When Hypnotized Minds Read Minds

It has long been reported that a hypnotized person may be more prone to telepathy or clairvoyance than a person in normal consciousness.  Such a result was definitely suggested by a series of experiments with hypnotized subjects conducted by a German group called the Society for Scientific Psychology. 

Mentioning the report of the group's leader (Albert von Schrenck-Notzing), a summary of the experiments mentions some good experimental methods:

"He states that in all experiments in mental suggestion and the transmission of ideas the witnesses were told to write down their wishes or mental commands immediately before the investigation and in another room or at a distance so far removed from the subject and behind her back that any sensory perception was absolutely excluded. Also, not a word was spoken either by Schrenck-Notzing or by any of the witnesses which might betray the purpose of the experiment."

As described here, the third and fourth experiment seemed to show a hypnotized person named Lina responding to pin pricks occurring on the body of the person who hypnotized her, unseen behind her. The fifth and sixth experiments seemed to show Lina responding to food or drink consumed by the person who hypnotized her, as if she had tasted the food or drink herself. The seventh and eighth and ninth experiments produced similar results, with Lina responding to things such as turpentine or pepper placed on the hypnotist's tongue, just as if she had tasted such things herself. 

In the thirteenth experiment, we read of a remarkable success in a telepathy experiment:

"In experiment thirteen, while behind the back of the subject and seated to one side of her, Baron Du Prel wrote down the mental order, 'Lina must get up, go up to Mr. Müller senior, pull the handkerchief out of his pocket and put it into the outer breast pocket of Mr. Müller junior. ' As soon as Schrenck-Notzing had read the order not a word was spoken, as was the case in most of these experiments. After he had seated himself at such a distance from Lina that all bodily contact was excluded and had concentrated his thoughts on this order, Lina stood up and like a blind person began groping through the studio with dragging steps. She went up to Mr. Müller senior, searching around in his coat until she found the pocket and then, slowly drawing the handkerchief out, she went to Mr. Müller junior, again looked for the pocket that she wanted, put her hand inside and reluctantly threw the objects she found inside it on the floor. Then she put the crumpled handkerchief inside the pocket, repeated as if automatically the same thing several times and again made sure that the handkerchief was securely in the pocket. As in this experiment every hint of what she was to do was carefully avoided, the witnesses considered that it gave evidence so convincing that any further similar experiments in the second sitting were unnecessary."

The fourteenth experiment was as successful as the thirteenth experiment. Schrenck-Notzing mentally commanded Lina to pull out a particular book from his bookcase, and put the book in a pocket of his coat in another room.  We are told Lina "took the suggested book and then went slowly with staggering steps up to the cloak and put it into the intended pocket." The fifteenth experiment was equally impressive, with Lina finding an exact book and an exact page number that had been suggested only mentally. 

There were then experiments that occurred "in the waking state," apparently with Lina not being hypnotized. Schrenck-Notzing made drawings which Lina could not see, and Lina was asked to reproduce. The result of the sixteenth experiment was not impressive, but the result of the seventeenth experiment was the exact match shown below:

The twentieth experiment occurred with Lina in a hypnotized state. On the third attempt to produce a drawing that Schrenck-Notzing had made which Lina could not see, Lina matched the drawing, as shown below.

The twenty-first experiment was equally successful. In a waking state, Lina tried to reproduce a drawing made by someone in another room. She successfully produced the drawing on the third try, as shown below. 

The thirty-third experiment was a very impressive result, demonstrating the strange effect called transposition of the senses, in which vision may seem to be transferred from the eyes to a different part of the body.  Such an effect has often been reported as something arising during hypnosis.  In the experiment Lina was hypnotized and blindfolded with a thick cloth, and observers "took care that no shifting of the cloth took place and that peering out of it was impossible." A book was then opened and placed on top of her head. Lina successfully read from the book. To rule out the extremely remote possibility that such a result could have been produced by a hyper-sensitivity allowing someone to feel ink impressions, a similar test was done using photographs of the text in a book. The blindfolded Lina was just as successful reading from such photographs placed on top of her head. 

The experiments above suggest a possibility about ESP that is also suggested by my own recent experience. The possibility is that someone trying to read someone's else mind may fail on the first attempt, but succeed very well on the second, third or fourth attempt. 

I will give some very recent examples seeming to suggest such a thing. About two weeks ago I said to one of my daughters, "You'll never guess what I saw down the street." I gave no clues, but asked her to guess. After a wrong guess of an orange cat, her second guess was "a raccoon," which is just what I saw. No one in our family has seen such a thing on our street before. Later in the day I asked her what I saw in a weird dream I recently had, mentioning only that it involved something odd in our front yard. After a wrong first guess of a snowman, she asked, "Was it a wild animal?" I said yes. Then she asked, "Was it an elephant?" I said yes. The dream I had was of two baby elephants in our front yard. These were the only two times that day she tried to guess what was in my mind. 

One or two times during the 13 days after this event I asked the same daughter to guess what I was thinking, without success. Then on the 13th day I asked her to guess what I had dreamed about, without giving any clues. I thought of a dream involving my father playing baseball catch with my sister. My daughter's first guess was wrong. Then she asked whether it was something that happened in my childhood. I said yes. Then she asked whether it was something happening in my back yard. I said yes. Then she asked whether it was some kind of sport. I said yes. Then she asked whether it was playing catch or some kind of baseball. I said yes. This was the same performance level noted above: one wrong guess, followed by all other guesses correct. On a test with my other daughter (the only telepathy test I can recall doing with her), I simply asked her to guess a thing I saw today, telling her only it was something that I hadn't seen in years. On her fourth guess, she got the correct answer: a grasshopper. 

The examples with my daughters suggest a possibility also suggested by the visuals shown above: that someone attempting ESP or reading someone's mind may tend to fail on the first attempt, but succeed very well (against all odds) on the second, third or fourth attempt. The examples given here suggest a kind of "warming up" effect. There is a failure to account for such a possibility in almost all laboratory testing of ESP.  No baseball team brings in a relief pitcher into a baseball game without letting the pitcher throw at least ten  "warm up" throws in the bullpen. So why is it that experimenters test ESP without accounting for the possibility of some "warm up" effect in which success may occur on the second, third or fourth try?

If I were given some grant money to test ESP, I would use the money to test ESP in a way that accounted for the possibility of such a "warm up" effect. Instead of only recording first guesses using Zener cards with five possible symbols, I would do tests in which subjects were given four chances to succeed in each trial in which ESP was tested, being tested with test targets that had a thousand possible appearances or a million possible appearances. Using a binomial probability calculator, there is a way to precisely calculate the odds of getting a certain degree of success, even if the person being tested is allowed four different tries for success. 

In a paper that can be read on the Cornell University physics paper server, the authors (Stuart Kauffman and Dean Radin) discuss  laboratory evidence for ESP gathered in recent decades, such as evidence from what is called the ganzfeld technique, a technique for testing ESP in subjects in a rather drowsy state of sensory deprivation. The evidence produced using this technique (which originated a few decades ago) is very good, but much better evidence was gathered in earlier decades by researchers such as Joseph Rhine of Duke University, and many doctors reporting dramatic clairvoyance in hypnotized subjects.   Kauffman and Radin give this summary of the telepathy evidence from the ganzfeld experiments, in which the success rate expected by chance is 25%:

"From 1974 to 2018, the combined ganzfeld database contained 117 studies. Of those, studies using targets sets with 4 possible targets included 3,885 test sessions, resulting in 1,188 hits, corresponding to a 30.6% hit rate. With chance at 25%, this excess hit rate is 8.1 sigma above chance expectation (p = 5.6 × 10^-16). Analysis of these studies showed that similar effect sizes were reported by independent labs, that the results were not affected by variations in experimental quality, and that selective reporting biases could not explain away the results. The Bayes Factors (BF) associated with the last 108 more recently published ganzfeld telepathy studies was 18.8 million in favor of H1 (i.e., evidence favoring telepathy). Given that BF > 100 is considered 'decisive' evidence, this outcome far exceeds the 'exceptional evidence' said to be required of exceptional claims.[48,49] By comparison, in particle physics experiments effects resulting in 5 or more sigma are considered experimental 'discoveries.' ”

The probability of 1 in 5.6 × 10^-16  cited is a likelihood of less than 1 in a quadrillion. So the ganzfeld experiments got results with a chance likelihood of less than 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000.  Given a 30% hit rate (5% above what was expected by chance), this very low probability should surprise no one familiar with what is called the law of large numbers.  This is the law that the more trials, the more unlikely it is that a result will differ from the result expected by chance. So given a deck of cards with four suits (clubs, hearts, spades, and diamonds), you might guess by chance the suit of a randomly selected card at a rate much higher than 25% if you make only a few guesses. But the more guesses you make, the closer your  hit rate will be to the rate expected by chance. For example, with 1000 guesses your success rate by chance would be something close to 25%, and it would be incredibly unlikely that by chance you would get as high as 30%. 

