Transhumanism Puts the Finishing Touches on the Materialist Religion

To many, Darwinist materialism is a kind of alternative to religion. But others think that Darwinist materialism is itself a kind of religion. You don't refute this suspicion by arguing that religions always involve belief in a God or gods, and Darwinist materialism does not entail such a belief. The reason is that several religions are not centered around a belief in a God or gods, including Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Scientology.

There are many definitions of religion, and not all of them specify that religion must entail a belief in a deity. For example, a broad definition of a religion was given by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz. He defined a religion as " a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic." 

Here is another rather similar definition: we can define a religion as a set of beliefs about the fundamental nature of reality and life, or a recommended way of living, typically stemming from the teachings of an authority, along with norms, taboos, ethics, rituals, roles or social organizations that may arise from such beliefs.

Such a definition covers every religion I have learned about, including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism and Scientology. Interestingly, under such a definition, Darwinist materialism may also be defined as a religion. 

Darwinist materialism does constitute a system of beliefs about the fundamental nature of reality and life, by teaching that all of the blessings of nature are accidents produced by blind natural processes, and that reality is fundamentally material rather than spiritual.  It also seems to teach a recommended path of life, by teaching or implying that activities that humans have so often engaged in (such as religious activities or spiritual activities or the study of the paranormal or the search for design in nature) are a waste of time, and by guiding people into a particular groove of speech, thought, and conduct that wins the approval of materialists.  

But should we really classify Darwinist materialism as a religion? One way to help sort out this question is to make a list of some of the tendencies that religions typically have. We can then ask: how many of these tendencies do we see in Darwinist materialism? The checklist below is a fairly good one.

	Revered founder?
	Sacred text?
	Priests, ministers or similar authority figures?
	Chapels, temples, or similar buildings where the faithful congregate?
	Creation story?
	Miracle stories?
	Life-after-death eschatology?
	World transformation eschatology?
	Belief in superhuman power?

Let's look at how many of these traits Darwinist materialism has.

The first item in the checklist is “Revered founder?” It is a hallmark of religions that the founder of the system of thought is treated as some kind of some special fountain of wisdom. A believer in a religion might dismiss some thought as shallow or dubious if he thinks that thought came from the mind of some ordinary person, but he may think that same thought is a pearl of wisdom if it came from the founder of his creed. Does Darwinist materialism have this “revered founder” characteristic? It would seem so, and the revered founder is Charles Darwin. An example of the fanboy zealotry of materialists towards Darwin was a statement on page 158 of the book The Inflamed Mind by Edward Bullmore, in which (referring in general in biological explanations) he states, "Ultimately, the answer must always be Darwin."  

What about the “sacred text” characteristic? The Darwinian materialist does not regard any book as being divinely inspired, but it would seem that Darwin's The Origin of Species book serves as a kind of sacred text of Darwinian materialists. So we can check off the first two check boxes on our checklist:

What about the third item on our checklist, “Priests, ministers or similar authority figures?” In a religion such as Catholicism there are priests who wear special garb, and in Protestantism there are ministers who serve a similar role as apostles of the belief system. Is there anything similar in Darwinian materialism? It would seem there is: the professors of evolutionary biology and similar professors such as professors of neuroscience.

Consider the activities of two young men, Rod and Bill. Rod decides to become a minister in a church. He is indoctrinated for years in a regimented minister-schooling environment in which allegiance to the belief system of his teachers is demanded. After graduating, he then spends lots of time standing before assemblies of other people (parishioners), preaching the teachings of his belief system. Using lots of specialized jargon, Rod may also spend a lot of time in scholarly writing to advance the beliefs of his church, contributing to things such as religion journals and theological books. If a heretic arises in his church to dispute the accepted teachings, Rod may act as a kind of "defender of the faith" by reasserting the claims of the ideological orthodoxy he was instructed in. 

Bill, however, decides to become a professor of evolutionary biology. He is indoctrinated for years in a regimented professor-schooling environment in which allegiance to the belief system of his teachers is demanded. After getting his graduate degree or PhD, he then spends lots of time standing before assemblies of other people (university students), preaching the teachings of his belief system. Using lots of specialized jargon, Bill may also spend a lot of time in scholarly writing to advance the beliefs of his scholastic tribe, contributing to things such as journals and books. If a heretic arises to dispute the accepted teachings, such as someone suggesting there is purpose and design in living things, Bill may act as a kind of "defender of the faith" by reasserting the claims of the ideological orthodoxy he was instructed in. 

