Chinese Research Suggesting the Reality of Clairvoyance and Mind-Over-Matter

Around page 376 of the book here, you get a discussion of Chinese research into "Extraordinary Human Body Function" or EHBF, which was largely research into clairvoyance, telepathy and mind-over-matter. 

The CIA document you can read here (and also here) is a translation of a Chinese 1984 parapsychology publication, one entitled "Research in Human Paranormal Capabilities." There are some very fascinating parts. 

On page 4 we have a claim that a particular person could read Chinese characters with his ears. We read this:

"Today is a very important and very memorable date, it is the anniversary of the first publication in the 'Sichuan Daily' of Tang Yu's paranormal capability to distinguish Chinese characters with his ear. This is a very important event in modern China."

The parapsychology term used for this ability is "transposition of the senses." The history of psychical research has many well-documented examples, some of which are listed in my series of posts here.  On page 53 of the same document, we read about tests done on children to see whether they could recognize the color of cards (and symbols on cards) that were placed in their outer ear. This is a test of one type of transposition of the senses. We read this about the testing procedure:

" Propaganda cards printed in various colors with number four type were cut into cards of two to five characters each to form a sampling pool. They were then folded in half and rolled into cylinders. Then tweezers were used to place these deep in the student's left or right outer ear deep enough that the students could not dig them out with their little fingers. Since the cylinders were springy, they opened up to press themselves to the walls of the ear canal, making them difficult to remove."

I do not recommend that anyone ever try this at home as a test procedure.  As my mother would often tell me, "Never stick anything in your ear smaller than your elbow." The only exception is manufactured things specifically designed to be placed in ears, such as earplugs.

On page 53 we read this about the results from a subject:

"On the morning of the 18th of July, at 8:30, 31 minutes after the test began, eleven year old Han nationality student, XIXY X( )X( ) correctly answered the test card. It was verified that the characters, color, and color of the paper were all correct. After 40 minutes, thirteen year old Tibetan Student Xun Wen (X) also correctly recognized the characters and color of paper in his ear. This was the first occasion of psychic abilities being induced in children in Tibet. Results of the three day test show that among these subjects of the survey (nine to fifteen years old) the occurrence of ('recognizing characters by ear') was about 40%."

On page 13 of the same document we read this claim about clairvoyance in two children:

"He reported on the results of psychic testing of two psychic children during last summer vacation and this spring vacation by himself together with Comrades Chen Bao-Liang, Liu Yi-Cheng, Yang Jian-Hua with the cooperation of Comrades Luo Cheng-Lie and Liu Gui-Lin of the Qufu Normal College in Shandong. Contents of the test were the ability to see something on the other side of a wall or in another building and the ability to make out messages. The procedures of the testing were very strict, the results were positive and repeatable under specific conditions."

A claim like this is too vague to have much of any value as evidence, and I present it merely to contrast it with the next example, which gives us a very precise account of exactly what went on in a test of clairvoyance which seems to have been a stunning success. We read this on page 22:

"In the 'Joint Experiment Report on the Reality of Human Psychic Functions' there were records of tests carried out on 'Z's ability to do 'psychic writing.'  The author of this article took part in making up the samples. The test at that time was to take a blank sheet of paper which the tester would sign, roll it up into a tube around a ball point pen, and fold back both ends. This would be placed on the table in front of the person being tested with three people watching at the same time. 'Z' was only allowed to pick up the tube and smell it. Then he had to put it back on the desk. He was not allowed to open the tube. Then 'Z' was given a fountain pen and another blank sheet of paper. After 'Z' had written on the second sheet of paper and stated that he had written the same thing on the piece of paper rolled up around the ball point pen, the observers opened the rolled paper. It was discovered that what 'Z' had written on the second sheet of paper with a fountain pen was also written of the signed sheet of paper in ball point pen. The style of the characters was also very similar. To do further testing to determine if Z''s psychic writing could break through the barriers of space, this experiment used a sealed envelope. "

There then follows a more explicit discussion of what exactly went on, an account that lists the exact names of the observers, and lists the date and time as 4:30 in the afternoon of January 22, 1983. The test words written down in the rolled up sheet of paper were "How are you? Thank you teacher." The  words written by "Z" were exactly the same: "How are you? Thank you teacher."

