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A lawyer responds to Prof. Carl Sagan – a Scientist/Astronomer - about the Afterlife and the Paranormal
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Contents
1. Opening statement

2. Rebutting Prof. Carl Sagan’s arguments:
i) Why don’t channellers give verifiable information?
ii) Channellers are making up the voices and the contents of channelling are all trivial and puerile
iii) It’s all wish-fulfillment
iv) The Fox sisters were faking it

3. Some Conclusions

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1. OPENING STATEMENT

A number of debunkers and closed minded skeptics mistakenly call upon Dr Carl Sagan’s skeptical writings to justify their own closed minded debunking, anti-afterlife, anti-psi (all paranormal) beliefs.

One of my colleagues even suggested that whilst the debunkers’ group on the East Coast regard Dr Carl Sagan as one of the giants of science - of astronomy, they also see Dr Carl Sagan, the way Christian Fundamentalists see Jesus.

Dr Carl Sagan was never a debunker. Nor was he closed minded. He himself said in chapter 12 of his book The Demon Haunted World, “If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I’d be eager to examine it …”. So he said.

Sagan would call himself an open minded skeptic, a critical thinker, a paranormal analyst. But after reading his writings on the paranormal I state that in his perception of the paranormal, he is fundamentally wrong.

Dr Carl Sagan was a theoretical scientist. He was not a ‘hands on’ practical laboratory scientist. He was not an empiricist – using scientific method to measure psi. He was not someone who was regularly empirically testing the paranormal in the field or in the lab.

He was NOT expressing an empirical, scientific view, but a personal, subjective, non-empirical view about the paranormal.

This means Sagan’s conclusions inevitably are subjective, unsupported by hard core empirical evidence. And as it is universally accepted, anything subjective can be subject to complete invalidation.

Sagan’s book is not about the afterlife. As a matter of fact, the afterlife is ancillary, not fundamental to his argument. Clearly then, he has not shown that he systematically analyzed the plethora of objective psi evidence. Sagan states that “If some good evidence for life after death were announced, I’d be eager to examine it …” but he has not even canvassed, studied and empirically analyzed any objective evidence for the validity of the paranormal and the afterlife – the different areas of objective evidence presented by some of the most intelligent scientists, empiricists on this planet earth of the past and of the present. That is an egregious failure on Dr Sagan’s part.

Sagan, inevitably, had a restricted perception about the evidence for the paranormal and the afterlife – (about psi - as a whole). The fact is that Dr Carl Sagan is not to be regarded as having objective authority on the paranormal or the afterlife. His above mentioned book is full of descriptive observations and reflections as perceived by a skeptic.

From his writings it is clear that Carl Sagan has not, as some other physicists have done, identified that afterlife activity is totally compatible with quantum physics’ or the sub atomic physics argument about the afterlife - higher level of vibrations than anything on physical earth.

If he did not agree with that, he should have given a rebuttal of the quantum physics explanation of psi. But he didn’t. He failed to do that. He avoided that. He by-passed the sub atomic physics argument of physicists such as Sir Oliver Lodge and quantum physics argument of Dr Fred Alan Wolf which would have knocked out or at least would have raised reasonable doubts about Sagan’s negative, anti-afterlife, anti-paranormal partiality.

Sagan raised a number of issues about mediumship, channeling, spiritualism generally. But then in his examples he deals with the mediums themselves, not with psi . In his examples he imputes that all mediums and all psychics are not genuine, appear to mislead – and especially in the case of channellers, come up with trivial information.

But that is ad hominem - he attacked the particular psychic not rebutting mediumship – not rebutting the actual psychic evidentiary process of channeling.

Further, Dr Sagan repeatedly tends to inductively interpret a singular paranormal activity – such as mediumship and then formulates a general principle – a conclusion imputing the afterlife does not exist. That is not correct. That is a fundamental flaw in logic. There is not just one area of evidence for psi/afterlife. My research shows that there are at least twenty three different areas of empirical evidence for the afterlife hitherto unrebutted – see www.victorzammit.com

Because his research was restricted, he inevitably came to restricted conclusions and failed to discriminate between the genuine, the legitimate and the specious. His conclusions, as we shall see below, were based on critical omissions and deletions, many assumptions and errors and many unfounded, unsubstantiated generalizations.

2. Rebutting Dr Carl Sagan’s arguments:

i) Why don’t channellers give verifiable information?