Clearly there are so many similarities between Rod and Bill that we can say that professors of evolutionary biology act as a kind of priesthood of the Darwinian materialist belief system. We may also note that special-status groups such as the National Academy of Sciences (with about 2000 members) can be compared to the college of cardinals of the Catholic Church (with about 200 members). The “Department of Evolutionary Biology” buildings in universities and colleges function just like chapels for the Darwinian materialist system. Instead of having ritualized meetings at chapels or churches, believers in Darwinist materialism have ritualized meetings at places like university lecture halls and TED talks. We can therefore add two more checks to our checklist:

The next item on our checklist is “Creation story?” The creation story of organized religions are well known, such as the biblical story that God made the heavens and the earth (along with its life forms) in six days. Darwinist materialism offers its own creation stories, such as the idea that life began from a random combination of chemicals, and that all biological innovations arose from random mutation and what Darwinists call "natural selection" (although they don't believe this actually involves a selection in the form of a conscious choice). You might protest that these are scientific facts, not just creation stories. But neither of these claims is a scientific fact. There is zero evidence that life ever arose by a chance combination of chemicals, and no one has ever succeeded in  attempts to produce living things (or the protein molecules that are the building blocks of living things) from combinations of mere chemicals in a laboratory simulating the early earth. We have no proof that any single macroscopic biological innovation ever appeared because of random mutations, natural selection, or a combination of random mutations and natural selection. The creation narratives of Darwinian materialism can therefore be classified as creation stories rather than scientific facts, the term “creation story” not necessarily meaning something untruthful.

As for whether Darwinist materialism involves a belief in miracle stories, some would argue that the Darwinian origin accounts are just such things. It can be argued that to believe that random mutations and natural selection (essentially just survival of the fittest) can produce something as immensely complex as a vision system (or a very complex protein molecule with hundreds of amino acids arranged in just the right way to produce a complex functional capability) is to believe in a miracle of luck, something as miraculous as falling trees in a forest conveniently forming into a large log-cabin hotel. But the point is debatable, so for now let's just put a question mark on the “Miracle stories?” line of our checklist, updating it as follows:

So we have an outcome in which Darwinist materialism is starting to resemble a religion, but at least the last three rows on our checklist are unchecked. However, in recent years we have seen a growth of what is called transhumanism. And it seems that the transhumanists are determined to propel Darwinist materialism into a system of thought in which the last three items on this list are checked off.

The transhumanist offers a strange version of a kind of a life-after-death eschatology. Transhumanists tell us that at some point in the future, people will be able to upload their minds into a computer or a robot. Transhumanists refer to such a thing as a “digital afterlife.”

Just as some Christians tell us that the planet will soon be transformed by the Second Coming of Jesus or some rapture in which the faithful ascend into heaven, the transhumanists tell us that the world will soon be utterly transformed after a “superintelligence explosion” results in the creation of superhuman electronic minds far superior to human minds (and after humans upgrade themselves into genetically or electronically enhanced supermen).  This is a kind of world transformation eschatology, as the creation of such super-minds would presumably lead to a transfiguration of global reality as dramatic as we might expect under the Second Coming of Jesus. 

Although the transhumanist does not tend to believe in any divine authority, he may well believe in superhuman extraterrestrials with god-like powers. Also, the  transhumanist believes that there will soon be a superhuman power on Earth, once there appears superintelligent computers or robots far smarter than men (as well as genetically or electronically upgraded humans who will be superhuman powers). Of course, all of these tales of future wonders such as mind uploading, digital afterlives and the appearance of supermen and superintelligent robots are very much a new type of miracle story. So when we add these miracle stories to the other tales of random mutation miracles of luck and the tale of a miracle of luck in which incredibly organized life first forms from mere unorganized chemicals, we have a system of belief in which there seems to be multiple miracle stories.  So in the case of transhumanist Darwinist materialism, the checklist now looks like this:

So transhumanism puts the finishing touches on the materialist religion. The end product (which can be called transhumanist Darwinist materialism, or more concisely transhumanist materialism) is something that really must be described as a full-fledged religion. It has all the main hallmarks of a religion. 

Having written a rather long blog post already, I will not now get into the weighty question of whether transhumanist materialism is a believable religion. I will merely note that a discussion of various considerations relevant to such a question can be found in the past and future posts of this blog. 

An Astronomer's First-Hand Accounts of the Paranormal

Camille Flammarion was one of the most well-known astronomers of his day. I have published one post on the many accounts of apparition sightings written up by Flammarion, based on accounts sent to him. I have also published a post on the accounts of ESP incidents written up by Flammarion. Now let us look at some astounding paranormal events that Flammarion claimed to have seen with his own eyes.

The accounts can be found in Flammarion's book Mysterious Psychic Forces, which you can read online here or here.  The page numbers I give will correspond to page numbers in the first of these links. On page 20 Flammarion states the following:

"I have so often seen a rather heavy table lifted to a height of eight, twelve, sixteen inches from the floor, and I have taken such undeniably authentic photographs of these; I have so often proved to myself that the suspension of this article of furniture by the imposition upon it of the hands of four or five persons produces the effect of a floating in a tub full of water or other elastic fluid, that, for me, the levitation of objects is no more doubtful than that of a pair of scissors lifted by the aid of a magnet."

An account like this should come as no surprise to anyone who read my previous post “When World Class Scientists Saw Ghosts (Part 1).” In that post I quoted the testimony of the world class scientist Sir William Crookes (the discoverer of the element thallium) that he had personally observed paranormal levitation occurring multiple times. Very specifically, Flammarion states on page 20 that on March 29, 1906, he saw a table rise 15 to 20 inches above the ground while he and the medium Eusapia Palladino were standing above the table with their hands on it (the other observers being at a distance), and also while one of Eusapia's hands was resting on Flammarion's hand. On page 21, Flammarion says, “This phenomenon of levitation is, to me, absolutely proved, although we cannot explain it.” He also states this on page 21:

"I will add that quite often the table continues to rise even after the experimenters have ceased to touch it. This is movement without contact."

