Abstract

Abstract

There is no easy way to overcome the elite who run the world except by the methods the Hondurans and Iranians are using. Getting out on to the streets and demonstrating until they are forced to give in. There are always too many people misled by fantasy, whether believers in Islam, Christianity, alien abductions or any other form of wishful thinking, for it to be generally successful. But every now and then, the public outrage is such that lying regimes are overthrown. It only happens when people have their feet on the ground, not in the air.

From Mike

Thanks for sending the interview with Jim Marrs showing that the Americans, having spent millions on remote viewing in the cold war, then used it to bring down the Soviet Union.

I thought the cold war had ended because the Soviet Union collapsed politically and economically. What did remote viewing have to do with it? This man is doing a bit of marketing. He is selling a book. Like all these books, it is a book about secrets that are being kept from us and nobody can ever know, so he can write anything he likes, and if anyone says it is garbage, they are part of the conspiracy. Its a win, win, win situation for these people.

There is no easy way to overcome the elite who run the world except by the methods the Hondurans and Iranians are using. Getting out on to the streets and demonstrating until they are forced to give in. There are always too many people misled by fantasy, whether believers in Islam, Christianity, alien abductions or any other form of wishful thinking, for it to be generally successful. But every now and then, the public outrage is such that lying regimes are overthrown. It only happens when people have their feet on the ground, not in the air.

I notice that Marrs justifies his remote viewing investigation by finding remote viewing in the bible. That will always get a good audience in the US because it then has God’s own imprimature. Never mind that most of the Jewish scriptures are about as believable as Sir Gawain and the Grene Knight.

I just read a good book by a scientist called Victor Stenger called Quantum Gods. It is directed at all the scams fed to the gullible based on the mysteries of quantum theory, and usually invented by people without a clue about it, yet they make fortunes. Just like Mr Marrs.

From Arthur

I guess, like most, you won’t even have listened to the interview with Jim Marrs.

Listen is all I could do because the streaming of the video seemed to be using up more memory than my poor old computer can spare, and it went off, together with all the icons on the software I was using, though the sound came through all right. You are still right, though. After about 15 minutes, shortly after he quoted the bible as evidence for remote viewing, I packed it in. The bible’s the oldest con trick still extant, however many Americans it impresses.

Of course, the fact that the US and no doubt the USSR spent millions, if not billions on an RV programme is, in your way of thinking, not relevant. you can think what you want and believe what you want. If it’s in the paper, or on the TV it must be true????? As it was pointed out in The Flat Earth News much of what is put in the press is either partially true, or completely untrue.

Let’s not fall out because I think a man’s a confidence trickster and you think he is a prophet. We are both old enough to hold our views without rancour. We are having a discussion, so let me address your points.

First, is Jim Marrs the only source you have that they did spend bi/millions on it? If there is no way of confirming his allegations, how is he any different from say the newspapers that you do not doubt are untrue? What, in other words, is the infallible criterion of truth you seem to have?

I was trained in science, and science is skeptical about anything not unequivocally proven to be so. You know I am, like you, skeptical of much that newspapers print, but you are utterly uncritical of people like this man who are using gullibility to make money—just like religions. You might reject conventional religions, but you are a believer, and like believers you get tetchy when others cannot see your reason to believe. Maybe this man’s interview is meant to explain it, but I am skeptical of his claims, which he can make with impunity, as I already said, because they are secret. Yet they are not so secret that he cannot find out about them, nor so secret that he is quaking in his boots that the CIA will get him for letting top secrets out, yet poor old Dr Kelly seems to have been murdered for what he revealed, and these gurus are not so generous and public spirited that they give their information away on the internet. They always want money for it, and get it from their uncritical supporters. Marrs kept holding back in the interview because he wanted people to read his book. He means he wants people to buy it!

Were you not also in the market to sell your books. What makes you any differant to Jim Marrs?

Well, I actually did give my books away on the internet, that’s one difference. Another is that I offer verifiable evidence for what I am saying. That is something that new age, psychic, conspiracy gurus do not often do unless you accept their speculations as evidence. It isn’t! Conspiracies are by definition secret, and when they are genuine government conspiracies, they usually stay secret forever or until it doesn’t matter any more. As I suggested to you a few emails ago, governments use spoilers and distractors to make smoke, and in my view that is what these people are. Real conspiracies for which there might be genuine evidence are mixed with quackery until you are forced to accept it all, though much is fantastic, or reject it all, though some has a real basis, because no one critical of some of it can tell which is which.

And, of course, any book written by a scientist is always valid, if you agree with it that is.

If it is reporting science, then it is valid because science is about repeatable, confirmable events, not about fancy. If it is not science, then I have no more reason for believing it than anyone else’s book. There is a region in between where a scientist might speculate. His/her speculations might be worth reading, but they remain speculations until they are verified… or refuted. Who Lies Sleeping? is speculation but intended to make us think about what we are doing now to ourselves, not to present a water tight case that dinosaurs had a high technology. There is not enough evidence to prove it. The best you can say about Marrs is that he is suggesting what might be, not what certainly is. The fact that he is fond of fringe “research” does not give him credibility.

Incidentally, scientists have investigated psychic phenomena, and they have never been verified. The research has never gotten anywhere. That is why it is eventually ditched, like the psychic engineering statistics lab at Stanford (I think) that has closed not long ago after 25 years. It was probably funded by government grants, and that is where the money Marrs speaks of went.

Have you read The Holographic Universe, by Michael Talbot? Also a good read.

I read it a long time ago. I gave it away in the last couple of years. I agree it is a good read, but that is not a good enough reason for it to be correct. David Bohm, a scientist, speculated that the universe might be some sort of hologram. Talbot develops the speculation to its limits, but science has not found enough evidence for it for it to enter the mainsteam. It therefore remains speculation—fancy, if you like. I also read, donkeys’ years ago, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, that Marrs said led him on to his remote viewing work. So, your implication that I will not hear of any of this is not true.

