We can use the term
“paranormal denialist” for people such as Michael Shermer who
deny all the mountainous evidence for paranormal phenomena. The
paranormal denialist is a very inconsistent creature. On one hand,
such a person will show complete credulity and child-like trust
towards the far-fetched dogmas of materialism, and towards dubious
and weak evidence cited in support of such dogmas. On the other hand,
such a person will show unvarying skepticism towards a huge variety
of compelling observations that contradict such dogmas. You may
compare a paranormal denialist to a neighbor you might have who
heartily supports a website claiming to sell “Martian real estate,”
but who can never be persuaded to go with you to a baseball game
because he's too skeptical that he'll ever see the local team
winning.
Michael Shermer has a new
book entitled Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the
Afterlife, Immortality and Utopia. Shermer's book contains quite
a few misstatements about the brain and mind. On page 13 he tells us
the following:
The soul has been
traditionally conceived as a separate entity (“soul stuff”) from
the body – but neuroscience has demonstrated that the mind –
consciousness, memory, and the sense of self representing “you” –
cannot exist without a brain. When portions of the brain die as a
result of injury, stroke or Alzheimer's – the corresponding
functions of the brain dies with them.
This statement is mainly
false. Neuroscience has certainly not demonstrated that the mind
cannot exist without a brain, and neuroscientists have no credible
explanation of how brains could produce either consciousness or
memory abilities like humans have or a sense of self. Shermer's
claim is disproven by the abundance of near-death experiences in
which people continue to have consciousness, memory, and self-hood
after their brains have electrically shut down during cardiac arrest.
It is also very much false that people lose mental function in
proportion to brain damage. Many epilepsy patients have had an
operation called hemispherectomy in which half of their brain is
removed to stop very bad seizures. Such operations produce little effect
on either mental capability or memory (see here and here and here for posts in
which I city many scientific studies that back up this statement).
Physician John Lorber documented many cases in which people had
above-average intelligence even though they had lost most or the
great majority of their brain due to hydrocephalus, a disease in
which brain tissue is replaced by watery fluid. As for stroke, a
medical web page says it has no effect on intelligence. A scientist
who did a recent study on Alzheimer's disease stated, “Our study
therefore suggests that, contrary to what was believed, neuronal and
synaptic loss is relatively limited in Alzheimer’s disease.” A
news story describing the study says, “Levels of neuron loss in
patients did not indicate how far along they were in the disease,
suggesting neuron death has little to do with the symptoms of
dementia.”
On page 82 Shermer tries
again to convince us that the mind is merely something coming
from the brain. He cites some anecdote of a man who developed
“pedophilic feelings” after a brain tumor, something that is
dubious evidence indeed. Then Shermer states the following:
Neuroscientists can
predict human choices from brain scan activity before the subject is
even consciously aware of the decisions made. Using brain scans
alone, neuroscientists have even been able to reconstruct on a
computer screen what someone is seeing. Brain
activity = conscious experience.
The first claim (which
Shermer provides no example to prove) is false. Neuroscientists
cannot predict what choices people will make from brain scan
activity. The second (probably exaggerated) claim (which Shermer
also provides no examples to support) is irrelevant. No one
disputes that the brain has an involvement in vision. If a brain
scientist had some way to deduce what you were seeing from looking at
your brain, that would merely confirm the brain's involvement in
visual perception, which no one disputes. But such a feat would be
nothing like figuring out what you were thinking of or imagining by
looking at your brain. No neuroscientist has ever done any such
thing, although you will occasionally read a misleading news story
claiming a “mind reading bran scan.” Such hyped-up stories are
actually about brain scans of visual perception rather than brain
scans of pure thought or imagination in people with closed eyes. As
for Shermer's claim that “brain activity = conscious experience,”
that equation is unproven and unbelievable. Conscious experience is
mental, and brain activity is physical. Physical things don't equal
mental things.
Shermer looks at evidence for
life-after-death, and his scholarship on this topic is very slight.
A reader may get the suspicion that he has got all his
information purely from negative sources such as the absurdly biased
pages of wikipedia.org and the books of other paranormal denialists.
He shows no real signs of having carefully studied any of the countless
books that have been written presenting evidence for life after death
or paranormal phenomena. People who have read books on a topic they
are writing about tend to quote passages from such books (which may
or may not be for the sake of criticizing what the book said). We
find virtually no quotations from Shermer suggesting he has read any
of the 100 books he should have carefully read before criticizing
evidence for the paranormal or life after death.
Discussing near-death
experiences, Shermer mentions the well-known case called “Maria's
shoe,” in which a hospital patient said that she had floated out of
her body and seen a red shoe on a hospital ledge several floors
higher than her current position, a shoe that a hospital worker
verified was in the specified place. Shermer does not mention
details of any other similar case, and a reader of Shermer's book
might think that this “Maria's shoe” case was just a
one-of-a-kind freak report. In fact, there have been many similar
cases, in which those having near-death experiences reported seeing or hearing things they absolutely should have been unable to see or hear, either because
of unconsciousness or observational impossibility from their bodies.
