Psychiatry and Possession

Is it possible to be a sophisticated psychiatrist and believe that evil spirits are, however seldom, assailing humans? Most of my scientific colleagues and friends say no, because of their frequent contact with patients who are deluded about demons, their general skepticism of the supernatural, and their commitment to employ only standard, peer-reviewed treatments that do not potentially mislead (a definite risk) or harm vulnerable patients. But careful observation of the evidence presented to me in my career has led me to believe that certain extremely uncommon cases can be explained no other way.

Soft and Hard Targets of Scepticism

When people like this get together, they become tribal. They pat each other on the back and tell each other how smart they are compared to those outside the tribe. But belonging to a tribe often makes you dumber.

On The Unreliability of Witnesses and Scientists

Once the reality of meteorite falls became established, the historian Eusebius Salverte pointed out that scientists' failure to recognise the truth of the matter for so long was borne out of "a predetermination to see nothing, or to deny what we had seen."

Neil deGrasse Tyson Fucking Loves Science

‘Science’ here has very little to do with the scientific method itself; it means ontological physicalism, not believing in our Lord Jesus Christ, hating the spectrally stupid, and, more than anything, pretty pictures of nebulae and tree frogs.

JREF Narrows Challenge

The overabundance of dowsers and psychics hoping to be tested but unwilling to submit to the arbitrary, fluid, and unfairly weighted experimental protocols established by an ornery stage magician -- The Amazing Randi -- has forced the James Randi Educational Foundation to limit applicants for the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge to established psychics (sic) with a TV crew.

Believers are Dumb; Non-Believers are Evil

In the battle between conflicting paradigms of existence, two modes of experiencing truth are forced into competition by the efficient arrangement of human neural architecture.  Social and analytic thinking require different parts of the brain, a brain that will suppress the neuronal networks not useful for the problem at hand.

Empathy for others predicts spiritual beliefs, while also entailing low scores on critical thinking and mechanical reasoning.  Those more disposed to analytical thought are less likely to be religious, but more likely to express traits in common with psychopathy.  While religiosity correlates with empathic concern, non-religiosity correlates with self-centred impulsivity and coldheartedness.

It could be possible to engage both mental modules in tandem, but the percipients would have to be aware of the differing functions of the brain, and the manner in which cognition and emotion act at odds with one another in the interest of simplicity.

Religious in the Next Life

In America, less people are praying, professing a religion, or attending religious services than a generation ago, but more people believe there is something to experience beyond this mortal plane -- proving that theocrats, zealots, molesters, and mad gods don't have a monopoly on wonder.

How to Feel Normal in an Anomalistic Universe

We spend an inordinate amount of time talking about the pathological delusions of true believers, the cognitive dissonance of skeptics, and the fear of commitment of those who straddle the line.  The focus has shifted from a simple ontological statement that while our valuation of science has an impressive track record of achievement, the universe nonetheless keeps serving up oddities that throw a wrench in our metaphysical project of comprehending the significance of human existence and grasping at the nature of reality.

Why Do Some People Find Deepak Chopra Quotes Deep And Not Dung?

This kind of tendency also feeds into broadly resonating societal effects, such as the susceptibilities that led—and still lead—some people to chase false “cures” for everything from autism to cancer, to follow false prophets who promise them transformation and revelation of hidden beauty while giving them nothing, and to confuse categories of existence and believe that the material is magical. And that is deeply, deeply important to understand.

Skepticism on the couch

A Skeptic encountering evidence of the paranormal is like the stereotypical woman in a movie farce who discovers a spider in her hair. Does she pause to calmly assess the situation? No, she starts batting wildly at her head, screaming, "Get it off me!" In this state of mind, even the most intelligent and knowledgeable person will be hard pressed to think logically. Panic makes anyone stupid.

Be careful, your love of science looks a lot like religion

Was fire harnessed by scientific method? Did developed countries become developed through randomized controlled trials? Many innovations obviously work or plainly don't; testing is often for close calls. That isn't to deny the progress of science or its unique role but only to relativize it as one precious mode of discovery among others. Promoting science's quieter, humbler spirit would have numerous upsides.

