Discussions
about the plausibility of the paranormal typically involve
discussions of whether particular examples of evidence for the
paranormal are convincing. But there is a very different way to
approach the issue of whether the paranormal is plausible: we can
consider the matter from a kind of a priori standpoint. We
can ask ourselves: given what we know about the universe (its origin,
its composition, its contents, its laws), and what we know about
mankind's level of knowledge, should we be surprised to witness
paranormal phenomena?
I can
imagine someone arguing in a certain way that given what we know
about the universe, we should not expect to see the paranormal. The
argument would go a little like this:
The universe we see is
very orderly, intelligible and predictable. In such a universe we should
not expect to see disorderly, mysterious and unpredictable things such
as are described in the literature on the paranormal.
Such
an argument is fallacious for several reasons. One reason is that
you are not entitled to conclude the unlikelihood or non-existence of
non-X simply because you have made some observations of X. An example
will show this. Let us imagine some African villager around 1700 who
has observed only black skins on humans. From such observations,
such a villager has no basis for concluding that he should not expect
to see humans with white skins. In fact, at any time such a villager
might have been abducted and sold into slavery by one of the white
slave traders who plagued African villages at this time.
There
is another reason why the argument above is fallacious. Within the
set of all possible universes, which would include an infinite number
of chaotic, messy, disorderly universes, the set of universes that
are orderly, lawful, and predictable is presumably a very tiny subset. So
if we are in an orderly and lawful universe, this may imply some
intelligent agency that helped to bring about such order. If such an
agency exists, the door is opened to the paranormal in innumerable
ways. There might be miracles or paranormal acts performed by such an
agency, or other spiritual agencies that it created. Living in an
orderly universe, we might think such things are quite possible; but
they might be very unlikely if we somehow lived in a disorderly and
chaotic universe. So from the orderliness and lawfulness of nature,
we have no basis for concluding that the paranormal is unlikely.
Let's
consider another facet of the universe: its size and extent. We live
in a planet revolving around one star, a star that is only one of
billions of similar stars in our galaxy. There are billions of
galaxies similar to our own. The universe is believed to be about 13
billion years old. Do such facts imply anything about the likelihood
of the paranormal?
It
would seem that such facts should imply a much higher likelihood of
the paranormal. Our galaxy may be teeming with intelligent life, and
that life may be mysteriously interacting with our planet in any
number of ways. Intelligent life that arose many millions or billions
of years ago may have evolved into some immaterial or godlike state
(Arthur C. Clarke imagined extraterrestrials evolving into a pure
energy state). This implies that an incredibly large number of
paranormal possibilities might occur. The possibilities are not
limited to spaceships appearing in our skies. Perhaps such godlike
extraterrestrial entities might interact with us in some mysterious
way that we interpret as a psychic phenomenon, an apparition, or an
angelic visitation.
If
ours was the only planet in the universe, we might rate such
possibilities as being very unlikely. But in a galaxy that might be
teeming with life, the likelihood of such things occurring may be
very high.
Another
thing we know about the universe is its beginning. The beginning we
have discovered is the strangest beginning imaginable. Scientists
say that in the Big Bang the whole universe suddenly popped into
existence, and that an instant later the whole universe was some tiny
size, almost infinitely hot and dense. We are told that all
of the mass-energy of the observable universe was once crunched into
the size of a baseball.
This
is the weirdest universe origin we can imagine, and in light of such
a supreme weirdness we should not be very surprised about observing
weird paranormal things. It's rather like this. Suppose you go to a
baseball stadium, and you are told that some hitter once a hit a
baseball clear out of the stadium. Given such a fact, should you be
very surprised to see a hitter hit the ball not so far, merely into
the first row of the center-field bleachers? No, you should not be
surprised by that. Similarly, in a universe that began in the
weirdest way imaginable, should we be very surprised to see some bit of
paranormal weirdness (a UFO sighting, an apparition, some telepathic
event) that is nowhere near as weird as such a beginning? No, we
should not.
Another
way to ponder whether we should be surprised by the paranormal is to
ask: should we be very surprised by the paranormal, given the current
state of human knowledge? It is quite common to try to discredit
claims of the paranormal by advancing various types of triumphal
narratives in which modern science is depicted as an almost-completed
undertaking, and scientists are depicted as those who have “pretty
much figured out” nature.
But
there's a counter-narrative that's a lot closer to the truth. Modern
science is only a few centuries old. Modern computerized science is
only a few decades old. Why should we expect scientists to have
largely figured things out in such a short time frame? When we make a
list of the things that scientists do not know and typically admit
that they do not know – for example, the nature of things such as
dark matter and dark energy, the cause of the Big Bang, how life
originated, how memory retrieval works, and whether life is common or
very rare in the universe – we have enough to discredit any claims
that scientists have “pretty much figured out” nature. When we
add to this list the set all of the things that scientists typically
claim to understand but do not actually understand because of their
current runaway overconfidence – things such as how species
originate and whether consciousness is generated solely by the brain
-- we have a list of unknowns so large that any claims that our
scientists have things “pretty much figured out” become rather
laughable.
In
light of such realities, we should regard the paranormal as being far
from unexpected. We may also consider the habits of the modern
scientist, who by force of social pressure implicitly declares many types of inquiry to be taboo (as shown in this deplorable recent example of censorship). When you
are not investigating something, and your community has by custom
declared it to be kind of “off limits,” then what business do you
have making pronouncements about its likelihood or unlikelihood, its
existence or nonexistence?
Facing
the paranormal, the university professor is always ready to chime in
with simple slogans such as, “Things like that can't happen.” An
equally simple reply can be given: “How the hell do you know?”
But a better reply may be: “Things like that can happen, and have been
abundantly observed to have happened.”
In the
early seventeenth century there was an entrenched
orthodoxy which was making some dogmatic pronouncements it had no
business making. Moving beyond their field of expertise, some
Catholic authorities had declared support for geocentrism, the idea
that the earth is at the center of the solar system. But there was a
lone investigator, Galileo, who made observations challenging such a
doctrine. Galileo had no “big science” culture behind him,
no fancy heavy iron instruments. All he had was a little hand-held
telescope no heavier than a walking cane.
Now in
one way the tables have turned. It seems that our university
scientists are now the entrenched orthodoxy sometimes making dogmatic
pronouncements they have no proper business making. Moving beyond
their sphere of expertise, we sometimes hear such people make
pronouncements about the paranormal as unwarranted as the seventeenth
century church bishop's pronouncements on the solar system. And these
modern experts often fail to examine the paranormal topics they are talking
about, in a way reminiscent of the Church authorities who refused to
look through Galileo's telescope when he invited them to do so. In
defiance of such declarations are individual paranormal investigators armed with
things as lightweight as Galileo's little hand held instruments: things
such as point-and-click cameras, palm-sized tape recorders or a pack of Zener cards. Are some of these
investigators the new Galileos?
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