I find your evidence for fantasy rather unconvincing, to say the least.

What evidence? Do you mean my books and web pages refuting Judaism and Christianity? They offer a large amount of evidence but all the believer can offer in return is unquestionable faith. Everything is false except faith to the believer. You’re entitled to your opinion, too, Arthur, but only a believer could be convinced by it. Maybe that is your point.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply to my recent email. I have no wish to fall out with you Mike. If there is anything that upsets you to do with this discussion I am quite happy to bring it to a close.

No, I’m not upset, but your annoyance is not heavily disguised! I think we agree on many things, disagree on some, but also put our emphases in different places.

Because I send you an interview of somebody does not mean that I think he is a prophet in any way. I also do not have evidence that he is a fraudster. If I was able to talk to him face to face perhaps then I would have a better idea of whether what he is saying is true. I cannot jump to your conclusions just on the evidence of one video. It is easy to cast aspersions against someone who is unable to answer back. Doesn’t the word “skeptic” mean not to take a position for or against a point of view until evidence is forthcoming, ie proof one way, or the other. Or am I at fault here. With regard to the funding on RV. All I can say is that millions of dollars were spent on it by the CIA over a period of years. You can find this by googling.

Well I have to imagine he has impressed you in some way, and perhaps I wrongly assumed that the interview was a taster for me and you knew more about what he was saying, but the interview did indicate that he had covered a large number of different fields with his “researches”, and mostly they were in fields that are hard to research for one reason or another. In this case, he says the superpowers have spent fortunes in secret on studying remote viewing. Yet he was able to find out about it. Was it secret then? Or was it open? If the grants were given to public universities like Stanford, I would assume it was no more secret than any other grant supported research in univerites, and you rarely hear about it until it becomes commercial. Orthodox scientists and no doubt many others were suprised that Puthoff and Targ (I think I have the names right) got support years ago. But to my knowledge nothing ever came of this research, and that is why it was dropped. Marrs seems to imply that the expenditure of all that money must have meant the work was successful.

I actually worked at Bradford university in a department trying to find uses for lasers in chemical spectroscopy because they could reveal higher order interactions that were forbidden by the laws of physics in normal spectra, like Raman and Infra Red. I got nowhere when I was working there, and it was the end of my being a scientist, but nothing has emerged in the last forty years to the best of my knowledge. Yet those labs must have cost the grant awarding body a lot of money, albeit not millions. At least one contract was government sponsored.

You can’t buy success in science when you are going down a blind alley, and the military might not be the best judges of what is feasible, especially if they are themselves believers. Whenever the government says something like this was a failure, the believers will take it to mean the opposite, the government is just hiding the truth. If it had really worked, then the government knew what Marrs was writing by remote viewing, and would have stopped it, if they had not wanted it to get out. As they didn’t, they cannot have remotely viewed it.

Skeptic originally meant one of the Greek schools of philosophers who thought nothing could be known for certain at all. They took the ability of the sophists to prove anything—whether for a proposition or against it—in a convincing way by argument as proof of their own philosophic position. So skeptics were those who would not believe anything. Scientific skepticism, though, is refusing to believe until something can be proved to be true by successful prediction. Scientific laws are meant to predict what will happen given certain conditions. Such laws have to be tested widely to establish the conditions within which they will work. So the scientific skeptic just disbelieves until, through this process of testing, they have sufficient reason to believe. It is not standing on the fence, as you seem to imply. The scientist begins with a doubt amounting to disbelief, and is not persuaded from it without the practical proof that shows they have no more reason to doubt. It accords with the original Greek outlook in that nothing is considered true… until it is demonstrated. That is why, I think the scientist cannot believe in god and honestly hold to the principles of science. If God is not proven to be so, then the skeptical view is He does not exist. You cannot be agnostic about it.

You say I’m a believer. If you mean by that, that I don’t accept that science has all the answers, then yes I’m a believer. I am not anti science, but I am very skeptical of those who preach the religion of “scientism” And many do. See definition.

I am skeptical of those who teach the religion of scientism too. Are there any such people, and, if there are, are they scientists? Scientism is the failing some scientists have of preaching on something as scientific when it is not science at all. The opinion of a scientist on anything that science has not investigated is worth little more than anyone else’s opinion. Scientism is to pretend it does.

But critics of science often refuse to accept that the scientific method is far more applicable than they like to admit. The philosopher, Mary Midgely, is an example. The reason is that science is at its core little more than “suck it and and see”. Scientific method is really an organized and systematic form of trial and error. I would say that much of how we learn in life is trial and error, and so scientific method is widely applicable. If that is scientism then I am guilty, but I would like to know why I am wrong.

The fact that you were trained in science does not make you an expert in Theology for example. I don’t pretend to be an expert in anything, so perhaps you should just discount anything I say.

You are absolutely right. I am myself critical of many “experts” precisely because they begin to think they are gods. The doctor who invented some gash rule about cot deaths, and, as an expert witness, ended up getting innocent parents jailed is a very good example. In my view, science is really quite humbling because its criteria are very strict. But this was not science, but scientism. This man was understood to be an expert on cot deaths, but this rule he had invented himself, and no other scientist had properly reviewed it or tested it themselves. This expert pronounced himself as god, and advocates, judges and juries believed him. Defence attorneys should have had the expert’s views examined by other scientists. When the miscarriages of justice happened, and were later discovered, other scientists then were asked to consider this expert’s rule, and found it invalid. If advocates, at the very least, had more knowledge of science, this ought not to have happened.

I am not an expert in theology, nor would I want to be. A theologian is just a man like Marrs seems likely to be, but in a very much older scam that is now accepted as part of society. Theology is the study of God, but one would have thought that any such study would begin by establishing what it is they are studying. You might as well study fairies or the undead. Anything that is said about such undefined things can mean nothing because there is no way of showing that it is true. That is the point of much that I have written in book form and even more so on the web.