The rise and fall of paranormal experimentation

"If you think your house is haunted, you don't need an exorcist, you just need a sceptic. Because I guarantee if I come along, nothing will happen."

Rationalists are Harshing My Empiricist Mellow

"Elsewhere they use a fair semblance of logic, but here their logic becomes wondrous weird. Elsewhere they generally succeed in preserving the standard scientific stolidity, but here they frequently manifest and confess a submission to emotions ill befitting those who sprang from the head of Brahma. Elsewhere they observe the knightly etiquette of the lists, but in this field think it no shame to decline the fair encounter, and, from the safe shelter of the barrier, to jeer about the presumptive quality of their opponents’ brains."

Was Charles Fort a Fortean?

"Today, we are fed the false choice of the extraterrestrial (meaning the extrasolar) hypothesis, but the length, depth and intimacy of this phenomenon suggest- to anyone willing to consider the implications of the evidence- that this phenomenon is a permanent condition of the planet and of our species. Fort wrote of this a century ago but no one seems to be able to face up to this yet. Certainly not most of the most visible Forteans."

Why have we stopped seeing UFOs in the skies?

"The way this stuff has permeated culture as a whole has bred a widespread incurious scepticism. We now extend the same degree of undifferentiating refusal even to those phenomena that, while hard to credit, deserve to be heeded. Climate change might be the most obvious current instance but, at its most noxious, scepticism results in an unwillingness to believe in others’ suffering. The attitude of wholesale rejection, by which one might stand a chance of becoming impervious to fraud, is thus bought at the ever greater risk of nihilism."

Is Richard Dawkins destroying his reputation?

"Dawkins might claim he only attacks the faith, not its individual believers, but in Sardar’s view his depiction of that faith denies its social and political complexity. 'What he is doing,' Sardar said, 'is creating a world that is more belligerent than the one we find ourselves in.'"

James Randi: debunking the king of the debunkers

"According to Sheldrake, his direct requests for data were twice ignored. After appealing to others at the JREF, Randi eventually wrote back, explaining that he couldn’t supply the data because it got washed away in a flood and that the dogs he tested are now in Mexico and their owner was 'tragically killed last year in a dreadful accident.'"

Reflections on the skeptic and atheist movements

"The Harris-Chomsky exchange, in my mind, summarizes a lot of what I find unpleasant about SAM: a community who worships celebrities who are often intellectual dilettantes, or at the very least have a tendency to talk about things of which they manifestly know very little; an ugly undertone of in-your-face confrontation and I'm-smarter-than-you-because-I-agree-with [insert your favorite New Atheist or equivalent]; loud proclamations about following reason and evidence wherever they may lead, accompanied by a degree of groupthink and unwillingness to change one's mind that is trumped only by religious fundamentalists; and, lately, a willingness to engage in public shaming and other vicious social networking practices any time someone says something that doesn't fit our own opinions, all the while of course claiming to protect 'free speech' at all costs."

The Great Stagnation: When Futurism Fails

"It's kind of amazing to me that all the skeptics out there never give Bigfoot a rest for a minute or two to train their sights on the endless bullshit that emanates from the PR departments of Big Science. And by 'kind of amazing' I mean 'not even remotely surprising'. There is an ideology at work here."

The Roswell Slides That Aren’t!

"This event, in my opinion, has done more damage to UFOlogy than anything else, and those behind it should be questioned on what their true motives really are. To decline interviews because they aren’t paying, speaks volumes."

 "The biggest tragedy in this utterly sorry saga is that Roswell – in my view, anyway – is still a genuine enigma of very mysterious proportions. But, the slides have done nothing but utterly damage the investigation into what really happened on the Foster Ranch, Lincoln County, New Mexico in the summer of 1947. And, just maybe, the slides have damaged the investigation to a 100 percent, irreversible degree."