Recently I've found myself thinking as much about religion as about psi. I'm aware that the two aren't necessarily related, and that some people take survival of consciousness seriously without believing in God. That said, the logic is that paranormal and religious experience are closely linked - most obviously in mystical and near-death experiences. And considering how much documented data there is about these and other such things it interests me that the spiritualism/New Age take on religion it informs is so little known or discussed.
I notice that especially now at Easter, a time there's so much religious commentary about. These days, post Dawkins, a lot of it comes from atheists. First up is Roland White, who writes jokey columns in the Sunday Times. Cornered by his daughter with the God question he panicked - as a disbeliever, what on earth was he to say? His problem, he explained, is that nobody could ever give him a convincing argument for the existence of God?
White cited a recent discussion between the Archbishop of Canterbury and John Humphrys, the acerbic broadcaster who it seems lost the last vestige of religious belief after the mass murders of children in the Russian town of Beslan. The archbishop, trying to win him back, argued as follows: 'God is the agency that's at work in everything and has set up the world in such a way that not only is evil possible, but moments are also possible where something breaks through of healing, or miracle. Where and when it breaks through might be guided by the power of prayer.' White comments: 'I don't think it persuaded Humphrys, and it certainly didn't convince me.'
White was quite funny about Vincent Nichols, the new Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, who last week accused the football authorities of showing disdain for Christians by holding Premier League matches on Easter Sunday. Why should the Godless hordes sit around twiddling their thumbs during a religious festival that means nothing to them? Would it be OK if they kicked a ball around in the park with sweaters for goalposts? What about a slightly more formal amateur level match? A fourth division event? How far up the footballing hierarchy before the archbishop detects disdain?
This is light, knockabout stuff. But the shadow of Richard Dawkins looms large. Over to the Guardian, where Madeleine Bunting discerns a growing distaste among thinking folk for 'the polemics of the New Atheist debate and its foghorn volume'.
Just this week, [author] AN Wilson announces in a thoughtful cover article for the New Statesman that he has apostated, abandoning his fellow atheists. Or take another example: in the Third Way, a Christian magazine, the poet Andrew Motion reflects wistfully, "I don't believe in God - though I wish I did, and I can't stop thinking about it so who knows what might happen one day?" Wilson and Motion talk of uncertainty, doubt and faith in terms that are probably far more familiar to the vast majority of the British - many of whom still describe themselves as believing in God, whatever they mean by that - than the certitudes used by Dawkins. New Atheism may come to be regarded as winning a battle but losing the war.
Bunting speaks of atheists' 'egotism and arrogance'. She sees the New Atheists mirroring a particular strain of fundamentalist Christianity with no knowledge of the vast variety of other forms of religious faith, and sharing 'the inner glow of complete certainty'. She cites the historian of religion Karen Armstrong, who argues that it's a mistake to see religion as a matter of belief in a set of propositions, when it's more about doing, acting with compassion.
She also approves of the philosopher and writer Alain de Botton, who calls himself an atheist but runs a quasi-religion School of Life, complete with Sunday sermons and 'pilgrimages' to fill the widespread longing for wisdom and insight. "Even if you're an atheist, there are a huge number of insights in religion," he says. "We're in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater."
That brought a come-back, also in the Guardian, from non-believing philosopher Julian Baggini, who pointed out that atheists are increasingly seen as shrill, bishop-bashing fanatics who are tone deaf to the spiritual. There's no point them complaining about this caricature, he added; if they publish books with titles like The God Delusion and God is Not Great then obviously they are going to be seen as anti-religious zealots.
Baggini's main point is that this extremism leaves the field free for people like Bunting who insist that religion is not to be taken literally, and that its creeds are not factual descriptions of the real world. This gets him going:
The idea that it is a modern distortion to think of religious beliefs as being factually true is manifest nonsense. If people thought their tenets of faith were metaphors, why did they torture or kill people who disagreed with them. Did doctrinal differences about Christ's divinity have no role in Rome's split from the Orthodox church? If literal truth is not what matters, why is it so hard to find a practising Muslim who's prepared to say that the Angle Gabriel didn't really dictate the Qur'an to the prophet?
(If it had come a few days earlier, the news that Mel Gibson and his wife are splitting up would have reminded the atheists of a perfect example of this kind of mind-boggling literalism. Gibson, a sort of ultra-traditionalist Catholic as I recall, was reported as saying that while he would make eternal salvation, his wife would not because she was a Protestant, even though he considered her to be 'saintly' and it was rather unfair.)
