The Warfare Is Mental

Asking The Right Questions

December 3, 2009

To conduct good critical thinking, it’s necessary to ask the right questions. Whether we are evaluating anecdotes of spontaneous events or scientifically studied phenomena, we should remove or at least recognize as many of our assumptions as possible, and a good way to do this is by questioning our interpretations of the evidence. The last thing I want to do in discussing these phenomena is convey the impression of a superstitious or reckless inductor grasping at straws to prove his point.
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A Precognitive Reality: Anomalous Mental Phenomena, II

November 25, 2009

I typically don’t keep jobs too long. At last count I’d worked over 50 jobs by the time I was 30. I was 19 when the following incident happened, and it was my fourth job.

I’d been working for a few months at a private club atop the county’s most prominent skyscraper. It was really a fun gig, to say the least. The day shift basically consisted of lunch for the elite. I was an upscale busboy, complete with a suit, a “crumber” and the whole kit. The clientele consisted of everybody from real estate moguls to business tycoons to sports team owners. Even some Hollywood types. There was a private gym up there where some of these types would congregate for various non-athletic activities, if you catch my drift. The club and the gym took up the entire top floor and you could see out over the Pacific or out over the mountains. Sunsets in wintertime were amazing. The whole setup was just so high-class and… just weird.
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The Strange Case Of Ingo Swann: Anomalous Mental Phenomena, I

October 26, 2009

Ingo Douglas Swan (Ingo Swann) is a Colorado-native and consciousness researcher who, along with laser experts Russell Targ and Harold ‘Hal’ Puthoff at Stanford Research Institute, pioneered the field of remote viewing (RV), an anomalous mental phenomenon where subjects appear to gain information by means outside the traditional senses.

Swann sees remote viewing as an innate human ability that can be activated and practiced like any other muscle, and not all parapsychologists or practitioners share this view. Swann claims to have had paranormal experiences since youth. In one experiment, conducted by Gertrude Schmeidler, a professor at City University in New York, Swann was apparently able to cause temperature fluctuations in sensitive equipment presumably by pure thought. Some of these thermometers were spread openly about the room, others were locked safely inside Thermos containers. The test went by sequence, in which Swann focused on a specific thermometer during each stage of the test. He was not allowed to move around the room and was given 45 seconds to rest between stages. Even amongst the sealed instruments, Swann was able to effect changes in temperature up to almost a full degree Celsius.¹

Re-Introducing: TWIM’s Power Commenters

October 20, 2009

I know what I said yesterday about not wanting to bore anybody with my arguments with other bloggers, but lately I’ve been thinking about a concept a few of us came up with several months ago, the concept of power commenters. After Deacon Duncan declined to participate in the debate I invited him to have with me, we had one post where we actually attempted the format, then pretty much set the whole idea on the backburner. Yet, as I did then, I think it’s a valid idea that could function as a sort of “intellectual broom” for the blogosphere, especially if we can find a few more qualified participants.

An Illusory But Incredibly Well-Timed Forethought?

October 14, 2009

On the observation that changes in brain matter affect changes in thought, particularly reductionist atheists often claim that thought is a mere by-product of matter, but I find it interesting that proceeding by pure thought alone, I can willfully move my arm right now.

Doesn't it follow, then, that thought — i.e. consciousness — also causes matter to move? Or is the decision to move one's arm merely an illusory but incredibly well-timed forethought that somehow preceded the act? Provided we're not too shameless to deny accept the latter absurdity, doesn't the former observation suggest that perhaps thought is more than the mere by-product of matter?

The Video Game Incident

August 13, 2009

It so happens that a single claim forms the entire foundation upon which nearly all varieties of theism must inevitably be built: the claim that consciousness can exist outside of a material body. Although the claim is a necessary component of nearly all religions, we should note that it is not necessarily theist, as there are atheists who accept the existence of metaphysical entities.

As far as traditional monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam or any derivative thereof) are concerned, we can safely say that if no spirits exist and consciousness cannot exist outside of a body, then their key claims are either false or severely distorted (Ephesians 6:12, Luke 3:22 & John 4:24, as examples).

Most skeptics and rationalists are familiar with the difficulty (note: not impossibility) of proving a negative. While it’s certainly difficult to prove the materialist’s claim that there is not a ghost in the machine, what’s less difficult and also theoretically possible is proving or at least supporting the claim that consciousness can and does exist outside physical bodies. Let’s refer to this claim as the immaterial consciousness hypothesis, or ICH for short [NOTE: the TMC introduced here envelopes the ICH. In other words, the ICH represents a deprecated term that has since been modified. I explain the reason for the change here, and I apologize for any confusion].

Psychic Kids: Children Of The Paranormal

June 17, 2008

As I was writing yesterday, I overheard a trailer for this show about kids experiencing paranormal phenomena. Since I've had more than my fair share of interesting phenomena occur throughout my life and have dedicated a substantial amount of time to reading and independent thought about the subject, I anticipated its 10:00pm debut on A&E. The show turned out to be both about as good and also a lot worse than I expected, and I do not mean to eschew or denigrate the families or producers. Contrary, I side with the parents in their estimation that what is happening to their children represents an authentic phenomena, but I think the methods used by the producers to present such a controversial subject to the general public are subjective, confounded and devoid of any substantive scientific value.