When the assertions of the Judaeo-Christian holy books are tested against science and real history, they fail. It is not theology, but a careful, dare I say, scientific study of the facts available to us. Naturally, no churchman will look at these facts because their scam is based on 2000 years of misunderstanding and deliberate misreading of them. If they are right, then the rest of history is wrong, and that is exactly what fundamentalists claim.

It is also worth noting that scientists like Einstein were also believers. And of course so was Darwin.

I disagree here, Arthur. Darwin began intending to be a cleric, but decided to opt for biology, and his discoveries led him away from belief, especially when his own children kept dying, including a particularly well loved daughter. Einstein was from a Jewish family and brought up in a Catholic school, but said he began to disbelief by the age of twelve, and thereafter never did believe. His “god” was Nature, and there I agree with him. He was a pantheist.

We live in an age of over specialisation. There was an age when people were able to be scientists, mathematitions, alchemists, Philosophers and Believers. Bruno, Leonardo Da Vinci and Erasmus come to mind.

That is right. The renaissance man is now an impossibility. Scientists are now called geeks, and most tend to be uncertain and defensive, yet though the modern world is a scientific one, many people run science down, not least the believers in religions. Scientists like R Dawkins are the ones with the confidence to appear in public. Most scientists—the ones who occupy the benches in analytical laboratories around the world—are far too shy for that, and many are unwilling to make pronouncements on matters they have hesitated to study. Many observers find it surprising, but, of course, make their judgements on the media scientists who are not ashamed to voice an opinion.

Any scientist, though, can, on the basis of science, say that God does not exist. Vic Stenger, whom I mentioned before, I believe, has written a good book called The Failed Hypothesis of God. He shows that, if God chooses to remain hidden as believers say He does, he cannot have any effect on the world. Nor can He intervene in it without leaving His tracks behind. Stenger examines this carefully and finds no such tracks. Indeed, the world is so far just how science describes it without having any recourse to God. You can argue that science is still not necessarily right, but it still shows that the world is explicable without a God.

I agree that the bible is very unreliable source. I am at present reading The Jesus Papers by Michael Baigent. He seems to be saying that the historical Jesus existed, but not in the way the Bible says. One example he gives is that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that she had children by him. This position is, I believe, at odds with D M Murdock’s point of view. I have no way of proving either.

I haven’t come across D M Murdock, but again the view of M D Magee is that the circumstances of the Christian gospels closely match the Jewish sect of the Essenes, active at the time, and that the best explanation of Jesus is that he was an Essene, and not merely any Essene but a leading one. Now the basis of this identity is a large body of evidence, that the churches will not honestly face because it destroys the notion that Jesus was a one off son of God. Baigent is expanding on The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail which he co-authored getting on for thirty years ago. It is a very interesting book, but tenuously links so many unlikely episodes in history together—admittedly making a fascinating story—that it is just incredible.

The senior Essenes were celibate because they aspired to be angelic, and angels do not copulate, just as Jesus argued himself. So the idea that he began a dynasty is unbelievable. In classical times, leading men wanted to claim descent from the gods, and to the ordinary man it seemed a good explanation of why they were exceptional. The idea carried over, it seems, into early post Roman Merovingian Europe. Then the religion had become Christianity, and the way to claim descent from God was to claim descent from Jesus. It required a myth to be invented that Mary Magdalene was the spouse of Jesus and she and her offspring escaped to Europe so that the Frankish kings could claim to be descended from God! Mary Magdalene seems to have been a late invention herself, hardly appearing in the gospels—without assuming that other women were really her.

We have no way of proving one story compared with another one except by the evidence provided, sound evidence or mythical evidence. When there is no clear demonstrable proof, science falls back on the the criterion of the balance of evidence. Then we have to make the judgements.

My position is: I do believe that man is a spiritual being. That consciousness continues after physical death. I have twice experienced being outside my body, albeit briefly. I have strong sympathies with the Gnostics position. And yes I am skeptic. Religion has its truths, as does Science. The use of discrimination is for me a necessary tool. Oh! and intuition is important. By the way I have seen your books for sale on the internet. Namely Who Lies sleeping? and The Mystery of Barabbas, both with a price tag.

Sure the books are on sale on the internet, but no one needs to buy them because they are already there for people to read, together, now, with a vast amount of supplementary material that is probably more important than what is in the books. Maybe that is why I am not selling any!

Regarding your beliefs, all I can say is that none of them have convinced me, nor do I think it is necessary to hold any such views. Words like “spiritual” seem to me to be virtually meaningless when it does not mean “religious” (mainly) or “supernatural”. I would be willing to use it if it were understood as an intuitive recognition of our interconnectedness, what I call “kinunity” because the whole of life is united in kinship—that is what Darwin showed. This spirtuality is a sort of joy occasionally felt at the sheer wonder of Nature, and that we are not alone in it, but are all linked together and mutually interdependent, and that for me is the reason we should love one another—and worms and beetles—not because some guru 2000 years back told us that God said it.

I cannot see how consciousness can continue after physical death. After all we lose it with a simple blow to the head, and death is rather more serious than that.

Out of body experiences are interesting, but I believe that much has been done on understanding them. The phenomenon is really the power of psychology and the imagination, often triggered by some chemical or physical change, like drug usage, magnetic forces, and, among these, are changes that happen in the circumstances that accompany death, and, of course, near death. Oxygen deprivation to the brain, for example, gives the bright light and tunnel effect that many people “returned from the dead” have experienced.

If religion has its truths, we only know it because science has confirmed them. Most of religion is manifestly false, and otherwise untestable, ie false to anyone skeptical.

You are far from alone in holding your views, but for me they are a legacy of Christianity, which requires them to be true or Christianity is false.

