Concerning paranormal and related phenomena a 1997 Gallup poll showed that:
- 49 percent of Americans believe in ESP
- 25 percent feel they have experienced telepathy
- 21 percent believe in reincarnation
- 17 percent feel that they’ve been in touch with someone who had died
- 25 percent believe in ghosts
- 14 percent feel they’ve been in a haunted house
- 55 percent believe in the devil
- 10 percent believe they’ve talked to the Devil
- 14 percent have consulted a fortuneteller or a psychic
- 55 percent believe in astrology
- 46 percent believe in psychic or spiritual healing
- 27 percent believe that extraterrestrial beings have visited the earth
More recent polls suggest that this Americans’ embrace of the New Age as continued. According to the LA Times, alternative medicine fan Robert Citron (who helped bring about the Orange County’s infamous bankruptcy) regularly consulted a psychic while he controlled the ill-fated investment pool.
Hilary Clinton, as First Lady, consulted a New Age guru, who assisted her in communicated with the long-dead Eleanor Roosevelt. Bill Clinton invited the New Age motivational speaker Anthony Robbins to the while house. The US military has a history of interest in the paranormal and in the past, pursued research owing to a worry that the Soviets were way ahead of us in the military use of paranormal abilities.
Many tens of thousands of Americans, along with members of the British Royal Family, have embraces and alternative medicine knows as homeopathy. According to homeopathic theory, medical substance that are diluted to the point that no molecules remain are, nevertheless, highly potent because their vibrations remains (or they retain a “memory” of the once-present molecules)
Many millions of Americans regularly visit chiropractors. According to traditional chiropractic theory, misalignments along the vertebrae impede the flow of “vital” or “nerve” energy throughout the body. These spinal problems, say many chiropractors, cause virtually every possible health problem, including heart disease, cancer, hyperactivity, and colds. There is no scientific evidence for this claim.
Also: it is clear that many Americans believe in (i) conspiracy theories (that the Holocaust was a hoax, that the CIA/Mossad killed JFK, that the CIA was behind the WTC attacks) for which no real evidence exists; (ii) the activities of child abusing satanic cults, despite the absence of evidence; (iii) creationism and the 6,000-year age of the earth, contrary to a mountain of physical evidence; (iv) fad diet and nutritional theories that ignore research finding; (v) therapies of methods, such as “facilitated communication” or the uncovering of “suppressed memories” that are dubious or discredited.
Aliens don’t exist. No, but believing in aliens are far more interesting and they make explaining complex technological breakthroughs so much easier. Sure there is a possibility for the existence of aliens but do you really believe that they would want to be involved with the real conspiracy that is the way the US government conducts itself outside of the public eye. The “alien and government conspiracy” for me is one of deception and smokescreens. The truth is out there but bug eyed monsters are a hell of a lot more interesting aren’t they?
Roughly speaking rationality amounts to basing one’s beliefs on good reasons. In the case of empirical beliefs -beliefs about the observable world- the reasons are called “evidence”. To be rational empirical beliefs must be grounded in evidence. The fundamental problem with most and perhaps all New Age (and related) beliefs is that there is no solid evidence for them. Some of them might be true, but, as things stand, we have no reason to suppose that they are true. It is unreasonable to base your ideas on anything but reason.
Ok, if we accept what Frank Advice says:
1)God exists.
2)Three replies later, God doesn’t exist.
Wow Bing, I commend you on reading my posting clarifying my position. Btw, I’m being sarcastic, just in case this went over your head as well.
A few more random examples that science cant explain. These are just fun things I wanted to add. If you think of some post away!
5. Eastern Medicine (those chinese people have an unexplainable way with herbs I tell you.
6. I was not sure if the article was implying that ESP doesnt exist. There has been “mountains” of evidence supporting an unexplainable psychic link between identical twins.
7. Crop circles are real I tell you! LOL
What reply #1 fails to mention is that:
“WHAT TOO FEW PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT TARG’S FAMOUS AIDS STUDY
That her study had been unblinded and then “reblinded” to scour for data that confirmed the thesis – and the Western Journal of Medicine did not know this fact when it decided to publish.”
straight from the article itself. It wasn’t science, it was fraud.
