I have seen many very surprising things in my life. One of the most surprising things occurred shortly after I arrived about 7:00 AM on September 11, 2001 at my desk on a high floor of one of the two towers of the World Trade Center. I never in a million years would have guessed that by noon both towers of the World Trade Center would be reduced to piles of smoking rubbish. Luckily I escaped using the stairways. Another extremely surprising thing I have seen in my life is a great change in public attitudes towards homosexuality in the United States.
I seemed to have heard not a single word about homosexuality before I was about 13. There seemed to be no mention of it anywhere on TV or in the movies. No teacher at school said a word about it. During the 1950's and almost all of the 1960's there was a kind of a heterosexuality enforcement regime in place. In a variety of ways, society tried to depict homosexuals as people who were sick freaks. To understand how successfully society had stigmatized homosexuality, you can consider how infrequently people used the "easy out" of avoiding the Vietnam War draft by declaring themselves to be homosexuals.
During the 1960's the US drafted young adults into service into the military. Around 1965 the Vietnam War began to become very unpopular among young men. People realized that many thousands of young men were being forced to serve in a dirty, dubious war on the other side of the globe, and opposition to the draft was massive. If you were a young man in those days it was hard to get out of the draft by claiming to be a conscientious objector, particularly if your family had no background with such a tradition. You could avoid the draft by fleeing to Canada or Sweden, and staying there for many years. Or you could take the "easy out" of just declaring yourself publicly to be a homosexual, which would allow you to stay in the US near your friends or family. The US Army at this time was treating homosexuality as a reason for rejecting a draftee. At this time society had so stigmatized homosexuality that few men avoided the draft by publicly declaring themselves to be homosexual. Society had whipped up so many anti-gay feelings among the populace that many a young man thought that he would rather flee to some other country (presumably never to return to the US) than declare himself to be a homosexual.
Part of the shaming effect was achieved by the "Bible of psychiatry" (the DSM) listing homosexuality as a mental disorder, something it did until the early 1970's. Both the DSM-I published in 1952 and the DSM-2 published in 1968 had classified homosexuality as a mental problem. Throughout the 1960's gay sex was prohibited by law in 48 out of 50 of the US states.
Finally in the 1970's things began to slowly change. During the 1970's about half of the 50 US states dropped their laws against gay sex. You can see the change in the laws in the diagram on the page here. A key weakening of the heterosexuality enforcement regime came around 1974 when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. In the 1970's we finally began to occasionally see a few positive depictions of gays, such as in an episode of "All in the Family" which was considered daring in its time.
But the lessening of the heterosexuality enforcement regime proceeded quite gradually. During the 1990's gay sex was still illegal in more than a dozen US states, and it was not until 2003 that a US Supreme Court decision (Lawrence vs. Texas) effectively deactivated all of the US laws against gay sex in private homes. In many US states there are still laws against homosexuality, but they are almost never enforced. I remember that in the 2004 US presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Howard Dean was widely considered to be too much of a radical largely because he had signed a law in Vermont merely allowing "civil unions" for gay people (which were like marriage in all but name). Finally in 2015 a Supreme Court decision allowed gay marriage throughout the United States.
By now we have in the United States a collapse of the heterosexuality enforcement regime which prevailed for so long, and was still running very strong in the 1950's and 1960's. But such a heterosexuality enforcement regime still exists in some other countries. Now a Netflix user will occasionally see gay kissing occurring on regular TV shows, and there are annual public Gay Pride parades that are massively attended not just by gays but also by very many straight people eager to show their support for gay people. The degree of homosexuality acceptance we now see in the US would have seemed extremely shocking to someone in the mid 1960's, who never would have imagined that a tendency so despised and shamed in his time would be so accepted in our time.
But there is another social conduct enforcement regime still in place, one that uses many tactics that allowed the heterosexuality enforcement regime to flourish for so long. This is the social conformity regime enforcing Darwinist materialism in academia and the US press. Just as the heterosexuality enforcement regime attempted for so long to depict a significant fraction of the population (perhaps 10% or more) as being shameful sinners or deviants to be despised, the enforcers of Darwinist materialism attempt to depict a large fraction of the population as being rather like law-breakers to be despised. That fraction of the population is the large fraction that rejects claims that there are material explanations for all the wonders of the mind and biology, or that reports observing or believing in paranormal phenomena.
Heterosexuality enforcement was achieved largely through legalistic strategies and deviance-shaming strategies. The legalistic strategies involved passing laws against homosexuality, and by making dubious claims that homosexuality violates the law of God. This typically required quotations from the oldest books of the Old Testament, since Jesus said nothing about homosexuality. Equally dubious is the legalistic strategy of today's materialism enforcers. Such people attempt to persuade us that there are "rules of science" that allow only material explanations for natural phenomena. But there are no such rules of science. Unlike courts such as US federal courts which follow a formally written set of rules of evidence such as the Federal Rules of Evidence, science has never followed formal rules of evidence or formal rules of procedure. The rules followed by different groups of scientists are hazy and vary from one field of study to another. There is no formal rule in science that natural phenomena must be explained by material causes, nor has there been any tradition constantly followed by scientists of only explaining things through material causes. And if there was such a tradition, it would be merely habit, one that should be abandoned as soon as any evidence justified its abandonment. The materialism enforcer pressuring people to follow the Way of Darwin (stated in some book written centuries ago) is like some heterosexuality enforcer pressuring people to follow the Way of Moses (stated in some book written centuries ago).