After  this more detailed account of the successful test of clairvoyant abilities, on page 24 we read this:

"The entire experiment lasted less than one hour. None of the observers ever left the area. 'Z', the person being tested, remained seated in his original position while performing the psychic writing. The entire desk was within the observers' field of vision. None of the four observers noticed 'Z'  doing anything suspicious. This was the third time this experiment was carried out. The former two occasions had similar results." 

As evidence for clairvoyance, the reported results seem very good. The main deficiency is the failure to report the real name of the person identified as 'Z.'  The report has appeared about one year after the observation date. But the report has so many details written so precisely that we can be rather sure it is based on notes  of what occurred written at the time. 

On page 27 and the following pages we have a report claiming tests showed a "psychic ability" of someone to break into two a needle that had been put in a sealed matchbox.  Unfortunately, the account is not explicit enough to qualify as good evidence. We are told that the tested subject could touch the sealed matchbox, but we lack a description of whether there were precautions to prevent the subject from using both of his hands to break the needle. 

On page 54 of the document, we read about tests of mind-over-matter. We read this:

"Because of what happened with the above experiment, beginning on the 25th, we change to a 'psychic movement' test, where we placed knotted twine, an open lock, a small bolt with the nut off, or a watch in a cardboard box which we sealed with tape. The children were allowed to attempt to untie the knot on the string, lock the lock, put the nut on the bolt, and set the watch. This was successful. The 11 year old Tibetan girl, Tsering Jwolka, on her first attempt, set the watch ahead one hour and forty seven minutes. On her second attempt she set the watch ahead six hours and twenty minutes. This test was repeated many times and successful each time. This caused quite a stir in Zedang village, and rumors started spreading around."

On the next page of the document (page 55) we read this astonishing account of child subjects displaying mind-over-matter trying to make changes in objects in a sealed cardboard box, apparently through mind-over-matter, without breaking the seals:

"The first subject was Tsering Jwolka, a twelve year old Tibetan girl. On the first test she successfully set a watch ahead 30 minutes, then she set it backwards 37 minutes. On the second test she closed a lock in six minutes. On the third test she opened the lock in four minutes, on the the fourth test she closed the lock again in two minutes. 

The second subject was Nima, a 13 year old Tibetan girl. On the first test she threaded a nut on a bolt in 30 minutes. On the second test she unknotted a string in ten minutes. On the third test she opened a lock in four minutes. 

The third test subject was 11 year Han nationality girl, Liu... On the first test she opened a lock in 39 minutes. In the second test she unscrewed a nut from a bolt in 30 minutes, and in the third test she was unsuccessful in attempting to knot a string. 

The fourth subject was 10 year old Han nationality girl, Xu (X). In the first test she was unsuccessful in knotting a string after 30 minutes. In the second test she unknotted a string in three minutes. In the third test she unknotted a string in 27 minutes. In the third test she unknotted a string in 12 minutes. 

The fifth subject was ten year old Han nationality girl, Chen (X) (X). her first test she unknotted a string in 12 minutes. In the second test she opened a lock in 22 minutes. In the third test she was unsuccessful in threading a nut on a bolt after 30 minutes. In 

The sixth subject was nine year old Han nationality boy, Chen (X). In his first test he unknotted a string in 30 minutes. In his second test he threaded a nut on a bolt in seven minutes. His third test was to be unscrewing the nut from the bolt. This was not attempted. 

In all of these tests, the test object was in a cardboard box. The cardboard box was sealed with tape. A special symbol was marked along the edge of the tape."

On page 66 we have a first-hand report which sounds like one of many cases of medical clairvoyance, in which a clairvoyant is able to mysteriously see inside the human body.  The reported results are very impressive. The main deficiency from an evidence standpoint is that the narrator is not identified. We read this:

" 'X-ray vision' is one form of manifestation of the human psychic function. This kind of vision is not really 'X-ray' vision, but is where the psychic uses his eyes to inspect the inner structure of the human body, does a comparison of normal and abnormal, and thus comes up with a diagnosis. Therefore, in this article I will talk a little about what I have learned from experience through many years of diagnosing diseases through 'X-ray vision' into the human body so others may use it for reference. I am a nurse in a hospital. Thus it is very convenient for me to do diagnosis through 'X-ray vision'. "

The author provides the table below, which indicates a very high success rate. 

