Spookiest Years, Part 3: The Year 1851

It is time for another installment of the intermittently-appearing "Spookiest Years" series on this blog, in which I discuss reports of the paranormal appearing during particular years, with an emphasis on quoting original source materials. This time I focus on the year 1851. In 1851 the newspaper The Spirit Messenger continued to published reports of dramatic events at seances. Page 174 of the January 4, 1851 edition reports spooky events at seances in Boston, including raps seeming to answer questions.  The January 25, 1851 edition on page reports this:

"Some eight of us were seated around a common card table. Numerous rappings were heard on the table and on the floor in various directions, in answer to different questions. Some most beautiful sentences were spelled out in the usual way. Soon the table was observed to move, and at the request of the company, it  moved from one to three feet, more than fifty times, while the feet and hands of the 'Medium' were held fast by some of the company ! The table was frequently raised from the floor more than a foot. In one instance it stood poised on two legs more than five minutes, while an examination was going on underneath for the purpose of detecting the agency by which it was moved. I took hold of it frequently while it was in this position, and found it stood quite firm. When I succeeded in bringing the side that was raised down towards the floor again, it would invariably fly back as soon as my hands were off. The 'Medium,' be it remembered, was an this time held perfectly still by one of the company."

On page 205 of the February 1, 1851 edition, we have an account of a long seance in which mysterious raps seem to answer questions correctly. On page 310 of the May 3, 1851 edition we have this interesting account of paranormal music:

"First there is heard low harmonious hreathings, like the hum of insects. It increases, until it resembles the softest chords of the Aeolian harp. Growing louder, it pervades the room with a full burst of the most  delicious music, as of the sweetest voices and instruments. Then are distinguished the words of the song, more or less plainly, until at last the unseen choir leave the room, and the sounds recede, growing more and more distant, until they are lost. The first manifestation of this kind.... occurred In the city of Troy [in New York state] a few weeks ago, under the following impressive circumstances. It was in an intelligent family, who were all thoroughly sceptical in regard to spiritual manifestations. One day they assembled around the death-bed of a beloved member. Just as she drew her last breath, and her features were setting into the rigidity of the tomb, every person present heard this low breathing, as of angels' harps. Had it been one person, it might have been an illusion of the imagination ; but it was an entire family. The sounds increased, swelling into a harmony. whose only name was heavenly. It continued full, and sweet, and strong, as one can conceive of angelic spirits making, for about a half an hour, when it passed from the room, and gradually faded in the distance, seeming to accompany the released soul in its heavenward flight. Since that time these musical sounds have been frequently repeated in that family, and they are also heard in several places in this city and Brooklyn."

This report was made decades before the invention of the phonograph and the tape recorder. On page 392 of the July 12, 1851 edition we have an account of mysterious occurrences in Providence, Rhode Island, which include a guitar playing by itself, and also levitating about. We read this:

"The instrument was carried by the spirit towards a window, through the upper part of which a dim moonlight shone ; and then we could see the guitar perform sundry fantastic tricks for our amusement. It would move sometimes horizontally and then vertically; it would dance, and then remain at rest ; dart back into the darkness, and then push forward into the dim moonlight, until we were perfectly satisfied with its lively performances·; when it was gently laid upon the table as if the operator wished for further orders."

A similar account appears in the 1853 account here, with the author saying he saw a guitar playing by itself for an hour, as well as moving around mysteriously. 

Page 17 of the edition of August 23, 1851 gives us one of the accounts of a phenomenon that would come to be extremely widely reported, and called "table tipping" or "table turning" (a diminutive phrase to describe the phenomenon, which very often included reports of table levitations or dramatic movements by untouched tables).  We read this:

"There has been considerable stir in town, of late, relative to what are called ' The Tippings.'  The hands of the medium are placed on a stand, and after an interval, the stand will tip in answer to questions, and will sometimes rock to and fro, and turn over upon the floor and rise again. The slighter movements of the stand appear like nothing extraordinary, as any one, without any apparent effort, by laying on his hands, can easily accomplish as much; but the more eccentric movements, such as the rocking to and fro,—the turning over and raising up of the stand, &c, are points which invariably elicit attention and inquiry, and produce the conviction that there is an influence at work beyond mere muscular effort...The 'tippings' first made their appearance in this town, in the family of Mr. John Morey, where, we believe, they have been somewhat accompanied with the Wrappings. This, however, is at present, peculiarly the case in the presence-of Mrs. French Cheney, the lady whom we have frequently alluded to in our columns, and through whom, at our request, the 'rappings' first manifested themselves in this place. She but places the tips of her fingers on the stand, and it will work itself into almost every imaginable posture, and the raps will be frequently heard much louder than when she is mesmerized [hypnotized]."

Page 163 of the November 8, 1851 edition of the Spirit Messenger gives an account by Charles Partridge of a meeting attended by "Judge Edmonds, Dr. and Mrs. Gray, E. Fowler and sister, Mrs. Fox and daughters, Messrs. Gordon and Cooley, Josiah Partridge and my family," among others. We read of a dramatic series of manifestations:

"A suggestion was made to darken the room, to enable us to see the lights which are sometimes produced by the spirits. We accordingly did so; and the lights which had been desired, were at different times and in different places seen, sometimes resembling phosphorescent flames, occasionally forming luminous clouds moving about the room ; sometimes they appeared like bright, glistening stars, and at other times like sparkling crystals or diamonds, &c. Physical manifestations increased in variety and force, and continued for three hours... The card table before mentioned began to move with violent force from one side of our circle (which was large) to the other, rocking and raising up and coming down, and finally the leaf was shut up, the cover turned round to its place, the table was gently turned upside down and laid at our feet....A chair, which stood outside of our circle and several feet from any one, was suddenly moved up to the circle and back, rocked, and finally, with great rapidity, conveyed from one end of the room to the other, winding its way among the people who sat there without touching them ; and yet at times passing with fearful rapidity within an inch or two of our persons. We were touched on different parts of our persons, simultaneously, as by a human hand, so distinctly that its size and temperature could be felt; and this was repeatedly done to different persons under circumstances in which it was not possible that it was done by any one in the form.... Afterward, the bass viol and violin were raised above their heads and out of their reach, (except one end, which sometimes rested on their hand, head or shoulder, often changing,) and in this position they were played and rapped upon as by human fingers, and the lime marked as before. A dinner bell on the shelf was raised up, and rung over their heads, then taken out into the parlor and carried round the room, ringing over the heads of fifteen or twenty persons sitting in the circle there, and then into the adjoining parlor, (where there was no person,) and carried nearly its length and dropped on the floor some fifteen or twenty feet from any human being. Another small bell was taken off the shelf, rung, and placed into and taken out of the hands of several persons. A pocket handkerchief was taken from the Judge's pocket, and tied into many knots, and put back again—a table-brush was taken from the shelf and put into the hands of several persons successive and taken out again, and their hair brushed with it."

