Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ Beyond Human Convincing Skeptics

Dear Coyote,

Thank you for our continued discussion. I think your teaching tact is
just fine, and I'm learning a lot from you. I, too, would like to think
of myself as a humble student in every situation, and I'm grateful for
this forum for giving me abundant opportunities to do so.

TT sounds like a wonderful person, and if he is helping you on your Path,
blessings to him! His PhD disciple also sounds like he has found his
calling in life, and I wish him well. If they're open to dialog, please
pass along my contact info, as I would love to learn from and share with
them.

Regarding your list ... I believe everything on the right-hand-side are
wonderful goals. But I don't understand why they have to be tied to some
of the items on the left-hand-side. I can pursue and am in the process of
attaining some of items on the right without having to concerned about
those on the left:

**************************************************************************

1. learning to speak the language of God.

To me, the language of God is written clearly in nature, and when I try to
appreciate it using the tools of math, science, and careful thought, I am
in an intimate conversation with God.

2. convince your self that you are more than you think you are & learn
not to fear death (and by extension life).

Death is an integral part of life, one of nature's most obvious lessons.
And while most people can use an extra dose of self-esteem, one of
nature's lessons (to me, anyway) is that I'm actually very, very small in
the cosmic order. And yet I'm here and breathing and able to appreciate
it, so that makes me feel very, very special, too.

3. learn to navigate when you are not in your physical body (such as
after you pass on).

Hmm ... well, this is in the realm of speculation, which I have no
objective basis to comment on. When someday I leave my physical body,
I'll try to let you know at that time

4. learning to not allow fear to affect your actions.

Hmm ... well, some fears are good and are designed to help me. But yes,
other fears are self-limiting and unnecessary, and overcoming them are
life-long lessons.

5. maintaining enough energy to practice the above techniques &
preventing others energy from "bringing you down".

In my experience, the more energy I give freely, the more I get back in
return. I find it curious why those who are so focused on "energy" are
also those who are the most concerned about "energy vampires." If I ever
come across to be an energy vampire to some, may the Universe return
ten-fold amounts of energy to you.

6. learning to expand the meditation states of mind to rest of your awake
periods

In progress ...

7. put your life in order so you can pursue your spirituality.

To me, the spiritual and the material are one and the same. There is no
duality, only unity. Separateness is an illusion. I manifest my inner
"subjective reality" through the external "objective reality" and they are
harmonious. To pursue one and dismiss the other is not the most
enlightened path to me.

8. finding deep rooted problems in your consciousness that need to be
repaired so you can progress.

I am a lucid dreamer, and I have numerous dreams every night. I keep a
detailed record of my dreams and I learn a lot from them. Nothing
mystical here ... it's a skill anyone can achieve, and well accepted and
documented in the scientific community, and is being actively studied in
ongoing research. It's quite fun and entertaining, and I would encourage
anyone to develop it.

**************************************************************************

Now, I would like to add one more item to your list:

* The purpose of critical thinking: learning to use the wonderful gift of
reason which God has given you.

After all, when we look at the universe and everything in it, there
appears to be a wonderful natural order, and those who are willing to
examine that order are able to deduce certain regularities which occur
without exception. Perhaps it is too arrogant of us to call these
regularities "laws of nature," but whatever else the mystics say, they
cannot refute that the same God which they firmly believe in also
manifests itself in a natural world which exhibits these "laws." The
mystics claim they are able to transcend these laws, and I'll grant them
the possibility. But the same God which created these laws and enables
them to transcend these laws also gave me some gray matter to discern
whether their claims are true or not. And if we are talking about the
same God here, then all will be in harmony, and the mystics will pass
every test I can conceive, because in fact, these are God's tests. If we
are not talking about the same God, then, well, we go our separate ways
for awhile, and perhaps in time, our paths will cross again in the future,
and we can share which each other what we have learned in our separate
journeys.