Anyway, I’ve gone on far too long, but that is because you raise points that are of great interest to me, and so I am delighted for the chance to expand upon what I have come to think about them. I wouldn’t think it if I thought I was wrong, so I think I am right, but I accept that you might after all turn out to be the correct one. If you are right, I expect you’ll be able to tell me so when we are both dead!

I found your last communication very useful and in many ways we are in agreement. You may know D M Murdock as Acharya S. She wrote The Jesus Conspiracy (The greatest story ever sold).

Right! Acharya S is the name I knew.

It is good to have these debates from time to time. I have an old friend who is a Russian Orthodox priest. We frequently meet for coffee and have many disagreements relating to his beliefs. He was rather upset when I said to him once that the Christ story was a myth. Fortunately we are still friends.

One of the popes, Leo X, was reported to have admitted it was a myth, the doubt about it being that the reporter was a Protestant. Even so, one might not expect a Protestant to want to advertise the view that someone—even a pope—thought it was a myth. The difficulty is that myths are always labelled as false, but myths can be created by skillful manipulators out of truth or semi-truth. Acharya S is among those who consider Christ to have been an astrological entity of some kind, usually identifed with the sun, and the stories about the sun’s annual journey through the constellations are anthropomorphized.

The whole trouble with this theory is that Christianity set itself up with a myth that could hardly have got itself supporters in the Roman empire, namely that God appeared as a man whom Romans thought was a rival to Caesar and killed as the law required. Why would the Christians do this, when the unadulterated myth was already apparently around and acceptable to many? The only answer that convinces me is that Christianity indeed began with a tale of a crucified Jewish leader. Christians could not escape it, only keep it under wraps—as mystery religions did their core secrets at the time. Jesus actually existed, and his story was highjacked after his death by Paul, whereupon Paul treated him as a cosmic entity to whom all the attributes of the cosmological God could be added. The power of this new version was the fact that the saviour had left the cosmos to appear on earth. It was novel and persuasive because the cosmos had seemed a long way away from ordinary folk.

In fact the original Jewish version was much closer to ordinary folk. The man who became Christ existed, but made no claim to be a god, merely the messiah, a man (or angel) sent by god. The notion of the messiah was Persian, and the cosmic entity was Mithras, a Persian (maybe the Persian) god. Mithras became Michael the angel in Judaism, and Michael the angel was to lead the heavenly hosts to save the Jews and elevate them to world leaders. This became the role of Jesus at the Parousia, so Jesus became Michael, who was Mithras, and Jesus therefore got the cosmic attributes of the Persian sun god. A human Jewish rebel became a Roman and western god with eastern solar attributes. The Romans considered Christianity to be a solar religion, and the imagery of the Orthodox Church, perhaps more commonly than the western churches show Christ as a sun god.

With regard to “out of body experiences”. The first one took place whilst travelling on a coach from London to Oxford. I was outside the coach and I became very worried about returning to my body.The second one took place when I was lying down and I was watching myself breathing from outside my body. I can only speak from my limited experience. I don’t really care as to whether people believe me or not. I wasn’t taking any substances at the time. Perhaps you might say that I have a strong imagination.

Well unless you saw something that you could not have known without being outside your body, it has to go down as a dream or a lucid dream—we are back to remote viewing. Experiences like yours, which I do not doubt for a second, need to be explained in the most parsimonious way possible. It is a rule of science. Without the evidence that you actually were in some sense outside your body, it has to be considered imagination.

Didn’t Einstein have what is called a Eureka moment?

Most people struggling with a problem have them, even we mere mortals! I have, and I expect you have too. It is intuition, surely. We know the mind, most of which is subconscious, works over our problems while we are asleep, or consciously thinking about other things, then the answer comes in a flash of gestalt, as psychologists call it. Some scientists and artists deliberate think about a problem they want to solve as they are in bed at night, knowing that the answer or an answer will often jump out at them the next day.

I think Mike we will have to agree to disagree. We both have strong beliefs and I am most certainly not trying to persuade you to my way of thinking. You also belong to a large group.

It is human to want to persuade others of our views. It is the basis of evangelism, but persuasion is different from obliging or arm twisting. An argument ought not to be a quarrel.

I do worry that our education system does not encourage pupils to question what they are taught as Truth.

Regrettably, the Truth with a capital “T” is what all believers think they have, Christians, Moslems, Jews, and New Agers who have the motto “the truth is out there”. These are larger groups than the science group, at least in total. Maybe religions like Buddhists, Taoists and Confucianists are not so dogmatic. I like to think the truth is out there too but the way to get to it is systematically, and that is science. The essence of scientific method is testing, which implies a question, and a test. “Is this hypothesis really so? We must try to prove otherwise.” If tests which could prove the hypothesis false do not, then it remains true until some such test succeeds. Then the hypothesis has to be abandoned for a better one, or modified so that it still works. What could be a better discipline for pupils?

Though you seem to have the idea that science is somehow dictatorial, it actually is not. Nature dictates what we find once we have assumed the world is the same for us all—in its laws, that is. If the laws of Nature depended on each of us subjectively, then science simply could not work. Tests are agreements between many different testers that they have found the same results—objectivity. So the basic assumption that we all experience the same laws of Nature seems valid because it does work, and better than any other form of investigation we have ever devised. Scientists have tried to investigate psychic matters but nothing has come of it, even though the churches of the world maintain that supernatural, or psychic, phenomena must exist because without it their concocted and unverified fancies just cannot hold water.

This, for me, is the problem with your beliefs Arthur. You say you hold them strongly, but you have not explained why you do. Science explains itself, but all forms of faith are, it seems to me, to be or end up anti-science because science cannot find any truth in them. Yet science works, and faith, after thousands of years, remains just wishful thinking.

I disagree that I wish to persuade you of my beliefs. What I would like is an understanding beween us that we agree to disagree.