Page 184 of the November 22, 1851 edition of The Spiritual Messenger gives us an account from Lebanon, New Hampshire dated October 21, 1851, an account signed by a variety of witnesses:  E. F. Brewster, Ohio; S. O. Hatch, Franklin; J. C. Hatch, S. H. Williams, J. C. Bill, Julia A. Blanchard, Fidelia Blanchard, Caroline Hatch, and Julia A. Williams. We read of a meeting at the house of D. Blanchard attended by Daniel Dunglas Home, whose name is misspelled as D. D. Hume. This may be the first published account of a medium who would go on to worldwide fame, and who would pass with flying colors a series of stringent tests by the world class scientist Sir William Crookes.  Compared to the later marvels observed in the presence of Home, such as Home himself levitating, the results are less dramatic. The main wonder reported (occurring under good light) is this: 

"It was suggested that they were to help in moving the table and an affirmative reply immediately followed. Then commenced larger and more decided movements—the table being slid freely about the floor and raised alternately one side and the other several inches, and at one time it was raised nearly to an angle of forty-five degrees, poised on two side legs, and then by oscillating movements the time was correctly kept to several tunes that were sung by the company."

Around page 198 of an 1853 book we have a discussion of someone who seemed to have been mysteriously moved  in 1851 to write down a record of someone's death, a death they had never learned of from their senses. The book reproduces the letter below:

" Fitchburg, Mass., Feb. 22, 1852. 

Mr. Charles Partridge :

Dear Sir: In reply to your letter of inquiry concerning Mr. Hooper's statement to you, I will say that, on or about the 20th of March last, Mr. Hooper told me that he had, for a number of days, been impelled to write, ' Your father, Thomas Hooper, is dead' and that, on inquiry of the Agency which influenced him to write this, when his father died ? he was further impressed to write, 'March 13th.'  He also told me that, ' he thought he was wrongly impressed, because he had but a short time before received a letter from England, where his father lived, and at the time the letter was written, his father was in his usual health.'

A few weeks after Mr. Hooper made these statements to me, he showed me a letter from a sister in England, informing him that his father died ' the 13th of March.' Of the genuineness of the letter from his sister, I will also add, there can be no question. These are the simple facts in relation to this case, as I know them...

" Yours respectfully, Charles Woodhouse."

A very similar account involving a different person (a Mr. Pecard of Lockport, NY) is told on page 200 of an 1851 book by Joel Tiffany, who earned a living as an official state reporter for the State of New York. We are told that Pecard was told in a seance that his daughter had died; and that upon returning from Rochester to Lockport, he learned that this had had happened.  After opening the book with much philosophical speculation,  the author tells us this:

"Thus during the winter past, I have frequently been present when sounds were produced, in answer to mental, oral, and written questions, entirely disconnected with any apparent physical agency. These sounds have been produced when there were no persons present but myself to hear them, and produced on objects directly under my inspection, so that I could positively know no physical agency was employed in their production. These sounds were frequently so heavy, that is, the concussion was so great, as to cause the table, chair, sofa, or whatever they were produced upon, to vibrate so distinctly as not only to be felt, but also to be seen. While sitting in a room with others, although entirely physically detached from all present, when I could positively know no person or physical agency was connected with the chair upon which I was sitting, sounds, clear, distinct and heavy, have been produced upon my chair, causing it to vibrate, and by placing my hand upon the place where the sounds were being produced, have received the concussion on my hand, and even had communications spelled out upon the back of my hand ; and this in open daylight, and when I was in the full possession of all my physical senses. I have not unfrequently sat by a table under circumstances when I could positively know that no person, either through machinery or otherwise, was in contact with it, when every part of the table was clearly within view, in open daylight, and have heard sounds produced upon the table with so much violence, as to cause ink stands, books and pencils lying upon it, to bound up from the table with much force.

During the same period of time I have witnessed the manifestation of physical power, other than the production of sounds, without any sensible or perceptible physical agency. One class of phenomena very common is the imparting an unnatural weight to material objects. Of this class I have witnessed the holding down of tables with so much force, that they could not be raised from the floor by any application of a power ten times greater than would be required to raise their natural weight ; and I have tested the genuineness of these phenomenal in such a manner as to leave no chance for mistake or doubt." 

On a later page the author recalls seeing a stand mysteriously move in a way that seemed to answer his questions, according to some code. We read this:

"I then arose, set my chair back and requested the spirit to answer my questions by moving the stand for an affirmative, and letting it remain at rest for a negative answer. To this it assented by moving the stand ; during the time, no person was standing within reach of it, and there was no machinery or other physical agency whatever connected with it. This I know, and the same can be attested to by all others present. I then commenced asking questions, which were all properly and correctly answered by moving the stand. This continued for the space of twenty or thirty minutes, during which time the stand in reply to every question requiring an affirmative answer was moved from four to six inches."

Later the author reports witnessing dramatic physical manifestations in Pittsburgh, seeing a heavy mahogany table being mysteriously lifted up and shaken violently. He also reports seeing in some other place a levitation and ringing of an untouched heavy bell.  On another page he reports seeing this:

"All these preliminaries being settled, the bell commenced ringing, the accordion was played, the violin fingered like a guitar, a small toy whip, which happened to be lying under the table at the time, was brandished about from one end of the table to the other, (some twelve feet), and a communication given by alphabet, and all these going on at the same time — after this, the large bell which had frequently moved up and down the table, came gradually up the foot and leg of Dr. W. (who was a member of the circle), until it came to the side of the knee and there it remained suspended without any physical agency, for some moments, until every member of the circle had an opportunity of examining it in that position."

