Why Ghost Investigators Need to Stop Saying ‘Paranormal’
The war of words between the paranormal and skeptic communities is as diverse and energetic as many long-running arguments over ideas and practices. It’s not likely to settle down anytime in the next decade, and perhaps not even in this century. I think both camps have armed themselves with beliefs that don’t hold up well under close scrutiny because they are both firmly entrenched in the extreme realms of belief and/or disbelief, neither group really having a monopoly over anything.
That is, Skeptics are as prone to believing things by faith as are Paranormal enthusiasts. Atheists are also firm believers in something. It is impossible to be human and NOT believe in something so much that you put your faith in it. Hence, we sometimes hear rhetoric about the religion of Science and Atheism — usually in pejorative terms — but there are undeniable and fundamental certitudes of Faith as expressed by the beliefs of Skeptics and Atheists. They might as well be practicing a religion.
The problem is that people who use the word “paranormal” have allowed it to define things that are stigmatized by fraud and hucksterism. It’s extremely difficult for a reasonable and informed person to think about “paranormal” stuff without thinking of all the fake claims that have been associated with the paranormal for decades. Hence, people who don’t want to believe in the Paranormal can point to case after case of fakery and misapplication and use those examples to argue that the Paranormal has not established itself as a credible corner of the universe.
But let me digress long enough to divide the Paranormal into four areas that should each be given different consideration. First, there are the matters of ghosts, demons, spirits, life-after-death, and perhaps also so-called psychic phenomena such as telekinesis, telepathy, etc. Second, there are the matters of scientifically undocumented creatures — the so-called Cryptids like the Loch Ness creature and its putative relatives, Sasquatch/Yeti and other hairy humanoids, etc. Third, there are the UFOs, unEarthly creatures, abduction memories, and all the stuff we generally associate with flying saucers and space aliens. Finally, the fourth category is everything I didn’t cover in the first three categories (which I realize is not fair to various groups but I cannot be exhaustive in this space).
I want to talk only about the first category of paranormal things in this article. I may return later to address some of the other things (especially UFOs, as I have grown weary of seeing people dredge up the idiotic Fermi Paradox with virtually no understanding of how it fails).
What Science Has to Say About Extra-biological Lifelike Activity
There is no good name for what many people would simply call a “spirit” or “soul”. C.S. Lewis once wrote You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body. Technically, that is more consistent with anything that science might be able to identify with the very broad concept of a soul or spirit. Science is still trying to figure out what it means by words such as consciousness, intelligence, and even personality so we need to accept that science doesn’t yet have the formal vocabulary (much less the tools) to decipher whatever a soul or spirit might be. And that, of course, has been the ameliorating argument put forth by philosophers and theologians for centuries.
Recent research, however, is bringing science closer to being able to participate in that discussion with better information and insight. For example, scientists are making break-throughs in decoding brain waves, which if we can extend that knowledge as far as we desire may one day allow us to:
- Communicate with people otherwise incapable of talking
- Watch dreams as they unfold
- Control devices with our minds
- Communicate across distances without using our eyes, ears, and mouths
And those are just a few of the more popular hopeful ideas that have been put forward — by real scientists, not by psychics and paranormal enthusiasts.
We have thousands of years’ of anecdotal evidence about these things but we have only just begun to assemble the science that we need to systematically explore and understand them. It could be that our minds are simply incapable of doing these things but, given unexplainable experiences human minds are similarly hardwired to interpret those experiences as paranormal events. Unfortunately, plausible as that explanation sounds, it has no more true scientific support for it than the idea that we might actually have latent abilities we have not really learned how to master or amplify.
All we know is that scientists are trying to solve a class of problems that are closely associated with brain activity. We want to help paralyzed people walk again. We want to help people with Alzheimers’ Disease and Dementia heal from their illnesses. We want to be able to confirm the veracity of statements people make. We want to be able to communicate with each other despite immense obstacles that presently disrupt that process of communication and communion.
In pursuing these solutions scientists are laying the foundation for creating technologies that can be used to study and understand phenomena that have divided us philosophically into Believers and Doubters. Neither Belief nor Disbelief proves anything. Neither Denial nor Democracy disproves anything. But there are other avenues of scientific research that are opening the doors to new questions.
For example, we can now say with reasonable certainty that humans are not the only intelligent creatures capable of creative thinking and abstract communication on this planet. Dolphins and whales have been added to that category, and I think the case for chimpanzees and orangutans has pretty much been made if not entirely accepted. Gorillas and quite probably other primates are also in that group.