Twenty years ago there were things that science supposedly could not account for but today it does without question. Science creates its own questions and in time answers them. It’s only a matter of time till until all that you mention as things “science can’t account” for will be accounted for.
Sir Isaac Newton held that the universe is an entirely regular, for it is completely ruled by laws. Accordingly, if one learns all the natural laws that govern nature, one can predict all future events, just as one can predict that a rock will fall when one release it from one’s hand, given the laws of gravitation. He believed that we have not yet learned all the laws that govern nature (science is as yet very incomplete), and so we are unable to make many predictions.
He believed everything could be described and predicted through science, it’s only our lack of understanding it that creates unaccountability. Even though one of his ideas that the universe is a perfectly ordered thing has been refined by quantum physics (random really does exist) his belief that everything can be described to science is still valid.
Chucky, very glad you actually read the article in its entirety. See how biased a copy and paste can be if it is not read completely? However, the rebuttal to Targ’s research is not complete destroyed by the triple-drug anti-retroviral therapy. Her research on the patients merely were not complete enough to make as conlcusive statements as she had made. But dont disregard the fact that those patients were who were on the therapy scientifically should not have lived regardless. However, I do applaud you for catching my small intentional overlook. (didnt think anyone would catch it, nice to know people are actually doing their own research) I have a few more things to say, but will post them later.
Hilary contacted Elanor Roosevelt? Pyschic Lesbian Convention 2003?
Ok, so if we accept the Targ experiment, then we will have proven that God is:
1. Arbitrary
2. Conditional
Whoops, I was just trying to be a devil’s advocate there. Sorry if you thought I was being sarcastic, because I was actually just trying to promote thought (ref. “What is God?”) by saying contradicting things in an anonymous forum, where a person’s character is primarily judged through written word. Although I don’t believe in Targ’s study, if it did exist, I would resent it.
It’s cool, Bing. I would resent the study too.
Interesting article you put out there Ashu. After reading it about 4 times (skipping the stats of course) I finally got to what you were saying. Not that it was poorly written, it just took me some time to figure out what you are trying to say. For those of you who are like me (slow), I am guessing (correct me if I’m wrong) that the major focus of this topic is not about how widespread New Age is-though you do make it clear with the statistics-but it is more of an article about how ludicrous it is for people to believe in this New Age stuff. Note: I don’t condone all New Age activities, however I do feel that it only promotes the idea that perhaps there is a higher being and that unlike what your article claims that all things do not need to be “proved” in scientific terms. I am sure you would agree there are many scientific anomalies that won’t ever be proved with science, some things that are so perfect that only the belief of a higher power can explain it. I will start with some general examples and move on to some more specific ones:
1. Where does the second nucleus go in mitosis? (or is it meiosis? bah whatever)
2. If the speed of light were .000000000000000000001 more or less faster we would all be not here.
3. The perfection of the Gravitational constant proved in physics as the most all time mind boggling number.
4. I read this article in “Wired” magazine, an internationally acclaimed magazine for technological breakthroughs and achievements. In this December 02 article titled “A Prayer Before Dying”:
THE THIRD-MOST ODDS-DEFYING, EYE-POPPING DISCOVERY IN THE LIFE AND WORK OF ELISABETH TARG, MD
In July 1995, back when AIDS was still a death sentence, psychiatrist Elisabeth Targ and her co-researchers enrolled 20 patients with advanced AIDS in a randomized, double-blind pilot study at the UC San Francisco Medical Center. All patients received standard care, but psychic healers prayed for the 10 in the treatment group. The healers lived an average of 1,500 miles away from the patients. None of the patients knew which group they had been randomly assigned to, and thus whether they were being prayed for. During the six-month study, four of the patients died – a typical mortality rate. When the data was unblinded, the researchers learned that the four who had died were in the control group.
All 10 who were prayed for were still alive.