Sagan says: # “How is it, I ask myself, that channellers never give us verifiable information otherwise unavailable? Why does Alexander the Great never tell us about the exact location of his tomb, Fermat about his last Theorem, James Wilkes Booth about the Lincoln assassination conspiracy, Herman Goering about the Reichstag fire? Don’t Sophocles, Democritus and Aristarchus dictate their lost books? Don’t they wish future generations to have access to their masterpieces?”

This is an example of Sagan presenting an argument with insufficient information about the afterlife. One essentially has to perceive the afterlife holistically – must have the full and extensive available knowledge about afterlife matters.

First, as to verifiable information for years we have been having highly gifted mediums, such as John Edward who was giving verifiable information ‘live’ every time he was performing mental mediumship for television. And those few skeptics who vociferated opposition were not able to rebut J Edward. At his best, John Edward obtains information verified by the sitters which is so specific with some of the sitters, the chance of the information being allegedly “guessed” is more than one in a million and at his very best, in one 2 billions – something NO debunker was ever able to match.

I myself watched some fifty television of John Edward episodes and I also attended one of those huge meetings of John Edward – 20,000 in the meeting – and confirm that unless one claims fraud – the results were absolutely brilliant.

Probabilities were beyond reasonable doubt consistently favoring John Edward. If some debunker raises the issue of fraud or cold reading – forget it. Of the thousands of meetings John Edward had, it would be naïve and stupid in the extreme to even imagine John Edward doing deals with different frauds each time to cheat and lie to the public every time he had an afterlife meeting.

As to Fermat, Booth, Goering et al, Sagan makes a fundamentally erroneous assumption that the human condition is constant on physical earth and in the afterlife. He should not assume that human variables such as thoughts, feelings, sentiments, motivation, higher drives for status, priorities, accomplishments, ambition, justice, rewards and punishment in the afterlife are just like on earth.
Nor can Carl Sagan think that to contact someone from the afterlife you can just go to any medium– giving the impression that it is as easy as picking up the telephone or sending a fax or emailing anyone you like. It is not like that at all.

That is secular Sagan rationalizing from limited restricted psi information.
Those who are fully informed could have told Sagan that there could be insurmountable problems for an afterlife entity trying to make contact with us on physical earth. Highly credible sources transmitted highly credible information about the conditions of the afterlife.

• It may have been that when you were on earth you held extremely strong beliefs that the afterlife does not exist. You believed that we are just like a candlelight in the darkness of the universe – when the light goes out, that’s it! Nothing else exists. And when you died you saw your physical body dead and you found that you have consciousness with all memories intact, a live spirit, a duplicate solid body of your dead physical body. You may have seen people around your dead physical body – you tried to talk to them but they did not respond – great confusion sets in. “I cannot be dead” you say, “… look I still have a solid body!” We are highly credibly informed from the other side that there are many people like this stay in this horrible confusion which sometimes turns into despair – for thousands of years! Now, if Hermann Goering was one of these people, certainly he would not be answering any of Carl Sagan’s questions!

• The afterlife is constituted of different realms at different levels of vibrations – the lowest and darkest, the most horrible to the highest where the light is, where vibrations are operating at a faster rate and conditions are so great, they are beyond description. Now a person with low vibrations, say Alexander the Great, will end up in the lowest, darkest realm. If Alexander the Great crossed over with extremely low vibrations because of systematic extreme brutality, Alexander is not likely to make contact with anyone. There will be problems of locating where he is – and other huge problems for him of darkness and aggression from other low entities. In such circumstances Alexander is not likely to be in a position to answer questions put by Carl Sagan through a medium about Sagan’s intellectual curiosities.

• If a person like ‘Sophocles’ or ‘Dimocritus’ or ‘Aristarchus’ when on earth suffered too much pain, depression or any sustained negativity, almost certainly, that person would not want to return to the environment where he/she had those negative experiences. Under those conditions, the earth would be just like a ‘Skinner Box’ - an environment where severe punishment is anticipated.

• It is also most relevant that afterlife entities do not all have equal skills in transmitting information to those still on earth. There are those who are most proficient and those who have no skills at all in communicating with us on earth. Just because some people were brilliant or notorious or aggressive when on earth does not mean they have any special skills in transmitting information to us here.

• If these abovementioned known names are in the realm of the light – there are no incentives for them to come anywhere near physical earth. Of course, there are exceptions, but the hugely better conditions for the normal, decent folk in the realms of the light are immensely superior to the much darker earth plane. Why would they bother to pass on information which they may think is totally irrelevant and immaterial to the real purpose of living on physical earth?

