Experts
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Parapsychologist, Scientologist, Physicist
Physicist & Author
Agree
Our accumulated data thus indicate that both specially selected and unselected persons can be assisted in developing remote perceptual abilities up to a level of useful information transfer.
Father of Remote Viewing
Agree
No one with any thinking capacities will deny that our species possesses --powers of mind-- that far exceed our biological factors and parameters. Many psi faculties exist among these powers of mind, and among these are remote viewing faculties. If you can't address this issue, then it is not the fault of our species potentials. It's the fault of engineered anti-psi spin grids you have bought into.
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Psychologist, Parapsychologist
Agree
Psi functioning is a complex psychological procedure. When we ask a naive percipient to use psi in the laboratory, this is not a simple request. I have argued that we, as parapsychologists, must examine and understand our own psychological functioning, as well as that of percipients. The nature of psi, creating connecting links that are not shielded by conventional physical barriers, implies that we are part of our experiments.
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Professor of Statistics
Agree
Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance.
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Neuroscientist
Agree
There hasn't been a comprehensive and persuasive model to explain consciousness and psychic abilities, so I felt compelled to share the one that I had developed. My hope is that it will open the minds of scientists to psychic phenomena, as well as explain and validate psychic experiences for people who have them.
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Computer Scientist
Agree
Even if it were shown that all past laboratory Psi experiments were somehow flawed, the explanation would have to be highly interesting in itself, and would surely have a significant impact on science as well. Denial of the existence of Psi phenomena seems to be increasingly the refuge of those who are simply not willing to look at the evidence with an open (but still critical) mind.
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Disagree
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Psychology Lecturer, Former Parapsychologist
Mostly Disagree
The recent resurgence of funding for parapsychology means there are several new labs and many new researchers at work. If psi does exist then one day one of them will find a way to demonstrate it and a theory to explain it. If that happens I shall be back like a shot, but until then, happily, I have given up.
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Psychology Professor
Disagree
Although Utts and I [...] evaluated the same set of data, we came to very different conclusions. If Utts's conclusion is correct, then the fundamental principles that have so successfully guided the progress of science from the days of Galileo and Newton to the present must be drastically revised. Neither relativity theory nor quantum mechanics in their present versions can cope with a world that harbors the psychic phenomena so boldly proclaimed by Utts and her parapsychological colleagues.
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Philosophy Professor, Father of Secular Humanism
Disagree
Religious miracles like paranormal claims postulate a nonnatural transcendental realm that allegedly cannot be evaluated by evidence or reason. The universe is bifurcated into a natural world, which science deals with, and a transcendent spiritual realm, which allegedly lies beyond our ability to comprehend it. Concomitant with these two realms, their proponents insist, are two truths. This dualism is also said to apply to human personality where we confront a "separate soul."
Psychology Professor
Disagree
Psi has been postulated not because normal psychology is incapable of accounting for people’s apparently psychic experiences, nor because of inexplicable findings in physics or chemistry; nor is it the logical outgrowth of some compelling scientific theory. Rather, the search for psi is now, as it has been since the formal beginning of empirical parapsychology over a century ago, the quest to establish the reality of a nonmaterial aspect of human existence — some form of secularized soul.
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Philosopher
Disagree
Parapsychology probably doesn’t have to do any harm, but in the end that’s exactly what it appears to do anyway. Parapsychology makes claims about the nature of reality and because of that, it matters a great deal whether any of it is true or not. We need to know what is real and what is not because, in the long run, that’s the best way for us to avoid harm and live better lives.
Philosophy Professor
Disagree
Parapsychology is the search for evidence of paranormal phenomena, such as ESP and psychokinesis. Most scientists try to explain observed and observable phenomena. Parapsychologists try to observe unexplainable phenomena. All the other sciences have led us away from superstition and magical thinking, while parapsychology has tried to find a scientific basis for such things as divination and mediumship.
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Arguments
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If you
disagree, then you
possibly
disagree with:
Are psychic powers real?
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The belief in an immaterial soul requires that central aspects of a person, such as consciousness, memories, and personality, are not contingent upon our physical bodies. The concept was first formalized in western philosophy by Rene Descartes in the 17th century, who proposed that our soul interacts with our body via the pineal gland in the brain. That theory has since been rejected by mainstream science.
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The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not "produced" by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.