Like many atheists, Baggini seems chiefly offended by the traditionalist extremists, but also derides the 'fluffy brigade', with their 'doctrine-lite' faith, whose idea of religion corresponds not to the reality, as expressed by traditionalist zealots, but to what they would like it to be. He doesn't care if people want to retain a sense of being religious, he says, as long as what they believe stands up to intellectual scrutiny.
As I say, in all this babble of voices there's very almost no reference to a body of research which in many ways offers new insights and possibilities, and offers tentative answers to the questions that stymie so many people. Atheists always say: where's the evidence? There is no evidence. Go away. Well, for me there is evidence: the fact that humans have psychic and religious experiences. Atheists of course are sceptics and think this experience is based on fraud, misperception, hallucination and wishful thinking. But most of them know little or nothing about it, and are just following the intellectual consensus, fed in the media by folk like Randi, Wiseman and Blackmore.
Some people can filter it out, but the fact is, these experiences and perceptions of many different kinds - apparitions and poltergeists, automatic writing, ouija board and other mediumistic communication, ESP, out-of-body and near-death experiences, and children's memories of past lives, and others - in their various ways all provide a detailed, multi-faceted picture of survival of death. Moreover, an abundance of channelled communications provide a very detailed picture of what kind of experiences may await us in the post-mortem state. The very least one can say is that humans are in some way subjecting themselves to an extraordinarily detailed and convincing illusion that they are psychic and immortal beings. If the power of the illusion isn't generally recognised, that's surely because there's a sort of taboo on taking psychical research seriously, so relatively few people know about it.
The point is, none of this would have to be proven beyond doubt - and of course it isn't - to be a part of the debate. Take the Beslan children that so upset Humphrys, the implausibly cruel God argument. The abundant indications that some children, in some circumstances, have memories of having lived before, offers some support - and some people would say, quite powerful support - of the Hindu and Buddhist claim that humans live more than once, and quite possibly many many times, a claim backed up by channelled communications and also in the data about the visions brought on by LSD and other hallucinogens. This offers a quite different idea of religion, of the world as essentially a kind of classroom, a learning experience, in which cruelty and suffering are a means, among many, by which we mature into fully spiritual beings. Of course, this raises other objections, like why should that be necessary, and might be seen as equally repugnant as a capricious God. But it's much more logical, and it's backed by evidence - of a kind.
Nor is it just about psychism and the paranormal. I've just been having another go at Irreducible Mind, and I'm astonished by the wealth of examples in it - relatively few of them from psychical research - that imply that the conventional view of consciousness, as a product solely of brain processes, is untenable and that the brain is much better conceived in terms of a device that transmits or filters some external factor. That factor doesn't have to be a soul, as traditionally conceived, but it seriously weakens one of the pillars of atheism, that the mind dies with the brain.
So there's plenty of food for thought here, and it would take the debate to a different level. Where I sort of sympathise with Baggini is his puzzlement as to what the basis of the 'fluffy doctrine-lite' religion actually consists of. What do people like Bunting actually believe? Is it a sort of tailored down version of Christianity, a nice friendly religion based on compassion and tolerance and quietly ignoring all the difficult and implausible bits. In that case how do they justify it? Where does it come from? Also, why don't they come out and condemn the excesses, cruelties and stupidities of the traditionalist zealots, instead of implying that that's not important or that it's a misrepresentation of religion by atheists?
Actually, I think Bunting is tapping into a kind of sympathetic agnosticism which I guess probably is pretty widespread in Britain and Europe and other parts of the developed world (I don't know about the US, which seems to be a somewhat different case). I've noticed - Bel Mooney's book Devout Sceptics based on a radio series, is a good example - that when famous folk are asked for their religious views they fiddle about on the margins of belief, rather like Andrew Motion, sometimes wanting to believe, but not really finding the justification for it.
I might well feel like this too if I hadn't happened to be curious about near-death experiences and the like, and spent some time getting to grips with it. I'm absolutely with the atheists on this one: there's no point in believing something without evidence. It's academic now, but I doubt whether the mere feeling that 'there is some powerful force that guides us, a force beyond human comprehension' would ever have made me religious, even vaguely and fluffily. I just wish I could collar all these people and say, stop wasting your time on anxious, puzzled speculation, and get reading. Then we can start to have a real conversation.
The evidence for the afterlife is just as strong as the evidence for natural selection.
Fossils, developmental anatomy, and comparitive anatomy are evidence of evolution, not natural selection. People believe in natural selection because it agrees with their preconcieved notion that evolution should conform to known laws of science, but there is no evidence that natural selection occured.