Skeptics always try to dismiss the many accounts of scientists, physicians and professors who stated they observed a wide variety of shockingly paranormal activity around Eusapia Palladino, on the grounds that Palladino was sometimes found cheating. But such an objection doesn't work, because the fact is that innumerable times such wonders were observed when Palladino was constrained so that there was no opportunity of cheating. On countless occasions such authorities would hold the arms and legs of Palladino, preventing her from moving. Under such controlled conditions the inexplicable and paranormal would happen again and again. 

On page 22 Flammarion says he saw a heavy chair five times move across a floor without anyone touching it. He also states the following: “Curtains near the medium, but which it is impossible for her to touch, either with the hand or the foot, swell out their whole length, as if inflated by a gusty wind.” This effect was reported by numerous other distinguished observers, such as Lombroso on this page. Also on page 22 Flammarion states the following:

"Here is a fifth instance, authenticated by me several times, and always with the same care. While I am holding one hand of Eusapia in mine, and one of my astronomical friends, tutor at the Ecole Polytechnique, is holding the other, we are touched, first one and then the other, upon the side and on the shoulders, as if by an invisible hand."

On page 27 Flammarion discusses a session on June 7, 1906 with Eusapia Palladino, in which a table was levitated:

"We had on that evening some movements of the table and a complete lifting of the four feet to a height of about eight inches. Six of us sat around the table,—Eusapia, Madame and Monsieur Ostwalt, their son Pierre, sixteen years old, my wife and myself. Our hands placed above the table scarcely touched it, and were almost wholly detached at the moment it rose from the floor. No fraud possible. Full light."

On page 64 to 65 Flammarion discusses an 1892 session he had with the medium Eusapia Palladino:

"There is full light,—a big kerosene lamp with a wide burner and a light yellow shade, besides two lighted candles. At the end of three minutes the table begins to move, balancing itself, and rising sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left. A minute afterwards it is lifted entirely from the floor, to a height of about nine inches, and remains there two seconds. In a second trial, I take the two hands of Eusapia in mine. A notable levitation is produced, nearly under the same conditions. We repeat the same experiments thrice, in such a way that five levitations of the table take place in a quarter of an hour, and for several seconds the four feet are completely lifted from the floor, to the height of about nine inches. During one of the levitations the experimenters did not touch the table at all, but formed the chain above it and in the air; and Eusapia acted in the same way. So then it seems that an object can be lifted, in opposition to the law of gravity, without the contact of the hands which have just been acting upon it."

Flammarion then describes a long series of inexplicable events he witnessed. Here from the middle of page 67 is part of the long description:

"The little round table, placed outside of the cabinet, at the left of the medium, approaches the table, climbs clear up on it and lies across it. The guitar in the cabinet is heard moving about and giving out sounds. The curtain is puffed out, and the guitar is brought upon the table, resting upon the shoulder of M. de Fontenay. It is then laid upon the table, the large end toward the medium. Then it rises and moves over the heads of the company without touching them. It gives forth several sounds. The phenomenon lasts about fifteen seconds. It can readily be seen that the guitar is floating in the air, and the reflection of the red lamp glides over its shining surface. A rather bright gleam, pear-shaped, is seen on the ceiling in the other corner of the room."

On page 74 Flammarion states this:

"After the end of that séance of the 27th of July, 1897, as I desired to see again the levitation of a table in full light, the chain was formed standing, the hands lightly placed upon the table. The latter began to oscillate, then rose up to a height of nine inches from the floor, remained there several seconds (all the participators remaining on their feet), and fell heavily back again."

From this page of the Flammarion book

On page 76 Flammarion begins to quote some reports written by those who witnessed sessions he carried out with Eusapia Palladino in Flammarion's house. Some of the highlights of these reports are in the table below:

Writer of account	Quote from account
M. Arthur Levy, page 78	“We rest our hands on the table. In a few moments it begins to oscillate, stands on one foot, strikes the floor, rears up, rises wholly into the air,—sometimes twelve inches, sometimes eight inches, from the ground. Eusapia utters a sharp cry, resembling a cry of joy, of deliverance; the curtain behind her swells out, and, all inflated as it is, comes forward upon the table. Other raps are heard in the table, and simultaneously in the floor at a distance of about ten feet from us. All this in full light....The table is always shaking and makes sudden jolts. Eusapia calls to us to look. Above her head appears a hand. It is a small hand, like that of a little girl of fifteen years, the palm forward, the fingers joined, the thumb projecting...we hear the sound of the tambourine, which is then quickly thrown upon the table. Next the violin arrives in the same manner, and we hear its strings sound. I seize the tambourine and ask the Invisible if he wishes to take it. I feel a hand grasping the instrument. I am not willing to let it go. A struggle now ensues between myself and a force which I judge to be considerable.”
M. Armelin, pages 89-90	“At five minutes of ten the table is lifted from the side opposite to the medium and falls back with a bang. At ten o'clock it rises from the side of the medium, who withdraws her hands, the other persons holding their hands lifted up. The same effect is produced three times. The second time, while the table is in the air, M. Antoniadi declares that he is leaning on it with all his weight and is unable to lower it. The third time, M. Mathieu leans on it in the same way and experiences the same resistance. During this time, Eusapia holds her closed fist about four inches above the table, looking as if she were strongly grasping something. The action lasts several seconds. There is no doubt whatever about this levitation.”
M. Le Bocain, page 100-101	“I addressed myself to the spirit in Arabic, in very nearly the following terms: 'If it is really thou, Rosalie, who art in the midst of us, pull the hair on the back of my head three times in succession.' About ten minutes later, and when I had almost completely forgotten my request, I felt my hair pulled three separate times, just as I had desired. I certify this fact, which, besides, formed for me a most convincing truth of the presence of a familiar spirit close about us.”