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Imagine a world in which each of us has a special inner core - a ‘real self’ - that makes us who we are, that can think and move independently of our coarse physical body, and that ultimately survives death, giving meaning to our otherwise short and pointless lives. This is (roughly speaking) how most people think the world is. It is how I used to think -and even hope - that the world is. I devoted 25 years of my life to trying to find out whether it is. Now I have given up.
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disagree, then you
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disagree with:
Are psychic powers real?
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The scientific method consists of creating the simplest possible theories that can explain and predict patterns in the natural world. Its critics say that mainstream science is too reductionist, too black and white, and too dismissive of new ideas that don't fit with its established corpus of knowledge. Its defenders say that its strictness is its strength, and it is not closed minded to reject theories that can't be proven without solid evidence.
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...I don’t think [research] is valid from the point of view of trying to prove that astrology works, because if you have the kind of mentality that is dead-set against astrology, you will try to blow holes in the statistics anyway. ... if I took that research to somebody who defines statistical research in a more "scientific" sense, they would say: "Three hundred people is nothing. What you need is 3,000 and a neutral control group." Whatever you do, they’ll find a way to set other tests.
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There seems to be an extremely common experience amongst people who don't believe in certain non-scientific concepts to be told by those who do to be more open-minded. This advice is typically based on highly flawed thinking, including an inaccurate understanding of what open-mindedness is. ...
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If you
agree, then you
possibly
disagree with:
Are psychic powers real?
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The laws of physics are foundational to all of science, describing with mathematics the basic ways in which the physical world behaves. Although physics doesn't provide the simplest explanation for everything - we need fields such as biology to explain emergent phenomena like life - it does require all explanations of the world to be compatible with physics. In contrast, some religious thinkers believe that this compatibility is impossible in explaining humanistic concepts such as free will.
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Animal instincts are not bound by the absolute determinism of the physical laws governing the mineral world.
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The human mind remains extraordinarily difficult to understand, but so is the weather. We can't predict whether it will rain one month from today, but we do know the rules that govern the rain, even though we can't always calculate their consequences. I see nothing about the human mind any more than about the weather that stands out as beyond the hope of understanding as a consequence of impersonal laws acting over billions of years. There do not seem to be any exceptions to this natural order.
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If you
disagree, then you
possibly
disagree with:
Are psychic powers real?
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Peripheral theorists in the study of consciousness have suggested that quantum mechanical phenomena (e.g. superpositions, entanglement) may be required to explain the workings of the human mind. Skeptics suggest that there is no reason to go to a substantially lower level than a neural network for an explanation of the mind, and that neurons are orders of magnitude too large to be affected by such quantum events.
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In this paper we propose that aspects of quantum theory (e.g. quantum coherence) and of a newly proposed physical phenomenon of quantum wave function "self-collapse" are essential for consciousness, and occur in cytoskeletal microtubules and other structures within each of the brain's neurons.
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Perhaps the most popular "extra ingredient" of all [in explaining consciousness] is quantum mechanics (e.g. Hameroff 1994). The attractiveness of quantum theories of consciousness may stem from a Law of Minimization of Mystery: consciousness is mysterious and quantum mechanics is mysterious, so maybe the two mysteries have a common source. Nevertheless, quantum theories of consciousness suffer from the same difficulties as neural or computational theories.
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disagree, then you
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disagree with:
Are psychic powers real?
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One of the major clashes between the scientific world view and religious world views, is that science does not support a belief in life after death. Christianity and Islam regard life as preparation for judgement at death, which will determine one's fate in the afterlife. Judaism regards death as not the end, but is much less focused on the afterlife than life itself. Buddhism and Hinduism believe in continual rebirth until enlightenment is attained.
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Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven-through a purification or immediately, or immediate and everlasting damnation.
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No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
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disagree, then you
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disagree with:
Are psychic powers real?
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The answer lies at the heart of one's personal philosophy or religious belief. For theists, the meaning of life is to serve God. For atheists, the meaning of life is generally more complex to define. For a theist, life cannot be meaningful without God - an assumption vigorously challenged by many atheists.
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What makes our lives meaningful is that we find the activities we engage in to be worthwhile. Our determination to carry out projects we have created for ourselves gives our lives meaning. We feel that life is meaningless when most of our desires which we regard as important are frustrated. Whether we regard life as meaningful or meaningless depends on the degree to which our important desires are frustrated.
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I think in a very positive way. ... I think that man now realises that he is an accident, that he is a completely futile being, that he has to play out the game without reason. ...man can only attempt to make something very, very positive by trying to beguile himself for a time by the way he behaves, by prolonging possibly his life by buying a kind of immortality through the doctors.