If it is reasonable to believe in natural selection based on the evidence for evolution it is just as reasonable to believe in the afterlife based on "apparitions and poltergeists, automatic writing, ouija board and other mediumistic communication, ESP, out-of-body and near-death experiences, and children's memories of past lives".
Posted by: e4bh2rtg125tg | April 15, 2009 at 10:34 PM
"The evidence for the afterlife is just as strong as the evidence for natural selection", says e4bh2rtg125tg.
I'd have to take issue with this. Natural selection can be observed and seen in action, whereas all we've really got as evidence for an afterlife are anecdotes. Take Colin Wilson's book 'Afterlife', for instance, and the anecdotes he provides from those such as Rosalind Heywood. Of course, I'm not suggesting that Heywood's honesty is in question, merely that we can't really know either way.
I was once firmly convinced of the reality of an afterlife, based mainly on the sheer number of apparitions witnessed over time and poltergeists. But how do we know what the true nature of an apparition is? It could merely be some form of 'echo' of bodily death etc.
As for poltergeists, how can you know that it is a discarnate entity that you're dealing with? The waters are muddied by the fact that there also seem to be commonalities between UFOs, lake monsters and poltergeists. (See John Keel's and Ted Holiday's UFO experiences and how they shared characteristics usually associated with the poltergeist).
So it's nowhere near as clear-cut as we thought. Look at the Enfield poltergeist case, possibly the most famous and fascinating of its kind. At first sight, it was all being caused by some deceased old man, but then children and old women began to be seen, and the voice stated that even it didn't know who it was (just as John Keel's phantom telephone callers didn't either, during the time he was chasing UFOs in the 1960s).
As I said, it's all so confusing and frustrating.
As for religion, it clearly has some value in terms of human happiness. I can't understand Dawkin's missionary zeal to convert people to atheism. Why is he so bothered? Plenty of people accept evolutionary theory and yet also believe in a deity, as evidenced by the Clergy Letter Project.
The traditional philosophical proofs of God don't bear serious scrutiny, but it's perfectly legitimate to believe in God provided you acknowledge that it's based on faith alone and without trying to defend the traditional philosophical proofs of God's existence or undermine evolutionary theory.
Posted by: Wesley Crosland | April 17, 2009 at 03:04 PM
"All we've really got as evidence for an afterlife are anecdotes"
I'm sorry, Wesley, but this isn't neccessarily true. Try looking at the book available here:
http://www.openmindsite.com/
Posted by: The Major | April 17, 2009 at 04:08 PM
I disagree Wesley with your comment regarding only anecdotal evidence for survival - if by anecdotes you mean simply stories passed on second or third hand.
There is over a century of first-hand reporting on phenomena much more evidential than you quote. You may find it useful to read the reports of Oliver Lodge, William Crookes and Arthur Findlay (there are many many more but I have read these) before forming a view.
If you have read them I would be interested to know why you have rejected them as evidence.
I agree that the phenomena you did mention on the whole don't prove survival of personality - although in the Enfield case there does appear to be some evidence of it.
Posted by: Paul | April 17, 2009 at 04:36 PM
I have read Lodge's reports, Paul, but this was some time ago and I honestly can't really recall what he says. Perhaps you can refresh my memory? As I said, I have no reason to believe that Mrs Heywood was lying or that she was just a crank, but it is very difficult to know either way. I'll have to reread Wilson's 'Afterlife' to see whether he offers anything more conclusive than anecdotes.
For some time the Enfield case convinced me of the reality of life after death - but then this belief was undermined not by skeptics like, say, Chris French, but by other paranormal researchers like Keel and Holiday.
The similarities between UFO phenomena and poltergeist phenomena muddies the waters somewhat, at least for me. Perhaps, as Keel himself is inclined to believe, there is some sort of intelligence at work amongst mankind, but who knows why.
As I said, it's all very ambiguous and frustrating.
Posted by: Wesley Crosland | April 17, 2009 at 05:03 PM
Yes, there were indications of afterlife at Enfield. Best was the bit about going blind and dying in the armchair downstairs, which I'm quite sure nobody there knew but years later was confirmed by the previous occupant's son. But there aren't any easy explanations for poltergeists. They have been around for 2000+ years and if there was an explanation we should have had it by now. Dear old Chris French dodges the issue by banging on about how you can't rely on human testimony, although juries do so daily in courts of law.
Shakespeare's repeatedly quoted 'there are more things in heaven and earth, etc' is still about all we can say with certainty in this context.