• It would be different if there was a heart to heart link – if there was love. We are informed from the other side that love is the most powerful force in the universe and physical death can never sever heart to heart love connection. A loved one will make the effort to draw close and will come into our aura – light vibrations being emitted from the body. But again, there are rules about contacting those still on earth. Sometimes the contact has to be sharp and short for reasons of energy transmission. It just may be that Alexander the Great, Sophocles and the others did make contact with their own loved ones on earth and with the knowledge they have from the other side, they may regard giving out additional knowledge to strangers as vexatious, trivial, totally unnecessary and irrelevant.

Dr Carl Sagan was thinking like Carl Sagan - a secular, intelligent human being on earth, as a materialist layperson in relation to the paranormal and the afterlife. He was making assumptions and projecting his own view of physical conditions on earth onto the afterlife spirit dimension the laws of whose operation he had not studied, not professionally investigated and is on record for not conducting one empirical psi experiment to test psi for validation.

ii) Sagan: channellers are making up the voices and the messages that come through channellers are trivial and puerile “banal homilies”.

Sagan says: # CHANNELLING: “Since most people know how to talk, and many – from children or professional actors – have a repertoire of voices at their command the simplest hypothesis is that Ms Knight makes ‘Ramtha’ speak all by herself, and that she has no contact with disembodied entities from the Pleistocene Ice Age. If there’s evidence to the contrary, I’d love to hear about it.”(p191-2 1st ed.).

There are many empirical ways that psychic investigators have proved that mediums are not simply “making up the voices” that come through them.

In order to understand them we need to distinguish the different kinds of mediumship which Sagan lumps together under the heading of “channelling”. In mental mediumship, as it is usually understood, no spirit occupies the body or the aura of the medium. In trance mediumship, the spirit actually takes over the voice- box of the medium and because of this the voice will sound different to the medium’s own voice. And in direct voice mediumship the spirit speaks through a voice box constructed of ectoplasm which is independent of the medium’s voicebox although still having elements of it.

Here Sagan claims that Ms Knight is not contacting any spirit. No one is using her voice box to project a voice-sound different from her natural voice. Implied in this of course, is that Ms Knight is a making a fraudulent claim. Otherwise Sagan asks, why could not the entity in Ms Knight give us information as to how conditions were then – some 35,000 years ago when the spirit was on earth? Carl asks some 22 questions he would ask if only Ms Knight’s entity would answer them. But his conclusion about what comes out of Ms Knight’s is that the alleged spirit offers lots of ‘banal homilies.’

Why did not Sagan select the classic work of, for example, Arthur Findlay’s On the Edge of the Etheric for something substantive about the afterlife transmissions to us humans on planet earth. Or noted American attorney Edward C Randall’s classic, The French Revelation – The Extraordinary Eyewitness Account of the Gifted medium Emily S French – highly important transmissions? Or Silver Birch’s classics, including, Light From Silver Birch about the purpose of life on earth – some nine books - and what we are to expect in the afterlife. For other profound transmissions which challenge our values, beliefs, philosophy and structures. Then for other profound transmissions Sagan should have read carefully Here and Hereafter by Anthony Borgia series – how a relatively high ranking Catholic priest on crossing over insisted on channelling information back to us because what he preached on earth was wrong. We have NEVER ever come across rebuttals of these particularly excellent transmissions from the afterlife. All we get is they can’t be true because there is no afterlife. That is inevitably unacceptable. Rebutting means you take every afterlife evidence and empirically explain why the evidence ought not to be admissible as valid evidence.

Why has not Sagan rebut these classic works? Why pick on a comic books for literature and not on a Shakespeare? Why does Sagan deliberately ignore the established international classics and deal with trivia? Why did Sagan pick on JZ Knight whom the paranormalists themselves do not even suggest as an example of qualitative spirit transmission – and not deal with brilliant trance mediums such as John Sloan, Maurice Barbanell and ‘automatic writer’ mediumship of Anthony Borgia ?