I already knew about the results of the ganzfeld experiments being in excess of 30%. But I learned something very interesting from the Kauffman and Radin paper I did not know, that a certain subgroup of subjects scored at a rate of 40% (in these experiments with an expected chance result of 25%).  We read the following, mentioning a probability (p) of less than 1 in a  10 billion:

"The modest 5% advantage over chance expectation in the ganzfeld telepathy studies suggests that rudimentary forms of telepathy are widely distributed among the general population. We know this because the majority of participants in these studies were unselected, often just college students participating in an experiment to gain credit for their psychology courses. By contrast, in a subset of these studies where participants were selected based on their prior reports of telepathic experiences, maintaining an active meditative practice, engaged in creative pursuits, and/or having strong belief in psi, the hit rate was a more robust 40.1%, some 6.2 sigma above chance expectation (p = 2.8 x 10^-10)."

Based on results in the nineteenth century and results discussed in this post, I strongly suspect a much higher rate of success in telepathy experiments would be achieved in the present if either subjects were tested in a hypnotized state, or subjects were tested using a protocol allowing for up to five guesses with targets having 1000 or more possible values.  

The Mainstream's Oppressive Dehumanization of Us All Goes Unnoticed

(1) "To crush or burden by abuse of power or authority"

(2) "To burden spiritually or mentally : weigh heavily upon"

-- Definitions of "oppress" by the Merriam-Webster dictionary

" To deprive (someone or something) of human qualities, personality, or dignity: such as...to address or portray (someone) in a way that obscures or demeans that person's humanity or individuality"

-- Definitions of "dehumanize" by the Merriam-Webster dictionary

Imagine that you had a skin color that was uncommon where you lived, and you were part of a racist society. Imagine you had been taught in school that people with your skin color "aren't quite fully human" or "are not as evolved as regular people"  or "are kind of  like animals." You would be a victim of oppressive dehumanization. Dehumanization is the depiction of any human beings as less than fully human, or anything that tends to make people treat or regard other humans as less than fully human. If you had been exposed to such oppressive dehumanization throughout your life, you might not even notice that it was occurring. If such oppressive dehumanization permeated the teachings of your society, you might believe the oppressive nonsense you were taught, and not even notice how badly you were being oppressed. 

A large fraction of us are like such a person, regardless of what skin color we have. This is because the information mainstream constantly oppresses us all and dehumanizes us all, by depicting all humans as being far less than what they are. Such oppressive dehumanization is part of the curriculum people are taught in high school, the curriculum people are taught in college, and the doctrines constantly propagated in maintream information sources such as Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, the Washington Post, Scientific American and the BBC.  Oppressive dehumanization teachings are such a common part of mainstream teachings that a large fraction of those suffering from such abuse fail to notice how badly they are being oppressed and abused. 

Before explaining such statements, I must delve into the question: what are human beings? I can give a little list that may shed a little light on this topic.

(1) Humans are minds with a host of abilities not possessed by any animals. From a mental standpoint the gulf between humans and animals is like the difference between a mountain and a mole hill or the difference between a palm-sized "Hot Wheels" toy car and an expensive functional automobile. Humans do things such as write books, perform scientific experiments and scientific analysis, compose symphonies and write screenplays, develop novel philosophical systems and novel theories of nature, create very complex inventions, and build enormously organized structures such as Grand Central Terminal. Animals do no such things.   

(2) Humans are minds with a host of normal abilities and characteristics not explained by material science. Humans have many daily-observed mental characteristics and abilities that material science is not able to credibly explain. It has become ever more common for scientists to confess that science has no explanation for the basic phenomenon of consciousness. Scientists also have no credible explanation for the basic fact of selfhood. There is no reason why billions of chemical reactions and electrical impulses in a brain should ever add up to any things such as a feeling and experience of selfhood, in which you end up convinced you are a single unified mind rather than some heap of chemical and electrical events. Scientists have no credible explanation for the human ability to create abstract ideas. Very long ago Thomas Huxley said that for a human brain to produce abstract ideas is no more explicable than a genie rising up from the rubbing of Aladdin's lamp; and such an arising of abstract ideas is no more neurally explicable today. Even the most basic abilities of human memory cannot credibly be explained by scientists. Scientists have no credible tale to tell of how very complex learned knowledge and episodic experiences could ever be translated into neural states.  Scientists have no credible account to give of how a human could instantly form a new complex memory, or how you could instantly recall the details of some obscure person's life after merely hearing his name, or how memories could persist in a brain for decades despite constant molecular turnover and constant synapse remodeling and synapse instability. 

(3) Humans are minds having a host of paranormal experiences  not explained by material science. Humans have many unusual experiences utterly beyond the explanation of material science. One such experience is extrasensory perception (ESP). We have almost two centuries of systematically gathered evidence for different forms of ESP, reported by esteemed authorities such as scientists and physicians. Such evidence has been steadily reported ever since the 1831 report of the Royal Academy of Medicine in France, which came out resoundingly in favor of the reality of clairvoyance. Written observational evidence of ESP and other paranormal anomalies in subjects under hypnosis was extremely abundant in the nineteenth century, and such evidence can also be abundantly found in twentieth century literature. During the twentieth century and early twenty-first century, there has accumulated extremely abundant laboratory experimental evidence in favor of ESP, particularly in well-replicated experimental protocols such as the ganzfeld protocol. First appearing in the nineteenth century or earlier, reports of near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences have abundantly occurred, particularly since 1975. Humans have abundantly reported sightings of apparitions, very often reporting seeing the apparition of someone who recently died but whose death was not suspected when the apparition was seen. In many cases multiple humans will report seeing the same apparition. The sighting of apparitions of deceased loved ones is extremely common among dying people, with such deathbed visions occurring to as many as about 25% of those who die. Such phenomena are not credibly explained by material science. 

(4) Physically humans are dynamic states of enormously organized complexity with bodies beyond the explanation of material science. The physical body of a human is a state of very great hierarchical organization. Subatomic particles are organized into atoms, which are organized into amino acids, which are organized into protein molecules, which are organized into organelles, which are organized into cells, which are organized into organs, which are organized into organ systems, which (along with a skeletal system and other systems) are organized into the human body. The physical arising of all this organization from the simplicity of a simple one-cell zygote is a miracle of origination 100 miles over the heads of today's scientists. The only accounts scientists have to explain such an origination are ivory tower "old wives' tales," such as the often-told but utterly fictional claim that the organization of a human body comes from the reading of a blueprint in DNA. DNA contains no blueprint specifying anatomical structures, but merely a database of low-level chemical information. The gigantic level of organization in a human body is also not explained by Darwinian evolution, which is a mere theory of accumulation rather than a theory of organization. 

The paragraphs above are a very crude sketch of what a human being is, but they may at least suggest how gigantic is the physical and spiritual reality of a human being. But how is it that mainstream authorities depict human beings? As something vastly less than what humans are. 

Biologists dehumanize us all when they make the groundless claim that human beings are animals. Such a claim is contrary to all human experience, including the reality that humans have many important capabilities that animals do not have. You do not justify the claim that humans are animals by pointing out that biologists refer to an animal kingdom and a plant kingdom, and place humans in the animal kingdom. Such a classification scheme is an arbitrary speech custom, and makes no sense. An intelligent way to have classified organisms would be to say that there are four kingdoms (a microbe kingdom, a plant kingdom, an animal kingdom and a human kingdom), and to place humans in their own kingdom. 

Biologists have never credibly explained how humans minds (with so many unique capabilities) could have arisen from animal predecessors through any natural process. This shortfall was brought into focus by one of the two originators of the theory of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. In his essay "The Limits of Natural Selection As Applied to Man," Wallace said that natural selection was incapable of explaining the human mind. To try to reduce this embarrassing shortfall contradicting their boasts of understanding human origins, biologists have long resorted to a tactic of speaking as if there was little difference between animals and humans. Every time they use this tactic, our biologists are agents of oppressive dehumanization. The biologist who tells you that you're not much more than a chimp is doing the same type of thing that war criminals of the 20th century did when they claimed that certain people they wished to exterminate were not much more than vermin. 