Skeptical people may be less likely to agree that dogs and birds and other animals should be added to the list but a typical household dog can understand about 300 words of human speech, enough to be able to respond intelligently to questions, commands, jokes, and other verbal stimuli. Science has not yet caught up with the Believers nor confirmed that the Doubters are right on any points, but if I had to lay down a bet today I would bet on the Believers in this category.
Intelligence, reason, and abstract thought are NOT the sole right of Man. Fortunately, there are no statements in the Bible making such outrageous claims so Christians and Jews don’t have to worry about reconciling the notion of having an intellectual conversation with their pets with their beliefs. Besides, Balaam’s ass was smart enough not to disrespect an angel — that should count for something. But as far as determining whether we humans are alone in the universe, I think the answer to that question is ABSOLUTELY NOT. We just didn’t realize we had a lot of relatives capable of independent, rational thought.
Of course, the animals have not developed complex civilization like Man has. So we still seem to be at the top of the intellectual food chain, so-to-speak. But you never know. “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” may be closer to reality than we presently realize.
What this means for paranormal studies dealing with ghosts, spirits, psychic phenomena, etc. is that science may one day vindicate the phenomena if not the interpretations. That is, whereas now many claims are dismissed on the basis of unscientific assumptions such as mass hysteria, atmospheric phenomena, rogue electrical fields in basements, etc., one day we may have the science and the tools to ferret out real evidence of things that currently cannot be explained.
And the nervous system may be at the root of all this paranormal activity. That is, think about what the nature of angels and demons may be. They are supposedly spirits, very powerful spirits, very dangerous spirits. The Bible and other religious works mentioning these entities don’t provide detailed scientifically validated histories for their origins, so these sources of information are mythical in the sense that the myths offer explanations that are consistent with a specific world-view.
Myths are not necessarily untrue — they simply depend upon a symbology that is less formal, less verifiable than scientific nomenclature. In other words, imagine how difficult it would be to understand simple elements of physics such as atoms and molecules if all we had to go on was that the world is made up of very many really small things. That would be the myth we pass on to future generations who lack our science. It doesn’t tell them much. The generations inheriting that knowledge from those to whom we pass it would have no way of knowing there was ever anything more.
So to label something as a “myth” when you mean it’s not true is an error — you’re disrespecting real myths, which may be just as real as you or I. A myth is a story that attempts to explain something in terms that its audience understands. The myth may reflect a scientifically verifiable truth in a wholly unexpected way. So be careful not to dismiss myths simply because you don’t want to believe them. There is nothing scientific in that attitude.
The nervous system has been part of Earthly life for millions of years. It may be that many species of creatures which previously inhabited Earth evolved both nervous systems and brains sophisticated enough to support rational thought, intelligence similar to our own. That they left no traces of civilizations doesn’t mean they could not think. Maybe they had civilizations, maybe not. We don’t need to find lost cavernous cities built by dinosaurs to ask whether dinosaurs had brains capable of expressing even the simplest of rational thoughts. We cannot rule out the possibility, especially since we continue to discover new species of dinosaurs almost every year.
Until our knowledge of the past life on Earth is complete we can never fully rule out the likelihood that other creatures preceded us who were capable of some sort of intelligent, rational thought, even if they never evolved beyond the simplest of tool-making techniques. So that is one question that must be answered. If there are angels and demons, what are they and where did they come from? Were they once biological creatures?
This, of course, leads to the question of whether there is “life after death”. And yet any biologist could tell you two things. First, yes, there is often “life after death” in the sense that the physical body is often transformed into other living biological things. We eat plants and animals that were once alive and our bodies use those things’ cells to construct or repair new cells. So life arises from death all the time, in a biological sense. But a biologist would also have to point out that the idea of a spirit surviving the death of the body does not constitute biological life after death.
In other words, “life after death” — as most people use it — is an oxymoron. There may be a conscious existence after death but it is not the same as the biological life that produced it. Hence, asking biology to confirm or denounce the idea of “life after death” is inappropriate. If there is something about neurological activity that continues to exist after the body dies, the biologist is the wrong scientist to study this phenomenon.
We don’t really fully understand the electromechanics of the brain. We know there are chemical processes that assist special biological material to “fire up” the network of cells and components which record our memories and assemble our thoughts. But what if those bio-chemical nodes are only nature’s way of connecting with something else, something that science has yet to identify, study, and understand? There is no indication that we have learned most of what can be learned about brains, intelligence, and consciousness. So the brain may indeed only be a receptacle or gateway to the mind — in that the mind may exist partly outside the physical body.