Later the author gives an account very difficult to account for by any method of trickery:

"Again, that the agencies can read our thoughts, may be inferred from the fact, that they can answer mental questions with the same facility they can oral or written ones. I have often mentally questioned these agencies in such a manner as to require affirmative and negative answers promiscuously, through a long series of questions ; and which upon the sense of chance guessing, would render it absolutely impossible for any person to answer correctly. And yet these questions have each received their appropriate answer, rendering it as certain as certain can be, that whatever influence made the sounds in answer to my questions, that influence was dictated by an intelligence which was familiar with my thoughts. Again, I have witnessed answer after answer given by alphabet, when the questions were propounded mentally, from written ones, and that too, under circumstances which precluded all possibility of the medium's knowing any thing of the nature of the questions propounded, and in such cases, the answers given were most astonishingly appropriate and correct."

On pages 236 to 239 the author gives a ringing denunciation of slavery. 

It was not until 1853 that Judge John Edmonds published his two-volume work describing accounts of witnessing paranormal phenomena. But he makes it clear that he took very careful records, and his recollections are not based only on memories, but dated notes taken earlier. In the book he says this about an 1851 event:

"On the 23d of April, 1851, I was one of a party of nine who sat around a center-table, on which a lamp with glass pendants, was burning, and another lamp was burning on the mantlepiece. And there, in plain sight of us all, that table was lifted at least a foot from the floor, and shaken backward and forward as easy as I could shake a goblet in my hands. Some of the party tried to stop it by the exercise of their strength, but in vain, so we all drew back from the table, and by the light of those two burning lamps, we saw that heavy mahogany table susi)ended in the air." 

1851 saw the publication of the book Letters to a Candid Inquirer, on Animal Magnetism, which you can read online here.  The author was William Gregory (1803-1858), a professor of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh (founded in 1582, and the sixth oldest English university).  Some of the many very spooky accounts in the book are discussed in my post here. 

We get a good chronicle of the mysterious events occurring in New York State and New England between 1848 to 1851 in the first half of the 1852 book by John C. Bywater entitled The Mystery Solved, or a Bible Expose of the Spirit Rappings, Showing That They Are Not Caused by the Spirits of the Dead, But by Evil Demons or Devils. The second half of the book (attempting a  "demons did it" explanation) is pretty worthless, but the first half of the book provides some careful documentation of the mysterious events occurring between 1848 and 1852, helping to show the lack of any credible natural explanation for such events. 

The events described above (involving such as table levitations and tables standing on two legs at a 45 degree angle) were dramatic, but far more dramatic things were reported in the following years, with things seeming to get more and more spectacular as the years passed, as I will discuss in later installments of this intermittently-appearing "Spookiest Years" series. For two earlier installments of this series, see my posts here and here. 

New Poll Finds That Fewer Than One in Three Americans Believe the Darwinist Narrative

 Late last month we had the publication of a large survey by the Survey Center on American Life. The survey polled about 5000 randomly selected adults, using some methodology so that the characteristics of the survey participants ended up matching those of the US population.  The poll probes questions such as how much trust the public has in scientists and how much the public believes some of the claims that scientists typically make. A web page announcing the results has the clumsy title "America’s Crisis of Confidence: Rising Mistrust, Conspiracies, and Vaccine Hesitancy After COVID-19."  The authors are not actually trying to suggest a rise in conspiracies, but a rise in belief in conspiracies.  Their data fails to show any such rise in belief in conspiracies. The web page has many graphs showing the poll results, and  only two of the graphs are a line graph showing a trend line over multiple years. Those graphs do not show any rise in belief in conspiracies.

The first few paragraphs of the web page announcing the poll results gives us a "confidence crisis" narrative in which the authors try to make it sound like there is some defect in the public and that scientists are wrongly being distrusted. We have this as the second paragraph:

"For years now, public discourse has been rife with concerns about the status of expertise in our political life. Stretching back decades, but intensifying since the rise of Donald Trump in 2016, a profusion of articles and books have bemoaned what commentators variously describe as an 'attack on science,' the 'death of expertise,' the 'war on science,' or the 'crisis of expertise.'  Many blame the ignorance or irrationality of Americans who ignore or actively oppose the recommendations of scientific, medical, and other technical experts and are increasingly susceptible to conspiracy theories."

This is classic "blame the public" spin in which a decline in confidence in scientific experts is regarded as some defect in the thinking of the public, rather than a rational response to a variety of reasons for lacking confidence in scientists or announcements about their work, reasons that include the following:

• A very strong structural level of overconfidence by scientists who in many fields routinely claim to understand deep mysteries of nature they do not actually understand.
• A very high level of ideological bias among many scientists who adhere to belief dogmas of particular scientific communities, dogmas that are not well established by evidence.
• A very high amount of speculation in quite a few fields of science, which may involve scientists speaking in a matter-of-fact manner about speculative never-observed things such as dark matter, dark energy, primordial cosmic inflation, string theory, neural engrams and the multiverse. 
• An extremely large replication crisis in fields such as social science, psychology, bioscience and neuroscience, in which a very large fraction or most of the results reported in scientific papers fail to be replicated.
• A crisis of bad methods (also called Questionable Research Practices) in some fields of science such as neuroscience, in which experimental studies typically have multiple serious flaws such as a lack of pre-registration, a lack of an effective blinding protocol, the use of way-too-small study group sizes, or the use of unreliable measurement techniques. 
• The deleterious effect of factors such as publication bias (under which journals tend to publish only positive results confirming an effect and not publish results failing to confirm an effect), citation counts and "papers published" counts (in which scientists are judged by the number of citations papers get and how many papers they have published, rather than how well they adhered to sound scientific techniques, which tends to encourage "quick and dirty" experimental methods, and also papers making interesting-sounding claims that may not be matched by any data collected). 
•  The extremely bad effect of an academia-cyberspace profit complex, in which web pages containing ads that generate revenue for the web site owners are strongly incentivized to publish misleading but interesting-sounding descriptions of new scientific research, to produce clickbait that generates more page views and more revenue for those running the web pages, as well as various other profit effects in which hype and misleading announcements are incentivized.
• A seemingly growing tendency for university press releases to make boastful claims about new research not matching any accomplishments of the research, and a seemingly growing tendency for scientific papers to have titles or abstract sentences making claims not established by any data produced by the described study (the latter occurring largely to maximize the eagerly desired paper citations). 
• A strong entanglement of certain types of scientists with various industries such as the pharmaceutical industry ("Big Pharma") and the biotech industry ("Big Biotech"), with the scientists often owning shares in companies whose stock prices can be positively affected by research done by the scientists, a relation that may reasonably be regarded as affecting the objectivity of such scientists.