Well, we are debating subjects that we disagree about, so surely we understand already that we disagree without needing a contract saying so. I suspect you mean you are finding the correspondence tiresome and want it to cease. I don’t want to tie you to a stake and force you to discuss things on the threat of lighting the faggots! So if you want to stop talking, then it’s fine by me.

I am not a scientist, therefore you have a distinct advantage over me. We therefore do not have level playing field. We don’t even speak the same language.

Quite so, but one of my points is that you do not understand science, and make false accusations that it is dogmatic, dictatorial, unquestioning and so on, all words that describe the world’s faiths, but not science. You do not need to be a scientist to understand and appreciate it. I apologize if I have been blinding you with science, but I thought you would have understood that as a former teacher, like you, I would be happy to explain, if I could, anything that seemed abstruse. We all have our distinct experiences, and, if I am a scientist and have understood certain things associated with it, you have done many things that I have not done. Any discussion has the same initial conditions of zones of incomprehension, the point being to expand the mutually comprehensible areas of our knowledge, and each of us learning something thereby.

As a younger man I was more like you, as you might have been able to guess, and rather wished that such powers as telepathy were real but I was unable to keep my faith when repeatedly nothing came of them. I still think we have surprising powers even if they are not dominant, extra senses for example, like the magnetic sense of direction that some people have quite strongly (like homing pigeons), and others seem not to have much. Maybe such phenomena can explain aspects of, say, telepathy, but, if they can be tested, then science will find out about them. Revelation will not

Your problem is, Mike, that precisely because you were trained in science that you are unable to think outside of that paradigm.

It is a bit like the blind men in the land of the blind asking the one eyed men to put out their solitary eyes because only then can they understand what it is like to be blind. And I can say the same about you, with the appropriate changes. I follow a paradigm that works and the evidence is everywhere, and you have a paradigm with fabulous promises that have never been realized after several millennia. I am unable to think outside my successful paradigm, you say, but you will not move from your failed one. So, who’s the bigger dogmatist? I suspect you are not willing to learn about science, not because you find the language too hard—you are obviously an intelligent man—but because you are emotionally committed to ancient fancies from something in your upbringing. That is most often the case in those who are addicted to the institutional religions, and maybe you are similar.

I cannot prove to you why I hold my beliefs because you insist on using a language that is not familier to me. Therefore anything I say must fit your scientific principles.

But Arthur, the language you choose to use is your own choice not mine. Most of our common language is, I think, quite easy to understand. There are words—earlier in this correspondence, I mentioned the word “spiritual”—which few understand because they have no firm points of reference, often because such words are used metaphorically, but people think they understand, or claim to understand, in the way that everyone in Andersen’s fairy tale could see how splendid the emperor’s new clothes were. If this is such a word, and you understand it but I do not, then you can explain it to me. I must say I have found from corresponding with Christians that most of them do not understand their own beliefs at all well, but it does not make them any more willing to fill the gaps in their knowledge. Faith, of course, requires no knowledge!

Science exists primarily in a five sense world, does it not? and is therefore unable to comprehend in its terms anything that does not fit within scientific principles. And for sure there are scientists that do accept that there is a God. How they reconcile that with their science I don’t know. If science were able to explain everything then other fields of knowledge would cease to have any relevance.

Like us all, science exists in the world. Senses are how we perceive it. I read an article a few years back suggesting that as many as 20 senses of one sort and another had been investigated by science. I mentioned the magnetic sense above.

When you say “scientific principles” do you mean the laws of Nature that science has discovered? If so, they have come from Nature, they are not imposed on Nature by science. If you mean the “scientific method”, as I said before, it is a refinement of trial and error, which is essentially how we experience the world, and how evolution occurs. It is, in other words, natural too. If remote viewing, say, happens in the world, then it is natural not supernatural. If we have souls and spirits present in the world, they can be investigated. Scientists do not refuse to investigate such things, and they have investigated them, but nothing has ever come of the investigations. The hypothesis of spirit cannot be verified and so, on the principle of scientific skepticism, it is false and spirit does not exist. Science though is corrigible, something you seem not to believe, so the situation could change. Scientists will not utterly count it out, and if some technique should emerge that made spirits visible, then it would be heavily subscribed by those scientists hoping to make a name for themselves. Therefore you are wrong about science being unable to comprehend whatever does not fit its “principles”. What is true is that believers refuse to comprehend science.

I totally agree with you about scientists who are believers. Science and belief are incompatible for a very simple reason—science demands evidence, but belief does not. You cannot do both! The ones who do do it by keeping their beliefs and their science in isolated separate compartments in their mentality. As somebody said, they take off their cassock when they enter the lab, and take off their lab coat when they enter the church. Mostly of course, they have been subject to childhood indoctrination into religion, usually by their parents, and Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Catholic Order of Jesuits said that he would have the child to the age of seven to possess the man (as an adult) for “the Faith”. Many scientists (like Einstein) can throw this off by the power of their intellect but some find the psychological compulsion impossible to escape. They have been trapped by religion like a lobster in a pot.

What fields of knowledge are you forbidding science from entering? If knowledge is what is certainly known, then science is the only source of knowledge surely. Its very basis is testing and prediction to establish it is certain. The success of its methods ensures that what it finds is as well known as is possible within current limits. What other fields have methods as assuring?

I am happy to continue the discussion, and if you want to discuss what I say with like minded friends, I do not mind either. How could I stop you? But if you are fed up with it, then that’s all right too. If you have sincerely found anything I have said hard to understand, then ask unashamedly—I always thought I was a reasonably sympathetic teacher—and you can be the same in reverse.

I quite accept that I do not understand science. This is quite obvious since I am not trained in the scientific method.