You can read about dozens of such cases here.
Shermer mentions the major
study on near-death experiences led by Sam Parnia. Shermer tells us
that only one of the people in Parnia's study reported an out-of-body
experience. But that's not correct, because out of 101 people in that
study who reported a close encounter with death, 13% answered “Yes”
to the question, “Did you feel separated from your body,” and two
of them reported very detailed dramatic out-of-body experiences.
Shermer refers to a patient
in the Parnia study who recounted the efforts of medical personnel to
revive him while his heart was stopped and he was unconscious.
Shermer suggests that the patient could have guessed the details
because he had seen TV shows in which people revive patients during
cardiac arrest. But the details were too specific for guesswork to
be a possibility. The man accurately described specific details of
the revival efforts, including the presence of a bald fat man with a
blue hat, a nurse saying, “Dial 444 cardiac arrest,” his blood
pressure being taken, a nurse pumping on his chest, a doctor sticking
something down his throat, and blood gases and blood sugar levels
being taken.
Here is what the Parnia
scientific paper said in regard to the accuracy of these
recollections:
He accurately described people, sounds, and
activities from his resuscitation...His medical records corroborated
his accounts and specifically supported his descriptions and the use
of an automated external defibrillator (AED). Based on current AED
algorithms, this likely corresponded with up to 3 minutes of
conscious awareness during CA [cardiac arrest] and CPR.
On page 90 Shermer argues
fruitlessly that near-death experiences don't count, because the
patients didn't really die. That's not a good argument, seeing that
near-death experiences are called near-death experiences and not
“actual death experiences.”
On page 92-93 Shermer
attempts to explain away near-death experiences by raising some
possible explanations, none of which are relevant. He points out that
if you take psychedelics it can be rather like a near-death
experience. That's irrelevant, because 99% of the people having
near-death experiences didn't take such drugs before their
experiences. On page 93 and page 95 Shermer mentions experiments done
by Olaf Blanke in which he electrically stimulated parts of the
brains to produce hallucinations. This is completely irrelevant
because people who have near-death experiences are not having their
brains electrically stimulated when they have such experiences.
Shermer fails to debunk
near-death experiences, and his proposed explanations (such as
hallucinations) collapse when we simply consider that near-death
experiences typically occur not in normally conscious people who might be
hallucinating but in people who should be deeply unconscious because their brains have electrically shut down,
as the brain quickly does very soon after cardiac arrest. A classic case of that is the Pam Reynolds case, in which a woman with a radically
depleted blood supply and very low body temperature reported details
of her drastic medical operation she should have been absolutely
unable to report. Shermer makes no mention of the case.
On page 96 Shermer ends his
discussion of near-death experiences with the vary lame argument that
since such experiences “vary considerably” that they are “exactly
what we would expect if they were the product of the inner workings
of the brain” (to cite a quote of someone that he cites
approvingly). To the contrary, the extremely strong amount of
recurrence and similarities in near-death experiences (in which a large fraction of people report floating out of their bodies, passing through tunnels, or encountering a "being of light") is exactly not
what we would expect if they were hallucinations, which would produce
content as dissimilar and random as the dreams of different people or
the hallucinations of schizophrenics.
Shermer then moves on to a
discussion of the evidence for reincarnation. Here the principal
evidence is the very weighty evidence compiled over decades by
psychiatrist Ian Stevenson.
Shermer shows no evidence of
actually having read or studied Stevenson's massive 2268-page two
volume work on cases suggesting reincarnation (entitled Reincarnation
and Biology), and does not specifically mention any of Stevenson's
cases. He does nothing to discredit such cases as evidence for
reincarnation (merely citing some other person who made weak general
objections to the birthmark element of such cases). Shermer only
attempts to debunk one specific case of a claimed past-life
recollection; and here he fails to discredit the evidence.
The case he picks to discuss
is that of James Leininger, who claimed as a very young boy to have
been a pilot named James who had his plane shot down. He said he had
flown the plane from a “boat” called Natoma, near Iwo
Jima. Inquiries by his father found that there was an aircraft
carrier called Natoma Bay which did operations in World War II near
Iwo Jima, and that it did have a pilot named James Huston, Jr. who was killed when his plane was shot down near Iwo Jima.
Shermer's attempt to debunk
this case fails. He suggests that the child got the idea for the
story while visiting a war museum, which hardly makes sense given
that the visit happened when the child was only 22 months old and
unable to read. He also lamely complains that “Natoma Bay” is
not an exact match for “Natoma.” The case still stands as modest
evidence in support of either reincarnation or contact with the dead.
And this case is not one of the 30 best cases in support of
reincarnation, all of which Shermer ignores (a case such as the
famous Shanti Devi case and the best of Stevenson's “matching
birthmark” cases being far more powerful as evidence). So in
regard to reincarnation evidence, the one case of alleged reincarnation Shermer chooses to debunk
is one he is not even able to debunk very well.