We hear nothing about such problems in the  web page announcing the results, which seems to be written with an attitude that when the public distrusts scientists or doubts their claims, it's all the public's fault.  But let's ignore the attitude of the writers, and look at some of the interesting data that was produced, some of which is misleadingly described by the authors.  One of the topics probed was what the public believes about human origins, and whether the public believes typical biologist claims about human origins. 

The first thing we hear about this is a paragraph that uses the extremely shady tactic of asking people whether humans "evolved over time."  The dubious use of such a question (while insinuating that it is a measure of belief in Darwinism) is one of the most disreputable tactics of pollsters trying to create an impression that a majority believe in Darwinism. It is conceded by everyone that gene pools change at least slightly over time, and any change in a gene pool is an example of evolution, according to one of the definitions of evolution.  Even those completely rejecting the idea that human origins can be mainly explained by Darwinian ideas will tend to agree with the statement that "humans evolved over time," because the human gene pool is now different from what it was thousands of years ago.  So asking people whether they agree with the statement that "humans evolved over time" is not a decent way to measure whether people agree with claims that Darwinian ideas explain how we got human beings.  The web page describing the new survey results tells us that 70% of the US agree that "humans evolved over time," but that does not show that even half of Americans agree with Darwinian claims about human origins. 

The web page announcing the results of the new survey then has a misleading section header of "Americans embrace evolution," which does not match the numerical data reported by the survey. This is followed by the web page making an extremely misleading claim about what was produced by its own survey.  This is what the page claims: 

"Most Americans believe that evolution is the best explanation for the origin of the human species, though a significant minority remain doubtful. More than six in 10 (61 percent) Americans agree that 'evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth.'  Thirty-seven percent of the public disagrees."

The paragraph above is a very misleading description of the results of Question H of the survey. The actual results are below:

Evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth
29	Completely agree
32	Somewhat agree
15	Somewhat disagree
22	Completely disagree
2	Refused

It is very misleading for the authors of the survey summary to be describing these results under a header of "Americans embrace evolution," and is very misleading for them to be using these results to make a a claim that "more than six in 10 (61 percent) Americans agree that 'evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth.' " When someone answers that they only "somewhat agree" with a claim, they should never be simply listed as people who "agree" with that claim.  The actual results should have been stated only exactly as they were: 29% completely agreeing and 32% merely somewhat agreeing.  

There follows on the web page a misleading graph that graphs a result that was never actually produced by the survey.  The graph is a visual representation of the incorrect claim by the web page authors that 61% of the respondents "agree that 'evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth.' "  No such result was produced, and the actual result was 29% completely agreeing with that statement and 32% merely somewhat agreeing with that statement.

I may note the bias involved in having a poll state "evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth," and then asking people whether they agree with that statement. Through the power of suggestion, this will tend to produce a higher agreement rate with the statement than a question asking what is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth, and then giving options such as "evolution" and "the agency of some higher power."  Similarly, if your poll makes the statement "argon is a dangerous form of air pollution we should control," and asks how well you agree with this statement, probably at least 30% will agree because of the power of suggestion, even though we all have been breathing an atmosphere that is about 1% argon all our lives. 

A web page tells us that something called "acquiescence bias" causes people to be more likely to state approval of something when they are simply asked whether they agree or disagree with a statement. We read this:

"One of the most common formats used in survey questions is the 'agree-disagree' format. In this type of question, respondents are asked whether they agree or disagree with a particular statement. Research has shown that, compared with the better educated and better informed, less educated and less informed respondents have a greater tendency to agree with such statements. This is sometimes called an 'acquiescence bias' (since some kinds of respondents are more likely to acquiesce to the assertion than are others) .... A better practice is to offer respondents a choice between alternative statements. A Pew Research Center experiment with one of its routinely asked values questions illustrates the difference that question format can make. Not only does the forced choice format yield a very different result overall from the agree-disagree format, but the pattern of answers between respondents with more or less formal education also tends to be very different."

The example given by the page shows how big this the power of suggestion can be.  When asked whether they agree or disagree that "the best way to ensure peace is by military strength," 55% agreed. But when the question was posed in a format allowing choices of either "the best way to ensure peace is by military strength" or "diplomacy is the best way to ensure peace," only 33% chose military strength and 55% chose diplomacy. 

We get a much better idea of what Americans are really thinking on the topic of human origins with a later question of the new survey discussed above. Here is the question as it appears as Question 8 in the survey form, with the percentages choosing particular answers :

Which comes closer to your view?
31	Humans and other living things have evolved over time due to processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process
38	Humans and other living things have evolved over time due to processes that were guided or allowed by God or a higher power
12	Humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time
17	Not sure
1	Refused

Now, you might think that this is a pretty fair question, because it offers several different options. But the truth is that the poll question above is a very poor way to be posing a question about human origins.  There are some very serious problems with the poll question above:

(1) Excluding the answer of "Not sure," the people being polled are given a choice between either embracing (a) the idea that "humans and other living things have evolved over time" as an explanation for their origins, or (b) the idea that "Humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."  The poll respondents cannot choose an answer saying that humans appeared for some reason after the beginning of a time, one that does not sound like such an appearance occurred mainly because of Darwinian evolution. 

(2) People believing in the biblical account of human origins have no answer matching their beliefs. The Bible does not say humans existed from the beginning of time, but that humans were created after the heavens and the earth were created. 

(3) There is no answer matching the beliefs of people who believe that the human species was purposefully created. None of the answers refer to a purposeful creation.  The answer referring to humans existing "since the beginning of time" does not seem to match the idea of those who think the human race was deliberately created after the beginning of time. 