Coyote, I'm also trying to read between the lines of what you're sharing.
It's clear to me that you're seeking "something," and you're exploring
different avenues in that search. You said yourself that the sideshows
are not important and can actually detract from the Path. And I, for one,
don't want to take you away from your Path. I enjoy sharing and
communicating with you, but what is your higher purpose, and is the
investment of your time and energy into this particular discussion helping
you along your true Path?

If the purpose of this discussion is as the title suggests, to "convince
skeptics," well, I think I've already made the offer quite clear to
contact me when you or anyone else has developed your abilities (in your
reality) such that they can be demonstrated in this reality in which I and
most other people dwell. If that method seems too much to ask, then,
please ignore lost souls like me and move on. The only thing I ask is
that if you do, please don't say or do anything irresponsible to steer
others into your reality without being absolutely sure first yourself that
what you are offering them is in their best interest. You are free to
spend your life the way you wish ... please allow others the freedom to do
likewise.

Hopefully we all hold the same ultimate goals and dreams for ourselves and
the world. We can clearly see both in history and today the terrible
effects of what happens when we stress our differences and become victims
of irrational ideologies. I'm trying to learn to disregard our
differences in exchange for focusing on our similarities, and at the very
least, let us find camaraderie in rationality, if nothing else. Our
future as a civilization depends on a common foundation.

I wish you the best, and please, do continue to share, but please also
make very clear your higher goals in our exchange.

Blessing,

HF

Dear Jeanne,

Thank you for your continued correspondence. I appreciate your wealth of
knowledge regarding astrology and hopefully I will be able to use you as
a resource as I learn more about it. Actually, I have a good friend and
colleague (Ph.D. astronomer) who gave a wonderful lecture about astrology:

==========================================================================

Michael Faison, Ph.D.

"What's Your Sign? Astrology, Astronomy, and Pseudoscience"

May 30, 2002

Astrology is an almost unavoidable aspect of modern American culture. 90%
of Americans know their "sign", and 30% of Americans believe that the
positions of celestial objects can somehow affect their daily lives or
their personalities. Some people even base their medical decisions, choose
a mate, or refuse to hire a job candidate based on astrology. In this
lecture, we will discuss the basics of traditional western astrology, the
historical connections between astronomy and astrology, why people believe
in astrology, and why it actually doesn't work.

Link to the web-cast of the entire lecture:

http://www.physics.northwestern.edu/pub_lecs.html

===========================================================================

I would be interested in your response to what he says in his lecture ...
it's only 60 minutes long, and is quite interesting.

Oh ... and please don't be put off by his last statement "why it actually
doesn't work" ... because he's actually quite sympathetic to astrology and
urges us to regard it as a work in progress. His statement is meant that
in its current state, astrology is not scientifically validated (partly
because of all the nonsense in it which you also acknowledge), and it has
quite a ways to go before it gains such a status. His attitude throughout
the lecture is that we as scientists should not disregard astrology
outright as nonsense, but to carefully consider its claims with a
scientific spirit, and if it doesn't seem to "work" now, maybe with a bit
more study, we can figure out what is worth keeping about this body of
knowledge.

Hopefully with that spirit, we can make true progress to free humanity and
not continue to enslave it.

Best,

HF

Has anyone here ever...

1 ...thought they were being stared at and turned around and someone was staring at you?
2 ...thought about someone and the phone rang and they were calling?
3 ...any mothers ever have a feeling about their child, for example, that they were hurt, and you found out that at the same time of your feelings, they were hurt?

Dear Coyote,

Here are my honest responses, having completely no agenda of my own to
push, but just relaying my god-honest experiences:

1 ...thought they were being stared at and turned around and someone was
staring at you?

Honestly, never. And several times, I've tried staring at the back of
someone's head, "willing" them to turn around, and, nope, they'd never
turn around.

2 ...thought about someone and the phone rang and they were calling?

Yes w/ email, but not w/ phone ... it's happened several times when I
thought about someone and he/she emailed shortly afterward. The problem
with this, though, is that I also think about 20 other people (or more) at
the same time, but the other 19 don't contact me. This is best explained
as an example of selective memory, where we tend to remember the positive
hits, but neglect the negative misses.

