I wander around the Internets in wonder of what they contain. Snarks and Bojjums, mystics and fakirs, swamis, frauds, fanatics and fanatical people of all stripes. Also honest, sober researchers but for some odd reason I don’t focus on these. Real people, people with lives, careers and a life outside of the paranormal do not fascinate me as much as those other people. The ones who ruminate on ghosts and goblins, spirits and demons, things that go bump in the night and sinister oozing that just might come from another planet but, probably don’t.
What fascinated me is the structure, the overriding meme that some of these people convey. It’s a bitter, anguished desire to validated, liked and even worshiped. There’s virtually no difference in the so-called researchers of UFOs, ghosts and other such jazz. The attitude remains the same, it’s almost cult-like in it’s dynamics and in it’s problem solving methods.
First there is the “us against†them thing. One person recently called it a “skeptic – believer war.†I was in a conversation with her and she accused me of going to war with believers, then implied that most skeptics do this. It’s not the first time I’ve gotten this attitude from people in the UFO/paranormal biz, far from it!
A war? Why a war then? I don’t think I’m at war with anyone. A couple of people seem to want me to to go to war with them but I’m really too busy for that kind of tommyrot. I sometimes challenge people into thinking (and behaving) in new ways, but a war?! Naa!
Generally speaking, any war has some overriding purpose. Usually wars are to eliminate a threat. Most of the time wars are over land or resources. I don’t have any land and virtually unlimited resources so that can’t be it. Wars can be caused by fear but I don’t fear believers, why should I? In fact, I’ve never met any skeptic who fears people who belive in whatever. I’ve met many believers who seem to fear skeptics though.
Why it is that very few skeptics think of this as a war while many (if not most) believers consistently put it into those terms? What is the point of going to war about this UFO crap anyway? What could the objective be? Are skeptics a threat? Is skepticism so dangerous to a believer that they must band to gather and go to war against it? Of course you can’t go to war against skepticism no more than you could go to war against terror (although some recent politicians in the US cannot seem to grasp this fact.)
Believers therefore tend to go to war against the agents of skepticism, the people who tend to bring a skeptical argument. It is quite fascinating to see it happening.
Since I don’t think skeptics are at war with any one person, it’s very difficult (as a skeptic) to understand what the war is all about. skeptics are more into this to find out something new, some solution to a mystery, a bit of knowledge that is heretofore unknown. This is what drives “skeptical†people, not debunking, not crushing knowledge or squashing the known. It’s quite the opposite! Skeptical people want to find out new stuff! Many of them have a passion to discover.
Believers on the other hand (these are the people who talk about skeptic/believer wars) seem to have a different bent .To them, knowledge is something that is already achieved, either by themselves or someone else. Sometime the holders of knowledge are some unseen authority. Some sinister portion of the government, aliens or mystical group. The knowledge itself is not known, but we all know that governments – large corporations etc keep secrets so they MUST be keeping secrets that will make an automobile run forever on a gallon of water.
The main point is, many people think that there is no particular reason to seek knowledge because we already know what’s going on, the task at hand is to inform the rest of the world of our superior knowledge and squash any nay-sayers. To me this seems opposite of open minded behavior. To my way of thinking, open minded people are delighted when new ideas are introduced, even ideas that go against prevailing thought. It is a hallmark of open minded people that while they might not accept every idea that comes along they do consider them. We might find flaws in an idea but that does not mean we disrespect the idea or the person who puts it fourth.
Considering an idea does not always mean accepting it. For example, a friend of mine (he’s a retired military man) claims that he was abducted by aliens and regularly sees “spacecraft†in the night skies above his rural home. While I’m sympathetic to his beliefs the prevailing facts are,
(1) it’s extremely unlikely that the Earth has ever been visited by craft from other solar systems. The distances are far too great unless they travel faster than light. So far, there is no evidence that this is possible.
(2) There is absolutely no hard evidence *publicly available* that suggest alien craft or extra terrestrial beings have ever landed or conducted activities on the Earth.
(3) No witness has ever submitted more than anecdotal testimony of their observations of so-called extraterrestrial *aircraft* in the skies of Earth.
– Finally,
(4,) Of all the so-called evidence, (photographic, physical or what have you,) none comes close to being compelling evidence of artifacts or activities arising from entities coming from another solar system. All of it has a mundane explanation which is far more probable of being correct than the postulate that “it” is an artifact from another solar system.
And so it is extremely unlikely that he is seeing aliens no matter how strong his belief or how stridently he advocates his belief. Unfortunately, those are the facts.