A professional psi empiricist would tackle the issue of mediumship empirically - not as Sagan did, wanting us to take him seriously on the paranormal by just expressing a descriptive armchair philosophical personal, non-empirical, non-scientific, not an objective view about trance mediumship
How would Ms Knight’s trance-mediumship be tested empirically? At least five ways:

a) I would expect Sagan to do a voice test on the medium using a voice-machine analysis unit (see Voice Machine Analysis) before the channelling and after channelling – and to the graph voices. There are other electronic ways to measure the vibrations of voices – and do at least four to six extended trials. No actor would be able to beat electronic voice box under sustained conditions. Definitive variance between Ms Knight’s own particular vibrations and the external entity vibrations would be easily detected electronically – see below.

b) do an EEG brain scan to test if there would be a repeatable significant difference in Ms Kinght before and during trance. Harvard trained Professor Charles H Hapgood has reported work in this area with gifted medium Elwood Babbitt– see VOICES OF SPIRIT. He found that whenever a spirit entered a medium, the EEG and other variables became significantly different to the medium’s own physical and verbal variables.

c) do a before/after testing on all other biological variables, e.g. blood pressure. (see b above),

d) whenever possible, do a comparison analysis of expression. Different styles of language use can be empirically measured by experts,

e) investigate and test the content for correlation with transmissions made through other highly credible trance mediums such as John Sloan, Maurice Barbanell and Edgar Cayce who transmitted messages, among other things, dealing with the urgent problems of to-day’s world – not just banal platitudes .
More baloney detection applied to Sagan himself:

In his channelling section, Carl Sagan again falls into the trap listed in his own baloney detection kit as observational selection when he picks on the lesser convincing and ignores the spectacular results.

Further baloney detected is Sagan’s 'argument from authority.' Imputed in his writing is that he tries to give himself authority as a scientist to speak about definitive (psychic) matters that are not part of his professional repartee. He has no objective authority.

Begging the question. He says on what is being stated in channeling: “People pay attention to these puerile marvels mainly because they promise something like old-time religion, but especially life after death, even life eternal”. Here Sagan makes a denigrating statement and tries to give the answer for it. That is technically an inadmissible statement.

iii) It’s all wish-fulfillment.

Sagan states, “ … how readily we are led, how easy it is to fool the public when people are lonely and starved for something to believe in.”

Here is another example of Sagan’s specious reasoning applied to Sagan himself: submitting an answer to his created negative predicament. Here Sagan is referring to the time when Zwinge Hamilton Randi, professionally trained trickster, organized the greatest hoax in Australia in 1986.

Unlike Sagan who treats the general public as gullible, I state that that there is a significant percentage of the public which is astute and not gullible or easily fooled or easily mislead. But there is a very tiny minority which tries to fleece the public, those who are NOT psychic, not gifted mediums, have no psychic skills but claim they are and who are vultures, illegally exploiting some of the gullible members of the public.

About Sagan citing the Randi affair: many people know Randi as one of the greatest conmen in history where he conceded that he cheated, lied, distorted, misled, misguided, used fraudulent conduct and according to Sagan used heinous trickery - - in Sydney Australia to fool the innocent public. He accepted that. There is no record that Sagan misquoted him about the Sydney incident. There is no record that Randi ever objected to Sagan’s work. What is on record is that Randi supported Carl Sagan until his death.

Other objective observers saw the Randi’ hoax in Sydney in a different way to how Sagan’s interpretation of the event: Randi’s hoax was uncovered and the event became his greatest humiliation and embarrassment of his life. He went home licking his wounds.

The Hoax: the Carlos affair – or how Randi’s fraud on the public began.

Carl Sagan reports in his book, among other things, that Randi suggested to the executives of Australian Sixty Minutes that they generate a hoax from scratch, using someone with no training in magic or public speaking, and no experience in the pulpit. Randi picks on his young tenant …Jose Luis Alvarez …who went through intensive training, including mock TV appearances and press conferences. He didn’t have to think up the answers, though, because, to fool the public, he had a nearly invisible radio receiver in his ear, through which Randi prompted. Emissaries from Sixty Minutes checked Alvarez’ performance.
Further, a press kit – full of lies, deliberately concocted to mislead, misinform and to fool the public, allegedly drafted by Randi, (fraudulently) stated that this Alvarez was some kind of a New Age guru – which is taken over by some ancient soul when he channels.

One show according to Sagan was in Sydney at the Opera House, on Sunday 21st February 1988. The Hall would have been half full. Most of those who would have attended would have been from the skeptics’ group. Only a small number of innocently curious would want to see for themselves if this guru Alvarez was genuine. Why? Because Australians, unlike Americans, are very skeptical.

Perhaps it’s their convict ancestors, perhaps it is the land itself that makes them that way or perhaps because Australia is a very young country with no conditioned entrenched culture, history or tradition. Relative to and compared with other people in the world, Australians are usually very skeptical.