3 ...any mothers ever have a feeling about their child, for example, that
they were hurt, and you found out that at the same time of your feelings,
they were hurt?

I'm not a mother, but I do have loved ones/friends/family members. In all
cases when they've suffered some major trauma, some serious enough to
require hospitalization, I've never had any premonitions whatsoever ...
the news would always came as total shock. I would suggest, too, that for
those who have had these experiences, ask yourself honestly how many times
you've had these feelings (we're always worried about the well-being of
our loved ones), but actually nothing bad happened. We tend to forget
these non-hits. When a positive hit happens, we're all goose-bumpy and
think it must be ESP or something. I'm not knocking ESP per-se ... I'm
just saying, please be objective and really consider whether your
experiences are in line with your expectations. Humans have an infinite
capacity to fool themselves. That's why we need to be critical and honest
(and not feel threatened or offended by those who encourage us to do so!)

With humility,

HF

P.S. ... I'd like to add another one to your list:

4. Had a dream, and elements in the dream happened the next day (or
shortly thereafter)?

For me, YES! As I've mentioned before, I keep a detailed dream log, and
in the past year alone, I have had 13 dreams where elements in my dreams
show up in waking life the very next day, sometimes with eerie accuracy.
Wow - you must think that I'm in line to become a prophet. But wait ...
these were 13 dreams out of more than 1200! The percentage of misses way
out-numbers the hits, and unfortunately, I'm not in line to be the next
Nostradamus.

It was put to me that living in a universe where the unlikely never happened would be much more strange and unlikely than living in a universe where the unlikely sometimes happens.

That is, statistically, it is very likely for you to live a life in which a certain number of unlikely occurrences are bound to happen. The occurrences *can* be adequately described as strange and unlikely, not paranormal. They are usually explainable by what we already know to be true. And, of course, there will be those unexplainable events. But unexplainable does not equal "must throw out everything we know to be true."

If something falls off a shelf, I could explain it by saying that a ghost did it, or I could figure that something ordinary caused it to fall off. Honestly, I consider people who jump to the explanations of ghosts as kind of ridiculous or in love with the kind of entertainment that thinking in that manner provides.

I've noticed by changing my mood or mental set, that creepy things tend to happen or not happen depending on my state of mind. Being in the "creeped out mood" sensitizes you to events in your surroundings that you interpret as being evidence of creepy things. Your environment doesn't change to reflect your mood, your mind does, and it notices the information coming in from the senses differently.

I honestly consider one point of view more mature and intelligent than the other. One is superstitious and childish, the other rational and mature. Unlike in the movies, the rational and mature one doesn't end up getting killed by a demon or a ghost. He or she ends up living life normally. Sorry.

Dear Friends,

In the thread about cloud-busting, a study was brought up which purports
that thousands of people practicing transcendental meditation in
Washington D.C. helped decrease the violent crime rate one summer.

Quoted from that thread:

"As the spiritual moves grows and becomes strong, it's effects will be
felt much more. As the momentum builds, as the energy builds, it will
affect the consciousness of all people in a good way. See
http://permanentpeace.org/ for an idea on how this might happen. Imagine
paying people to meditate on peace every day. In Washington, DC one summer
this reduced the crime rate in a measureable way. And as more poeple
started meaditating, the crime rate declined further. More than 40 studies
world wide have documented this effect, including one study in Isreal."

It should be pointed out that there were many flaws to this study, not the
least of which is that during the study period, the murder rate in
Washington D.C. was higher than ever before or since then!

Critical commentary about the study can be found at:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_5_24/ai_67691836
http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2005/04/what_the_bleep_.html

Incidentally, this study won the 1994 Ig-Nobel Prize in Peace:

1994 Ig-Nobel Peace Prize

John Hagelin of Maharishi University and The Institute of Science,
Technology and Public Policy, promulgator of peaceful thoughts,
for his experimental conclusion that 4,000 trained meditators
caused an 18 percent decrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C.