Charles Darwin was one of the first thinkers to practice  dehumanizing rhetoric trying to depict humans as being mere animals or little more than apes. In his book The Descent of Man he claimed this near the beginning of Chapter 3: “My object in this chapter is to show that there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties." Contrary to all human experience, this statement was a huge falsehood, and it is easy to understand why Darwin made it. The more some biologist tries to shrink and minimize the human mind,  like someone saying the works of Shakespeare are "just some ink marks on paper," the more likely someone may be to believe that such a biologist can explain the mind's origin. The more a biologist  dehumanizes humans, making them sound like animals, the more likely someone may be to think that such a biologist can explain the origin of humans. 

Our Darwinist biologists fail to see how they are impeaching their own credibility when they make ludicrous claims that humans are animals or that human minds are scarcely more than animal minds. They fail to realize that if such claims were true, they should make us doubt the reliability of all of the main explanatory claims made by biologists: because why would a mere animal (or a mind not much more than an animal's mind) be expected to come up with the right answer on questions so complex and subtle as the origin of  species or the origin of humanity?  

Darwin's strategy of dehumanization has been followed by very many of his disciples. Part of that strategy involves a suppression and censorship of observational reports of hard-to-explain unique human abilities and unique human experiences. Humans very often see things and have experiences suggesting that humans are closer to angels than apes: uniquely human experiences that animals don't have. Such observations and experiences are profoundly embarrassing to all thinkers trying to advance a claim that we are little more than apes. The way such thinkers deal with such a problem is to try to suppress, censor and belittle many such observations and the people who have them. 

So when mainstream academia authorities write textbooks or articles about human psychology or the human mind, they conveniently avoid mentioning  innumerable reliable accounts humans have reported of paranormal human experiences. Another tactic is do defame and disparage anyone reporting such experiences. Of course, the person who does not hesitate to pull out a "you're little more than an ape" claim will tend to have few qualms about pulling out an "if you saw this, you must be crazy" claim. Once a person gets used to the "steel jack boot on your head" oppression of depicting humans as being soulless animals, he will easily migrate to the "steel jack boot on your head" oppression of gaslighting reliable witnesses of things such a person cannot explain. Some of the attempts in the world of scientific academia to suppress inconvenient observations are documented in Etzel Cardena's paper "The Unbearable Fear of Psi: On Scientific Suppression in the 21st Century."

As the British Empire was growing, some men in Philadelphia in 1776 produced a document declaring that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Back then the British wanted people to regard themselves as something much less: just obedient subjects of their king. So they tried to make sure that as few people as possible heard about the Declaration of Independence by America. If someone did hear about it, and asked about it, they were told that the authors of such a statement were crazy or scoundrels. That was oppression. Similarly, the doctrinal lords of mainstream media want as few people as possible to hear about evidence and observations suggesting that you were endowed by a Creator with an immortal soul. And if someone hears about such evidence and observations, and inquires about such things, the mainstream tells them that the accounts come from crazy people or scoundrels.  That also is oppression. 

The oppressive British Empire has now faded away as a political empire, being eclipsed by other empires that sometimes seemed more oppressive. But a kind of ideological British Empire persists around the world, and the biology departments of universities are its oppressive outposts. Such outposts of ideological colonialism are dedicated to making us all subjects not of the British monarch, but kind of mental minions of a nineteenth century British man, Charles Darwin, and also intellectual subjects of his devotees in institutions such as the Royal Society.  Dehumanization is a long-practiced specialty of that organization, whose members are prone to be portraying humans as so much less than they are. A tiny elitist organization consisting of some 1700 members, mostly old white men, the Royal Society has a "for show only" slogan of "Nullus in Verba," which means "take nobody's word for it." Ever since it became essentially a Church of Darwinism, the Royal Society has acted as if its operating principle is "Always take Darwin's word for it." 

A scientific study (discussed here) showed how Darwinist ideas bring people to the brink of dehumanizing their fellow humans.  People were given an interface showing the "Ascent of Man" visual that is an icon of Darwinist propaganda. Below the icon was an interface referring to seven nationalities. People were encouraged to use the interface to specify "how evolved" they thought seven groups of people are (Americans, Arabs, Chinese, Europeans, Mexican Immigrants, Muslims and South Koreans).  The respondents tended to specify some of these groups as being significantly "less evolved" than others. In this context "less evolved" means basically "less human." We should not be surprised by the results. Being constantly mixed with dehumanization rhetoric, Darwinism brings people to the brink of dehumanizing their fellow humans through racist thinking. Never be surprised when some Darwinist thinker starts spouting racist rubbish against some other group of humans, claiming that such people are "less evolved." 

A nadir of dehumanization comes when materialists preach the toxic nonsense of determinism, the claim that humans are "lumbering robots" that lack free will. This poisonous absurdity has been taught by some of the leading figures of materialism. Thankfully this ruinous doctrine has not yet made it into the mainstream. Another nadir of dehumanization is an equally poisonous absurdity taught by some figures of materialism: the nonsensical and groundless theory of some infinity of parallel universes in which there are infinite copies of you. All who teach this nonsense would dehumanize you by trying to get you to disbelieve in the uniqueness of your individual mind. Then there are many other materialists who attempt to dehumanize you by getting you to suspect that you are merely some bits bouncing around in some computer simulation produced by extraterrestrials. 

All of those who told us these toxic absurdities have been guilty of abuse of power and abuse of authority. Such people have typically held positions of power and authority that caused people to trust that they would be teaching truth and paying fair attention to all relevant evidence. When such people practiced oppressive dehumanization, by depicting humans as so much less than they are, such authorities were betraying the public trust and abusing their power. 

Know which people have been mankind's oppressors. Such oppressors have been not merely those who eroded freedom and human rights and arranged laws so that the richest keep getting richer at the expense of people with lower incomes who keep getting economically oppressed. Mankind's oppressors have also been those who attempt to dehumanize you by depicting you as some ape-like animal or "lumbering robot" very much less than what you are. Trying to drain us of the lifeblood of human dignity, such dehumanizing oppressors exist abundantly in the outposts of intellectual colonialism to be found in the shiny new buildings of the media and the old ivy-covered towers of academia. 

Does the Vacillating Templeton Prize Stand for Anything These Days?

The Templeton Prize is a huge monetary award of more than 1,300,000 dollars. The prize was established by John Templeton, an incredibly successful investor who in his will gave a huge endowment to the Templeton Foundation he had established. The Templeton Foundation now has assets of more than 3 billion dollars, and gives out lots of small grants as well as the big jackpot of the annual Templeton Prize. Until 2001 the Templeton Prize was officially called “the Templeton Prize for Progress in Relgion.” From 2002 to 2008 the Templeton Prize was officially called ”the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities."

Nowadays the Templeton Prize has no such official title other than the Templeton Prize. But in 2020 on one of the Templeton Foundation's pages describing the prize, the prize was described in these terms: “The Prize celebrates no particular faith tradition or notion of God, but rather the quest for progress in humanity’s efforts to comprehend the many and diverse manifestations of the Divine.” The page also referred to “the John Templeton Foundation's mandate for breakthroughs in discovery and outreach with direct or indirect relevance to 'Spiritual Progress.' ”  Those were quotes I copied from the page in 2020. 

Looking at the latest version of the Templeton Foundation's description of the Templeton Prize, I see that the description of the prize has changed once again. The latest page describing the Templeton Prize describes it as a prize that: "honors individuals whose exemplary achievements advance Sir John Templeton’s philanthropic vision: harnessing the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s place and purpose within it." So now apparently the Templeton Prize is merely another prize for scientists. 

The Templeton Foundation has removed all claims that the prize has anything to do with spirituality or morality. Very confusingly, the page describing the prize states this: "In 2020, the Templeton philanthropies updated the description of the Templeton Prize, focusing it on research, discovery, public engagement, and religious leadership that advance our understanding of, and appreciation for, the insights that science brings to the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s purpose and place within it." The inclusion of this phrase "religious leadership" is very odd, because in two of the last four years the prize has been to physicists who had no involvement at all in religious leadership. One of these was an avowed materialist hostile to claims of cosmic purpose, an advocate of the claim that life has no purpose.

The claim that giving a prize to scientists does something to "advance Sir John Templeton’s philanthropic vision" is an inaccurate one. The late John Templeton tried to set up a foundation to promote progress in religion, not a foundation to give prize money to scientists. 

The 2022 winner of the Templeton Prize, Nobel Prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek, has not done much of anything to explore humankind's place and purpose within the universe. A look at his papers on Google Scholar seems to indicate that he has no great interest in such a thing, but seems a hundred times more interested in equations, matter and energy than in humans. Looking through the titles of the first 300 papers of Frank Wilczek listed on Google Scholar, I find not one single paper about human beings. 