Those in the New Age who heard this alleged guru immediately dismissed him as fake, a fraud and a bull-artist. Why? Because the voice did NOT change, as what happens to genuine trance mediums. In his delivery when under the fake trance, he sloppily shouted and at times screamed – but in his own natural voice. It was very embarrassing. The professional mediums thought something was terribly wrong promoting his imposter.

In another interview with some of Australia’s toughest journalists, most of whom were convinced they were dealing with a fake, – this Alvarez could not stand the tough, aggressive questions put to him. When at one stage, it was put to him that anyone can reduce his heart beat by putting a rubber ball under his armpit and squeeze, Alvarez’ response was to run away from the interview in great embarrassment. His coaching by Zwinge Randi to fool tough journalists miserably failed.

Comment: professionals are puzzled by this episode because:

• No commercial mainstream television station, especially Sixty Minutes will participate in fraudulent conduct. It is against all strict ethics and expressly stated regulations of television, press and radio media in Australia. Knowing and understanding the tough journarlists in Sixty Minutes, these journalists inevitably would say, “ … it’s absolute rubbish that this station will be involved in fraud against the public.” Yet we have Carl Sagan claiming that Zwinge Randi and a major mainstream television station co-operated to fool the public, to knowingly fraudulently report to the public that a fake guru was genuine.

• Ought not this alone raise reasonable grounds that Carl Sagan was fooled about this one – not having basic discerning powers and reasonable discrimination to identify that which is real to that which is pure anti-paranormal propaganda dished to him by someone who conceded he is a professional trickster and a fraud? Many people would expect more from Carl Sagan. Pity, a theoretical scientist being fooled because what was related to him was consistent with his own negative anti-paranormal prejudice. He swallowed it hook, line and sinker!

• Further, it will be a criminal offence to knowingly pursue fraudulent conduct. On a civil level Sixty Minutes would be liable for unspecified damages – for causing stress, injury, anxiety, severe embarrassment, humiliation and even nervous shock - with some people.

So much for Carl Sagan telling everyone not to accept anecdotal evidence - and deluding himself he is being astute, non-prejudicial, implying he is objective and empirical. It is very sad really. It just shows how easy it was to fool materialistic easily led scientist Carl Sagan who deep down wanted to accept information consistent with his own untested subjective partiality – notwithstanding his misconstrued adage, 'I’ll investigate all evidence.'

Conclusion on this item: Sagan was not acting as an informed scientist - he was not empirical, not objective and certainly not scientific - not astute, not able to detect baloney.

iv) The Fox Sisters Were Faking It.

Sagan# and the Fox sisters. The third issue I want to deal with is when this Carl Sagan makes an untrue statement about that ‘… little girl who had been a conspirator in a nineteenth century flim-flam – spirit –rapping, in which ghosts answered questions by loud thumping – grew up and confessed it was an imposture.” (p 230)

Carl Sagan is referring to the incident of how modern spirit contact started in 1848. He deletes and omits anything not consistent with his skeptical partiality – that is unfair, unreasonable and unbecoming of someone with a science background. Using the fine art of baloney detection kit I find that he:

a) ignores critical information which contradicts his negative beliefs,
b) misreports the facts,
c) makes too many self-serving assumptions,

The facts, very briefly, of this significant incident which are accepted are: it was not just ‘one little girl.’ These were the major players, two sisters in Hydesville, New York in 1848, Margaret and Kate, then aged 14 and 11 years – known as the Fox Sisters. In March that year began rapping noises in the house into which they just moved. Everything was done to identify the disturbing noise but one had any idea where the rappings were coming from.

The contemporaneous reports show that the noises terrified the children and destabilized the family. Then Kate challenged the unseen power to rap the number of times she clapped hands. Every time she clapped, the correct number of raps followed, and the correct raps were given of the number of fingers or hands held up. So the unseen force could both hear and see. Questions were asked to the unseen entity and the correct answers were given. From then onwards a system of communicating followed and intelligent answers were given. The critical message from the unseen entity was that he was a tenant there and another person by the name of Bell murdered him. That was in 1848. And although the police tried to find the body immediately after the report, the body was not until 1902- 54 years later when a skeleton in the same residence was found buried deep in the basement, thus corroborating what Margaret and Kate Fox told the police.

Evidence not in dispute is that both Margaret and Kate became very poor, destitute and suffered severe depressive alcoholism- in fact both drank themselves to death in 1892 and Kate a year later. Reports state between 1848 until they died they contined as mediums. This provoked the rationalists who opposed them bitterly – naturally enough.