No belief no matter how vociferously defended can stand up to fact. It is this where the believer and the skeptic part company. For a believer has already decided (or proclaimed) what the truth is, they know what the facts are because it happens to be whatever they believe. Belief therefore becomes an asset to their facts and how violently they defend their beliefs becomes their evidence. Hard evidence is no longer necessary for why does one need any when the “facts†are already known?
To most skeptics (and anyone who takes a more hard-nosed realist view,) this is nonsense. You can’t manufacture “fact†just by believing something. Belief (or “knowing†as I like to say) must *MUST* be based on a preponderance of *real* evidence. No testimony, no strident defense of belief or circular argument can stand up to the preponderance of real evidence.
So the war is not about aliens or ghosts, it’s not about skeptics and believers. It’s about *methods.* Skeptics don’t need to believe for their facts and believers must cling to beliefs because they have no other evidence. They don’t need any! Why look around for evidence of something that is already “known?†then those other people, those “skeptics†come along and say something like “that’s not really evidence,†or “ I can’t base my beliefs on your strident defense of your own.â€
Skeptics on the other had need a little more than just a preponderance of belief; faith in other words! They have faith that aliens have landed in their backyards and involved THEM in some Earth shattering program to improve human race (or some such.) They have faith in the *fact* that they are special, touched by angels, above all of us mundane people who simply raise families and work for a living. They have faith and this faith is validated by their peers –
just like in ANY religion!
Believers , the faithful don’t need compelling evidence, why should they! Evidence is for the weak and the ignorant! Why try to prove something when you already know the answer.
There is a very amusing thread going on Regan Lee’s blog right now. She and contactee Jeremy Vaeni are debating whether or not to get regression hypnosis to verify their so – called experiences. The question Regan asks is, “what happens if nothing happened? “
I have to chuckle, nothing happened! (in all probability.) Now, it is quite probable that they both experienced something, something significant perhaps. They have memories of various UFO type of phenomena and a nagging feeling that they are special and gifted. I sympathies with them but really, doesn’t everyone have those feelings from time to time? It’s not aliens or ghosts, it’s just human nature. Isn’t it? Most of us don’t try to explain it with exotic encounters with ghosts/aliens/bigfoots/god or whatever.
Those other things might be a *part* of human nature, or *apart* from human nature, that’s a question I find fascinating. That is the real question to my mind but, I have the advantage of being able to look at this stuff objectively, M’s Lee (among others) cannot be objective as a researcher or as a writer because she’s a believer. She’s too close to it now and all she can do is validate her own beliefs. I think the question she asked is a red herring because if she got regression hypnosis she would discover all manner of little mean-grim in saucers (orange or otherwise) have beset her all of her life. It’s almost a gimme that she was abducted, likely more than once. How could it BE nothing?
In a way, I envy her steadfast defense of her own beliefs. I usually doubt my beliefs and this causes me to question, perhaps a little too much.
So what it comes down to is this, there is no war between skeptics and believers. The only conflict is with the believers as they desperately try to create a reality more to their liking. A reality populated by all kinds of strange and wonderful beasties, ghosts, witches, goblins bigfoots and aliens. It’s a place where people routinely “cross over†and talk to the dead, where magic spells are cast upon the unwary and where strange alien beings cross billions of miles to perform vile experiments in the middle of the dewy night.
We can be sure that these things don’t exist, they are not in our offices, our automobiles and our supermarkets. Things like this would not *only* exist when we are alone, in the dead of night. They don’t bother our politicians (despite evidence to the contrary.)
These things inhabit our dreams, our imaginations, not our real space. And so the narrow skeptics universe is my playpen, not ghosts, not aliens or bigfoots, not free energy or government conspiracy. I’m a dreamer and the real universe is bigger and better than all of that stuff!
Why should I limit myself to my own imagination, when I can have it all?
I think it was Arther C. Clark who said;
The universe is not only more incredible than we imagine, it’s more incredible than we can imagine.
It was March 6th, 1998, when the JREF Million-Dollar Challenge first came into existence. That’s almost ten years ago. It’s always been a simple, direct, matter: do what you claim you can do of a paranormal nature, and walk away with the prize. Our expectations at first were that we’d attract major personalities by this means, but they’ve avoided having to take the test by simply not applying; those who have actually applied are generally honestly self-deluded persons who have difficulty stating what they can do, which can be understood if they really don’t know what they’re experiencing; we at JREF have gone through involved procedures to help them recognize their problems. Usually, they have indicated that they don’t know what real scientific rules are, when it comes down to their actually being properly tested.