Posted by: guy lyon playfair | April 17, 2009 at 08:41 PM
Wesley
Might I ask what is ambiguous about things such as NDEs, Past Life Recall, EVPs, Poltergeist and Child Past Life Recall? And there is more then just that.
Posted by: Kris | April 17, 2009 at 09:56 PM
http://www.geocities.com/chs4o8pt/summary_of_evidence.html
"Many scientists have conducted their own research into the afterlife and found the phenomena are real. Some of the scientists who have conducted or believe in afterlife and psychical research are Nobe Prize winners. These scientists were not fooled by magic tricks. Highly skilled stage magicians have investigated many mediums and have found them to be genuine. Studies have shown people with more education are more likely to believe in the afterlife, and most medical doctors believe in the afterlife.
"I can tell you the evidence for the afterlife is overwhelming and it is extraordinary. This evidence supports the conclusion that the afterlife is real, it has withstood the test of time and the collection of new data. However, I can't make you read about it. You have to do that yourself...."
Details are on the linked web page.
http://www.geocities.com/chs4o8pt/summary_of_evidence.html
Posted by: vbjbsevbwsf7 | April 18, 2009 at 05:12 AM
Hmmm, is that really Mr Guy Lyon Playfair? Actually, 'The Indefinite Boundary' is one of my favourite exploration of all these matters.
But if someone like Mr Playfair - who has had an enviably extensive amount of first-hand experience of all these phenomena - has so far been unable to disentangle all this complex evidence and provide coherent and conclusive explanations, we have to ask, will we ever be able to?
As for the death of Bill Wilkins, and his son's subsequent confirmation of the circumstances of his father's passing, I'm afraid that, like Maurice Grosse, I fear it wasn't really him. (Terry Wilkins confirmed that was how his father died, but did he also confirm that it was his father *speaking* and was how he spoke?)
I also seem to recall that the 'entity' at one point assumed the form of Maurice Grosse, perhaps another indication that it had the ability to totally mislead and deceive about who or what it was.
So that would be my retort to Kris - if that isn't ambiguous then I don't know what is.
As for Chris French, it's the same old tired line about "hoaxes and trickery". If the explanation for, say, the Enfield case is hoaxes and trickery, then I'd have to ask how it was possible for two teenage girls to dupe so many people over so long a period of time without either Playfair, Grosse or anyone else rumbling them. It just won't do.
Posted by: Wesley Crosland | April 18, 2009 at 11:39 AM
Wesley
Nothing really ambiguous about, though we can debate the identity of the entity, we still clearly had one. What about all the other areas I listed?
Posted by: Kris | April 18, 2009 at 01:48 PM
I concede that the other areas provide evidence, Kris, but I was really talking about the poltergeist and, contrary to what you say, I think it's far from certain that what was present was merely the deceased spirit of somebody. It clearly didn't even know itself who it was. It was contradictory, confused and misleading, just as John Keel's UFO experiences were. Who might have supposed there'd be some commonalities between poltergeists and UFOs? But what links them, exactly?
To repeat, all I'm saying is that it is far too glib to assert that what you had at Enfield was a straightforward haunting by a deceased person or persons.
Posted by: Wesley Crosland | April 18, 2009 at 02:16 PM
Hi Wesley
I think I am in agreement with you about Enfield from what I have read and seen. I suspect it's one of those things that are best observed first-hand - as soon as it goes into print or photographs it is going to be difficult to fully accept it as evidential of survival. I suspect that is true for most phenomena - we need to see it first hand to be fully convinced (I know that's how I feel anyway at the moment).
As for Oliver Lodge, I don't think it would be useful or even practical for me to precis his research on a blog. I'd need to re-read the material myself to do that and it will probably be faster if you read it yourself. I'd suggest the Raymond book if you have it as it is a complete record in (tiresome) detail in place. It also includes a description of Raymond as he was before his death and some interesting thoughts on afterlife. Having read it I think you may not be 100% convinced (I wasn't) but I don't think you could dismiss the evidence as "anecdotal" in a perjorative sense or of not containing evidence of survival.
Posted by: Paul | April 18, 2009 at 06:23 PM
Wesley has got it about right, and so has Paul - you have to be there, which Chris French wasn't. I don't know who claimed that the Enfield affair was 'straightfoward' - certainly not me.
Posted by: Guy Lyon Playfair | April 18, 2009 at 07:52 PM
I should point out that I wasn't saying that someone had stated that the Enfield case was merely a straightforward haunting by a deceased individual. Rather, there occasionally appears to be an implication that this was essentially what it was.
