I enjoy reading and listening to John Stossel, of "20/20" fame. I appreciate his skeptical and libertarian
outlook. However, one admission by him speaks volumes about our collective view of reality - and
what is likely missing.
In his recent book, he investigates hypnosis and admits that, he, as a skeptic can sometimes be
wrong. He acknowledges that hypnosis is a real phenomena and that it can be used with surprizing
effects.
Think about this: hypnosis has been around for centuries, together with its therapeutic uses - and
is a highly repeatable phenomena. Yet, we find ourselves in the year 2007 with a prominent writer/
skeptic admitting that "it works"!
Acupuncture has existed for centuries as a highly repeatable phenomena - ignored or dismissed
by Western medicine - until "Red" China opened its doors to the world in Nixon's day. Actually,
it was still dismissed for some time after that.
You can't find a subject subject to more examination and experimental cash flow than medicine
and health care. Yet, the 2005 Nobel prize was won by two Australian doctors who discovered
that ulcers are caused by an infection! They had to fend off opposition and doubt after centuries
in which doctors "knew" that ulcers were not the production of infection.
If all of the above can take place in regard to repeatable phenomena , then what about transient
observations? What lurks out there in our collective reality that is hidden first by bias and secondly
by the fact that it is intermitent? Ghosts? UFOs? ESP? Poltergeists? Big Foot?
Throw in a few hoaxes here and there and you begin to wonder if we will EVER get to the hard truth
about things!
How do we know that scientific laws actually exist? By performing experiments that give us consistent
results, you say. I reply, and are the occassional "anomalous" results discarded as mistakes?
( See William Corliss on this point). How can an atheist or materialist hypothesize that the universe
is perfect in its manifestation of physical laws, if no Creator exists to enforce them? They "just are"?
If we were to choose people who are most experienced to interpret aerial phenomena, wouldn't
they be aircraft pilots or military people? You mean the very ones reporting flying saucers?
And who would be best - in real world experience - in intuiting guilt or innocence or discerning what
acts are accidental or violently deliberate? The police? You mean people who may discreetly use
the inputs of psychics? Who trumps the subject here? Academic skeptics or those skilled in the
actual work?
I conclude that the world we live in is far weirder than any of us will ever know.
metatron