We read some case accounts by the author in which claims are made of successful diagnosis through clairvoyance.  No one who has carefully studied the 19th century reports of clairvoyance (often written by doctors) will be very surprised by this part of the Chinese document. In the 19th century it was very often reported that in a state of hypnosis some clairvoyants would be able to see into the human body, and make many a correct diagnosis about medical problems that the unaided human eye could not see. 

After hearing of such wonders, we should remember why we should not be surprised to hear of mysterious powers of the human mind. The reason is that a human mind is something utterly beyond the understanding of physical science.  The most basic powers of the human mind (such as learning, instant recall of relevant information, recognition, imagination, insight and the persistence of memories for decades) are powers utterly beyond any credible explanation by neuroscientists, who offer nothing but vacuous jargon-laden hand-waving when asked to explain such powers.  No learned information has ever been found in a brain through the microscopic examination of brain tissue. Nothing in a brain bears the slightest resemblance to any system for permanently storing or instantly retrieving learned information. We know the type of things that allow the permanent storage and instant retrieval of information in physical systems: things such as components for writing information, components for reading information,  stable and easily navigable writing surfaces,  sorting, addresses and indexes. The brain has no such things. No scientist has any credible theory of how any of the very many types of things that humans remember could be encoded as brain states or synapse states. Because we lack any credible neural explanation for the basic powers of human minds, there is no credibility in trying to exclude accounts of mysterious powers of minds by saying "a brain could not do that." Almost every human mind does every day many things that brains could never do. 

The latest result of an ESP test is the result reported on page 62 of the year 2025 document here. It is a test of 240 participants conducted at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland's largest university), by two professors. The researchers used the long-successful Ganzfeld protocol, which for many years has produced results of around 30% to 32%,  well above the result expected by chance (only 25%).  The tests were done in a "ganzfeld laboratory" in a "quiet and secure basement room of a university building," in the years 2023 and 2024. We read that "Seventy-two hits were obtained out of 240 sessions, a 30% hit-rate," a success well above the result expected by chance, only 25%.

Scientist Flubs and Flops #8

Link

 

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• "Fundamentally, we have a poor understanding of how any internal organ forms." -- Timothy Saunders, developmental biologist (link).
• "Biochemistry cannot provide the spatial information needed to explain morphogenesis...Supracellular morphogenesis is mysterious...Nobody seems to understand the origin of biological and cellular order."  -- Six medical authorities (link).  
• "Quite simply, scientists' supposed referred expertise about fields of science distant from their own is nearly always based on mythologies about science rather than science itself." -- H.M. Collins and R. Evans, "THE THIRD WAVE OF SCIENCE STUDIES: STUDIES OF EXPERTISE AND EXPERIENCE."
• "This is mostly in line with a sobering recent realization of NIH in the US that around 90% [of] all biology science results are NOT repeatable. Scientist publish what worked not a majority of experiments that do not, even if this is the same experiment." -- Boginslaw Stec PhD (link). 
• "My experiences at four research universities and as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research fellow taught me that the relentless pursuit of taxpayer funding has eliminated curiosity, basic competence, and scientific integrity in many fields. Yet, more importantly, training in 'science' is now tantamount to grant-writing and learning how to obtain funding. Organized skepticism, critical thinking, and methodological rigor, if present at all, are afterthoughts....American universities often produce corrupt, incompetent, or scientifically meaningless research that endangers the public, confounds public policy, and diminishes our nation’s preparedness to meet future challenges....Universities and federal funding agencies lack accountability and often ignore fraud and misconduct. There are numerous examples in which universities refused to hold their faculty accountable until elected officials intervened, and even when found guilty, faculty researchers continued to receive tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars. Those facts are an open secret: When anonymously surveyed, over 14 percent of researchers report that their colleagues commit fraud and 72 percent report other questionable practices....Retractions, misconduct, and harassment are only part of the decline. Incompetence is another....The widespread inability of publicly funded researchers to generate valid, reproducible findings is a testament to the failure of universities to properly train scientists and instill intellectual and methodologic rigor. That failure means taxpayers are being misled by results that are non-reproducible or demonstrably false." Edward Archer PhD, "The Intellectual and Moral Decline in Academic Research," (link).
• "The images from a total of 20,621 papers published in 40 scientific journals from 1995 to 2014 were visually screened. Overall, 3.8% of published papers contained problematic figures, with at least half exhibiting features suggestive of deliberate manipulation....The results demonstrate that problematic images are disturbingly common in the biomedical literature and may be found in approximately 1 out of every 25 published articles containing photographic image data."  -- Bik, Casadevall and Fang, "The Prevalence of Inappropriate Image Duplication in Biomedical Research Publications" (link). 
• "I am merely pointing out that a large proportion of our scientists are being subsidized by the government in the name of might, and none, to my knowledge, in the name of right. Here we have science in an age of rampant nationalism and materialism." -- Harvard psychologist Henry Murray (link). 
• "Can so many scientists have been wrong over the eighty years since 1925? Unhappily yes. The mainstream in science...is often wrong...Scientists are often tardy in fixing basic flaws in their sciences despite the presence of better alternatives. Think of the half century it took American geologists to recognize the truth of drifting continents, a theory proposed in 1915 by -- of all  eminently ignorable people -- a German meteorologist." -- economist Stephen Thomas Ziliak (link).