(4) There is no answer matching the beliefs of people who believe that the human species arose mainly because of non-evolutionary reasons very much after the beginning of time, such as people who believe that humans arose because of purposeful activity by visiting extraterrestrials.   

(5) Since it does not refer to humans evolving from some lower species, the question does not measure belief in the core Darwinist idea that the human species arose from some lower species or ape-like species. It merely refers instead to humans "evolving over time." Someone believing that humans were divinely created might choose the first answer as his choice, while believing that after a divine creation there occurred a little human evolution that God did not assist. That person's answer would then tend to be counted as support for Darwinism, even though the person rejected the Darwinist belief that humans arose through mere natural processes. 

What we have in Question 8 above is a question that seems designed to try to get as many people as possible to give some answer sounding like an answer voicing support for evolution as an explanation for humans.  It is a poor way to be trying to figure out what people think about human origins. Despite the clear Darwinist slant of the question, in which the cards are stacked in favor of Darwin, the result is a very humbling one for Darwinists. Less than a third of the people answering have agreed with the Darwinist account of human origins, that humans arose merely due to processes such as natural selection.  Only 31% of the respondents have agreed with the claim that "Humans and other living things have evolved over time due to processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process." 

It is remarkable that so few agree with that statement after so many decades of Darwinist control over the educational system, and endless stories in our mainstream press repeating the groundless legend that Darwin's ideas explain the origin of the human species.  The socially constructed triumphal legend that a 19th century biologist with no degree in biology explained the origin of the human species (requiring a million types of just-right microscopic biological complexities he knew nothing about) has been endlessly repeated by the press and our educational systems. But the great majority of the American people still are not buying it. Fewer than one third of them agree with the Darwinist narrative that we arose merely due to processes such as natural selection. 

In its description of its methodology, the recent poll makes no claim to be a secret ballot poll. We are told that people were randomly picked and contacted, but no mention is made of any attempt to inform poll respondents that they were engaging in a secret ballot.  If a secret ballot technique had been used, I strongly suspect that far fewer than 31% would have answered they agreed with the claim that "Humans and other living things have evolved over time due to processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process." In the case of Darwinism we have a situation in which authorities (the educational system and professors) keep trying to give people the idea that a particular belief is the politically correct belief that they are obligated to believe. Many people filling out what they think is not a secret ballot will kind of think that they must "answer as they are supposed to answer," but will answer differently when they are convinced they have a secret ballot and will never be penalized for answering as they believe. The new poll finds that only 6% of the respondents were atheists, and only 7% agnostic. These very low numbers are part of the reason I suspect that if a secret ballot had been done, far fewer than 31% would have answered they agreed with the claim that "Humans and other living things have evolved over time due to processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process."  A properly designed survey question about human origins (not having the defects listed I above) would also have  probably resulted in far fewer than 31% agreeing with the statement above. 

What would a good poll question about human origins look like, one that would not suffer from any of the five problems I listed above? It might look like this (a question not appearing in the recent poll):

Which comes closer to your view? (Mark X in only one box.)
	Humans evolved from some lower species because of natural processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process.
	Humans evolved from some lower species, with this evolution guided or aided by God or a higher power.
	Humans arose mainly because of the action of some causal power or causal agency that scientists don't understand very well.
	Humans arose pretty much or exactly as described by the sacred scriptures I follow.
	Our bodies and minds and behavior are so complex and hard-to-explain that humans do not understand how the human race arose or how human language first arose.
	I don't know.
	I decline to answer.

If you were to give this question in a secret ballot poll to Americans, I think it is very unlikely that even 25% would choose the first answer. Answering another poll question (Question 9C), one asking how well scientists understand "how the human species came to be", only 14% of the respondents in the large new poll answered "very well" rather than some answer indicating less confidence in scientist's knowledge of this topic. 

The new poll tells us that trust in scientists has dropped sharply since the year 2020.  We have a graph telling us that the percentage of Americans having a great deal or some trust in scientists has dropped from about 89% in 2020 to only 69% in 2023. We read that "nearly half of the public (47 percent) agrees that scientific research has become less trustworthy in recent years." 

Anyone studying the degree of  belief in Darwinist tenets might reasonably derive a lesson from this poll and how it was described in the document announcing it: (1) polls trying to measure belief in Darwinist ideas tend to use tricky or vague wording designed to maximize results suggesting belief in Darwinist claims;  (2) the numerical results of such polls are often inaccurately summarized to try to make it sound as if a belief in Darwinist claims is higher than the numerical results suggest. Similarly, tactics of "give us an inch and we'll take a mile" are very heavily used in the literature of Darwinism salesmen, where we constantly see little bits of gene pool change or unimpressive microevolution treated as if such things were justifications for belief in macroevolution, something a trillion times harder such as microbes evolving into mammals or chimp-like creatures evolving into humans.  

There is a credible scientific account for how gene pool change can naturally occur. There is no credible scientific account for how macroevolution involving massive body structure innovation and massive numbers of new protein innovations and new cell types could occur. Two of the very many reasons why the latter does not exist are (1) the sky-high level of organization and functional complexity in biochemistry, proteins and cells, requiring a fine-tuned arrangement of extremely  many parts of the right type, with a multitude of too-hard-to-accidentally-achieve functional thresholds; and (2) the fact that DNA (a mere repository of low-level chemical information) specifies neither the large-scale structure of bodies nor the small-scale structure of cells, contrary to the innumerable misstatements that Darwinists have made about this topic. So there is no conceivable change in DNA or its genes that can explain something such as a transition from dinosaurs to flying birds or a transition from chimp-like organisms to humans. 