On page 101 Flammarion says that while there was some disagreement among the witness reports he has given, with one witness refusing to believe anything paranormal was occurring, “The levitation of the table, for example, its complete detachment from the floor under the action of an unknown force acting in opposition to the law of gravity, is a fact which cannot reasonably be contested.”

On page 103 Flammarion describes an experiment he tried similar to an experiment the scientist William Crookes did with the medium Daniel Dunglas Home. In that experiment with Home (according to Crookes) an accordion that Crookes had bought was observed to play by itself.

Flammarion bought an accordion at a bazaar. He placed it above the head of the medium Eusapia Palladino, while her hands were firmly held: "All possibility of fraud is eliminated; for the instrument is well above Eusapia's head, her hands are firmly held." Under such conditions the accordion was heard to play by itself. Page 108 reports a levitating book floating in the air after passing through a solid curtain.

On page 115 Flammarion quotes a letter written by Professor Chiaia of Naples. He states the following about Eusapia Palladino:

"This woman rises in the air, no matter what bands tie her down. She seems to lie upon the empty air as on a couch, contrary to all the laws of gravity; she plays on musical instruments— organs, bells, tambourines—as if they had been touched by her hands or moved by the breath of invisible gnomes....This woman, at times, can increase her stature by more than four inches. She is like an india-rubber doll, like an automaton of a new kind; she takes strange forms. How many legs and arms has she? We do not know. While her limbs are being held by incredulous spectators, we see other limbs coming into view, without knowing where they come from."

On page 134 Flammarion quotes a report of M. de Siemiradski, who stated the following:

"The piano then opens noisily, and we hear the bass notes of the keyboard sounding. I utter aloud my desire to hear high notes and low notes touched at the same time, as a proof that the unknown force can act at the two ends of the keyboard. My wish is granted, and we hear bass notes and treble notes sounded at the same time, which seems to prove the action of two distinct hands. Then the instrument advances toward us. . It presses against our group, and we are obliged to get up and move back with our experiment table, and we do not stop until we have thus moved back several yards."

On page 137 Flammarion quotes a M. Ochorowicz as stating, “The hypothesis of a 'fluidic double' (astral body), which, under certain conditions, detaches itself and acts independently of the body of the medium, seems necessary for the explanation of the greater part of the phenomena.”

On page 151 Flammarion quotes M. Porro as giving this account of a levitation in which Eusapia Palladino (seated in a chair) levitated to the top of a table:

"The medium lifts her two hands, all the time clasped in mine and in those of No. 5 (Morselli), and uttering groans, cries, exhortations, she rises with her chair, so far as to place its two feet and the ends of its two front cross-bars upon the top of the table....Eusapia was lifted up still farther with her chair, from the upper part of the table, in such a way that No. 11 on one side and I on the other were able to pass our hands under her feet and under those of the chair. Moreover, the fact that the posterior feet of the chair were entirely off of the table, without any visible support makes this levitation still more irreconcilable with the supposition that Eusapia could have made her body and the chair take an upward leap."

Flammarion's testimony and accounts are corroborated by several sources you can read online. One of these is Hereward Carrington's long book "Eusapia Palladino and Her Phenomena," which you can read online here. Another such book is the book "After Death -- What?" by Cesare Lombroso.  You can read the book online here. Lombroso was an influential figure in criminology, the scientific study of crime. On page 49 of the book, Lombroso states the following, repeating the astonishing claim made by Porro:

"The Levitation of the Medium to the Top of the Table. Among the most important and significant of the occurrences we put this levitation. It took place twice, — that is to say, on the 28th of September and the 3d of October. The medium, who was seated near one end of the table, was lifted up in her chair bodily, amid groans and lamentations on her part, and placed (still seated) on the table, then returned to the same position as before, with her hands continually held, her movements being accompanied by the persons next her. On the evening of the 28th of September, while her hands were being held by MM. Richet and Lombroso, she complained of hands which were grasping her under the arms; then, while in trance, with the changed voice characteristic of this state, she said. 'Now I lift my medium up on the table.' After two or three seconds the chair with Eusapia in it was not violently dashed, but lifted without hitting anything, on to the top of the table, and M. Richet and I are sure that we did not even assist the levitation by our own force. After some talk in the trance state the medium announced her descent, and (M. Finzi having been substituted for me) was deposited on the floor with the same security and precision, while MM. Richet and Finzi followed the movements of her hands and body without at all assisting them, and kept asking each other questions about the position of the hands. Moreover, during the descent both gentlemen repeatedly felt a hand touch them on the head. On the evening of October 3 the thing was repeated in quite similar circumstances, MM. Du Prel and Finzi being one on each side of Eusapia." 