But when we consider all the disparate evidence - the mediums' testimonies, various apparitions, an apparent doppelganger, even Tourette's Syndrome - then this view is clearly unsustainable.
Getting back to Chris French, he also doesn't deign to explain how that fireplace was wrenched out of the wall. I suppose he'd say that we can't just rely on the word of others in accepting this.
I also suspect that the reason French seldom experiences anomalous phenomena first hand is because he doesn't stay at a location long enough. I've always thought there to be something rather fishy about this. Anyone ever seen him on 'Haunted Homes' for example? He leaves the comfort of the winnebago, goes into the allegedly haunted property, and then leaves before you can say Jack Robinson whilst declaring that there's nothing unusual around.
Finally, as I've said Paul, we've no real reason to doubt the evidence proffered by those such as Wilson or Lodge et al. On the other hand, what grounds have we to believe them either? Robert Monroe's books on journeys out his body, for instance, are most fascinating, but the problem is that we've really only got his word for it that he did it.
Posted by: Wesley Crosland | April 18, 2009 at 09:25 PM
"I was once firmly convinced of the reality of an afterlife, based mainly on the sheer number of apparitions witnessed over time and poltergeists. But how do we know what the true nature of an apparition is? It could merely be some form of 'echo' of bodily death etc."
In my opinion research on reincarnation and nde's gives us best evidence for survival.
These cases are good examples of how good survival evidence we can have from reincarnation research.
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_19_1_keil.pdf
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_16_3_haraldsson.pdf
Posted by: Raimo | April 19, 2009 at 06:10 PM
Raimo: I don't think research into reincarnation is good evidence for survival to be honest as it seems to me at best to explainable by spirit possession (leaving aside all the possible non-psi explanations where applicable)- of course this in itself might constitute evidence of survival, but not in he way I think you mean.
Wesley: If you cannot decide whether to accept the word of Lodge, Crookes etc then it seems to me the only other route is direct personal experience. If you can find one :) - by the way it will probably only be useful to you alone (why should anyone else believe you?) and only then if you can trust your senses :)
Posted by: Paul | April 20, 2009 at 01:33 PM
Sorry that should have read "... explainable equally well by spirit obsession in most instance".
Posted by: Paul Welsh | April 20, 2009 at 03:36 PM
"it seems to me at best to explainable by spirit possession"
I'd say that reincarnation is much better explanation. Many children in these cases have birthmarks or birth defects. Thus the paranormal process that produces those marks/defects occurs before birth.
Some of these children also remember their past life, events after their death, choosing their parents or being drawn to them and also time they spent on their mother's womb. Thus they remember the whole process. Also their memories are personal to one certain individual, not some random memories. Children in these cases identify themselves as persons whose lives they remember. They can also have phobias or philias which match with events in previous personality's life.
About non-psi explanations: Did you read those cases I mentioned in my earlier post? Skeptics can say what they want, but I don't think it's possible to explain those cases with non-paranormal explanations.
In my opinion reincarnation research produces best evidence for survival. NDE research can also produce some good evidence, but other areas of research are more ambiguous.
Posted by: Raimo | April 20, 2009 at 04:38 PM
I quite agree, Paul. This is why psi is so problematic from an evidential point of view.
Even with respect to the Enfield poltergeist case, the hardest evidence available for those who weren't directly involved in the case or witnessed things is the voice which, peculiarly, certain people (Graham Morris and Anita Gregory, for instance, although the latter it seems was less than honest about the whole episode generally) didn't find terribly convincing.
Well, whenever I do I always find it pretty convincing - especially those queer barks. I'm at a loss to know how an eleven-year-old girl could have possibly faked that so well, as some people implied.
Posted by: Wesley Crosland | April 20, 2009 at 05:54 PM
I didn't read the references yet Raino but I am definitely not ruling out reincarnation as a fact.I have read quite a bit on the subject and am familiar with most of the most famous cases.
My second posting said "... explainable equally well by spirit obsession in most instance" as you probably noted.
As far as birth marks are concerned I agree they are pursuasive though not conclusive as there appear to be instances of obsessing or even possessing entities making marks on people or of people being able to do it consciously. The correspondence between a fatal injury and a birth mark is intriguing and I think hard to reasonably dismiss as merely coincidental.
I think it is actually very difficult to provide conclusive proof or survival of a particular personality other than perhaps directly to people who knew them. Once the reports become 2nd hand I think it is even more difficult to accept them as fact (which doesn't mean they should be rejected either in my book) and this leads to the dilemma that Wesley mentioned.
Posted by: Paul | April 20, 2009 at 07:02 PM