SETI Scientist Misspoke Sagan-Style

Last year the New York Post had a misleading editorial by the chief scientist of the SETI Institute, Nathalie Cabrol. It was clumsily entitled "The possibility of life on other planets is more likely than we know," rather than the more concise "life on other planets is more likely than we know," which expresses exactly the same idea in three fewer words.  Saluting Carl Sagan, the editorial gives us the same type of baloney and BS on this topic that we often got from Sagan, a scientist who often made very bad misstatements about very important topics. 

Early on we have this bit of baloney: "We live in a golden age in astrobiology, the beginning of a fantastic odyssey in which much remains to be written, but where our first steps promise prodigious discoveries." No, actually we don't live in any such "golden age in astrobiology," because astrobiologists have done nothing to show that life exists on other planets; so astrobiology is current a science without a subject matter. And astrobiology (the search for life on other planets) has been going on for more than 60 years, so it certainly is not taking its "first steps." Astrobiology is 65 long years away from "beginning." The first SETI attempt to detect radio signals from extraterrestrials was the Project Ozma launched in 1960. The link here allows you to browse through a table showing all of the main searches for extraterrestrial intelligence, which have been occurring almost steadily since 1960. 

Highlights include:

• The SERENDIP I project, which from 1979 to 1982 surveyed a large portion of the sky, the portion depicted in Figure 4 of the paper here, a project which a Sky and Telescope article tells us surveyed "many billions of Milky Way stars."

• The Southern SERENDIP project lasting 1998 and 2005, which surveyed for some 60,000 hours a large portion of the sky, the portion depicted in Figure 2 of the paper here.

• The SETI project discussed here, surveying a significant portion of the sky, the portion depicted in Figure 2 of the paper here. 

• The all-sky SETI survey discussed here, which operated continuously for more than four years. 

• The two-year southern sky SETI search discussed here, which observed for 9000 hours and "covered the sky almost two times."  

• The five-year META SETI project discussed here, which between 1988 and 1993 spent about 80,000 hours of telescope time searching for extraterrestrials. 

What would you think of an employee who was assigned some task, and who then said (when asked months later to report his progress)  that he "had only just begun" the project, despite working on it for months? You might think that such a guy should not be trusted. But how much worse is it to claim around this year that scientists are "beginning" to search for extraterrestrial life, making "first steps," when such efforts have actually been going on pretty much full blast for 65 years?

We then have from Cabrol a repetition of some of the "we are star stuff" hogwash that Carl Sagan loved to spray. We read this:

"To begin with, the elementary compounds making life as we know it — carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur —  are surprisingly common.

It is no accident that we humans are made of them.

This is the star stuff astronomer Carl Sagan always talked about — not the aliens of Hollywood’s imagination.

This is life — or the building blocks of life — ever-present, but invisible to the human eye."

Sagan would always repeat this "we are all star stuff" mantra, but it was a profoundly misleading claim.  The word "stuff" implies a disorganized set of things or disorganized material.  For example, if someone said to you, "Let me show you some metal stuff I have in my garage," you would be surprised if the person opened his garage door and pointed at a car.  The word "stuff" implies some not-very-organized set of things.  For example, someone may say, "I bought some stuff at the food store," referring to various items in a bag that are not any very organized arrangement.  