[REFERENCE: "Interim Report: Results of the National Demonstration
Project To Reduce Violent Crime and Improve Governmental
Effectiveness In Washington, D.C., June 7 to July 30, 1993,"
Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, Fairfield,
Iowa"]

http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig1994

I don't want to give the impression that all we skeptics want to do is
rain on other people's parade, that we're anti-peace, anti-free-thinking,
anti-open-mindedness. Quite the contrary ... skeptics want peace and love
as much as the next peace-loving individual, and we whole-heartedly devote
ourselves to free-thinking (which is why we're so unpopular sometimes),
and we are extremely open-minded (but not so much that our brains start
falling out.)

What bothers me as a skeptic is that I'm asked to believe extraordinary
claims without extraordinary evidence. And when evidence is presented, it
is one-sided and falls to pieces when examined critically. Granted, the
intentions of the TM study by Hagelin were good, but the science was
really, really messed up. I wouldn't start diverting city funds from the
police department to the Maharishi University based on it. Indeed, one way
transcendental meditation can truly make a difference in the crime rate is
if EVERYONE (especially the criminals!) practiced it all day long, such
that everyone did nothing except TM. Yeah, that'll surely solve the crime
problem overnight.

Keep the studies coming, keep the hope up, keep the debate going, but
above all, keep your brains intact! We would be thrilled to accept a new
way to understand the Universe, and we would welcome a revolution in our
thinking. But let this revolution be based on reality, and not fantasy.

Best,

HF

You don't need to convince skeptics. They will convince themselves of whatever they want. Their life is their business.

Alex

Dear Alex,

Actually, the human behavior you allude to is known as
"the confirmation bias," which everyone exhibits.

Michael Shermer more eloquently describes in the following article how
"Skepticism is the antidote for the confirmation bias."

Best,

HF

The Political Brain, Scientific American, July 2006
By Michael Shermer

A recent brain-imaging study shows that our political predilections are a
product of unconscious confirmation bias ...

Also, I wonder what the meta-message in astrology is ... that my life and
actions are dictated by external forces, and I have no power to control my
own destiny? Seems very binding to me. Christ said, "The truth shall set
you free." Science frees me from a whole host of ancient superstitions
and ideologies which bind. While I wouldn't go so far as equating science
to truth, I do believe it can show that some notions are not-so-true,
notions which don't serve us very well anymore.

Hi HF;

I think your take on Astrology being so fixed is kind of narrow. If someone sent you a warning that a stone was about to fall on your head would you just stand there and accept it or would you move? Your reasoning sounds like "Astrology said a stone will fall on my head and there is no way I can avoid it". Clunk.

I guess that ends this discussion.

Here is how I tend to envision your scientific study. Pretend a Transcended Energy Being from the Upper Cycle of "Whatever" decided to give you a chance at researching his abilities.

You hold up a hoola hoop and ask him to move through the hoop and then back again. He does this and you document it. Next he/she is asked to take a drink of water. A arm materializes to grasp the glass, the glass is poured into the center of the Energy Being. You note that you never saw the glass touch it's lips.

"Well you haven't really done anything a human three year old couldn't do so there is nothing special here. Come back when you have something to offer."

The Energy Being from the upper cycle of "Whatever" flys off and thinks, "At least he didn't think I was a burning bush this time, things are looking up".

Recently I was handed a old copy of Kung Fu Magazine at work. Mostly it had alot of good stuff but then I can across an ad for "Iron Crotch Gung Fu"
and a picture of the Master towing a car down the road with a rope tied to something under his skirt, presumably his manhood. Maybe this needs scientific proof but I'll just take their word for it.

When I was done crying and laughing, reason returned and wondered if this would fall into the realm of paranormal for you? "Scientist discovers that man really doesn't need a trailer hitch or tow truck". Add the rest of the story.

I was just wondering if YOU can prove the existance of anything? Not reports or documents but you the person. Please prove to me the existance of reality.

and pass the imaginary Mai Tai.

JD