The Book 4th Edition
'We should not go for complete skepticism, but for degrees
of probability'.
Professor Bertrand Russell
In sharing the results of my research into the afterlife
I have come across many different reactions—from those
who readily accept the afterlife as a belief to others who
are skeptics and debunkers.
An open-minded skeptic is someone who generally will not
accept superstition or beliefs to explain physical or psychical
phenomena. He or she will however accept scientifically
and other objectively based results. As has been explained,
to a person all of the most famous psychic researchers began
their investigations as open-minded skeptics.
I am on record for publicly articulating a skeptical view
of life. I was not prepared to accept things I was told
on 'faith'. I doubted, I questioned, I read, researched
and investigated. I still consider myself an open-minded
skeptic—but not in the specific and the particular
issue of the afterlife because I thoroughly investigated
it.
Like the many scientists who bothered to systematically
investigate the afterlife, I too came to the irretrievable
conclusion that we do survive physical death. The evidence
I was able to obtain myself for the existence of the afterlife
is for me definitive, absolute, irrefutable and positively
conclusive.
However, historically there are also what are known as
“closed-minded skeptics” also known as debunkers.
These people have already made up their minds about everything.
And, like the clergy in Galileo's time, they will refuse
to consider even scientific information that contradicts
their personal beliefs. They have changed the definition
of “skeptic” from “one who doubts”
to “one who will never accept”. The term “closed-minded
skeptic” as used in this book refers to this group.
Closed-minded skeptics who claimed they investigated psychic
phenomena have mostly rejected the results of psychic experiments
and observations, even when the results were objectively
obtained. Their logic was that if the results proved positive,
the experimenter must have been unqualified or there was
fraud. They took the role of prosecutor not investigator.
In context of testing the paranormal (psi) and afterlife
evidence, it is critically important to fully understand
the very serious implications of the ‘experimenter
effect’. So far it has shown that professional psi
experimenters have become victims of their unconscious (perhaps
even conscious), of their negative partiality, when conducting
psi experiments.
The classic experimenter effect was demonstrated by Professor
Marilyn Schlitz and Professor R. Wiseman (1997 and 1999)
in collaborative studies into whether or not a person can
detect when someone is looking at them from behind. In these
experiments Professor Marilyn Schlitz who is open-minded
toward psi phenomena achieved positive results while Professor
Wiseman who is a closed minded skeptic did not. This happened
even when they used the same experimental equipment and
procedures and the same pool of subjects.
Some unreasonably closed-minded skeptics have made most
cowardly attacks on the lives and reputations of great men
and women involved in psychic science and have been responsible
for holding back knowledge of the afterlife for several
decades. Many are still operating today, accepting large
salaries and grants from the materialists to 'debunk' all
things relating to the afterlife and psychic phenomena.
A classic comment which illustrates the inflexibility and
the determination of the closed-minded skeptic to block
any inconsistent new information was made at one of my meetings
at a meeting of Humanists in Sydney, Australia. One hard-core,
closed-minded skeptic burst out after I presented the objective
evidence for the afterlife:
I would not believe in the afterlife even if you could prove
it to me, Victor!
Because of conscious and unconscious deletion, closed-minded
skeptics only have some pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. They
are NOT seeing the overall picture. Yet some of them have
been very vociferous about their unsubstantiable claim that
the afterlife does not exist.
I concur with other empirical psychic researchers that
even if the perfect demonstration of evidence for the existence
of the afterlife?say, materialization of a loved one?was
witnessed by closed-minded skeptics, these skeptics/debunkers
would refuse to believe the evidence had anything to do
with the afterlife.
Historically, closed-minded skeptics and debunkers have
opposed every invention and discovery and have made fools
of themselves:
• Sir William Preece, former chief engineer of Britain's
Post Office, will be remembered for making one of the most
'idiotic' comments in history about Edison's inventions.
Sir William stated that Edison's lamp (parallel circuit)
was a 'completely idiotic idea'
• professors, including Professor Henry Morton who
knew Edison, stated immediately before Edison demonstrated
the electric light globe: 'On behalf of science ... Edison's
experiments are a ... fraud upon the public’
• the Scientific American, The New York Times, The
New York Herald, the U.S. Army, academics—including
Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy Simon Newcomb from
John Hopkins University—and many other American scientists
all heaped derision, ridicule and denigration onto the Wright
brothers claiming that it was: 'scientifically impossible
for machines to fly!’
• one of the leading scientists from the French Academy
of Sciences stated that hypnosis is a fraud and stated after
seeing a hypnotized subject with a four inch needle in the
top of his arm: 'This subject has been paid for not showing
he's in pain’
• another scientist from the French Academy of Sciences,
after listening to a record made by Edison, stated: '...
clearly that is a case of ventriloquism’
• John Logie Baird, the inventor of television, was
attacked by closed-minded skeptics who stated it was: 'absolute
rubbish that television waves could produce a picture’!!!
There are hundreds of other examples of how closed-minded
skeptics refused to believe anything that was not consistent
with their own entrenched cherished beliefs and their five
senses.
But what has to be remembered is that the belief of closed-minded
‘skepticism’ in itself is NOT scientific, not
empirical. Closed-minded skepticism does NOT have the substance
of science or objectivity to show that it is correct. On
the contrary, closed-minded skepticism, like religion, is
a subjective belief and as a belief it is subject to fundamental
error and to complete invalidation.