This could, perhaps, be partially explained by Quantum Theory, perhaps Quantum Mechanics. We don’t yet know enough to say what will best explain why we think we see the world through our eyes. We just know that when we open our eyes we are conscious of seeing things from the level of our eyes.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics teaches us that energy cannot be lost but that it must be transformed into something else. Hence, the fields produced by any body of energy must also go back into the pool of things that exist. So when you think about consciousness surviving outside the body you have to find a way to reconcile this energy retaining its coherence sufficiently that it can be rational and intelligent. In other words, something must help consciousness resist the natural tendency toward Entropy.
To date, no one has been able to show that Entropy can be avoided — but we can easily see that it can be slowed or deferred. Hence, consciousness might indeed be able to survive the death of the body — at least long enough for some transformative process to occur such that the consciousness may continue to exist. Some people might call this ascension. Some people might describe it as a passage to a higher plane of existence (or an alternate plane of existence). But if we assume for the sake of discussion that consciousness manifests itself in some sort of electromagnetic expression, there must be a source for that manifestation. If the source is completely biological then Entropy must ensue rapidly — that is, the timeframe for a consciousness to transform into a more sustainable state after the heart stops beating must be very short. If the source is NOT completely biological then Entropy may not have to kick in so quickly.
Hence, given an assumption of electromagnetic foundation for consciousness, there are three logical possible outcomes for any consciousness experiencing death of the biological “host”:
- The consciousness collapses because it cannot produce sufficient energy to sustain its coherence
- The consciousness must seek rapid transformation into a state that can be sustained without a biological host
- The consciousness can retain its coherence for an indeterminate but extended length of time, perhaps slowly losing coherence
This assumption — that consciousness is manifested electromagnetically — allows us to consider the possibility that “ghosts” can survive the death of the body, perhaps even that they might be able to possess and manipulate a weakened body. Perhaps a strong “ghost” might even be able to attach itself to a very young, developing embryo that has yet to develop its own consciousness, thus leading to a form of reincarnation. Another variant of the recincarnation hypothesis is that a pre-existing consciousness might be blended with one forming in an embryo.
Of course, we don’t know when living creatures first become conscious or self-aware. Babies are ill-equipped to share their insights into their own existence with us. Memory itself is complex enough that we don’t yet even know if it’s preserved electrically. But if biological memory works anything like computer memory then assuming a consciousness can manage its own electrical fields without the aid of a body then it might be able to retain some memories.
We don’t know enough to say this line of reasoning is impossible or wrong. Hence, we cannot say that the phenomena so-called paranormal investigators are trying to document and understand are not real. But our ignorance and inability to dismiss this one line of reasoning doesn’t rule out other plausible explanations, either. And, contrary to popular opinion, this is not a matter which Occam’s Razor can help us decipher. Occam’s Razor says “pluralities should not be multiplied” (i.e, don’t just make up stuff without a need for it), although most people mistakenly believe that it says “the simplest explanation is usually the correct one”. In fact, where life is concerned simple explanations are usually wrong.
Since we don’t have a complete understanding of what life and consciousness are we don’t know what the simplest explanations can be. Hence we don’t have the luxury of dismissing anything but the most absurd nonsense from consideration — and even then we may eventually come to learn that what we thought was nonsense was sage wisdom. Ignorance leads us to make many mistakes and to rely on bad explanations.
Of such ignorance are myths born, but the myths themselves only seek to explain real things. Which leads us back to the word “paranormal”. This word has been abused too much to be of any viable use. Supposedly the paranormal lies beyond normal scientific understanding but if that is the case then the word is an oxymoron because, frankly, given enough time and effort we should be able to scientifically study and understand these phenomena that have so enthralled paranormal investigators.
Scientists may not want to use K2 Meters, cameras, and audio recorders to identify and study the phenomena, but when they are ready they’ll have tools and methods that are deemed acceptable by a majority of the scientific community. And, truth be told, if all these entities really exist, I suspect rather strongly we won’t have to camp out in dark houses at night to study them.
The problem is that science may not be prepared to open a door that cannot be closed. For example, suppose we scientifically validate the existence of bodiless consciousness. It won’t be long before people start clamoring for the construction of devices that these consciousnesses can control and eventually be bonded to. After all, that would be a way for us to ensure our survival after the death of the body (and it would require the creation of a whole new body of laws to allow the biologically living and the eletrically-manifested to co-exist peacefully with each other). But then, what if we create such devices only to unwittingly hand them over to angels and demons? What would the world be like then?