On page 43 of the book,  Lombroso gives corroboration of the previous report by Flammarion of table levitations (the mysterious rising of a table into the air).

"Complete Levitation of the Table. It was natural to conclude that if the table, in apparent contradiction with the law of gravitation, was able to rise on one side, it would be able to rise completely. In fact, that is what happened, and these levitations are among those of most frequent occurrence in experiments with Eusapia. They were usually produced under the following conditions : The persons seated around the table place their hands on it and form the chain there. Each hand of the medium is held by the adjacent hand of the neighbor on each side; each of her feet is under the foot of her neighbor ; these furthermore press against her knees with theirs. As usual, she is seated at one of the short sides (end) of the table, — the position least favorable for mechanical levitation. After a few minutes the table makes a lateral movement, rises now to the right and now to the left, and finally is lifted wholly off its four feet into the air, horizontally, as if afloat in a liquid, and ordinarily to a height of from lO to 20 centimetres (sometimes, exceptionally, as high as 60 or 70), then falls back on all four feet at once. Sometimes it stays in the air for several seconds, and even makes fluctuating motions there, during which the position of the feet under it can be thoroughly inspected. "

On page 55-56 of the book Lombroso tells us of another astonishing thing he saw, corroborating the report of M. Arthur Levy quoted above:

"Once a closed fist appeared on the head of the medium. It opened slowly and showed the hand open, with the fingers spread  apart. It is impossible to state the number of times that this hand appeared and was touched by us. Suffice it to say that no doubt was any longer possible. It was actually a living human hand that we saw and touched, while at the same time the entire bust and the arms of the medium remained in sight and her hands were continuously held by her neighbors on each side." 

Eusapia Palladino was not the only medium who seemed to have an abundant ability to produce paranormal effects under the observation and restrictions of scientists.  There were several others, including (1) Daniel Dunglas Home (who produced dramatic paranormal effects under controlled conditions set up  by the leading scientist William Crookes, as described here); (2) Marthe Beraud, who produced a wealth of inexplicable effects under the controlled investigation of a scientist, as described here;  (3) Indridi Indridason who produced spectacular paranormal effects under controlled conditions set up by a scientific committee to investigate him (as described here). 

Claims about the impossibility of effects such as these are based on a belief in a non-existence of spiritual beings and the non-existence of a human soul.  But if there exists spiritual beings or human souls, then we have no idea what are the limitations or powers of such things, and you have a situation that is best described with the colloquial expressions "it's a whole new ballgame" and "all bets are off" -- in other words, we have no warrant making claims about an impossibility of paranormal phenomena. 

Postscript: On page 377 to 430 of Volume 6 of the Annnals of Psychical Research (1907), we have an astonishing account by Professor Phillipe Bottazzi of a host of paranormal wonders he witnessed in the presence of Eusapia Palladino. On page 422 we read the following account of the appearance of a doubling of Eusapia's left arm:

"Whilst Galeotti was controlling Eusapia's right hand, he distinctly saw the doubling of the left arm of the medium. 'Look!' he exclaimed, 'I see two left arms, identical in appearance ; one is on the little table, and it is that which Mme. Bottazzi touches; the other seems to come out of her shoulder, to approach her, and touch her, and then return and melt into her body again. This is not an hallucination ; I am awake, I am conscious of the two simultaneous visual sensations which I experience when Mme. Bottazzi says that she bas been touched.'  The results of this seance were very favourable because they eliminated the slightest trace of suspicion or uncertainty relative to the genuineness of these phenomena."

On page 413 the professor gives this account:

"I felt an open hand seize me behind, gently, by the neck. Instinctively I let go of Dr. Poso's right hand with my left and I carried it where I clearly felt this sensation of contact, and I found the hand which was touching me : a left hand, neither cold nor hot, with rough bony fingers which dissolved under pressure ; they did not retire by producing a sensation of withdrawal, but they dissolved, 'dematerialized,' melted. Shortly afterwards the same hand was laid on my head ; I carried mine quickly to the spot, I felt it, I grasped it ; it was obliterated and again disappeared into my grasp."

On the same page the professor states, "Two apparitions of human faces were also seen."

The account above of a dissolving spirit hand may seem too hard to believe, but let us consider that the same thing was reported by the very prestigious scientist William Crookes, one of the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century. On pages 92 to 93 of his Researches into the Phenomena of Spiritualism, Crookes reported observing such paranormal hands multiple times, and said they were often self-luminous. Below is a quote by Crookes which sounds very similar to the passage just sighted:

"To the touch, the hand sometimes appears icy cold and 
dead, at other times, warm and life-like, grasping my own 
with the firm pressure of an old friend. I have retained one of these hands in my own, firmly resolved not to let it escape. There was no struggle or effort made to get loose, but it gradually seemed to resolve itself into vapour, and faded in that manner from my grasp."