The Templeton Foundation page describing the awarding of the 2022 Templeton Prize to Frank Wilczek is a strange affair. It uses the word "beauty" eight different times. For example, we read this:

"Drawing from science and aesthetics, he argues for an objective principle of beauty in which our universe employs the most elegant structures to achieve spectacular surprises. With the flair of an artist, he paints a picture of the universe in which space and time, logic and pure mathematics form a pattern of awe-inspiring beauty. His concept of natural beauty is one where maximum complexity arises from foundations of maximum simplicity."

But why should someone get so big a prize for having a sense of beauty? We all have an appreciation for beauty.  Also, it makes no sense to claim that "maximum complexity arises from foundations of maximum simplicity."  The enormous complexity and gigantic levels of organization in biological organisms were not made possible by "foundations of maximum simplicity."  A prerequisite for such biological complexity (but not at all sufficient to cause it to arise) are extremely complex and fine-tuned laws of nature, things that are not at all "maximum simplicity."  An example of such laws are the very complicated laws that keep protons and neutrons bound in the atomic nucleus, but also allow the electrons in atoms to behave in very complicated ways consistent with the chemistry needed for life. It takes incredibly complicated and fine-tuned physics for you to have both the chemistry allowing folded protein molecules with up to 10,000 atoms, and also the kind of physics needed for stable stars like the sun.   No kind of life would be possible in a universe with physics of "maximum simplicity."   

Another Templeton Foundation page related to awarding the prize to Wilczek is a page with the title "The Universe According to Frank Wilczek." We have very many words about Wilczek, but no indications that he has any very strong interest in humans or human minds. The talk is mainly about matter, energy and physics, with lots of speculations about undiscovered axions. Very strangely we read this quote: "Wilczek 'epitomizes what the Templeton Foundation is going after, which is the synthesis of science and what I would call the metaphysical,' says France Córdova, president of the Science Philanthropy Alliance and a member of the prize’s judging committee." Nothing on the long, wordy page describing Wilczek's work (and nothing on his Google Scholar list of  papers) gives the slightest indication that Wilczek has any interest in metaphysics. 

The front page of the Templeton Prize site (www.templetonprize.org) now has a link to an LA Times interview with Wilczek about his metaphysical views. We get no sign of any deep thinking about metaphysical matters in the interview, in which Wilczek claims that "God is under construction" and "God can be constructed."  We hear Wilczek giving some witless reasoning that God cannot have a will because "the form of the physical laws seems to be very tight and doesn't allow for exceptions." 

So what does the Templeton Prize stand for these days? Not much of anything, it seems. You apparently don't have to be any serious scholar or analyst of the human mind or humanity to win the Templeton Prize, and you can seem 100 times more interested in your physics speculations (such as speculations about never-detected particles such as dark matter and axions) than in any matters of humanity or human welfare or spirituality or morality. 

Although we read a giant font headline at www.templetonprize.org claiming that the Templeton Prize is "the world's most interesting prize," it is no such thing. Nowadays it seems the Templeton Prize is mainly just a big million-dollar handout for already flourishing "fat cat" old guard scientists, kind of like being elected to the Royal Society consisting mostly of old white men who keep pushing the same old story lines, some of them very dubious. The Templeton Prize epitomizes the Matthew Effect at work in modern society, under which the famous and already-richly-rewarded get more fame and more rewards. 

Dreams and NDEs Suggesting the Soul's Non-Earthly Pre-Existence

Most people are familiar with the doctrine of life after death through the survival of the soul. The idea is that a person has some immortal soul which survives death, and that after you die your soul will go to some kind of postmortal realm, perhaps some kind of heaven. An idea that fewer people are familiar with is the idea of the soul's pre-existence in some non-earthly realm.  This is the idea that your soul did not start to exist here on Earth, but started to exist somewhere else long before you were born. According to such an idea:

(1) You once existed in some non-earthly realm, which may have been some kind of heaven or paradise;

(2) For some reason you then came to live here on Earth as a flesh-and-blood human;

(3) After you die you will then return to that place where you dwelled before being born here on our planet.

The doctrine of the soul's non-earthly pre-existence should not be confused with the doctrine of reincarnation.  Reincarnation is the doctrine that your soul has experienced multiple earthly lifetimes in multiple bodies living at different times.  The doctrine of the soul's non-earthly pre-existence is the doctrine that you lived before this earthly life, but in some place other than planet Earth, perhaps some heaven or paradise.  A believer in the doctrine of the soul's non-earthly pre-existence can either believe or disbelieve in the doctrine of reincarnation.  Such a person could believe that his soul originated in some realm other than Earth, and that such a soul has had one and only one incarnation here on planet Earth, the person's present earthly life. Or such a person could believe that he or she has had multiple incarnations here on planet Earth, which would be a belief rather like (or the same as) the belief in reincarnation. 

Although we currently lack any airtight "good as gold" evidence for such a hypothesis, and the doctrine may or may not be true, I can think of six reasons for believing in the doctrine of the soul's non-earthly pre-existence:

(1) The doctrine might help explain the hard-to-explain acquisition of language by young children. Linguists such as Noam Chomsky have drawn attention to a "poverty of stimulus" dilemma in regard to language acquisition: that young children seem to learn a language and its grammar without being exposed to sufficient examples that would explain such language acquisition. This "poverty of stimulus"  dilemma doubles when we consider the case of children who become fluent in two different languages before the age of five, such as two I know who became fluent in both Chinese and English (two languages with different grammar rules) by the age of three or four. If we imagine that souls may have practiced earthly languages in some state where they existed before birth, this might help explain the riddle of how children can learn two languages at an early age despite a "poverty of stimulus." 

(2) The philosophical problem called the problem of evil may be greatly lessened if we imagine the soul's non-earthly pre-existence. It could be that each of us existed in blissful happiness for very many years before coming to Earth, and that each of us chose to come to Earth and face its risk and pains, for the sake of some higher purpose. Clearly such possibilities lessen the problem of evil. For example, if I consider only the earthly life of Anne Frank, I may have a "problem of evil" dilemma. But suppose I hypothesize that Anne Frank's earthly life was preceded by a million years of her heavenly bliss, and that she chose to come to Earth and to face difficulties like those she faced. Then the problem of evil seems to shrink. 

(3) There are some anecdotal reports of very young children saying they existed in some non-earthly state before living on Earth, and some of these children have apparently claimed that they selected their own parents. However, evidence of this type seems to be scattered and sparse. An example of such accounts can be found in the scientific paper "Paranormal Aspects of Pre-Existence Memories in Young Children" which can be read here or here. 

(4) One PhD using hypnosis on adults has claimed to have found evidence for the non-earthly pre-existence of the soul. For more information, see the book Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives by Michael Newton PhD (which can be read on www.archive.org using this link). 

(5) People having near-death experiences often report going to some unearthly heavenly kind of realm, and also having some thought that they were "returning to their true home," rather than seeing such a place for the first time. For example, in the first episode of the Netflix series "Surviving Death," a woman who had a near-death experience while kayaking (supposedly deprived of oxygen for many minutes) says at the 5:40 mark, "I believe I was in heaven,"  and "I had an overwhelming sense of being home." Similarly, a woman named Karen who had a near-death experience said, "It felt like I was returning home." At the end of this post I will quote many more accounts of this type, in which people having near-death experiences report a feeling of "returning home" upon encountering some mystical or heavenly realm 

(6) I have had quite a few dreams suggesting the idea of the soul's non-earthly pre-existence (in addition to more than two hundred dreams suggesting the more general idea of life after death).  Below are some examples:

• I dreamed my late father asked (?) if I could go to some home where I had previously lived, saying that my late grandmother now lived there. I'm not sure whether it was an asking to make such a trip or a prediction of such a trip. The home may have symbolized some postmortal realm, particularly given the assertion that my late grandmother now lives there. Because it was stated that I had previously lived in such a place, the dream may hint at the doctrine of pre-existence (that souls live in some heavenly realm before they come to live on Earth).
• I dreamed I was crossing a kind of floral boundary line marking the border between two different homeowner's yards. Looking at the yard I was entering, I was thinking, "I've lived there before." Crossing over into the other yard I saw a smiling woman who seemed to greet me. Crossing over to the other side of this boundary may have represented crossing a boundary between earthly life and an afterlife, often referred to as the Other Side.  The thought that I've lived there before may suggest the idea of the pre-existence of the soul in some heavenly realm.
• I dreamed that I walked up some ascending walkway to reach some high place where there were joyous people having fun and playing music. I saw a little girl who was having fun playing with colorful sprinkles. I said to the girl, "Princess, we have been drawn away from this place by our duties, but we will return to it one day." In the dream I gently took the little girl's hand, and walked away with her. The dream may symbolize the idea of a blissful heavenly pre-existence, followed by an earthly life involving the carrying out of duties, followed by a return to the heavenly state. 
• I dreamed that I was driving a car, next to a toll gate on a bridge. There were two lanes, and I realized I was in the wrong lane. So I did a short U-turn to get into the right lane, the lane with the toll gate. The toll was $98.  Because I was first in the lane opposite the lane with the toll gate, the dream implies I had previously come across the bridge, and was now going to cross the bridge in the other direction to return to where I had come from. The bridge may symbolize the border between this earthly life and some afterlife realm (on the Other Side). The dream may symbolize not only an afterlife (going to some Other Side) but also pre-existence before birth in the same afterlife realm (because the dream implies that I previously crossed the bridge).
• I dreamed that I was on a bus heading to some library, with the idea that I had once lived next to the library. The ride may represent a return to some heavenly place of great knowledge where I had existed before an earthly life (the idea of pre-existence). On the same day I dreamed of a baseball batter hitting a homer and rounding the bases, with clear imagery of the discarding of the bat. The trip ending up at home plate may represent the same idea of pre-existence (return to a heavenly home where you once existed), and the discarding of the bat may represent a discarding of a human body at death by a soul that no longer needs it.
• I dreamed I came to some office where someone said that the last time I was at the office I had dropped on the floor many pages of information and some cash, and that such things had been saved for me, so that I could receive them when I returned. The dream may symbolize the idea that upon leaving some heavenly pre-existence to come and be born on Earth, a person may lose memories of such a pre-existence, which are then restored when the person returns to such a heaven after dying.
• I dreamed that a woman driven in a car over a river bridge (from the other side of a river) got out of the car, and said she had to walk about sixty blocks before she could reach home.  Each of the sixty blocks may symbolize a year of life, and the "reaching home" after such a journey may symbolize a return to some postmortal state (on the Other Side) that the soul may have previously inhabited during some non-earthly pre-existence. 
• I had a dream in which I got a bus back home quickly, but some young people had to wait a long time before getting their bus back home.  Because those having near-death experiences often report encountering some heavenly realm which they thought of as their "real home," you could interpret this getting a "bus back home" as reaching an afterlife realm after death (a person as old as me getting such a trip fairly soon, and young people having to wait a long time before getting such a trip). If a soul previously existed in some non-earthly realm, that realm may be regarded as its "true home." 
• On one night I had three dreams involving travel. In one I was waiting for a train, and in another I was in car about to go on a long trip. The dream most suggestive of life after death involved me in a bus, being driven across a bridge to its Other Side, with the bus then dropping me off at a spot that I recognized as my home (another repetition of the "going home" motif constantly occurring in my dreams, with "home" possibly representing some afterlife destination where souls may have previously existed before coming to this earth). 
• I dreamed that I was an Allied soldier in Nazi-occupied Italy, trying to get back home. In the dream I found a boat yard near a river, and stole a kayak, trying to use the kayak to get back home. This was another repetition of a "crossing the river" motif I often get in dreams, which may symbolize the barrier between life and death that leads to some Other Side that is like my "real home," perhaps because I lived there before during some non-earthly pre-existence. On the same night I had another "trying to get back home" dream, which also had a "blockage" motif that I often get in dreams. 
• I dreamed I was hiding in the woods as some of the Bad Guys passed by. Then in the dream I remembered a place I had once lived, some magnificent building where I had seemingly enjoyed perfect happiness and safety. I had the idea that I must go back to that place, and beg the current owners to let me live there again, so I could again enjoy such happiness and safety.  The part about the woods may have symbolized the danger of earthly living. The magnificent previous home may have symbolized some heavenly realm where each of us enjoyed a pre-existence of perfect happiness and safety before coming to live on this planet, a realm to which we will all one day return.
• I had a dream I was at my home, looking at an open trash can that had at its top a discarded envelope. The envelope was for a letter that I had sent to England, and which had been returned to me unopened. Only the envelope was in the trash, not the letter. The discarded envelope seems to symbolize the idea that when we die we discard a body that is a mere envelope for the soul. The round trip of the letter (going on a long journey and returning back to its home and source of origin) may symbolize the idea that after death a soul returns to its heavenly source, possibly (according to the idea of the soul's non-earthly pre-existence) a place where it lived before (its real home).
• I dreamed I took a jet to Heidelberg, Germany, and in the dream I recalled a part of  Sigmund Romberg's song "When It's Summertime in Heidelberg," which portrays an idyllic place where "there's beauty everywhere" and "every day is like a holiday." The dream may have symbolized a journey to some afterlife paradise. Because I was born not very far from Heidelberg, the dream may also symbolize the idea of returning to some idyllic place where I once existed, which meshes with the idea of the non-earthly pre-existence of the soul. 
• I dreamed that I left some tall skyscraper where I worked or lived, but then I returned to the building's ground-floor lobby. I was worried that I did not have the ID card needed for entrance, but found that I did have it in a bent shape. The "high altitude" destination reached by an elevator may signify some heavenly realm where my soul once lived (the idea of the soul's non-earthly pre-existence, suggested in 10+ other dreams I have had). The alteration of the ID card may signify some mind-bending alteration of the self that occurs when a person returns to his heavenly home upon dying.
• I dreamed that it was a dark stormy night, and that I was supposed to meet my daughters outside, but I had no coat. I thought that after meeting my daughters I should just go home.  The dark stormy night may represent death. The lack of the coat may represent the shedding of the bodily exterior at death, leaving only the soul behind. The brief meeting with my daughters may symbolize some ghost appearance I might make after dying. The "going home" (a motif repeating countless times in my dreams) may symbolize return of the soul to some heavenly home where it once existed (again, the idea of the soul's non-earthly pre-existence). 
• I dreamed that a man was leaving the building where he worked, going back home. The security guard in the front lobby said something about not leaving a mess, and so before the leaving man left he gathered up some newspapers and put them in a plastic bag (one about four times longer than its width). The "leaving work and going home" part may have symbolized dying and returning to some "heavenly home" where a person's soul may have originated (according to the idea of the non-earthly pre-existence of the soul). The placing of the newspapers (information) in a plastic bag may have symbolized a death event in which information (in a body's DNA) is put into a body bag. Plastic body bags (about four times longer than their width) are used whenever a body is stored in a morgue.
• I dreamed that I awoke sleeping outdoors in a dangerous spot very close to the tracks of trains that were speeding by. Then, strangely, I had a bicycle which I returned to a woman and a child, saying, "Sorry I slept with your bike." In the dream I then realized I was on some trip to some city far away from my home, and that the trip was almost over, and that I would soon go home. The "dangerous sleep" element of the dream may symbolize dying during sleep. The "giving back the vehicle" element may signify shedding at death my body, widely regarded as a vehicle for the soul (legally bikes are considered vehicles). The trip far from home may signify my earthly life, and the return to home (an extremely frequent motif in my dreams) may signify going back after death to some heavenly home where my soul may have existed before my earthly life.
• I dreamed that upon arriving in some distant city, I reminded myself to make sure to book a flight back home. The "flight back home" part may symbolize the ascent of a soul at death to return to some heavenly home where such a soul may have previously existed before living on Earth. Similarly, in two other dreams I was waiting to get a bus back home.  
• I dreamed I reached some snowy location where I saw my late father and my late firstborn sister. There was the idea that I was returning home. My sister said that my coat was seeming to unravel. The unraveling of the coat may have symbolized dissolution of the earthly body at death.  The returning home idea may have been another repetition of the idea that in an afterlife people return to some realm where they existed before birth. 
• I dreamed I crossed over to the other side of the street, to return a book I had borrowed from a library, at the deadline for returning the book. The deadline may represent death, and the crossing over may represent returning to some Other Side where my soul had once been (before birth). The book may represent my soul, which may have been kind of "borrowed from heaven" according to the idea of the nonearthly preexistence of the soul.  On the same night I dreamed I was in a school class, being asked by the teacher to give the answer to some complex question. Confident that I had written down the answer on one of the pages on my desk, I searched my pages, but could not find the answer. We have a "you had the answer, but you lost it" motif. Perhaps the answer represents an answer to some great philosophical question, which may have been known by my soul before coming to Earth, but which was lost upon my birth on this planet. 