In the US there was never any imprisonment of people for defying materialism, although in the period between 1920 and 1960 the Soviet Union engaged in very massive killing and imprisonment of people defying the ideology it called "dialectical materialism." Equally great persecution of those defying materialism occurred during the long reign of Chairman Mao in China, particularly during the Cultural Revolution period of the 1960's.
Just as yesteryear's heterosexuality enforcer made a heavy use of derogatory deviance shaming, today's materialism enforcers make a heavy use of derogatory deviance shaming. Yesteryear's heterosexuality enforcer made a frequent merciless use of terms of abuse such as a six-letter term beginning with "f," a ten-letter term beginning with "c," and so forth to refer to gay people. Today's materialism enforcer makes frequent use of terms of contempt such as "creationist," "mystic" or "spiritualist." Often the terms are used inaccurately, in ways that mislead. The term "creationist" will forever be entwined with the term "biblical creationist," so calling anyone a creationist is an attempt to insinuate that he is a fundamentalist. In fact, most of the people called "creationists" by materialism enforcers are not fundamentalists, and do not even appeal to scripture in their writings, but instead appeal to the facts involving stratospheric levels of systemic organization and fine-tuned complexity in biological organisms. It is therefore misleading to refer to such people as "creationists." The term "mystic" has a technical meaning in religion or philosophy, and most of the people our materialists call mystics are not actually mystics. Similarly, most of the people called spiritualists by materialists are not believers in spiritualism, the belief that it is possible to communicate with the dead by use of mediums or seances.
The shaming tactics of today's materialism enforcers continue full blast, and in a single article it is common to read a trifecta of mudslinging in which Darwinism defenders try to smear and shame their opponents by (1) inaccurately claiming or insinuating they are fundamentalists; (2) inaccurately linking them to vaccine opponents; and (3) attempting to compare them to cigarette manufacturers, about as groundless a comparison as you could make. "Shame, blame and defame" is the way materialists handle their critics. Part of this program involves merciless attempts to gaslight observers of the paranormal by trying to paint them as people hallucinating. Then there are the endless attempts of materialists to try to paint those documenting the paranormal as frauds or cheats.
A key element of heterosexuality enforcement was misrepresenting the degree of diversity in human sexuality. For very many years in the very rare instances when homosexuality was mentioned, people were told that only the tiniest fraction of humans were homosexual (1% was a commonly stated estimate). We continued to be told this for many years after the Kinsey surveys had reported data suggesting that more than 10% of the population was homosexual or bisexual. Something extremely similar occurs in regard to materialism enforcement. Materialism enforcers constantly make misleading claims that there is a "scientific consensus" in favor of the tenets of materialism. The term "consensus" is defined in different ways, including "unanimity of opinion" or "general agreement." There is no robust evidence that there exists any unanimity of opinion or any "general agreement" in favor of the tenets of materialism or Darwinism, either within the scientist population as a whole, or within the population of all biologists and psychologists.
The only way to reliably determine the degree of belief by scientists in some doctrine is to do a fairly-designed secret ballot of scientists, but such ballots are virtually never done. Almost all attempts to poll scientists on their beliefs are guilty of procedural problems, such as failing to provide a secret ballot, or offering too limited a series of choices in an opinion poll, one of which should always be a best version of an alternative to a prevailing tenet, and one of which should always be the equivalent of "I don't know" or "I am not sure." Rare opinion polls of scientists fail to meet such minimal standards, and will typically offer poll choices that include some "straw man" version of an alternative to dominant ideas, rather than some more credible alternative. Therefore all claims of anything like a consensus (either in terms of a unanimity of opinion or even a strong majority of opinion) in regard to the key claims of materialism or Darwinism are unfounded. Any well-designed international secret ballot poll of a large branch of scientists (such as all biologists or all psychologists) would probably reveal that no such consensus exists, if you define "consensus" as either unanimity or near-unanimity of opinion.
The heterosexuality enforcers of yesteryear did not want people to know that there were large thriving communities of gay people in places such as San Francisco or the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. So I never heard or read a word about such communities until I was maybe 17 years old. Similarly, today's materialism enforcers do not want you to know facts such as that significant fractions of the population report out-of-body experiences, that large fractions of dying people or widows (and perhaps even a majority) report seeing apparitions of deceased family members or hearing their voices, and that the reporting of dramatic paranormal experiences was incredibly common around the time Darwin was writing, being well documented by many a distinguished scientist such as Sir William Crookes and Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder of the theory of evolution. So we hear of no such things in their writings. Today's materialism enforcers do not want you to know about the very large number of scientists who have expressed doubt or lack of confidence in claims that are claimed to be part of a mainstream consensus, so they avoid quoting statements like the scientist confessions I list in my post here. Such enforcers try to keep doubt about their dogmas "hidden in the closet."