On page 556 of Volume 6 of the Annals of Psychical Research (1907), we have the following statement asserting that levitation and apparitions of hands were observed under carefully controlled conditions, by quite a few distinguished scientists and professors:

"A SERIES of seances with Eusapia Paladino have just been held in Naples. They have been perhaps more important than all that have preceded them, because conducted under even more severe scientific control. These seances took place in the laboratory of Professor Ph. .Bottazzi, Director of the Physiological Institute in the University of Naples. There were also present, Dr. G. Galeotti, Professor of General Pathology in the University of Naples; Dr. T. De Amicis, Professor of Dermatology and Syphilography at the same University, Dr. 0. Scarpa, Professor of Electro-Chemistry at the Polytechnic School in Naples; M. E. Jona, Senator, President of the Italian Electro. Technical Association; Dr. A. Cardarelli, Senator, Professor of Clinical Medicine in the University of Naples; M. N. Minutillo, Professor of Jurisprudence in the University. Mme. Bottazzi was also present at two seances, in the course of which mediumistic faculties revealed themselves in her-which disturbed her considerably. By the light of three lamps the table round wbich the experimenters were seated was seen to rise as high as nearly half a yard (4oc.) or to float in the air untouched, without any contact with Eusapia, for about twenty-five minutes; then apparitions of hands began, and of black heads, etc." 

Below is Figure 2 following page 404 of Volume 8 of the Annals of Psychical Research (1909). It shows a levitation produced during one of the scientific tests of Eusapia Palladino. 

On pages 404-405 we have a description of what went on, which included a levitation of the table when no one was touching it:

"The two hands, feet, and knees of Eusapia · being controlled, the table is raised suddenly, all four feet leaving the ground, then two and again four feet; Eusapia closes het fists, and holds them towards the table, which is then completely raised · from the floor five times in succession, five raps being also given. It is again completely raised, whilst each of Eusapia's hands is on the head of a sitter. It is raised to the height of one foot from the floor and suspended in the air for seven seconds while Eusapia kept her hand on the table and a lighted candle was placed under the table; it was completely raised to a height of ten inches from the floor and suspended in the air for four seconds, M. Curie only having his hand on the table, Eusapia's hand being placed on top of his. It was completely raised when M. Curie had his hand on Eusapia's knees and Eusapia had one hand on the table and die other on M. Curie's hand, her feet tied to the chair on which she was sitting. Two and then four feet of the table were raised when a weight of ten kilogrammes was placed on the table, the hands, feet, and knees of Eusapia being thoroughly controlled. It was completely raised when touched by no one, not even Eusapia, she being under perfect control."

Time War: A Science Fiction Story

As Jane and Tom walked toward the vice-principal's office, the high school students started to speculate on what they might have done to get themselves into trouble.

“Did you mess around with the school's database again?” asked Jane.

“That was a one-shot thing, long ago” said Tom. “I bet it's your fault. Did they catch you smoking pot on the school grounds?”

“Hell, no,” said Jane.

The two students walked into the office of the school's vice-principal, Mr. Donahue. “Are we in trouble?” asked Jane.

“No, you are not,” said Mr. Donahue. “I have some very important news I have to break to all of the students at our high school. I thought I'd tell you first, to get a feeling for what kind of reaction the news will provoke.”

“I knew it: you're going to cancel the school play,” said Jane. “It's not fair, dammit. I worked so hard to get the lead part.”

“No, it's not that at all,” said Mr. Donahue. “It's something much, much bigger than that. What I have to tell you is this: the world is totally different from the way you think it is.”

“What do you mean?” asked Tom. “Oh, is this some kind of broaden-our-horizons talk or freshen-our-perspective lecture?”

“No,” said Mr. Donahue. “What I mean is that the world is really, truly, radically different from the way you think it is. Believe it or not, you don't even live in the century you think you are living in.”

Tom looked at Jane, and they both tried to suppress a laugh. “So tell us how that works,” said Tom with a smile.

“This isn't the year you think it is,” said Mr. Donahue. “This isn't even the twenty-first century. You are now living in the year 2527.”

Jane tried not to laugh. “How do you figure that?” she said.

“Have you ever heard of a time machine?” asked Mr. Donahue.

“You mean a machine allowing someone to travel through time?” said Tom. “Yes, but no one's ever invented that.”

“You're right,” said Mr. Donahue. “But one day someone invented something pretty similar. It was a machine that would prevent the passage of time. It was a machine that would prevent time from flowing.”

“Go on,” said Jane.

“The machine was invented in another country,” said Mr. Donahue. “By tinkering with the machine, the inventors added a feature they called geographic selectivity. They were able to stop the flow of time in only some places they had chosen, allowing the normal passage of time to occur in the rest of the world.”

“Wow, that must have been fun to play around with,” said Tom in a skeptical tone of voice. “What happened next?”

“The inventors of the machine sold their device to the government of their country,” explained Mr. Donahue. “That country declared war on the United States, Russia and China. That small country very quickly won the war by freezing time in the United States, Russia and China. They call this war the Time War. Our country lost that war, as did Russia and China.”