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agree, then you
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agree with:
Are psychic powers real?
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Is it meaningful to talk of "my truth" and "your truth" where both of us "right"? Critics of relativism say that such talk dilutes the very essence of truth.
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...if Richard Dawkins asked, "Is it real?" he would mean something quite different by "real" than I do.
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At the heart of relativism is the belief that there is no such thing as a universal truth, only a variety of conflicting truths, each of which may be regarded as valid. And that many such beliefs and values are incommensurate - not just incompatible, but incomparable, because there is no common language we can use to compare the one with the other. The consequence of this approach has been both to undermine the value of knowledge and to narrow the scope of intellectual and political debate.
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Indirect Arguments
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If you
agree, then you
presumably
agree with:
Is there life after death?
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Various Eastern religions believe that life continues after death either by transmigration of a soul (reincarnation in Hinduism) or by causal conditioning of the psycho-physical elements that make up a person (rebirth in Buddhism). Mainstream science regards this belief as implausible in principle, though specific claims of reincarnation have nonetheless been investigated empirically.
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The very purpose of reincarnation is to carry out the tasks of the previous life that are not yet achieved. If I die while we are still refugees, my reincarnation, logically, will come outside Tibet, who will carry out the work I started.
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Most people are not likely to be too impressed when they realize that all Stevenson had to show for over forty years of research is that it is now false to claim that there is no evidence for reincarnation. It is still quite reasonable, however, to claim that there is no compelling evidence for reincarnation.
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agree, then you
presumably
disagree with:
Must all explanations be compatible with the laws of physics?
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Miracles are events attributed to divine intervention. From a scientific perspective, miracles have no place because they violate the laws of physics and are unreproducible via experiments. As such, scientists tend to attribute miracles to the fallibility of human interpretation of events.
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Jesus said to the servants, "Fill the jars with water"; so they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, "Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet." They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine.
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There do not seem to be any exceptions to this natural order, any miracles. I have the impression that these days most theologians are embarrassed by talk of miracles, but the great monotheistic faiths are founded on miracle stories—the burning bush, the empty tomb, an angel dictating the Koran to Mohammed—and some of these faiths teach that miracles continue at the present day.
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If you
agree, then you
presumably
disagree with:
Must all explanations be compatible with the laws of physics?
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The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy increases over time, or that a closed system moves from an ordered state to a random state. Critics of evolution suggest that life itself is prima facie proof that evolution is flawed, since the opposite appears to be happening - life has evolved from primordial soup to sophisticated creatures like ourselves. Defenders of evolution say that this objection is based on a misunderstanding of entropy.
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But the second law of thermodynamics--at least the underlying principle behind this law--simply says that natural forces do not cause extremely improbable things to happen, and it is absurd to argue that because the Earth receives energy from the Sun, this principle was not violated here when the original rearrangement of atoms into encyclopedias and computers occurred.
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In making these arguments [against evolution, Granville Sewell] simply ignored the vast literature addressing [the issues], so as to give the impression that logical fallacies obvious to you or me have somehow eluded our benighted colleagues in the life sciences. It is an arrogance typical of the ID movement; armchair philosophers believing they can refute in a day what thousands of scientists have built over the course of a century.
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If you
disagree, then you
possibly
disagree with:
Must all explanations be compatible with the laws of physics?
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The belief that we control our decisions is seemingly undermined by the fact that the future is an inevitable consequence of the past. When we put our foot on a car's accelerator, we know that this causes chemical combustion in the car, and that the car has no choice but to go faster. Similarly, the putting of our foot on the accelerator was also caused by chemical combustion - one in our own brains. For this reason, many philosophers and scientists regard free will as illusionary.
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Situation-action machines are built with a bunch of rules that say, "If in situation X, do A," "If in situation B, do Z," [etc.]. A choice machine [looks] at the world [and] says, "If I did this, what would happen? If I did that, what would happen? ... It builds up an anticipation of what the likely outcome of one action or another would be, and then chooses on the basis of how much that outcome is valued or disvalued. They're both machines, but [the latter] is much more free than the other.
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I don’t think "free will" is a very sensible concept, and you don’t need neuroscience to reject it — any mechanistic view of the world is good enough, and indeed you could even argue on purely conceptual grounds that the opposite of determinism is randomness, not free will! Most thoughtful neuroscientists I know have replaced the concept of free will with the concept of rationality — that we select our actions based on a kind of practical reasoning.
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