgs boson to investigate dark matter.

Some people suspect that the spirit world is made of dark matter. In this case, physicists studying dark matter could soon discover the spirit realm. However, even if the spirit world is not made of dark matter, Carroll describes a process that would allow physics to eventually discover the spirit world. When physicists stumble upon an effect in their laboratories or particle accelerators that involves spiritual physics, further study will inevitably lead to discovery of the spirit world.

Through mediumship and other paranormal phenomena, we know that spirits do have some effect on the physical world. Wave function collapse may be one such effect. Quantum entanglement may be also be a phenomena that links the physical world to the spirit world. Therefore, it is only a matter of time before persistent investigations of mainstream physics will lead to the discovery of spiritual physics.

From the article:

It's possible, even likely, that millions of them [dark matter particles] pass through your body every second. It's like a city with two populations, each speaking a different language, and no translators or bilingual interpreters. The two groups of people go about their separate lives, never directly speaking with each other. Likewise, in our galaxy, dark matter and ordinary matter pass right through each other all the time.

The Higgs boson could be the bilingual particle we've been looking for. We don't know exactly what the dark matter is, but we certainly have our favorite theories. In many of those models, the Higgs is the one particle that readily interacts both with ordinary protons and neutrons and also with dark matter.

...

There are several experiments currently running with the goal of detecting dark matter.

...

We're not just waiting around for dark matter to be detected, either. Now that we've found the Higgs, we can start studying its properties in detail.

...

But once we better understand the Higgs and the particles it decays into, we might be able to infer the presence of dark matter just by process of elimination, by pinpointing events in which more energy went into the collision than we detected coming out.

...

Copyright © 2012 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Eminent Researchers: Alan Turing and Wernher von Braun

I have updated the Eminent Researchers page on my web site to include Alan Turing and Wernher von Braun.

Alan Turing

From Wikipedia.

Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS ( 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954), was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine.[1][2] Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.[3]

In a paper where he describes his Turing Machine,
Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59, 433-460,
Turing wrote:

I assume that the reader is familiar with the idea of extrasensory perception, and the meaning of the four items of it, viz., telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. These disturbing phenomena seem to deny all our usual scientific ideas. How we should
like to discredit them! Unfortunately the statistical evidence, at least for telepathy, is overwhelming. It is very difficult to rearrange one's ideas so as to fit these new facts in. Once one has accepted them it does not seem a very big step to believe in ghosts and bogies. The idea that our bodies move simply according to the known laws of physics, together with some others not yet discovered but somewhat similar, would be one of the first to go.

Turing recognized that the lack of ESP would prevent a computer from passing the Turing Test.

Wernher von Braun

From Wikipedia:

Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun (March 23, 1912 – June 16, 1977) was a German-born rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and, subsequently, the United States.

From Wikiquote:

Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.

...

For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all.

...

It is in scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happening by chance.

Copyright © 2012 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Doctors Testify to Patient's Spirit Return

Doctors Testify to Patient's Spirit Return

Within hours of Burke being pronounced dead at the hospital, two members of the medical team who had treated him received a "visitation" from Burke in their own homes – before they knew that he had passed on. What's more, the men had never met.

Copyright © 2012 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Savants and ESP

Last month I posted on Acquired Savant Syndrome. Today I noticed an article Savants: What They Can Teach Us by Larry Dossey, MD that says Savants are often capable of ESP.

Savant is derived from a French word meaning “learned one.” Although they are often mentally or socially impaired, savants frequently possess astonishing creative and intuitive powers of obscure origin, in areas such as mathematics, art, or music.

...

“Savant syndrome” was popularized in the 1988 movie Rain Man. Kim Peek, the developmentally disabled man who was the inspiration for the film, knew more than 7,600 books by heart, as well as every area code, highway, zip code, and television station in the United States.

...

Many clinicians have reported savants capable of extrasensory perception, or ESP, also called psi.

...

The article describes one child who would know when his parents were going to pick him up from school, another who would know about conversations that occurred out of earshot and who had the ability to pick up thoughts, and another who would know when the telephone would ring and who would be calling.

In the same way that Acquired Savant Syndrome is explained by the filter model of the brain, so is ESP in people who are born as savants. The same abnormality in the brain that causes impariments like autism, may also damage the filtering ability of the brain that normally blocks certain facets of consciousness. When that filtering ability is damaged, the abilities that make them savants as well as the ability for ESP can manifest.

Copyright © 2012 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Restore Yourself with Tai Chi

I got this book from the library today and I highly recommend it:

Becoming One with Nature: Restore Yourself with Tai Chi
by Martin Lee, Ph.D., Emily Lee, TC Master, Melinda & Joyce Lee

It covers energy healing, self healing, and meditation. It includes an exercise to help you learn to feel the energy (chi), as well as a 64 sequence of forms (tai chi movements).

It's only 144 pages but contains photgraphs and written text of how to do the forms.

My only criticism is that the author tries to give a scientific explanations of why it works. Martin Lee is a physicist who worked on particle accelerators and he is trying to get technical, analytical, scientific, minded westerners to believe in it long enough to try it and prove it for themselves. I can understand his motivation but in my opinion the explanations are not compelling. He does give short case histories of people who have been helped by the techniques including himself and I find that much more convincing - except much of what he is writing about I already know and accept from my experieces with spiritual healing.

I was looking for a book that gave the qigong/tai chi/chi kung perspective on healing because I was interested in expanding my understanding beyond what I have learned in Spritiualist churches and this book satisfies that interest. What surprised me was how similar the two forms of healing are.

Copyright © 2012 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.