In 1888 Margaret, to the surprise of many claiming that the strange rappings had come about by ‘cracking her toes.’ One very well known report states that a journalist offered Margaret $1,500 for an exclusive if she recanted.

One would say that under those irresistably alluring conditions, Margaret, Kate or anyone else in the world who suffered from extreme alcoholism and poverty would say anything for money!

Just two and a half years later, Margaret recanted her confession. Not only was their alcoholism out of control, they had a grudge, perhaps legitimately, against her other elder sister Leah who married into money. It is reported that Leah also was able to have their children taken away from Margaret and Kate – and took much of the money they made from their work.

Now for Sagan to state that the ‘little girl’ who was then ‘conspirator’ and that she ‘confessed’ would be most fundamentally misrepresenting what actually took place.

Sagan ignored other most relevant information which would have raised more than just reasonable doubt to his interpretation of the Fox sisters’ incident. By leaving out important contradictory information Sagan in fact is trying to mislead, misguide and misinform the reader. Sagan tries very hard to make the reader accept his argument that there was absolutely nothing significant to follow in this incident. That is most unfair – certainly not an empirical argument at all.

Moreover, Sagan refers to just ‘one little girl’ in relation to the incident - not even mentioning her name and her sister’s name - known in American and world history as the famous Fox Sisters. This was because, I submit that the reasonable level headed intelligent reader would go to the Net to get the full story of the Fox Sisters and how spirit contact became popular in the United States and gets the full story of what really happened in Hydesville and what happened to Margaret Fox.

Further, by misreporting the facts, Sagan too was trying to denigrate and destroy any credibility the Fox Sisters’ had.

I challenge skeptics and others to duplicate the noise just by cracking the joint of their big toes – I know I'd find that no one on earth can do that! Nor did Sagan question the toe cracking explanation – something which, for informed people is not a physical possibility- especially when they wore socks and shoes in New York.

Instead Sagan blindly accepts the explanation because Sagan was not empirical enough, not objective and scientific enough to question everything until it can be independently substantiated. He emotionally wanted to accept the misinformation because that would be consistent with his own anti-paranormal negative partiality.

3. Some Conclusions

Dr Carl Sagan, the astronomer, scientist, fails in his ‘critical thinking’, in rebutting the paranormal/afterlife in many important respects – as shown above. He did not show he had the means to construct a reasoned argument against the validity of the empirical evidence for the paranormal. He built the ‘straw-man’ argument – concocting something fragile himself so that he could rebut it- to delude himself, to delude the skeptics, to delude the debunkers. He ignored the qualitative and included the vexatious. He illegitimately tried to use his status as a scientist to rebut the empirical evidence of the paranormal he does not understand, he did not research or he had ignored. He preached about critical thinking and violated every rule in the book.

Balanced against Sagan’s denigration of the public describing them as being over-gullible, I submit that a greater proportion of the people are searching for some meaning in life because of what they themselves experienced traditional beliefs and science cannot explain. They have legitimately argued that their history and tradition, the values and beliefs have failed them.

That is not being gullible, that is not being dogmatically indiscriminately superstitious - that is not being easily led. That is being intelligent.
That is an attempt to reconcile their role in the universe with the given life on earth in a particular environment.

To impute that only Carl Sagan has the answers about what to accept or not to accept – or to state only scientists or the skeptics or the debunkers know what is going on- is to make a most erroneous statement fundamentally inconsistent with what we know about materialistic scientists, what we know about closed minded skeptics and debunkers. Many see these as losers, defeatists and over-sycophantic to those who hand out funding.

Accordingly, whereas Dr Carl Sagan might have been a good astronomer, he fails miserably in empirically showing why the objective, empirical evidence for paranormal and the afterlife not be accepted.

Notwithstanding anything herein before stated, here is my justification for not labelling Dr Carl Sagan as a closed minded skeptic (thanks to Nobel Laureate Prof. B Josephson and Dr Dean Radin for their drawing my attention to this quote:)

"At the time of writing there are three claims in the ESP field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study: (1) that by thought alone humans can (barely) affect random number generators in computers; (2) that people under mild sensory deprivation can receive thoughts or images “projected” at them; and (3) that young children sometimes report the details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation.


From: Sagan, C. (1995). The Demon Haunted World. New York, Random House, page 205

A LAWYER PRESENTS THE CASE FOR THE AFTRLIFE www.victorzammit.com

November 05