You cannot have your cake and eat it. You freely criticize science and scientists, so you feel sufficient well versed in it to be able to declare or imply it is wrong in important regards, dogmatic, dictatorial, and so on. I have been trying to explain to you that your view of science is mistaken, but you are unwilling to listen. I have pointed out that the scientific method is very simple in essence, so training in it is not necessary to understand how it works, but you simply don’t want to hear how it works. You are like the Catholic Cardinals who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope. If you are right that I have prejudices, you need to be aware of your own.

It is also true that you do not understand anything outside of the five sense world. In fact you deny its existence.

It is sometimes hard to believe you are reading what I write, Arthur. I have accepted that there are far more than five senses in the world, and that some of them might have led to the illusions of powers in humans like telepathy. I have explained that science tests hypotheses to establish whether they are true or not. No hypotheses of the features that comprise the “other world” you believe in have ever been confirmed, or proven fruitful in any way, other than psychological. They are dead ends, and so they have been since they were invented in prehistory. Skepticism is accepting only what works, belief is faith in what does not work. I do not deny the existence of this “other world”, I say there is no confirmed evidence that there is any such thing, and that this world is explicable without the need to invoke other worlds or gods or spirits. Finally I tried to explain that subjective impressions are not objective ones, and science concerns objectivity. That means phenomena that are common to us all. A man and his wife can spend eight hours in bed together, and in the morning one of them can claim to have been abducted by aliens who came through the walls, took them outside to a waiting spacecraft and somewhere in orbit did biological tests on them, returning them in time to wake up and have breakfast. Though their partner experienced a normal night in bed, the one abducted will refuse to accept their “experiences” were purely subjective. They were dreams! All belief is equally irrational.

You have also said in the past that “an open mind” is a “gullible mind”. “My Brief Response” at the time was never answered by you. I did put the question in response to your statement that it must follow that not having an “open mind” presupposes a “closed mind”. How can we really move on in this discussion, if this is so? I also said that in such a situation: “Nothing very fruitful is likely to come of it”. I think broadly speaking this is correct. And as such perhaps it is, in your words, becoming tiresome.

I just searched my correspondence for “My Brief Response” and found nothing. Perhaps you had no response from me because I didn’t get the original. Send it to me again and I’ll be able to know what you mean. As for an open mind being a gullible mind, I believe I was speaking of the oft repeated request by Christians to approach their nostrums and fables with an “open mind”. What they mean is with a mind like theirs—a gullible one. I read what they say with an open mind, then analyze what it is they are saying. So far, I have found no good reason to believe what they say. So I have not been open minded enough. My mind is apparently closed. I am only open minded enough when I believe the nonsense being spouted by them. That is why “an open mind” means “a gullible mind”. If I offered you the philosopher’s stone to turn base metals into gold, carefully parcelled up in a bag, and demanded your life’s saving’s for it, you would tell me to jump in a river. You would not believe me. If you thought I might be telling the truth, you would want proof, a demonstration. Then you have become a scientist and not a believer! And despite my asking, I have still had no reasons for belief in this other world from you.

So before I finish I shall leave you with a couple of quotes. And perhaps if you could briefly put your scientifically trained mind aside when you read them, you might get a glimmer of understanding as to where I am coming from, but I doubt it in the circumstances.

“If we do not strive for inner perfection, we will remain what we are now- talking animals. The world has never been without teachers. Each age has its teachers. Jesus, Buddha and Muhammed were some of the great ones,but there are always qtubs, special beings who take care of the world. the perfect man the complete man, lies within each of us.” Sheik Sulyman Loras.

“I was a Hidden Treasure and I loved to be known. Therefore I created the Universes.” From the Hadith Qudsi.

“…O Marvel! a garden amidst flames! My heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks, And a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s Ka’ba and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Koran. I follow the religion of Love; Whatever way Love’s mount take, that is my religion and my faith.” Muhyiddin Ibn ’arabi.

Your expectations of me are low, so I cannot see any point of putting in the effort to understand whatever these religious poets were trying to put over in their metaphors and allegories. I cannot see why an Almighty Being needs to speak through flawed men, so cannot believe that any of these words are God’s or come from God. If they are the views of individual men, however perfect they might consider themselves to be, they are just opinion.

All of us are human beings living within Nature, and within human society, and the measure of perfection in these circumstances is getting on with others and other species. That requires individual effort to show to others how the perfect being acts. Since the advent of Christianity, it and its twin Islam have spouted on about love, while hating others and each other profoundly, and killing thousands as the supposed wish of their God. These religions are deeply disgusting and hypocritical.

The recognition, demonstrated quite clearly by Christ in the gospels, that God is your fellow human being, and every time you slight or wound a fellow human, you are slighting and wounding God, that is the essence of all religion. It demands the abandonment of God as a supernatural superbeing, and the sincere acceptance that He is everyone you meet in human society. We should love each other, yes, but love is not some mysterious human ability with supernatural overtones, it is being compassionate, being attentive, caring and doing something to help. It is active, but it is certainly not killing them. Christians and Moslems do not get it.

If you seek to be perfect, and want to do something about it without being merely pious, then read about secular Christianity. You seem unable to stomach whatever I write, but this is my view of it:

http://www.askwhy.co.uk/christianity/0870SecularChrist.php

And I don’t doubt there is a secular Islam to match, if you find Islam so attractive. Religion was originally whatever was conducive to society, to its stability and preservation, and the society was in practical terms God.

Hoping the Goddess can smile upon you, Arthur, and help you be a Secular Christ. I accept you are a good man already, if a little intolerant of contrary opinion. Yours in kinunity.

My brief response to you was in the form of a hard copy. I believe. It looks to me as if your fraca with the Christian lobby has had a devistating effect on you. And I can understand why you spoke of the open mind in the way you did. I do find some of your assumptions about me rather patronising and misguided. I think this is perhaps because of your unfortunate experiences with the Christians. You seem to be putting me in the same box as them. You could not be more wrong. I can only refer you to the first poem. We all have our short comings. So let’s leave it at that.