But human bodies are not some disorganized stuff. Bodies are things that have an enormous degree of hierarchical organization.  In a body subatomic articles are organized into atoms, which are organized into simple molecules like amino acids, which are organized into vastly more complicated protein molecules consisting of hundreds of amino acids arranged in just the right way to produce a functional effect. Then such protein molecules are organized into protein complexes or organelles, which are organized into cells that may have thousands of such organelles. Then the cells are organized into tissues, which are organized into organs, which are organized into organ systems. "Stuff" is a misleading term to use about that type of organization. Using such a term for something as organized as the human body is like calling the Golden Gate Bridge "some metal stuff."  

And contrary to the overconfident claims of astronomers such as Sagan, we do not actually know that the heavy elements in our bodies came from stars. Calculations based on the number of supernova explosions in our galaxy (discussed here) suggest that fewer than .0002 of the galaxy should have received elements from supernova explosions. So the claim that the heavier elements in our bodies came from stars is questionable. Scientific accounts of the origin of all elements heavier than iron are shaky, as a recent Quanta Magazine article confesses. 

A human being is not "some stuff." Physically a human being is a state of enormous organization, something so vastly organized it is the opposite of what you think of when you hear the phrase "some stuff." And a human is also a mind, something mental, which is not physical stuff. 

I think I understand why scientists kept repeating Sagan's extremely misleading claim that "we are all star stuff." One reason is that it was a slogan that serves to dehumanize and depersonalize humans, and to make it sound like a human body is not organized. Scientists are embarrassed by the vast levels of functional organization in the human body. The credibility of all claims of an accidental or unguided origin of the human species are inversely proportional to the amount of functional fine-tuning, information richness, and hierarchical organization in human bodies.  The more organized and fine-tuned our bodies, the less credible are claims of an unguided origin of humans. So, clinging to a groundless dogma they cherish (that humans are mere accidents of nature), scientists love to repeat phrases that make human bodies sound like nothing very special.  One such phrase is the very misleading phrase "we are all star stuff." 

People familiar with the utter inhabitability of the hell-world Venus (twice as hot as a busy pizza oven) may chuckle at these lines by Cabrol talking about a planet revolving around another star:

"This Earth-sized exoplanet, identified using NASA’s TESS satellite system, orbits a cool red dwarf star and shares intriguing similarities with Venus. Signs of habitability are seemingly everywhere."

"Signs of habitability are seemingly everywhere"? What actually happened is that projects such as Kepler and TESS spent years looking for habitable planets, and found only a very small number, probably fewer than 20. Instead of "everywhere," it was more like "1 in a 20,000." Kepler surveyed 500,000 stars, finding fewer than about 20 habitable planets. 

Sounding like someone writing very carelessly, Cabrol says this of elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur: "This  is life — or the building blocks of life — ever-present, but invisible to the human eye."  No, some carbon floating around in space is not life, nor is it a "building block of life." The phrase "building block of life" in reference to atoms or amino acids is profoundly misleading, for reasons explained in the visual below. 

Multicellular life is built from incredibly organized components called cells, which cannot be properly compared to the simple clay things that are "building blocks." Even one-celled life is built from hundreds of different types of proteins, each a special arrangement of thousands of atoms that have to be organized just right, not something unordered like a building block. 

We  have this very misleading language by scientist Cabrol:

"This is life — or the building blocks of life — ever-present, but invisible to the human eye. Thanks to decades of astronomical research, we know these organic molecules and volatiles are found on Mars, in the plumes of Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus, in the atmosphere of Titan, on comets and more."  

The proteins required for life require very special arrangements of amino acids. But no amino acids have been found on Mars. This has been a giant investigative failure of astrobiologists, a flop. No building blocks of life have been found on Mars, but Cabrol sounds like someone attempting to insinuate that such things were discovered.  Organic molecules are extremely rare on Mars, existing in only the scantiest amounts; and the only type of organic molecules found on Mars are not building blocks of life. The building components of visible life forms are cells; the building components of such cells are protein  molecules; and the building components of protein molecules are amino acids. No one ever even found amino acids on Mars. So if you insist on using this term "building blocks," a correct statement would be: not even the building blocks of the building blocks of the building blocks of visible organisms have been found on Mars. There is no evidence of amino acids being found on Enceladus or Titan. Claims were made to have detected some amino acids in a sample retrieved from a comet, but the reported abundances were negligible, so low we can have no strong confidence in the claims, because of a high chance of earthly contamination (discussed here).