A person who had a near-death experience reported having a feeling of returning to some place or state of his existence where his soul had previously lived. He states this:

"And I knew, 'THAT's my home, my original BEING, the original EXISTENCE of all of us, the home of ALL our souls. It's from here that I come and it's here that I belong. We all come from here and we will all come back here. A deeply familiar sensation of HOME and BELONGING pervaded me completely. I was ONE with everything. There are no earthly words giving me the possibility to describe this deeply anchored knowledge, this memory, and this beloved feeling of home."

Another person experiencing a near-death experience reported a similar feeling of "returning home":

" I was drawn into a long, dark tunnel that had a very bright, white light that was shining love. I could hear harps and saw my great uncle Harry Ed and Aunt Vickie. I was in total bliss and happiness. I was home. I didn't want to go back. I had a life review where I saw ever single event from my life...I knew I had to go back, but I really wanted to stay. I knew that it would hurt to go back to my body. I truly knew that this was home."

Another person experiencing a near-death experience reported a similar feeling of "returning home,": and also reported someone saying that she had chosen to incarnate on Earth. She stated this:

"They reminded me that I had chosen to be incarnate on Earth and that I had to go back. I already knew that by being by their side, everything was coming back to me. They gave me so much love. I was at home and I badly wanted to stay. I didn’t want to leave, but I had to go back. That’s how it had to be. I remember laughing a lot with them. They understood me. They knew the difficulty of an incarnation, as well as I knew it before I incarnated on Earth."

Another person tells an elaborate account of a near-death experience that includes this statement:

"I was HOME. That is what it felt like, the ultimate homecoming. I was where I was meant to be." 

Another person describing a near-death experience states that he floated out of his body, and then states this:

"At the end of the tunnel was an extremely bright light...

I was drawn to the light, although I wasn't sure what it was...It all felt peaceful and natural. The closer I got to the light, the more I understood what was going on. I knew that I had left my physical body and was passing on. I also knew I had been here before and that I was 'home'."

Another person describing a near-death experience states this:

"I felt my soul leave my body. Suddenly, I was across the room watching the entire scene. As I looked at the bright golden light, I was standing there wondering if I should stay on earth or go Home. At this time, I didn't feel any pain and I felt at peace. I was facing the light about to go Home, then the next thing I know, I was being pulled back into my body."

A person who had a near-death experience after heavy smoke inhalation reported this:

"The place where I went wasn't here, wasn't this universe (or if even the word ‘universe’ applies.) Everything there was made up of light, light that was light but wasn't light. I've never found adequate words for what to call it, except for ‘HOME.’ I just knew it was HOME, my real HOME. The place I'd been living, where I was born and grew up: that was no longer ‘home.’ It was only where I'd come from, where'd I been. When I did return back to HERE, I felt totally out of place. This wasn't where I belonged anymore - it was only where I'm meant to be, just for a time. THEY promised that when I'm done, or when I've done all I can do, then I could go HOME again. To express what HOME was like has been impossible for me to do. Everything HOME is connected. It is all One. It's Light. Light is love, or what beings here call ‘love,’ I think. Peace...I'm not sure if where I was, was heaven, but I was at peace, I was loved, and I was HOME."

Another person who had a near-death experience reported this:

"I remembered the most amazing part, I was HOME. I remembered clearly that I was back. Back where I belong. There’s a certain way you feel at HOME. It's not the same feeling or awareness as here on earth. It’s SUPER awareness of a sort. Nearly impossible to describe. It’s the best and most secure and loved feeling you’ve ever known, magnified and multiplied many, many times over."

A person who had two near-death experiences stated this about the second experience:

"As the same tunnel closed in all about me and my conscious mind flew to pieces once more, I felt far less terror and far more tranquility than before.  My old friend death was coming to pay a visit...Peace washed over me yet again.  How can death be a return home?  It is.  Or, it was for me the second time."

Another person having a near-death experience reported  encountering a mysterious figure in white:

" I hear him say to the me in front of him, 'You now have a choice. You can come Home with me, or you can return to your body and to your life. What do you choose to do?' ”

Another person having a near-death experience reported this  interesting account suggesting the soul's non-earthly pre-existence:

"I recall pronouncing to myself 'I'm back!'  It was as though I had returned. I certainly recognised this place that felt like 'The Real Place,' where time is infinite and the earthly place was just an extremely short blip within the ultimate scheme of things.  It was as if I already knew this, but that we are supposed to forget.  This knowledge gave me the confidence to know that the 'normal state' is just a made-up place where we adhere to some short-sighted rules and that we take it all too seriously. I knew that we were supposed to forget This Place and so I vowed to rebel and promised myself that I would remember this place.  Words cannot describe how I knew (indeed still know!) that 'This Place' was the actual reality.  The closest example I can give is how in a dream, we are generally ignorant of the waking state. Well, in 'This Place,' it's as though we know that while we are in our earthly realm, we are dreaming and not aware of this other, definitely more real, place....One other thing - that place is infinite.  It's almost as if the 'normal/earthly state' is an elaborate, kind-humoured but necessary ruse.  However, I have no doubt that this higher state is home and that we must have all been there before many, many times."

Another person who had a near-death experience stated this:

" I also recall seeing a planet in the distance that I felt was 'home.' I had a feeling that I was from there and that earth was not my home. I also saw a light that was so big that I could only see part of it. I felt that we all came from it."

Do each of us do a round-trip like this?

Don't Claim to Understand Human Origins If You Don't Understand the Origin of Language

Noam Chomsky has for very long been a major and valuable voice in academia and US culture. A tireless writer, he has been an important voice of conscience in American politics for decades. In 1967 when few US professors were speaking out against the Vietnam War, Chomsky authored a long influential essay "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" that spoke out against that misguided war. Chomsky was by then a very famous linguist, and the essay and his later political writings attracted great attention in the world of US academia. Since then Chomsky has authored numerous books and essays that have made noteworthy and incisive criticisms of mistakes in US foreign policy and domestic policy. He was one of the leading figures opposing the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Chomsky became very famous through his work in linguistics. In linguistics (the study of language) we saw for many years a kind of "Chomsky club" or "Chomsky culture" that was an example of the tendency of professors in a field of study to become regrettably infatuated with the work of a single thinker. Just as evolutionary biology professors became over-eager apostles of Charles Darwin and cosmologists became credulous apostles of Alan Guth, it seemed that for decades professors of linguistics were under the spell of Noam Chomsky.  Chomsky claimed that humans had somehow acquired an innate ability to learn language. He claimed that this was easier because all languages shared the same structure, what he called a "universal grammar." The wikipedia.org article on Chomsky states this:

"He bases his argument on observations about human language acquisition and describes a 'poverty of the stimulus': an enormous gap between the linguistic stimuli to which children are exposed and the rich linguistic competence they attain. For example, although children are exposed to only a very small and finite subset of the allowable syntactic variants within their first language, they somehow acquire the highly organized and systematic ability to understand and produce an infinite number of sentences, including ones that have never before been uttered, in that language.^[164] To explain this, Chomsky reasoned that the primary linguistic data must be supplemented by an innate linguistic capacity. Furthermore, while a human baby and a kitten are both capable of inductive reasoning, if they are exposed to exactly the same linguistic data, the human will always acquire the ability to understand and produce language, while the kitten will never acquire either ability. Chomsky referred to this difference in capacity as the language acquisition device, and suggested that linguists needed to determine both what that device is and what constraints it imposes on the range of possible human languages. The universal features that result from these constraints would constitute 'universal grammar'.^"

Chomsky spoke correctly when he suggested that humans have an innate ability to learn language, and when he noted the failure of science to explain that ability.  He was correct in realizing that the amount of language that young children are exposed to is not at all sufficient to explain the astonishing ability of such children to start speaking grammatically and informatively in a particular language. But he seemed to have used words poorly when he referred so often to a "language organ" or "language acquisition device," as if there is some physical part of the body that can explain a young child's ability to pick up language so quickly. 

Scientists have not discovered anything in the brain that can account for a human's ability to learn language quickly. Indeed, scientists have never discovered anything in the brain that can account for a human being's ability to learn anything whatsoever, at any speed. We still have no credible theory of neural learning or neural memory. The "theories" that are given on this topic are more like mere catchphrase repetitions rather than credible theories. Neuroscientists keep muttering the phrase "synapse strengthening" when asked to explain how humans learn things. That is neither a detailed theory of learning nor a credible theory of memory formation nor a credible theory of memory retrieval.  Synapses bear no resemblance to a device for permanently storing information. Synapses are subject to constant random remodeling and stochastic restructuring. The average lifetime of the proteins in synapses is 1000 times smaller than the longest length of time that humans can remember things (50 years or more). No one has either an understanding or a detailed credible theory of how complex learned information (such as history lessons you learn in school) could ever be stored as synapse states or neural states. 

