In an internet discussion forum, someone asked what drives pseudoskeptics to wage an information war against paranormal phenomena. I replied by quoting from several different post I had made to the same discussion forum in other threads. Below are slightly edited versions of those posts:
The information war is important to pseudoskeptics because they are ideologically driven materialists. Consider the case of Dr. Eben Alexander M.D. If a neurosurgeon says he changed his mind and now knows consciousness is not produced by the brain and that God exists, because he experienced the afterlife during a near-death experience. And from his knowledge of the way the brain is wired he knows the brain could not produce that experience. Then the materialist's religion crumbles to the ground. It calls into question their creation myth, Darwinism. If God exists, there is a good candidate for an intelligent designer of life. Supporting a nonphysical consciousness would be a selective pressure on the evolution of the brain that is not part of the natural environment. If the afterlife is real, then consciousness is not produced by the brain, and conscious human beings could not have evolved naturally. It makes belief in God reasonable. It proves the scientists and materialists, have been hoaxing the entire world for the last 150 years at least, by denying the several independent forms of empirical evidence for ESP and the afterlife. When the afterlife is accepted by all sectors of society, those who perpetrated this hoax who claimed to be smarter than everyone else are going to look like the biggest fools and villains the world has ever known outside of a genocidal government. They cannot allow the truth to become accepted. It would mean religion was right and Science was wrong.
Another reason pseudoskeptics can't allow paranormal phenomena to exist is that it would threaten their position at the top of the evolutionary tree since they might be considered a genetically inferior evolutionary dead end compared to people who have psychic experiences.
Are materialists dodos afraid of extinction?
But if you are a materialist, if you don't believe in the afterlife or reincarnation, then the fact of ESP forces you to confront the possibility that you are a member of an inferior species that might go extinct. Evolution is important to materialists because it is part of their creation myth. Faced with the reality of psychic phenomena, faced with the possibility that they are an evolutionary dead end, it would create a existential crisis of epic proportions. It would shake their faith that they are rational, intellectual, supermen and instead suggest that they are like the dodo, which was doomed to extinction because of stupidity. It would suggest materialists are inferior to people with psychic abilities, particularly since psychic ability seems to run in families and thus probably has a genetic and therefore (according to materialist belief) an evolutionary basis. The existence of ESP threatens materialists' most sacred faith about their origins and their place in the universe.
Pathological skepticism is a backlash against organized religion.
The Pathology of Organised Skepticism, L. David Leiter, Journal of Scientific Exploration (Vol.16 No.1, 2002)
The theme that has emerged time after time, as I become closely acquainted with individual PhACT members is this: Each one who has disclosed personal details of their formative years, say up until their early 20’s, has had an unfortunate experience with a faith-based philosophy, most often a conventional major religion.
Very often, their family or community has (almost forcibly) imposed this philosophy on them from a very early age; but then as they matured, they threw off this philosophy with a vengeance, vowing at a soul level never to be so victimized again.
Pseudoskeptics are on a crusade against organized religion. It blinds them to the empirical evidence for the afterlife because that evidence would dissolve their raison d'être leaving their existence in actuality as meaningless as their materialism paints it. They may not realize they are being irrational since they lack critical thinking skills because their reasoning ability has been stunted by church logic. It is why they say there is no evidence for any paranormal phenomena. It is not that they just can't believe the evidence, they cannot allow it to exist so they fight the evidence by all possible means because of the existential threat it represents to their worldview.
According to the book The Sociopath Next Door most sociopaths are atheists. So the ranks of pseudoskeptics probably have a higher percentage of sociopaths than the general population, particularly among the leaders of the movement who set the standards for their followers. This might explain why pseudoskeptics do what they do.
How to Determine if Someone Is a Sociopath: 7 Steps
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Sociopaths have delusions of grandeur, and oftentimes feel overly entitled to certain positions, people, and things. They believe that their own beliefs and opinions are the absolute authority, and disregard the opinions of others.
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Sociopaths are professional liars. They fabricate stories and make outlandish, untruthful statements, but are able to make these lies sound convincing with their confidence and assertiveness.
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Because sociopaths are such dominant leaders, they are usually able to attract a following of some kind. These people tend to be weaker, more passive individuals who have been intoxicated by the sociopath's charm.
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Sociopaths are incapable of experiencing guilt or shame for their actions.[9] They rarely apologize for their behavior, and are unaware of the emotional, physical, and financial repercussions of their actions. As a result, they betray, threaten, and harm those around them without feeling any type of remorse.
Sociopaths are manipulative. They constantly try to influence and dominate the people around them, and tend to seek positions of leadership.
Sociopaths are incapable of experiencing love, and likely will not have had healthy romantic relationships in the past.[10] They are only concerned with their own interests, and use compassion as a tool to manipulate others, but are not genuinely compassionate.
They are afraid of being embarrassed when the truth comes out.
Mainstream science has been saying unambiguously, emphatically, and repeated that alternatives to materialism are false and that the empirical evidence against materialism is invalid for far longer than a hundred years.
When it becomes generally accepted throughout all sectors of society that this denial of the truth is the greatest scam in history, deliberately perpetrated on humanity, Science will be disgraced beyond any possibility of recovering its reputation. It will have to live in a future of infamy lesser only to that of governments guilty of genocide.
What could be more important to humanity than the knowledge that the afterlife is real? What could be more important to science than huge gaps in its understanding of the universe revealed by the empirical evidence for ESP and the afterlife? By clinging to the false religion of Materialism despite several independent forms of overwhelming, extraordinary, empirical evidence to the contrary, Science has betrayed humanity and itself, by neglecting its duty to Truth.
Imagine what the world will be like when it is a generally accepted scientific fact that human consciousness survives death, and that everyone will have to experience in a life review or future incarnation the harm they have inflicted on others during their life. The world will be an incalculably better place because it will be an established scientific fact that when you harm another person you are harming yourself. How much pain and suffering could have been avoided if materialism had not been advocated so strongly by scientists? How different the world will be when everyone knows that there is an afterlife waiting for us after death where the atmosphere is permeated with love and all souls are aware of their interconnectedness and brotherhood.
The shame and guilt that is the due of Science is so great that those who have adopted Scientism as their religion, those materialists whom the blame will fall upon, will do whatever is necessary, consciously or unconsciously, to prevent the truth that materialism is false from becoming accepted through all sectors of society.
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