We then have these lines from Cabrol:

"Much farther away still, nearly 200 hundred types of prebiotic organic molecules have been detected over decades of astronomical observation in interstellar clouds near the center of our galaxy. They include the kinds of molecules that could play a role in forming amino acids — those building blocks of life."

Notice the "try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" language. We don't hear about the discovery of amino acids in interstellar clouds, but merely a mention of "molecules that could play a role in forming amino acids." It's like someone who doesn't have a best seller and doesn't have a finished book and doesn't have a first chapter and doesn't even have any paper saying that he has a tree in his back yard, and that the tree could be used to make paper. 

We then have this utterly fallacious example of the "many chances equals many successes" argument that astrobiologists like to use:

"The sheer number of potential alien worlds adds to the probability that life could be abundant in the universe.  Data received from Kepler space telescope missions since its launch in 2009 suggest that tens of billions of Earth-sized planets could be located in the habitable zone of sun-like stars in our galaxy alone.

Because the probability distribution in nature predicts more puddles than large lakes —  more small buttes than Himalayas, more small planets than large ones and more simple life than complex life —  the universe is likely teeming with planets harboring that simple life."

 Such reasoning is completely fallacious. It is not at all true in general that "many chances equals many successes." It is also not at all true in general that "many chances equals some successes" or even that "many chances equals at least one success." If the probability of something happening is sufficiently low, then we should expect many chances to yield zero successes.  So "many chances" does not necessarily equal "many successes," and "many chances" does not necessarily equal "some successes" or even one success. For example:

• If everyone in the world threw a deck of cards into the air 1000 times, that would be almost 10 trillion chances for such flying cards to form into a house of cards, but we should not expect that in even one case would the flying deck of cards accidentally form into a house of cards. 
• If a billion computers around the world each made a thousand attempts to write an intelligible book by randomly generating 100,000 characters, that would be a total of a trillion chances for an  intelligible book to be accidentally generated, but we should not expect that even one of these attempts would result in the creation of an intelligible book. 
• If you buy a million tickets in a winner-take-all lottery in which the chance of winning is only 1 in 100 million, you should not expect that any one of those tickets will succeed in winning such a lottery. 

Below are some very general observations about probability:

• It is not necessarily true that many chances (also called trials) will yield many successes. 
• It is not necessarily true that many chances (also called trials) will yield some successes or even one success. 
• If the chance of success on any one trial multiplied by the number of trials gives a number less than 1, we should not expect that even one of the trials will produce a success.
• If the chance of success on any one trial multiplied by the number of trials gives a number greater than 1, we should  expect that at least one of the trials will produce a success.

Roughly speaking, if the chance of life accidentally appearing on the average planet is greater than 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, we should expect that life exists on at least one other planet in the observable universe. But if the chance of life randomly appearing on the average planet is less than 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, we should expect (given only chance) that no life exists outside of our solar system, in any planet in the observable universe. 

Unfortunately for extraterrestrial life enthusiasts, there is every reason for suspecting that the chance of life appearing on any random planet (because of accidental chemical combinations) is very, very much less than 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.  Even the simplest microbe requires 100 or more types of functional protein molecules.  An average functional protein molecule consists of hundreds of amino acids arranged in just the right way to achieve a functional result.  It has been estimated that the probability of a functional protein molecule forming by chance is less than 1 in 10 to the hundredth power. 

Here the math tells a decisive tale.  It seems that by chance that nowhere in the observable universe would there form even one of the functional protein molecules needed for life. But more than 50 types of such molecules would be needed for even the simplest thing to exist. Even the simplest microbe is like a purposeful arrangement of many thousands of amino acids parts, just as a 50-page instruction manual is a purposeful arrangement of about 15,000 letters.  The odds against abiogenesis (the accidental origin of life) are prohibitive.  Life may be common in the universe, but only if there is some purposeful agency acting to overcome the prohibitive odds against the accidental origin of life. 