While there have been many eminent scientists who after
investigating psychic phenomena did accept the existence
of the afterlife, there has NEVER ever been any scientist
in history—a physicist, biologist, geologist, astronomer
or anybody else—who could rebut the existing evidence
for the afterlife.
The rational and informed searcher will reject the world
conspiracy theory—that all those highly accredited
scientists in different countries who have worked to show
that the afterlife exists got together over the last one
hundred years or so to fool the rest of the world.
The afterlife is inevitable and the consequences of it
are enormous.
Rebutting the skeptics on EVP and
ITC
What do the debunkers say about electronic voice phenomena?
Of the objections raised by the debunkers and closed minded
skeptics I quote a leading representative of the hardcore
skeptics, an assistant Professor of Psychology at Pace University
in the United States, Professor Hines. In his book called
Pseudoscience And The Paranormal—a Critical Examination
of the Evidence (1987) we are told the following on page
76. Remember, this hardcore skeptic explicitly claims that
his work is supposed to be a 'critical examination of the
evidence'.
... if one takes a tape recorder out to a graveyard one
can record the voices of the dead. How? Put the machine
in the 'record' mode with a blank tape and turn the volume
all the way up. Then, when you play the tape back, if
you listen carefully, you'll hear the voices of the dead.
They're not very clear, to be sure, but if you listen
long and carefully, you can begin to make them out...
the tape recording... is picking up stray sounds from
the environment and especially, the sound of the breeze
or wind passing over the microphone...
If one expects to hear voices, constructive perception
will produce voices... the Indians used to believe that
the dead spoke as the wind swirled through the trees.
The tape recorder has simply brought this illusion into
a technological age (Hines 1987:76).
Now here was the opportunity for this assistant professor
to identify the classic research done by some of the world's
top scholars and others and to issue a credible scholarly
rebuttal of the research on a scientific basis. Here was
the opportunity to demonstrate his knowledge of scientific
method (if he had any) to rebut EVP.
He was expected to scientifically scrutinize the research
of Dr Raudive in Germany, Friedrich Jurgenson in Sweden,
Peter Bander in England, Marcello Bacci in Grosseto, Italy,
Professor Walter & others such as George Meek in the
United States, to name just a few.
The scientists and other reputable researchers mentioned
do not go to 'the graveyard'. They usually work in carefully
controlled conditions in laboratories with other observers
who include amongst them some skeptics, atheists, physicists,
engineers, journalists, clergymen, psychics. Sometimes they
work in professional recording studios as with Dr Peter
Bander's sessions.
The voices are clearly not auditory hallucinations—they
have been heard by rooms full of people and by millions
of people across Europe at the same time. You can purchase
tapes full of them from any of the National EVP Associations
(see links at the end of Chapter 3). You can listen to them
on the Internet. Thousands of voices have been identified,
recorded and corroborated by independent witnesses. Much
of the subject matter has been checked and found to be factual.
Electronic voice-pattern analysis has matched the voices
to those of the person while alive.
Why did this Assistant Professor not deal with any of the
evidence, starting with say, the contents of Dr Raudive's
international book Breakthrough? Technically, when
evidence for the afterlife is presented by the presenter,
the onus shifts onto the other party not accepting the evidence
to argue on what technical basis the evidence is not accepted.
This assistant professor should have examined some of the
best 'spirit voices' of the 72,000 voices taped by Dr Raudive
such as the voice of Raudive's own secretary Margarete Petrautski,
who called out Raudive's wife's name 'Zenta' and identified
herself as 'Margarete'. She then went on to say: 'Imagine,
I really exist!'—English translation from German,
'Bedenke ich bin' (Bander 1973: 25).
Assistant Professor Hines should explain why the apparent
voices were not really voices and if it is admitted that
they were voices, why they were not those of the dead.
He should have taken a sample of this Margarete Petrautski's
voice and compared it with the tape recording of her voice
before her death as the researchers did. Highly sophisticated
voice machines exist today which can accurately and scientifically
measure all voice variables, e.g. pace, rhythm, accents,
origin, etc. The Margarete Petrautski tapes are excellent
subjects for scientific scrutiny because of the exceptionally
good quality recordings of her voice. Yet this Assistant
Professor chose to ignore scientific method and fall back
on his closed-minded entrenched skepticism.
If the Assistant Professor endeavored to adhere to scientific
method and showed in some way that he could be technically
correct, or that the evidence presented should not be accepted,
identifying the project as subjective, one would perhaps
discuss the project with him and explore the voices to ascertain
where the voices could be coming from.
But he didn't. Assistant Professor Hines chose not to identify
the classical scientific work done and being done on EVP
on a global scale because he knows this scientific work
is substantive and cannot be rebutted.
In scientific method, as in formal logic, as in litigation
– court proceedings from the lowest to the highest
level, if anyone does not formally rebut the evidence produced,
then the scientific evidence stands as absolutely valid
until it is rebutted—if ever it can be rebutted. That
is a fundamental scientific premise.
My experience with closed-minded skeptics and debunkers
however is that some will never listen to reason and will
never read the research.
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