THE FOLLOW-UP STUDY
A lot of studies had investigated the effect of prayer on healing, but they were methodologically sloppy and their findings couldn’t be replicated. In July 1996, Targ began a confirmation study, one with a larger sample and a more exacting protocol. It is widely acknowledged as the most scientifically rigorous attempt ever to discover if prayer can heal.
By this time, triple-drug therapy for those with AIDS had begun, and quite miraculously AIDS patients stopped dying. So rather than just measuring mortality, the replication trial also tallied the occurrence of 23 AIDS-related illnesses that appeared during the six months of the study, from ulcers to encephalitis.
Forty patients were recruited. They filled out questionnaires, had photos taken, and signed consent forms that indicated they had a 50/50 chance of being prayed for by faraway psychic healers. They were free to pray for themselves and have family and friends pray for them as well – the trial design assumed everyone would get a “baseline” amount of prayer from loved ones. Their blood was drawn, and a computer matched them to a statistical twin – a counterpart with a similar CD4+ level, age, and number of previous AIDS-related complications. The computer randomly assigned one of each pair to a control group and the other to a treatment group.
The photos of those in the treatment group were sent to 40 healing practitioners, ranging from rabbis to Native American medicine men to bioenergetic psychics. These healers performed their rituals one hour a day for six consecutive days. Each week for 10 weeks they rotated, so each test-group patient received distant healing from 10 practitioners. The healers kept logs and were not paid. They never met the subjects in person.
The photos of the control group were kept in a locked drawer.
Six months later, the data was unblinded.
THE SECOND-MOST ODDS-DEFYING, EYE-POPPING DISCOVERY IN THE LIFE AND WORK OF ELISABETH TARG
The research results showed that the subjects who were not prayed for spent 600 percent more days in the hospital. They contracted 300 percent as many AIDS-related illnesses. That’s a pretty sensationalistic way of saying those who were prayed for were a lot less sick. Here’s the somewhat less-sensational way of framing the results: The control group spent a total of 68 days in the hospital receiving treatment for 35 AIDS-related illnesses. The treatment group spent only 10 days in the hospital for a mere 13 illnesses.
This begs all sorts of questions, which we will get to, but for the moment, consider the following:
The chance of this occurring randomly is less than 1 in 20, meaning it is statistically significant.
There was no placebo effect. For the patients, being less sick didn’t correlate with believing they were being prayed for by the psychic healers. Not even close. Nearly 55 percent of both groups imagined or guessed or believed they were being prayed for – and they did no better than the others.
Targ had a pedigree. She graduated from Stanford Medical School, did her residency at UCLA, and, at the time of the study, was an assistant professor of psychiatry at UCSF.
The study, while controversial, eventually passed the scrutiny of peer review and was published by the Western Journal of Medicine.
Targ was news. She appeared on Good Morning America and Larry King Live and was written about in Time. She instantly became a star in the New Age community – not as famous as doctors Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil, and Larry Dossey, but more respected because of her scientific rigor.
Although few doctors have read the study or know its details, it has achieved renown and is routinely cited – not as proof that prayer works, exactly, but as evidence that there’s some connection between spirituality and healing.
THE VARIOUS QUESTIONS THIS BEGS
Is the “prayer effect” even theoretically possible?
Are these psychic healers who I think they are?
How did a reputable doctor come to risk her reputation studying the paranormal?
What could be more odds-defying than this?
Yes clearly, many could and will argue this simply as coincidence. And believe what you will. However, these numbers scare me.
Yes, by abridging articles I can clearly take a biased viewpoint on it. So here’s the full thing if you care to read http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/prayer.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=
Sorry it seems as if this post was more of just a copy and paste. I will expand more in this topic with a later post. For now, think about it folks, just that fact that raw numbers of people who support at least the idea of there being more than just what science proves sort of says something. Obviously, that should not be the sole reason, because if it was we would still think the earth is flat (but now I’m just going off on a meaningless tangent). To me, faith is everything, even faith in believing in science. As Einstein wisely said it “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”