Below are some relevant quotes:

• "The transformation of an ensemble of appropriately chosen biological monomers (e.g. amino acids, nucleotides) into a primitive living cell capable of further evolution appears to require overcoming an information hurdle of superastronomical proportions (Appendix A), an event that could not have happened within the time frame of the Earth except, we believe, as a miracle (Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, 1981, 1982, 2000). All laboratory experiments attempting to simulate such an event have so far led to dismal failure (Deamer, 2011; Walker and Wickramasinghe, 2015)." -- "Cause of Cambrian Explosion - Terrestrial or Cosmic?," a paper by 21 scientists,  2018. 
• "Biochemistry's orthodox account of how life emerged from a primordial soup of such chemicals lacks experimental support and is invalid because, among other reasons, there is an overwhelming statistical improbability that random reactions in an aqueous solution could have produced self-replicating RNA molecules."  John Hands MD, "Cosmo Sapiens: Human Evolution From the Origin of the Universe," page 411. 
• "The interconnected nature of DNA, RNA, and proteins means that it could not have sprung up ab initio from the primordial ooze, because if only one component is missing then the whole system falls apart – a three-legged table with one missing cannot stand." -- "The Improbable Origins of Life on Earth" by astronomer Paul Sutter. 
• "Even the simplest of these substances [proteins] represent extremely complex compounds, containing many thousands of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in absolutely definite patterns, which are specific for each separate substance. To the student of protein structure the spontaneous formation of such an atomic arrangement in the protein molecule would seem as improbable as would the accidental origin of the text of Virgil's 'Aeneid'  from scattered letter type." -- Chemist A. I. Oparin, "The Origin of Life," pages 132-133.
• "The expected number of abiogenesis events is much smaller than unity when we observe a star, a galaxy, or even the whole observable universe." -- Scientist Tomonori Totani, "Emergence of life in an inflationary universe," a paper confessing we would not expect one natural origin of life (abiogenesis) even in the entire observable universe (link).
• "We now know not only of the existence of a break between the living and non-living world, but also that it represents the most dramatic and fundamental of all the discontinuities of nature. Between a living cell and the most highly ordered non-biological system, such as a crystal or a snowflake, there is a chasm as vast and absolute as it is possible to conceive." --  -- Michael Denton, MD and biochemistry PhD, "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis," page 250.

As for Cabrol's claim that "because the probability distribution in nature predicts more puddles than large lakes —  more small buttes than Himalayas, more small planets than large ones and more simple life than complex life —  the universe is likely teeming with planets harboring that simple life," nothing could be more fallacious.  The fact that it is harder to create complex multicellular life than one-celled life does not give you the slightest warrant for concluding that one-celled life is common in the universe. To make such an argument is every bit as fallacious as saying "it's much harder for accidents to produce aircraft carriers than for accidents to produce automobiles, so the moons of Jupiter must contain many automobiles." 

Cabrol works for the SETI Institute, an organization dedicated to search for life in space. The SETI Institute has prepared extensive educational materials.  On page 85 of one of their documents (the Volume 2 here), we have some material designed to be taught to school children. We read this:

"Nobody knows how life was created. One theory is that the first life-forms were created by chance combinations of complex molecules in tide pools or shallow seas, warmed by the Sun and energized by lightning. Another theory is that the first life was made by chance combination of complex molecules at places where hot volcanic vents heated the ocean on the sea floor." 

This is very poor education on the topic of the origin of life, the kind of materialist junk that Carl Sagan would push.  The above  sentences create the utterly erroneous idea that all you need for life to get started is a little energy -- maybe lightning, sunlight or heat. It's an idea as fallacious as the idea that all you need to write books is some process that accidentally splashes ink on paper pages. The 218-page document has no meaningful references to proteins, and utterly fails to serve as something that can educate school children about the complexity of life. 

More Dreams, Visions or Spooky Events That Seemed to Foretell a Death or Disaster

In the series of posts below, I discussed dreams, visions or mysterious voices that seemed to foretell a death or disaster:

When Dreams or Visions Foretell a Death

More Dreams or Visions That Seemed to Foretell a Death

Still More Dreams or Visions That Seemed to Foretell a Death

Still More Dreams, Visions or Voices That Seemed to Foretell a Death

Even More Dreams and Visions That Seemed to Foretell a Death

Some More Dreams or Visions That Seemed to Foretell a Death or Disaster

When the Future Whispers to the Present

When Dreams or Premonitions Seem to Act Prophetically

Dreams, Visions or Premonitions That Seemed to Correctly Predict a Death

Sometimes Dreams, Visions or Premonitions Seem to Foretell a Death

Let us look at some more cases of this type.