The commonly stated idea that there is some consensus among scientists about how the human species originated is one of the very many misleading claims spread about by Darwinism enthusiasts, who often use misleading terms and phrases.  Even polls of scientists slanted to produce results favoring Darwinism (such as the one discussed here) reveal 8% disagreement with the Darwinist explanation, and a well-designed secret ballot poll of scientists would reveal a much higher disagreement. A careful reading of my very long post "Candid Confessions of the Scientists" (which has countless quotes by scientists) will reveal that scientists very often express lack of explanatory confidence about a host of matters relevant to human origins. You might credibly claim to have an understanding of human origins by natural processes only if you had an understanding of many smaller questions, such as how we got human minds, how human memory works, how human thinking and understanding arises, how human language first arose, how we got so many very fine-tuned genes and fine-tuned proteins, how proteins fold into specific 3D shapes needed for their  function, how protein complexes form, how cells reproduce, how a human zygote progresses to become the vastly more organized state of a human body, and so forth.  In my post "Candid Confessions of the Scientists" we hear innumerable scientists confessing or insinuating that they do not understand such things, and do not understand other things such as the origin of life. Publicly scientists love to make insinuations that they are in agreement about human origins. But scattered throughout their books, papers and articles is very much  evidence that no such agreement exists, and that the necessary foundation for credibly claiming confidence about understanding human origins simply has not been laid.

The full list is ten times longer

Quite a Few So-Called "Alien Abductions" May Be Spiritual Experiences

Netflix has an interesting new series called "Encounters" dealing with UFO sightings and similar reports of the paranormal. One episode partially deals with a reported UFO sighting at the Ariel school in Ruwa, Zimbawe.  On September 16, 1994 about 60 school children between nine and twelve claimed to have seen a strange craft and strange beings near the craft.  The same episode deals with Harvard professor John Mack, who interviewed some of the Ariel school children.  In the 1990's John Mack started seriously studying reports of paranormal experience that are often called "alien abduction" accounts (although, as I will explain, such a term may be an inappropriate one for many of these cases).  His scientist colleagues expected him to produce a paper or book suggesting that accounts of alien abductions are produced by people with mental illness. Instead, Mack produced the 1996 book "Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens," in which he stated that the people telling such stories seem to be generally of sound mind.  Mack suggested that the people may well have been reporting experiences of something that really happened, not just something that was all in their minds.

The behavior of Mack's fellow scientists was one of the most shameful episodes in the recent history of science.  Mack was subjected to merciless gaslighting from fellow scientists, who treated him as if he had lost his mind or gone over to some "lunatic fringe."  Mack's serious scholarship on observational reports well-worthy of study was treated as an abhorrent aberration by materialist professors eager to "sweep under the rug" such reports and prevent people from studying them. It was just more of what has gone on for more than 200 years within scientific academia: scientists senselessly ignoring important-seeming observational reports they should have been paying attention to, for the sake of maintaining a storyline consistent with their materialist dogmas and poorly grounded boasts of understanding human minds or human origins.  Harvard put together some "Star Chamber" style secret committee to try and revoke Mack's credentials. In 1995 it was announced that after a year of "closed door hearings" Harvard would not discipline Mack. The article pointed out that the hearings had cost Mack more than $100,000 in legal expenses. Mack eventually died suddenly after being hit by a car.  

A key question is: how much of Mack's accounts were obtained through hypnosis?  On page 32 of his book "Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters" Mack states this:

"A modified hypnosis or relaxation exercise may be used to help focus the client's attention upon their inner experience and memories, but it should be emphasized that about 80 percent of the information is obtained through conscious recollection...We are careful not to lead individuals or to encourage them to 'produce' and abduction story --we use neutral, encouraging comments and questions."

This raises a question mark about the reliability of the accounts, because it is known that under hypnosis people can be extremely suggestible. A nineteenth century work describes this aspect of hypnotism, describing some hypnotized subjects:

"When they drank water, and were told that it was milk, coffee, rum, whisky, or wormwood, they tasted it as such. Nay, after drinking it as whisky, they were told that they were drunk, and in a minute or two became, in every particular, very drunk indeed. The expression of the face was perfectly that of intoxication, and they could not walk a step without staggering or falling. They were easily made, by suggestion, to fancy themselves any other persons, and acted in character. They shot, fished, swam, lectured, and exhibited every feeling suggested to them. They were as easily made to suppose a stick to be a gun, a rod, a sword, nay, a serpent ; or a chair to be a tiger or a bear. From these animals they fled with extreme terror. They were made to see, hear, and feel a dreadful storm, and to creep for shelter under a table or a chair, supposed by them to be a house."

It is quite a potential problem for us to be told that 80% of reported recollections come from "conscious recollection" and that hypnosis was used to get some of the accounts.  That makes it unclear whether a particular detail we hear from someone did or did not come from statements under hypnosis.  A good technique would be:

(1) Whenever citing or quoting anything that a particular person said under hypnosis, always tell the reader that such a statement was made under hypnosis.

(2) If a person ever makes some sensational claim under hypnosis, attempt to verify such a claim by seeing whether it is made by the same person under more than one hypnotic session. 

Unfortunately, it seems that Mack failed to follow such a technique.  But we should not necessarily throw away the accounts he has gathered, merely because of such imperfect methods.  

Another complaint I have about Mack is his terminology.  His book titles seem to overuse the term "abduction" and to presumptively use the term "aliens."  A typical account in Mack's books will involve some encounter with some mysterious entity of unknown origin.  Why should we be using the term "alien" to refer to such entities? In most cases no claim is being made by anyone to have learned that the strange entity encountered is from another planet.  If such reports come from encounters with real mysterious entities, we do not know whether such entities are spiritual, extraterrestrial or extra-dimensional.  Often the reports involve mystical-sounding or spiritual-sounding experiences that it may be inappropriate to describe as "abductions," a term with a strong criminal connotation.  Mack's 1996 book should have had a less presumptive title, something such as "Human Encounters With Mysterious Entities."  And Mack's use in his books of the term "alien abduction phenomenon" is unfortunate.  It would have been better to have used a more general term such as "involuntary high-intensity anomalous experience." 

The fact is that humans have for a very long time reported an extremely wide variety of encounters with mysterious entities:

(1) For ages humans in normal health have reported that in normal waking consciousness they suddenly and unexpectedly encountered apparitions of the dead, appearing as full or partial human figures.

(2) Very large numbers of dying people report seeing apparitions of the dead, a phenomenon sometimes called deathbed visions.

(3) Many have reported seeing mysterious humanoid figures such as  Bigfoot or Yeti.

(4) In near-death experiences people report seeing a wide variety of mysterious entities that may include some numinous "Being of light," deceased relatives or deceased friends, angelic or semi-angelic figures, or various other mysterious figures. 