“So time is frozen in this country?” asked Jane. “But that's crazy. It that was true, I couldn't be talking right how.”

“No, time isn't frozen right now in the United States,” said Mr. Donahue. “They just recently unfroze time in this country. But for the past five centuries, time has been frozen in the United States, Russia and China. But in all the other countries, time has been flowing normally. The rest of the world is now far more technologically advanced than we are. Kenya and Ethiopia are now the most advanced nations on the planet.”

“Why would anyone do some crazy thing like that?” asked Tom, still not believing a word of the story.

“The country that did it said that it was necessary, to stop global warming caused by the superpowers, and to get rid of all the nuclear weapons,” explained Mr. Donahue.

“So I'm now more than 500 years old?” asked Jane. “Funny, I still don't have a wrinkle.”

“Of course, you don't,” said Mr. Donahue. “Because for most of those 500 years, time was frozen for you, and everyone else in the United States. So you didn't age an extra day.”

“So what do we do now, now that time has been unfrozen here in the US for the first time in five centuries?” asked Jane

“Well, the first thing we have to do is to inform everyone in the school, and convince them what happened,” said Mr. Donahue. “Then we have to work out a program for getting everyone up to speed on all the new technology. We have five centuries of progress to catch up on.”

"So what kind of things were invented during those centuries?" asked Jane.

"Things like self-dissolving garbage, instantaneous home construction through nanobots,  bottom-of-the-ocean entertainment resorts,  robotic husbands, 200-year-old Olympic medalists, and graduate degrees by syringe injection," said Mr. Donahue. 

“You'll never convince the other school kids that this crazy story is true,” said Tom.

“I think it might be easy to do that,” said Mr. Donahue. “You see, I've already made use of some of the new technology that was invented in the past five centuries while time was frozen here in the USA.”

Placing his hands on his neck, Mr. Donahue twisted something, and took off his head, placing his detached head on his desk. Jane and Tom began to scream.

“What are you screaming about?” said the detached head on the desk. “Having a detachable electronic head like this is very popular these days. It's so much better than one of those old-fashioned flesh-and-blood heads.”

Ignoring the Red Flags: Madoff and Materialism

Around the year 2005 it seemed that one of the the most respectable securities firms around was Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. It was run by Bernie Madoff, who at that time seemed to have the finest credentials. He was the former chairman of NASDAQ, one of America's largest securities trading establishments. Around 2005 the word around the upper class elite was that many smart upper-crust people were investing their money with Madoff's company. His investors “included banks, hedge funds, charities, universities, and wealthy individuals who have disclosed about $41 billion invested with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC,” according to a wikipedia.org page. According to the same page, famous people investing with Madoff included “Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, actors Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, John Malkovich... Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mortimer Zuckerman, Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax, the Wilpon family (owners of the New York Mets), broadcaster Larry King and World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein.” For years, it seemed like you could make more money investing with Madoff's firm than with any other securities firm.

But in 2008 it was discovered that Bernie Madoff's company was guilty of a massive 64-billion-dollar fraud. Madoff was running a gigantic Ponzi scheme, a scheme in which investments can seem to do well as long as the investors don't all ask for their money back, in which case they will find they have actually suffered massive losses. It was the largest Ponzi scheme in history. Madoff plead guilty, and was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Investors lost tens of billions of dollars because of the fraud.

Long before the fraud became public, there were many red flags regarding Madoff's company: warning signs that people should have paid attention to, but ignored. In the year 2000 a financial analyst named Harry Markopolos had done research on Madoff's company, and concluded “that Madoff's numbers didn't add up.” He told the Securities Exchange Commission that it was mathematically impossible for Madoff's to be getting the returns it claimed using the strategies it claimed to use. But the SEC ignored his warnings, including a 2005 17-page memo which listed 29 red flags or warning signs, and which had the title “The World's Largest Hedge Fund is a Fraud.” Markopolos approached the Wall Street Journal in 2005 with his claims that Madoff's company was a fraud, but the Wall Street Journal ignored him.

It seemed that the “social proof” involving Madoff's company was so great that people ignored the red flags. Social proof is when people regard something as well-established or proven or sensible based on the number of people who support it, the depth of their commitment, and the prestige of the most prestigious supporters. Given all of the wealthy, famous investors who had given so many billions to Bernie Madoff, his company had tons of “social proof.” But its financial claims were bunk. When investors got quarterly statements listing their investment returns, they were being told outrageous falsehoods.

Now let us consider modern-day materialism, the belief system that reigns in today's universities. Materialism consists of unproven tenets such as the claim that life and biological species arose accidentally, the belief that there are no souls or spirits, and the belief that human mental phenomena (such as consciousness and memory) can be explained entirely by the brain. We may ask: is modern-day materialism its own system of institutional falsehood rather similar to the Madoff scheme, and is it a kind of scheme of misleading baloney in which people are year after year fed false information that cannot be true because the math just doesn't add up? Does materialism have its own red flags just as bad as existed for the Madoff company, red flags that are being ignored because of an abundance of “social proof” leading people to think, “It's too big to be wrong?”