A 1906 news story tells this account:

"FALLS CITY, Neb., Feb. s.— When Dr. Kerr and his wife had seated themselves at the breakfast table this morning Mrs. Kerr commenced to relate the story of a dream she had in the night. She had dreamed that their house was on fire and was giving a vivid description of the excitement she had undergone and of the damage done to the house. Her story was interrupted by the unceremonious  arrival of a neighbor's son who burst into the room, exclaiming that their house was in flames. The house had caught fire from a defective electric light wire.

Considerable damage was done to the house and the contents before the flames were extinguished. The psychic phenomenon presented by Mrs. Kerr's dream is causing much discussion."

You can read the account here:

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=LAH19060206.2.117.44&srpos=6&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN-%22strange+vision%22------

Below is a sad account of a mother who seemed to have a dream of her son's death that occurred on the same day 90 miles away:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1907-11-28/ed-1/seq-1/

The account below from 1907 is similar to the one above, with a mother having a vision of the death of her son at the time he died, a vision that proves true. 

The account above can be read here. 

A woman in 1893 told of having a strange vision of the death of her cousin, one that matched the death of that cousin five years later:

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn94052989/1893-01-15/ed-1/seq-16/

Below is an account of a child who had an unusually vivid dream of his mother and father at a funeral, where there was a "beautiful little white coffin." On the same day he told his mother of the dream, he was killed by an automobile. 

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn93055779/1907-04-17/ed-1/seq-1/

In the account below we have a man claiming to have a very explicit dream in which an angel tells him his wife will soon die. The wife did soon die in a freak accident. 

The newspaper account can be read here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016689/1911-05-04/ed-1/seq-1/

The newspaper account below dates from 1911. We have not exactly a vision of foretelling the disaster of a son being sick and without money, but instead a vision in which the father seems to perceive such a state existing thousands of miles away. 

"LOS ANGELES, Jan. 10. —Walter Bulloch is in a local hospital to-day, anxiously awaiting word from his father, a wealthy retired linen merchant in Ireland, following the receipt by Chief of Police Sebastian of a cable from Bulloch senior, in which the father stated that he had a vision of his son, penniless and sick, and requested that the Chief of Police search for the young man. Sebastian had a notice inserted in local papers and young Bulloch saw it and notified the Chief that he was the son of the man whose dream had spanned the ocean separating them. Sebastian cabled the father that his son was ill and without funds here."

You can read the account here:

https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=NWJ19110113.2.76&srpos=4&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN-%22strange+vision%22-------

Below we have an account of a clairvoyant vision of a loss of life in some kind of wreck of accident involving the steamship Continental in 1870. The clairvoyant  in San Francisco claimed the accident took place many miles away, at Cape St. Lucas (the same as Cabo San Lucas, a location at the tip of the Baja peninsula in Mexico, 1542 miles from San Francisco), with the vision supposedly occurring the same day as the accident.  The newspaper account says a matching accident occurred to this ship, in just such a place. 

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85033673/1870-12-27/ed-1/seq-1/

According to the wikipedia.org page here, the following accident occurred to the Continental on September 29, 1870:

"The steamship foundered 30 nautical miles (56 km) off Cabo San Lucas, Mexico with the loss of eight lives. She was on a voyage from Mazatlán, Mexico to San Francisco, California."

The "Cabo San Lucas" referred to is Cape St. Lucas ("Cabo" means "Cape" in Spanish, and "San" means "St." or "Saint.") 

In the account below we hear of a rose that inexplicably begins to arise from a mirror.  The appearance of each leaf in the rose seems to correspond to the death of a family member. 

Below is an incredibly strange newspaper account of rumors arising that a man had died in a car crash. The man drove to his friends to assure him the rumor was false. But on his way back he died in a car crash, just as the rumor had described. 

You can read the account here:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87078082/1909-06-25/ed-1/seq-6/

The account below is found on page 782 of the December 8, 1933 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here:

"A painful impression has been produced in Sordevolo by the sudden death of Signora Cornella Piovano, aged thirty-eight. Signora Piovano dreamed that she had died suddenly, and awakened in great agitation. The next morning, still under the impression of her dream, she recounted it to her family, expressing the conviction that it would be verified. A few hours later the unfortunate woman, while putting her child to bed, was taken suddenly ill and died almost immediately".

The very interesting account below is found on page 171 of the May 29, 1920 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here.