(5) A thorough examination of the history of spiritualism will reveal very many reports of encounters with mysterious figures appearing during seances, figures often called materializations.  A prominent example is the Katie King apparition or materialization well-studied by the scientist Sir William Crookes.  Read the section entitled "Miss Cook's Mediumship" in the newspaper account here for a very detailed account, and my posts   here, here, here and here for related information. 

(6) The lore of the Catholic Church includes numerous stories of encounters with mysterious figures, often identified as the Virgin Mary or saints.  An examination of the lore of Mahayana Buddhism would probably produce very many similar accounts. 

(7) Users of certain types of drugs report seeing mysterious entities, and sometimes claim to see the same type of mysterious entities (with a very distinctive non-human appearance) whenever they take a particular type of drug. 

(8) In quite a few cultures there are figures called shamans who claim to be able to go on spiritual journeys in which they may encounter mysterious entities.

(9) As discussed here, a small group of people claim to be able to practice at will something called astral projection in which they have out-of-body experiences that may involve claimed encounters with strange nonearthly intelligences. 

(10) We can find in every major religion some mystics who claimed to  have trips of the soul in which they encountered some superhuman reality. 

People don't learn about such things (except in the briefest and the most superficial way) when studying to become psychology professors. Mack should have thoroughly studied such reports as part of his investigation into the accounts he has labeled as "alien abduction" reports.  But I don't see very much evidence of such scholarship in Mack's writing.  If Mack's scholarship had been deeper, he might have tended to use some more general term to describe the reports he had studied, rather than to put them all into some "alien abduction" category. But Mack was very diligent about personally interviewing people reporting anomalous experience, showing none of the "fear of hearing firsthand testimonies" we so often get from skeptics. 

On pages 72-73 we hear of a person named Jean who reported very frequent reports of being taken to what she called a spaceship. She said that "sometimes it was like being 

beamed up" and "sometimes it was like being sucked up, sort of like a vacuum cleaner, and all of a sudden just whoosh!" The beings she claims to have encountered (in what she calls a spaceship) are described by her as "very refined presences" and "literally beings of light." On the next page we read her

claims that she was given "a new cosmological system"

that enabled her to "plug into Source, or God," having 

"a capacity to heal myself and heal other people" and

become "a medium to, if you will, the Divine." The report sounds like a very spiritual affair, and we may wonder why mystical-seeming encounters such as this are put in the category of close encounters with extraterrestrials, as if some purely physical encounter with a nuts-and-bolts spaceship had occurred.  

On page 74 we read of an Andrea who describes an encounter beginning with a beautiful flash of light. She reports that she floated feet-first through the glass of her window, rather as if it was her "astral body" moving rather than her physical body. She recalled thinking "I'm not a body anymore," and thought "I'm light." She reports encountering strange creatures that "look like they're made of light."  On page 75 a Karin reports a feeling that was like moving at ultra-fast speeds "basically tucked in a ball." We read, "For Karin, these overwhelming energies seem to have a kind of 'universal power' as if they emanate from God." The next two accounts we get (from two other people) also sound like mystical or spiritual experiences, with lots of mention of encounters with mysterious intense energies, but little mention of anything sounding like protoplasmic extraterrestrials in metal spaceships. 

Here is an encounter described on page 161 of one of Mack's books. Dave reported beings who he could see only as silhouettes taking his "inner self" or "inner spirt" out of his body and taking him through large transparent tubes, "into the next plane." In the next plane there were beings that appeared luminous, like "giants" with "crystal" bodies. They had big heads with large eyes having beautiful colors. We are told, "The beings would not permit Dave to go further into the light, which seemed to be coming from a great 'inner city' of some sort, because, they told him, he was going back to the Earth plane. Dave said he was brought to this plane to show him that there was "life beyond this life," and that there are other planes of reality into which we will eventually pass. We read this:

"Dave and the other two people felt a warmth in this other plane, a sense of belonging there, and he did not want to come back to Earth. He described a place of overwhelming joy, without pain, filth, anger or discontent, an awesome realm where nothing and no one was above another and

existence itself was like light. The realization that this was 

only a demonstration, and that he could not actually fully 

experience the light, filled Dave with a sense of loss. 

But he has a strong sense that after death in prior lives, it 

is into this other plane that he has passed and that he will return to it again when this life is over." 

Any student of near-death experiences will recognize several elements in this account. They include (1) an idea of an inner self kind of traveling out of the physical body; (2) a trip through a tunnel; (3) encountering strange luminous beings;  (4) a report of a kind of unearthly "city of light"; (5) being told that you must return to Earth; (6) a feeling of regret about having to go back to Earth; (7) an idea of "life beyond life" or some "higher plane" which a human will eventually reach.  We may wonder: why has this very spiritual-sounding account been put in a book with a title insinuating an encounter with flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials?

We may notice here a huge contrast between the report above and the stereotypical idea of an alien abduction. Asked to describe a typical account of an alien abduction, the average person (based on press accounts) might report someone being forced into a flying saucer, tied down, and subjected to terrifying medical examinations.  The account above is pretty much the exact opposite of such a terrifying encounter with a "nuts and bolts" spaceship.  The report is of a very positive experience. And instead of being an experience with a physical spaceship on Earth, the person is taken to what seems unearthly spiritual realm. 

On pages 163-164 we have some interesting suggestions that some of the imagery that shows up in some of the so-called "alien encounter" or "alien abduction" accounts may be symbolic imagery.  So a person who reports seeing some reptile-like alien may be seeing some manifestation that symbolizes some lower intelligence or lower spiritual level, rather than a literal species that arose on some other planet with a reptile-like form.  

It is widely believed that visual symbolism occurs in dreams.  Dream content is worthy of serious study, and some dreams may come to humans telepathically from some external reality beyond our understanding.  One of the reasons I suspect such a thing is that for years I have been logging my own dreams, and I do not at all find them consisting of mere random content. During the past three years my dreams have seemed to heavily repeat themes involving life after death.  I have had had more than 400 dreams in the past three years that seemed to symbolize the theme of life after death, as I report in my very long post here. Very often such themes seem to be expressed with symbolic imagery. 