Lacking any understanding of how any type of learning or memory acquisition can occur in the brain, we have no warrant for saying that humans have a "language acquisition device," as if we knew of some physical thing that can explain the learning of language or the learning of any other skill or knowledge. 

The wikipedia.org article on Chomsky notes opposition to some of his theories about language, stating the following (there are numbered links in the original text):

"Multiple scholars have challenged universal grammar on the grounds of the evolutionary infeasibility of its genetic basis for language, the lack of universal characteristics between languages, and the unproven link between innate/universal structures and the structures of specific languages. Scholar Michael Tomasello has challenged Chomsky's theory of innate syntactic knowledge as based on theory and not behavioral observation. Although it was influential from 1960s through 1990s, Chomsky's nativist theory was ultimately rejected by the mainstream child language acquisition research community owing to its inconsistency with research evidence. It was also argued by linguists including Robert Freidin, Geoffrey Sampson, Geoffrey K. Pullum and Barbara Scholz that Chomsky's linguistic evidence for it had been false."

We should always be asking this question of scientific theorists: what were their motivations in creating their theories? I think what was going on was that Chomsky had a "language acquisition dilemma" on his hands once he realized that young children acquire language without hearing sufficient examples to explain that, something he called "the poverty of the stimulus."  So he tried to lessen this "language acquisition dilemma" by teaching a theory which made it look like it's not so hard to learn a language.  If all languages follow some simple rules of a "universal grammar," that might make it more easy to explain a child's acquisition of not just one language but two languages. Many young children acquire two languages in their childhood, in cases when the father's favored language is different from the mother's favored language. 

But if such a "universal grammar" theory is not correct, then nothing has been done to reduce what we can call "the miracle of language acquisition." It is no surprise that in Chomsky's "Aspects of the Theory of Syntax," we have no use of the words "DNA," "evolution," "gene" or "genetic," and no mention of Darwin.  DNA and its genes cannot be the source of some innate ability to learn language. DNA merely specifies low-level chemical information, not anatomical information, and not high-level intellectual abilities. 

Chomsky often seemed to be guilty of shrink-speaking when talking about language acquisition. Shrink-speaking is using words and phrases that makes some huge or impressive or complex or hard-to-explain reality sound as if it were small or unimpressive or simple or easy-to-explain. For example, if you described the dramatic works of Shakespeare as "just some marks on paper," you are engaging in shrink-speaking.

Chomsky seemed to be guilty of shrink-speaking when he tried to depict language acquisition as mainly the ability to correctly use grammatical rules. Language acquisition is something vastly more than that: it is the ability to state a vast variety of meaningful true statements, and the ability to understand a huge variety of ideas and statements expressed through language. The difference between a mere ability to use grammar rules and the ability to use a language as well as most people do is as big as the difference between learning how to use a hammer and a screw driver and having the ability to build a ten-story apartment tower with functional electricity, plumbing and elevators. 

An example of Chomsky's shrink-speaking on this topic was this statement on page 316 of his Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use: "To know English is, let us say, to know how to talk grammatically, how to understand what is said to us in English, and so on."  Knowing how to make complex true statements in  English is enormously more than "to know how to talk grammatically." If a person could only speak grammatically correct nonsense like saying "the rock is angry" or "the floor is hungry," that would be speaking grammatically. Actually speaking English meaningfully and truthfully involves learning a great treasure trove of conceptual knowledge and abstract ideas and word definitions, something many, many times more difficult than merely learning  the grammar rules of a language.   

In his interesting book The Kingdom of Speech, which can be read online here by those with a login at www.archive.org, the late Tom Wolfe discusses the failures of scientists to credibly explain language. He mentions Charles Darwin's extremely ridiculous claim that human languages evolved out of humans imitating the song of birds.  Chapter IV is entitled "Noam Charisma," and describes Noam Chomsky's domination of the field of linguistics. In Chapter V Wolfe discusses how Chomsky's ideas were challenged by the work of Daniel L. Everett.  Everett spent many dangerous years in the Amazon river area of Brazil studying a language called Piraha spoken by only a few hundred tribesmen.  The language seemed to defy Chomsky's dogmatic generalizations about languages. Chomsky bitterly denounced Everett. This goes on all the time in academia: scientists creating dogmatic edifices, and bitterly denouncing those who produce observational evidence against such dogmas. 

Wolfe mentions a 2014 scientific paper entitled “The Mystery of Language Evolution" co-authored by Chomsky. In that paper the authors stated this:

"We show that, to date, (1) studies of nonhuman animals provide virtually no relevant parallels to human linguistic communication, and none to the underlying biological capacity; (2) the fossil and archaeological evidence does not inform our understanding of the computations and representations of our earliest ancestors, leaving details of origins and selective pressure unresolved; (3) our understanding of the genetics of language is so impoverished that there is little hope of connecting genes to linguistic processes any time soon; (4) all modeling attempts have made unfounded assumptions, and have provided no empirical tests, thus leaving any insights into language's origins unverifiable. Based on the current state of evidence, we submit that the most fundamental questions about the origins and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever, with considerable uncertainty about the discovery of either relevant or conclusive evidence that can adjudicate among the many open hypotheses."

Co-authored by the most famous current linguist, what this amounts to is a laudibly frank confession that scientists do not understand the origin of language. This is the current situation:

(1) Scientists confess (as the statement above indicates) that they lack any credible theory of the origin of language.

(2) Scientists very widely confess that there is an unsolved "problem of consciousness," that scientists lack an understanding of how brain activity can give rise to human conscious experience.

(3) Scientists lack any credible theory of memory, confessing that they cannot explain such basic things as how a human is able to instantly recall complex detailed information on a subject upon hearing a single word such as a person's name. 

(4) Scientists lack any credible theory of how there arises in humans such mental wonders as thinking, insight and imagination, there being no coherent reason anyone can articulate why such mental things should arise from any combination of merely physical neurons, no matter how well they are connected. 

(5) Scientists lack any credible theory of the origin of protein molecules, the complexity of which was totally unknown to Darwin.  In the scientific paper here, a Harvard scientist says, "A wide variety of protein structures exist in nature, however the evolutionary origins of this panoply of proteins remain unknown."

(6) Scientists lack any credible theory of how a speck-sized one-celled zygote is able to progress to become the incredibly complex hierarchical organization of the human body. The often-repeated claim that this occurs because of a reading of a DNA anatomy blueprint is a myth and a lie. No such blueprint or recipe for constructing a human adult exists in DNA, which does not specify any anatomy information. DNA merely specifies low-level chemical information, such as which amino acids make up a protein. 

(7) Scientists lack even a full explanation for how any adult human keeps living. For an adult to live, there must constantly occur protein folding, under which linear chains of amino acids form into the complex three-dimensional shapes needed for protein molecule function. But the protein folding problem remains unsolved. We don't understand how three-dimensional protein molecules are constantly arising from one-dimensional polypeptide chains (mere chains of amino acids). There has been some progress in protein structure prediction, the art of predicting the 3D shape of a folded protein molecule from its linear amino acid sequence. Although such progress is often mistakenly depicted as progress in solving the protein folding problem, it is no such thing.  Using deep-learning "frequentist inference" (involving massive databases created through analysis of countless thousands of proteins and their shapes) to predict 3D protein shapes from their amino acid sequence does nothing to explain how linear sequences of amino acids are able to organize into folded 3D shapes needed for protein molecule function. 

(8) Despite all of these shortfalls, which collectively tell us in the loudest possible voice that scientists do not understand either the origin of the human species or the origin of any single adult body or any single adult human mind, scientists continue to claim they understand human origins. 

Nothing could be more ridiculous than item (8) above. It is like someone claiming that they understand the origin of cars when they don't understand the origin of an engine and don't understand how parts are assembled to make a car and don't understand what a factory is and don't understand how tools are used to make cars and don't understand how the first cars were created. Why do scientists keep claiming they understand human origins? Because they got hooked on making a groundless boast that was an intoxicating conceit. Claiming that they understood human origins was a bad habit that scientists got hooked on, rather like a drug addict gets hooked on some drug. The origin of humans is a mystery a thousand miles over the heads of our scientists. The more we learn about the  stratospheric levels of  interdependency and fine-tuned organization within biological systems, and the more we learn about the depth and diversity within the full spectrum of human mental experiences and human capabilities, the more ridiculous-sounding are the explanatory boasts of biologists claiming to know how humans arose. 