Let us consider five cases in which the math just doesn't work for materialism (which includes the idea that mental activity such as recollection is caused purely by brain activity, and that life and humans arose purely because of accidental natural processes).

1. Materialists claim that life originated from non-life, when there was some lucky combination of non-living chemicals that caused something living to appear. Scientific research has shown that even the simplest living microorganisms require more than 100 proteins. But a protein is a combination of hundreds of amino acids arranged in just the right way to achieve a functional effect. It has been estimated that the probability of even a single complex functional protein appearing by chance (from a random combination of its amino acids) is less than 1 in 10 to the seventieth power  -- more unlikely than  you guessing correctly the 10-digit social security numbers of seven consecutive strangers you met. It seems, therefore, that if mere chance is involved, we would not expect life to naturally appear from chance combinations of chemicals at any time in the history of the universe.
   
2. Materialists claim that mankind originated from random mutations and natural selection. We know that there have been about 100 billion humans who have lived since 8000 BC. The total number of humans or human ancestors who lived between 300,000 BC and 8000 BC is less than 3 billion, and probably less than 1 billion. There has been little impressive human evolution during the 100 billion lifetimes since 8000 BC, with the biggest examples being only minor things like lactose tolerance or better breathing for some humans living in high altitudes. But according to materialist accounts, between 300,000 BC and 8000 BC there was an enormous amount of evolution that led to the origin of speaking humans and humans capable of math, art, architecture, agriculture, science and philosophy. This requires we believe that during less than 3 billion lives there occurred vastly more helpful  evolution than occurred during 100 billion lives. But the mathematics of random mutations make such a thing exceptionally unlikely – as unlikely as a country getting 30 tornadoes in one year, and then only 1 tornado in the next 60 years. Calculations of the "waiting time" period needed for only a tiny fraction of the random mutations needed to account for hominid changes presumed to have occurred between 300,000 BC and 8000 BC suggest that it would actually have required very many millions of years for such mutations -- billions of years, in fact (to use the figure in this table for  a string of only 5 nucleotides). 
   
3. Materialists claim that memories are stored in the human brain, and materialist neuroscientists typically tell us that memories are stored in tiny brain components called synapses. But we know that these synapses are made up of proteins that have short lifetimes. The average lifetime of a synapse protein is only about two weeks. But old people can accurately remember experiences they had more than 50 years ago, or things they learned more than 50 years ago. This length of time (50 years) is some 1000 times longer than the two weeks that is the average lifetime of synapse proteins. So it seems that if memories are stored in the brain, they should not even last for  a thousandth of the maximum length of time that humans can remember things.
   
4. Humans such as actors who play Hamlet or Muslims who memorize all of their holy book can remember vast amounts of information with complete accuracy. But we know that synapses and neurons are very noisy.  A scientific paper states, "Several recent studies have documented the unreliability of central nervous system synapses: typically, a postsynaptic response is produced less than half of the time when a presynaptic nerve impulse arrives at a synapse." Another scientific paper says, "In the cortex, individual synapses seem to be extremely unreliable: the probability of transmitter release in response to a single action potential can be as low as 0.1 or lower."  So synapses in the cortex often transmit signals with a likelihood of between 10% and 50%. If we do an estimate of how well humans should be able to remember based on the amount of noise in neurons and synapses, taking into account the need for a brain signal to travel through multiple synapses, we must conclude that if memories are stored in brains, we should not be able to remember with more than 1% accuracy. But Hamlet actors and Wagnerian tenors remember very large amounts of stored information with 100% accuracy.
   
5. When people talk about the speed of brain signals, we typically hear an estimate of about 100 meters per second. But that is not a reliable estimate of the speed of brain signals, and is only how fast a brain signal may travel when moving across the fastest tiny parts of the brain (what are called myelinated axons).  A realistic estimate of the speed of brain signals would have to take into account the relatively slow speed of signal transmission through dendrites (estimated at only .5 meter per second), the very strong slowing factor of what are called synaptic delays (having a strong cumulative delaying effect), and another very strong slowing factor caused by what is called synaptic fatigue (a refractory period in which a synapse will often have to rest before firing again).  When you realistically take into account all of these factors,  as I have done at length in this post,  the math ends up showing that brain signals should not be able to travel in the cortex at much more than a snail's pace of about 1 or 2 centimeters per second.  But humans can remember very obscure memories instantly, such as when a quiz show contestant instantly identifies a randomly chosen name or place -- much, much faster, it would seem, than would be possible if our recall involved relatively slow brain signals moving about in our brains. 

In all of these cases, it seems that for materialism the math just doesn't add up. So there are lots of red flags suggesting materialism is feeding us falsehoods. But such red flags are being mainly ignored, just as happened in the Madoff case. Maybe it's for the same reason that it took so long for people to see what was wrong in the Madoff case: because there was an abundance of “social proof.” Just as the Madoff company had lots of "social proof" in the form of its prestigious investors, modern-day materialism has lots of "social proof," in the form of prestigious professors who support it.

Just as a Madoff investor may have reasoned that the Madoff company was “too big to be a sham,” someone today may reason that institutional academic materialism is “too big to be bunk.” But nothing is too big to be bunk or too big to be a sham.