Some of the experiences called "alien encounters" or "alien abductions" may be mental communications from some mysterious external reality, similar to dreams, but appearing more vivid than dreams.  On page 164 Mack makes an interesting speculation:

"The beings and their UFO-related 'props' may seem almost...to disguise themselves, as in Carol's encounter, through inhabiting the familiar images of the experiencer's knowledge base...One might also consider that it may be a means that the beings, or the intelligence behind them, utilize to mute the traumatic impact of the intense energies and the shock of unfamiliar images, while at the same time opening the experiencers to the mysteries of the unknown by breaking down the boundaries of their familiar world...Animal images that abductees encounter  may, as they do for some

native people, serve to disguise humanoid beings, but they may also represent archetypal symbols of great power and meaning that can propel them on their transformative journeys." 

I often get the feeling after analyzing my dreams that some recurring element is a symbolic token representing something deeper. For example, my very frequent dreams of being on a bus, train, boat or aircraft may symbolize traveling to some unearthly realm. My very frequent dreams of being on an elevator or escalator may symbolize going to some higher realm of existence.  My very frequent dreams about crossing some border or barrier and going to some other side of something may symbolize some an eventual trip to some Other Side of an afterlife. Let us imagine some higher intelligence (possibly spiritual in nature) wanting to convey to someone an idea of some encounter with some higher reality of great power and knowledge.  Such a message might be conveyed through modern icons and symbols such as UFO encounters,  entering into a spaceship, encountering a humanoid creature with a huge head and giant eyes, and so forth.  Perhaps just as we should often ask "what does it symbolize?" when analyzing dreams, we should ask "what does it symbolize?" when analyzing some reports sounding like encounters with extraterrestrials. 

Continuing to use the word "alien abductions" to refer to a variety of experiences that may or may not provide evidence of visiting extraterrestrials, on page 237 Mack says, "In this chapter I will try to show how the alien abduction phenomenon can potentially be one of the most powerful agents of spiritual growth, personal transformation, and expanded awareness that is now affecting people on this planet." A bit later (after quoting someone referring to "Divine Source") Mack states, "Sometimes abductees perceive, or are told by the beings, that their (the 'beings') true nature is a kind of energy form, but that they have to become embodied to play this intermediary role between humans and Source. " On the next page we read, "Abductees sometimes express the conviction that the Earth is not their true Home, which is in another realm outside of time and space." Such an idea is frequently expressed in accounts of near-death experiences. 

On page 244 one of the persons described as an "alien abductee" describes a scenario under which humans choose to become incarnated as humans here on Earth, possibly for reasons such as spiritual or moral growth.  Two pages later another "abductee" expresses a similar idea. The underlying idea is one that has often been suggested by dreams and near-death experiences, as I discuss in my post here.  On page 251 we have one of the "abductees" describing a "choice of whether to come back to your earthly body" choice that sounds like a very common motif of near-death experiences.  When describing such things, Mack fails to point out resemblances between such experiences and other types of spiritual experiences (such as near-death experiences) that are never called "alien abduction" episodes.  We get the impression that Mack was very diligent in studying the people he interviewed, but was not much of a scholar of the more general topic of paranormal or spiritual experiences.   Doing a little better about drawing connections, on page 256 he states this:

"The abduction experiences affect profoundly the experiencers' sense of who or what they are as beings in the cosmos. Their transformation, which they attribute directly to their encounters with the infinite or the creative Source, is often expressed in the ecstatic language generally associated with mysticism or other experiences of transcendence."

On the next page we are told that "when they no longer deny their experiences and confront them honestly, abductees tend to lose their fear of death."  We hear of one "abductee" claiming to have made contact with her deceased son. 

The more we hear about these people describing their experiences as factors producing spiritual growth and worldview deepening, the more we should tend to think poorly of those who tried to gaslight Mack and his subjects, and who tried to suggest that Mack was guilty of malpractice by not labeling his subjects as psychotics, and not prescribing them anti-psychotic medication.  

A very interesting possibility is that some of the strange events described while someone is under hypnosis (and sometimes categorized as "alien abduction experiences") may be neither fantasy nor recollections of encounters with extraterrestrials, but instead what may be examples of what used to be called "traveling clairvoyance." During the first half of the nineteenth century, when hypnosis was called "Mesmerism," "animal magnetism" or "somnambulism,"  there would often seem to occur astonishing displays of clairvoyance by people under hypnosis.  The hypnotist would invite the hypnotized person to kind of "go with him" on a mental trip to some place the hypnotist knew well, but the hypnotized person had no knowledge of.  The hypnotized person would often describe the place with astonishing accuracy, and might describe details about the actions of its current occupants that were quite unknown to the hypnotist, but which would subsequently be verified as being correct.  It was rather as if some power of the mind to travel outside of the body and explore the external world was being unlocked.  

When some hypnotized person asked about an alien abduction describes seeing some beings of light and visiting some unearthly realm, he may use the present tense. The hypnotist will tend to interpret this as some recollection of some weird encounter that previously happened.  But what is occurring may be no recollection of a past experience, but instead an example of traveling clairvoyance or something like astral projection in which the hypnotized person is temporarily unshackled from his bodily limits, and is able to make contact with realities beyond our planet, realities that may be spiritual or involving some other dimension.  Such an idea is unthinkable only to those who deny the existence of the human soul.  During near-death experiences there seems to be a travel of a human soul beyond the body. So why should we should exclude the possibility for such a thing to a happen under hypnosis, particularly since there is so much nineteenth century evidence that under hypnosis certain subjects could display all kind of wonders such as immunity to physical pain and traveling clairvoyance? 

There are quite a few attempts to shoe-horn so-called "alien abduction" accounts into a "nuts and bolts" kind of explanation of visiting metal spaceships from other planets. Such attempts often involve ignoring what was reported.  For example, in a book on alien abduction studies  an author says, "When abductees described communication with occupants, it was almost always accomplished telepathically; they said they received  'impressions' that their minds converted to words."  That already takes you out of the world of materialism and its "brains make minds" claims, into the world of psychic phenomena. Again we have a parallel with near-death experiences, in which people abundantly tell us that some idea was received telepathically, rather than by hearing some spoken words.