Chomsky co-authored a book called "Manufacturing Consent : the Political Economy of the Mass Media." The book was an insightful look at how political opinions of the masses are shaped by a small group of opinion-makers in control of media cartels and media conglomerates, who often issue propaganda that is successfully passed off as "news." He described how this small group often acts in its own self-interest while hiding such bias and maintaining a facade of objective reporting. He described how such lords of thought control often achieve wonders of opinion shaping by simply focusing on a small group of stories that advance the story lines favored by such ideological puppet masters, while ignoring imporant events and facts that conflict with such narratives.  

Chomsky apparently failed to ever realize that a very similar situation exists in regard to the control of opinions about nature and scientific matters by a small corporate-entangled elite that acts in its own self-interest. The opinions of the masses about human nature and human origins is largely controlled by a small elite that is constantly passing off ideological propaganda that is not labeled as ideological propaganda but as "science news." Such a small elite has enormous bias, with a great interest in propelling whatever narratives further its boasts that a small priesthood of professors are "lords of explanation." Such an elite is entangled with a corporate profit system and academia profit system that gets enormous windfalls from things such as government grants, scientific publishing and advertising revenue from misleading clickbait "science news" stories.  Chomsky failed to realize how the same type of successfully disguised propaganda infrastructure that he had identified in politics also existed in scientific academia, with great similarities between the two. 

In the diagram below the purple area represents not just a host of observations of the paranormal (such as two hundred years of well-documented evidence for human clairvoyance written by distinguished credible witnesses such as doctors and scientists), but also a great body of biological evidence such as neuroscience evidence that conflicts with the dogmatic high-level claims of neuroscientists. You may not have heard much about such observations, because our professors have been busy "manufacturing consent" by excluding many of the most important observations from what they discuss in their articles, papers, lectures and books.  

Chomsky's speculations have done very little to reduce the great mystery of language origin and the great mystery of rapid language acquisition by small children. Because learning a grammar is only a small part of using a language, you would never explain language acquisition by merely explaining an acquisition of grammar rules. Trying to make it sound like "learning a language=learning grammar rules" is the kind of shrink-speaking error that goes on all the time in the silly thinking of reductionists: using misleading talk to make it sound like enormous complexities are something very simple. It's the same kind of misleading talk that goes on when people speak as if bodies are just bags of chemicals, or when people speak as if cities are just a bunch of buildings.

 It is not true that all languages use the same grammar. For example, a page discussing differences in language grammars states this:

"In Chinese, a typical sentence is SVO (subject + verb + object). Time is expressed in individual words such as tomorrow, yesterday, in the past. Meanwhile, time expression in English is through different verb tenses and verb forms. This explains why Chinese students often get confused and overwhelmed with past tense, future tense, and perfect tense." 

But despite such differences in grammar, I know two who were able to speak both fluent English and fluent Chinese by the age of three or four. And many people can speak six or more languages fluently. 

It is probably a "fool's errand" to have "straw hole scholars" who call themselves linguists try to study language in isolation, to try to figure out how language originated and how a child picks up a language. You can only get realistic ideas about language as part of a broader study of the human mind and human mental behavior. Study the entirety of reported human behavior (including all the important paranormal observations senselessly branded as taboo by our professors), and you may get some good ideas that may help explain the orgin of language and the marvel of a child's quick acquisition of language. 

Below are a few ideas (some speculative) that may be of some use in trying to clarify the origin of language and the acquisition of language by small children.

(1) Language acquisition by a small child may occur partially through telepathy or extrasensory perception (ESP), which may occur more powerfully in small children, and may occur more powerfully between small children and their parents. So, for example, when a parent tells their small child "do not spill your food," and the child gets the idea without the parent ever having explained the concept of spilling food, there may be telepathy occurring between parent and child that helps the child to learn the word "spill." There exists two hundred years of very convincing evidence for ESP and telepathy (discussed here, here, here, here and here and the series of 54 posts here) which our mainstream scientists have senselessly ignored. Scientists should focus very carefully on testing ESP between small children and their parents, which could provide more evidence for the hypothesis of ESP assisting the language acquisition of a small child. 

(2) Language acquisition by a small child may occur partially because of some previous life lived by the small child, either on Earth or in some non-earthly realm of existence in which languages such as English may be spoken. Scholars such as Ian Stevenson did some work that may provide some evidence in favor of such a hypothesis. Further work should be done to search for evidence of a non-earthly pre-existence of human souls before earthly life. There exist anecdotal reports of small children reporting to their parents accounts of living in some non-earthly place before they began to live on Earth. Some examples of such accounts can be found in the scientific paper "Paranormal Aspects of Pre-Existence Memories in Young Children" which can be read here or here.  A systematic effort should be made to try to find out whether such reports are common or very rare flukes. 

(3) As an alternative to the ideas in item (2) above, language acquisition may occur partially because humans are born with souls that are in some sense pre-loaded with conceptual knowledge, rather than being "blank slates." When studying the matter of animal instincts, you may get many reasons for suspecting that many types of organisms are born with knowledge they never learned. For example, babies know as soon as they are born to suck their mother's breasts; bees know how to make hives; birds know how to fly with other birds in perfectly synchronized formations; beavers know how to build dams; salmon spending most of their lives in the ocean know to swim upstream to return to their place of birth to reproduce; and some birds know how to engage every year in very complex migrations spanning huge distances. Material science lacks any credible explanation for complex animal instincts, which are behaviors that cannot be credibly explained as arising from genes. Genes merely specify low-level chemical information, not high-level behavioral instructions. 

Among more than 200 dreams I have had that seemed to suggest the idea of life after death, described here, more than fifteen have seemed to suggest the idea of the non-earthly pre-existence of a human soul. This idea is also suggested by numerous accounts of those having near-death experiences, where there often occurs someone saying that he seemed to briefly visit some unearthly realm he identified as his "real home," as if his soul had previously existed there.  

The following investigations might provide clues that help shed light on the abnormally easy acquisition of language by small children:

(1) Rigorously test ESP or telepathy between children and their parents.

(2) Attempt to determine exactly what percentage of those having near-death experiences report feelings or thoughts seeming to hint at some possibility that human souls may exist in some non-earthly realm of existence before birth.

(3) Do more research to search for evidence for the possibility of reincarnation.

(4) Have more people (particularly older people and terminally ill people) keep daily dream journals (updated both in the middle of the night and upon waking), and study whether either the doctrine of reincarnation or the doctrine of the soul's non-earthly pre-existence is suggested by dream content. The claim that all dream content is random neural activity is one of many dubious dogmas of the modern neuroscientist, who has no idea of how neurons could produce either ideas or dreams. It is possible that our dreams provide us with important metaphysical clues from some mysterious source outside of our brains.

(5) Do more testing to determine whether humans and other organisms are born with knowledge they never learned.  

Postscript: The day after posting this post I said to one of my daughters, "You'll never guess what I saw down the street." I gave no clues, but asked her to guess. After a wrong guess of an orange cat, her second guess was "a raccoon," which is just what I saw. No one in our family has seen such a thing on our street before. Later in the day I asked her what I saw in a weird dream I recently had, mentioning only that it involved something odd in our front yard. After a wrong first guess of a snowman, she asked, "Was it a wild animal?" I said yes. Then she asked, "Was it an elephant?" I said yes. The dream I had was of two baby elephants in our front yard. These were the only two times that day she tried to guess what was in my mind. This night was one of several times in which it seemed as if there was ESP between me and her (two similar cases are described here).

One or two times during the 13 days after the elephant guessing,  I asked the same daughter to guess what I was thinking, without success. Then on the 13th day I asked her to guess what I had dreamed about, without giving any clues. I thought of a dream involving my father playing baseball catch with my sister. My daughter's first guess was wrong. Then she asked whether it was something that happened in my childhood. I said yes. Then she asked whether it was something happening in my back yard. I said yes. Then she asked whether it was some kind of sport. I said yes. Then she asked whether it was playing catch or some kind of baseball. I said yes. This was the same performance level noted above: one wrong guess, followed by all other guesses correct. On a test with my other daughter (the only telepathy test I can recall doing with her), I simply asked her to guess a thing I saw today, telling her only it was something that I hadn't seen in years. On her fourth guess, she got the correct answer: a grasshopper. 

Page 5 of the scientific paper here describes a 7-year-old girl who is "fully bilingual in Turkish and Danish" despite having had most of half of the left side of her brain removed in a hemispherectomy operation at the age of 3. We are told that except for a slight spasticity, "she leads an otherwise normal life." On page 63 of the book Bright Splinters of the Mind by Beate Hermelin, we read this about a gifted subject: "Christopher can understand, talk, read, write and translate from Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Welsh." We then read about detailed tests of this subject. Cases such as that clarify the inadequacy of all mainstream explanations for human language acquistion.