Around page 109 Shermer
begins to discuss mediums. He shows no evidence of having read
anything on the massive historical evidence for paranormal phenomena
produced when mediums were present. A large amount of this evidence
involves inexplicable physical phenomena. Such inexplicable physical
phenomena have been very often observed under controlled scientific
conditions that precluded any possibility of fraud. Examples are
dramatic paranormal phenomena produced by Daniel Dunglas Home while
being investigated at length by the scientist William Crookes, one of
the most distinguished scientists of his day (his account is here); extremely dramatic paranormal phenomena very often produced by Eusapia Palladino in front of
scientists who were restricting her limbs to prevent fraud; and a
host of dramatic paranormal phenomena produced by Indridi Indridason while being
investigated under controlled conditions by some of the top
scientific and medical men in Iceland.
Shermer does not inform his
readers of any such cases. He speaks as if medium phenomena are
purely an information phenomena, in which mediums seem to know things
they shouldn't. His explanation is the quite vacuous explanation of
“cold reading.” Cold reading simply means asking questions,
guessing and making general statements that might apply to large
numbers of people. That's an empty non-explanation for cases in which
someone repeatedly seems to show knowledge that could not have been
obtained by natural means. Shermer provides no evidence that cold
reading can produce anything more than the very weak results we would
expect to get from someone asking questions, guessing and speaking in
generalities. He claims on page 110 that in some 2002 TV episode he
tried cold reading and people said he was “eerily accurate,” but
when I try the URL his book gives as something to support this claim,
I only get a dead link, a URL that goes nowhere.
Mediums are still a subject
of serious scientific research. Shermer discusses such research only
by mentioning someone else's critique of a 2002 book by Gary
Schwartz. He make no mention of the main scientific research done on
mediums in the past 15 years, done at the Windbridge Institute.
Peer-reviewed research on mediums published by the leader of this
institute (Julie Beischel PhD) produces evidence of strongly anomalous
effects that cannot at all be explained by Shermer's empty “cold
reading” hypothesis.
Of course, we hear from
Shermer no mention of a case such as that of Leonora Piper. In this
case a person who was extremely skeptical about mediums (Richard
Hodgson) came in to investigate Piper, hoping to expose her as a
cheat. After spending a very long time investigating her, he became
quite convinced that she was actually receiving messages from the
dead. He published a 168 report on his findings, and later published
a 300 page follow-up report. Several other very thorough and serious
investigators of Piper became convinced that paranormal phenomena
were occurring. The case of Leonora Piper is one that cannot be plausibly explained by trickery or “cold reading.” Gladys Osborne Leonard was another medium who held up very well to long
investigations by scientists and serious researchers. Her many
successes in providing information that should have been unknowable
to her is something that cannot at all be explained by trickery or
cold reading.
We can only wonder whether
the omission of such cases (and countless other relevant cases) from
Shermer's book is because of a poor scholarship of his subject
matter, or a matter of deliberately censoring relevant information,
for the sake of keeping readers in a carefully filtered information
bubble. There are types of evidence for paranormal phenomena very
relevant to life-after-death that Shermer says virtually nothing
about. He fails to discuss or debunk the well-documented phenomena
of deathbed visions (something different from near-death
experiences), and says scarcely a word about apparition sightings or
the fact that a large percentage of widows report experiencing
evidence of contact with their deceased spouses. The index of his
book has no entry for either “ghosts” or “apparitions.” He
also fails to make any substantive mention of ESP, a phenomena for
which there is massive experimental evidence, evidence so strong that
it makes a mockery of his claim that the paranormal doesn't really
exist.
Other than speaking to a boy
who claimed past-live experiences at a young age (at a time when the
boy was much older and had forgotten such early memories), and other
than speaking to people he was on television shows or debates with,
Shermer seems to show in this book no evidence of having personally
spoken face-to-face with anyone who claimed a paranormal experience.
Lack of legwork can be excused, but there's no excuse for writing a
book about evidence for the paranormal, and failing to deeply
research the evidence for that topic, when such evidence is so
readily available to anyone with an Internet connection and access to
a large public library.
At one point Shermer reminds
us of the heavy molecular turnover in the body. He tells us that
molecules in our bodies are constantly being replaced. He seems to
be arguing along the lines of: you don't really have the same body
you had a few years ago, so what makes you think you have an immortal
soul? He fails completely to see how the very fact of rapid
molecular turnover argues for life-after-death rather than against
it. It is true that there is heavy molecular turnover in the body,
and part of this is that the protein molecules in our synapses have
average lifetimes of only a few weeks or less. But humans can
remember many things reliably for 50 years. How could that be if the
very place that scientists claim your memories are stored (synapses)
are such ever-changing “shifting sands” lacking any stability?
The answer would seem to be that our memories exist not in
ever-changing synapses, but in some stable substrate such as a human
soul.
Two other books suggesting that paranormal denialists don't do their homework is James Alcock's recent book on the paranormal (reviewed here), and Clay Routledge's recent book Supernatural. Routledge takes the approach of refusing to discuss any of the massive evidence for the paranormal, and pretending that people believe in it only for psychological reasons. Such an approach is a convenient excuse for lazily failing to read any of the relevant evidence literature.
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