The heterosexuality enforcers of yesteryear frequently appealed to naturality, saying that you must follow "the natural way" of heterosexuality and not engage in "unnatural acts" such as homosexuality. The force of this reasoning started to diminish as people realized that gay people act in a way that is perfectly natural for them. Today's materialism enforcer also appeals to naturality, often calling his position "naturalism," which he defines as the belief that only nature exists. But strangely he tries to push you towards some of the most unnatural conclusions a person could make. It is a natural human response to respond to examples of gigantic organization and vast fine-tuned complexity (such as we see everywhere throughout biological organisms) by assuming that they must be the result (directly or indirectly) of some purposeful intelligence rather than unguided accidental processes. It is the person wanting you to believe that such things are accidents of chance who is luring you to draw some conclusion that is extremely unnatural, in the sense of being against all of your common sense instincts. As the evidence for very precise cosmic fine-tuning and stratospheric levels of information and well-arranged molecular machinery in living things grows greater and greater, it seems to become more and more apt to suspect there's nothing more unnatural than naturalism.
Now we see our naturalists attempting to explain the very precise fine-tuning of the laws and fundamental constants of our universe by appealing to some notion that there exists some multiverse, described as an infinity or near infinity of other universes, having an infinite variety of conditions. Nothing could be more unnatural than this desperate maneuver.
Heterosexuality enforcement often involved creating kind of "zones of exclusion" in which homosexuals were for all practical purposes forbidden. The heterosexuality enforcers would sometimes admit that quite a few people are homosexual, but would create zones of exclusion in which homosexuals were effectively told they were not allowed. Such zones might be the US Army (before it changed its policy to allow gay people), a church, a club, an office or a sports team. Similar "zones of exclusion" are nowadays created by the enforcers of materialism while having a "keep it in the closet" attitude. A person may tell you that it's your right to believe that the processes of biology are thoroughly purposeful (the blessings of some power greater than man), or that humans have immortal souls, but may tell you (by word or deed) that you can't express such views within his science class or can't express such views and expect to be hired or promoted or published as a biology teacher or professor. The heterosexuality enforcer effectively would say things like this about homosexuals:
- "Not in my office!"
- "Not in my parish!"
- "Not in my family!"
- "Not on my team!"
- "Not in my club!"
And today's materialism enforcer effectively says things like this (while thinking of contrarian thinkers and embarrassing evidence to be excluded):
- "Not in my class!"
- "Not in my journal!"
- "Not in my staff!"
- "Not on my committee!"
- "Not on my panel!"
- "Not on my web site!"
- "Not in my conference!"
The current state in regard to the enforcement of materialism in academia and the science press resembles the 1950's state regarding the enforcement of heterosexuality. Our universities and mainstream science publications are constantly painting a portrait of a purely materialist world, just as in the 1950's we were led to believe the US was a purely heterosexual country. Our mainstream science publications continue to try to shame, smear and defame reasonable critics of materialist claims as well as witnesses of paranormal phenomena. But yesteryear's heterosexuality enforcement regime has collapsed in the United States. And within a few decades the same thing may happen to today's materialism enforcement regime.
We can imagine how things might be after such an enforcement regime collapses. It might be like this:
- Around 2050 it might be that no longer will high school and college students be instructed so that the staggering wonders of hierarchical systemic organization in the human body known to 21st century science are described as being due to explanations drafted in the 19th century by people who knew nothing about such epitomes of fine-tuned complexity and didn't even present theories of physical organization.
- Around 2050 it might no longer be that mainstream science publications keep always writing that scientists will one day understand how a brain stores memories, an empty promise they have now been making for 75 years after the invention of the electron microscope which should have been sufficient to discover such a thing around 1950 if it was occurring.
- Around 2050 it might actually be that in university psychology courses and in high school psychology courses people will be taught fairly about the very large fraction of normal, honest human beings who have witnessed paranormal phenomena, without such people being depicted as crazy people or silly people, and without teachers trying to shame such people and make them objects of hate and scorn.
- Around 2050 it might be that in biology textbooks and in mainstream science articles we will get a discussion of the many brain physical shortfalls that suggest the brain cannot be the source of phenomena such as instant memory creation, instant memory recall and the remembering of facts learned fifty years ago and experiences had decades ago, things such as the lack of any addressing or indexing in the brain, the very heavy signal noise in brains, the relatively slow average transmission speed of signals in the cortex, the unreliability of signal transmission across synapses, and the short lifetimes of synaptic proteins (1000 times shorter than the longest length of times humans can remember things).
- Around 2050 it might be that in school classes people learn about the many respectable scientists who very carefully studied paranormal phenomena and reported observing things that defy the explanations of materialists. Teachers might stop following a "nothing spooky allowed" rule, and might stop following a "shame the witnesses" rule in dealing with those report observing spooky things.
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