You happily write off books such as The holographic Universe by M Talbort as irrelevant. No doubt you have similar views on The Tao by Capra. I personally found these books very useful and informative. M Talbort in his book has an interesting section called “Restructuring Science”. I refer you to it. The word kinunity sounds like a made up word to me.

All words are made up. I told you I no longer have The Holographic Universe, so I cannot look up anything in it. Capra was a great believer in kinunity extended into the realm of physics, particularly in the supposed light of quantum mechanics, but he wrote in 1975, basing his views on the “Bootstrap” or “S-matrix” theory which proved to be a dead end, and was already unravelling when he published. Bootstrap theory seemed to suggest that nothing was independent, so fitted a tenet of Buddhism. When bootstrap theory led nowhere, Capra ended his science career with it. Since then he has become a media guru, along with Gary Zukov, favourites of Oprah Winfrey and other talk show hosts because they have a large audience of “spiritualists”, and playing to the gullible gallery gets them plenty of advertising revenue. I note, in passing that the Dalai Lama has written that “if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings and abandon these claims” (The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, 2005). I am copying the citation not having read the book.

I am sorry if I seem patronising. I do not mean to, but your refusal to hear what I am saying in favour of your preconceptions is possibly the source of it, and any assumptions I make—you do not say what they are—are informed by what you write to me, and are not based on prejudice. Finally, the Christian lobby has had no particular effect on me—they are greyhounds chasing a stuffed rabbit—but what has had an effect is the terrible deeds of Christianity and professed Christians—like Bush and Blair—throughout history. I frankly cannot see how anyone can associate Christianity with a merciful God. Or Islam! They are devilish religions. I am more sympathetic to Buddhism by far, and have said that it is the religion I would choose, in its original atheistic form, if religion were obligatory.

Step outside these warm evenings, Arthur, and smell the honeysuckle. Nature! Wonderful isn’t she? Science is how she teaches us.

I am an optimist and despite your views on religions there are some excellent words of wisdom within some traditions. Better not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Like G I Gurdjieff once said you have to be like thief in the night and only use/take that which is of use to you.You don’t have to buy into any of them. Some people thought he was a devil,but he brought some very important knowledge to the world.Both in music,ways of seeing and movement.He undoubtedly was an enigma.He was one of the wise ones.

What I am trying to say is that not all the answers are out there, they are within man himself. Until we stop ignoring the reality of who we are. This will continue. It is not my belief that man is naturally a destructive creature. It is not natural for him to kill, sometime on a large scale other human beings,despite what our leaders tell us. There may be exceptions,but in general this is so. Those within the military have to be intensively trained to do what they to do. They have to leave any quibbles,doubts behind.Any moral questions of what is expected of them. This causes both serious physiological scars to the fighting man as well as death and destruction to others. In the First World War my Father was very nearly Court Marshalled for being late for guard duty. He explained to the officer in charge that he was helping someone in great need. Fortunately he had an understanding officer, otherwise I probably wouldn’t be here sending you this email. To be kind,generous,loving,caring to others does not require intensive training.Positive parenting and schooling yes.

Yes nature is wonderful and we can learn much from her and we as a species should be taking better care of her. In our ignorance, we like blind men, continue to exploit the earths resources and in so doing are destroying both nature and human communities. We continue to think that war,war is superior to jaw,jaw. It really is time that we regained our humanity.We are in danger of losing it whilst we continue with this madness. And that is where the unknown lies. Man’s interior is a mystery to many. You might say that this is all “Fantasy”. Well I don’t know if what I have said makes my point of view any clearer to you Mike. My philosophy for what it is worth is:that there is always an upside to a downside.

I read just the other day, that, by the end of the War, hardly one man in ten was actually taking aim with their rifles, and many of those who did were deliberately shooting to miss! Evidence of what you say. Most people are not murderers. The relevant point in the article was that the psychological problems (“shell shock”) had by many soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq is caused by them being required to kill people. Yet people are amazingly obedient. They do as they are told, and when an authority tells them to kill, or harm, someone, they are all too ready to do it, apparently feeling absolved from the moral problem by being able to defer it on to their commander (Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments). Psychological distance also makes it easier to kill by the use of technology between the killer and the victim, or physical distance, like 36,000 feet vertically! I suspect we do as we are told because we had to obey our troop leader when we were still not yet human. Then, it might have meant the difference between life and death to do it—for example uniting to drive off a predator. Now, it is maladaptation, when our leaders are greedy sociopaths like Blair, or greedy empty headed dunces like Bush.We seem to agree on this.

Perhaps we all go through a phase when we are fascinated by the occult. I used to read ghost stories when I was a child, like those by M R James, and the allegedly true accounts like those about Borley Rectory. Later, I loved H P Lovecraft, and the period atmosphere and elegance of the Hammer House of Horror films, but always hated the idiotic blood and gore and special effects type of horror movies the Americans liked, though I did like Vincent Price. When it came to actually following up with what was supposed to have been the real thing like Theosophism, Madame Blavatsky, Gurdjieff and so on, I couldn’t distinguish between it and the stories I had liked earlier. When people come back from Thibet (it was always Thibet in those days, not Tibet) with fantastic secrets but which take a lifetime or more of study to acquire, then my skepticism rises.

I agree, though, that there is a lot of wisdom in what the ancient religions taught. They were teaching people how they should behave in society, so there ought to have been sense in it. In many cases, too, the religions were offering ways of surviving in dire circumstances. The Hindus are vegetarians, not for any supernatural reason, but for the practical one, that not everyone could eat animals because there were too many people and not enough beasts—over exploitation of resources even 3000 years ago. We need to take up the same lesson, or there will be indescribable famines, but it is hard to do. In India, the rulers did not need to stop eating flesh, and did not do it, at least for a thousand years after everyone else had. We are back to “there’s a law for you’uns, and there’s a law for we’uns, and tain’t the same law”! Or, “it’s the rich what get’s the pleasure, it’s the poor what get’s the blame”. Since we ceased living in small groups, religion lost its purpose, and became a tool of the ruling class, and so it has remained.

We agree on many things, as we have said before, but discussion is like drama—if the protagonist and the antagonist agree on everything, then the play is not entertaining, and the audience leaves the auditorium unenlightened. Discussion has to be about those things we disagree on, not what we agree on, though we need to remind ourselves that we are not in a quarrel when we get passionate about this view or that one.

By the way, what is the reality of who we are? Sorry, ;-)

The question of what is your reality can only be answered by you. If you really want to know? Then that is the first step. Since it is an interior reality unique to you. Asking the questions such as: What is the point of my existence here on Earth at this time. Am I really here by accident, or is there a purpose? Did I choose to be here? Perennial questions that go back to the dawn of time. There are many others. You may see such questions as irrelevant. On the other hand you may see them as a step into the unknown. The beginning of a challenging adventure. And believe you me it is a challenge for those who dare to take the plunge. My father once wrote in my autograph book when I was a kid: “Dare to be your self”. At the time I had no idea what he meant. I have since learnt that the full saying is “Dare to be yourself. Dare to be a Daniel.” Both Love and Knowledge are neccesesary. Hence the reason for “I was a hidden Treasure and I loved to be known” If you have no wish to know then there is no more to be said on the matter.

I winked after my last question—what is the reality of who we are?—not expecting you to attempt an answer. The answers you give illustrate a point I was making, namely that science is based on objective reality, and that is shared reality, not subjective, entirely personal reality. My subjective experiences are my own, as are yours, and, unless they are of a general nature that can be shared to make them objective, they must remain our own. You are, of course, correct that my own experience is unique, so my reality is unique. But what can only be my own is of no interest to others unless they are going to pretend otherwise and become like the spectators of the emperor admiring his new clothes. We cannot escape from being social animals, so can only operate as fully human by sharing with others, yet what is shared must be experienced in common. Our truths are learned in common, not in isolation. This is the core of what we disagree about. There are many things I would love to know, but I cannot know them purely from my internal experiences, and nor, I think, can anyone. We know only too well that people brought up essentially from birth isolated never become properly human. Our humanity is shared, and without it, or without due regard for it we end up mad or malfunctioning. “Spiritual” experience never leads to any useful discoveries.

When it comes to questions like those you mention—What is the point of my existence here on Earth at this time? Am I really here by accident,or is there a purpose? Did I choose to be here?—sometimes I might have a personal answer, and sometimes a reasonably objective one, but they are not the answers you are thinking of. So, no, I did not choose to be here. How is it possible? What is the point of my existence? It is whatever I make of it, and an annoying thing about the “promise” of an everlasting life is that it makes this life entirely worthless in comparison. This is the only life we are sure we have, and as such deserves a lot more emphasis that the reigions of the world give it. Put in the more abstract way of your second question, there is no answer at all. No, despite all the religious lies, no one speaks for God, and no one knows anything about any other life or any divine purpose in this one. Certainly, I can do what you say, and ask myself to answer from my own subjective experience, but any such answer will be worthless because it is entirely arbitrary. Each person has their own, so it really cannot be usefully shared. If I think I have an answer, my experience is irrelevant to anyone else, and it does not matter how singular you think you are, because all of us are singular. The gurus are those whom others flatter with “spiritual” genius, or they flatter themselves with it.

As you say, these questions go back to the dawn of time, and the fact that no one is any the wiser, still, ought to mean something. There is no need for me to judge the questions. It is the supposed answers that need questioning. Evidently they never actually answer the questions. It is central to the religious (“spiritual”) scam. The reason why it works perennially is that we experience our lives subjectively, so that our world dies when we die. Most people just cannot conceive of it and find a phony “answer” in the “fact” that they do not die at all. It is a feeble attempt to objectivy themselves.

You assure me that asking these questions is a challenge. Christians always say it is a challenge to take up the Christian faith. No doubt all of the institutional religions are the same. It has to be called a challenge to make it seem psychologically worthwhile. What is genuinely challenging is attempting to improve the situation of others in the world, preferably, it seems to me, by improving the world for everyone. Our modern motive boils down to selfishness, and that excludes everyone except self. Social animals cannot do that, for long at any rate, without destroying themselves. That is what we are doing, and the destruction is real. We owe it to future generations to stop it.

I cannot see how faith in spirits helps. We need faith in each other, and that eschews faith in angels and demons other than as metaphors for good and bad people. If Daniel’s lions are other people, then I see the point of the story, but if they are actual lions rendered lambs by God, then the story is a fairy tale. We shall have to face up to greedy lions but they are human ones, and God does not hold them back, so innocents always die in human struggles for betterment within society. We can call them reptiles, but they are “reptiles” that arise spontaneously from the human genome and society, and then have to be kept in order by society as a whole. We have seen what happens when we get slack with the payoffs made to bankers and politicians. They are simple straightforward crooks and have to be treated as such. Bush and Blair should be tried for war crimes against the human race.

I think it was Popper who explained that there are real things held in common, and there are imaginary things held personally, but there are also imaginary things held in common! These latter are the persistent belief systems of the world, which become actual forces in human society, not because they are real—they remain imaginary (emperor’s new clothes)—but so many people believe they are true and are willing to act on them, that they become a real force. Believers will kill to preserve their beliefs, whether they are beliefs in spirits or in capitalism.

Anyway, as I said, Arthur, I did not expect you to continue, and shall not be surprised if you take the chance to stop, esecially as I am no wiser for your coy replies. I still cannot see how pure subjectiveness can tell me anything about the human condition. Without a comparison, I cannot even be sure I am human!

Secretly you must have the last word.

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