Re: What If We Were All Psychic??

Author: J.Amenta
Date: 1996/10/29
Forums: alt.paranormal

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Daan,

The "Chance-Coincidence" argument you bring up is one of the most
time honored claims against the existence of the paranormal - and it
along with fraud is often the first line of defense for the skeptics.
What is even more fascinating is this idea of "chance" has also
extended to the very existence of life itself. That is, you and I
are the end products of an evolutionary drive based primarily on
"chance-coincidence" - over millions of years. The scientific
community although having no answer on what occurred before the
big bang, does have all sorts of explanations for what has happened
afterward - and in most scientific circles, an existence based
primarily on "chance-coincidence" rules the day. Now there have
been several brilliant men, such as Waldo Emerson, or Carl Jung who
felt strongly that the world and Universe were not just based on
chance alone, that the Universe is more teleological in nature (the
Universe has a final cause, and all things move toward this cause).
So "chance" has been a big - real big topic among the scholars since
man began his existence.

A lot of intellectual work and thought has gone into the study of
"chance". Many very complicated mathematical theories have been
developed that measure "chance" and how often (and how "not" often)
it seems to impinge upon each of our realities. The casinos in Las
Vegas and Reno have made quite a lot of money based on these
established theories of chance.

And many of the great men who have studied the paranormal have
been keenly aware of the above laws - since the idea of "chance" is
been such a common argument against the paranormal... any dunce
can think of "chance" as the first *easy* explanation.
The problem however with chance, is that *chance* does indeed have
known limits, and not *everything* can be ascribed to chance -
although many scientists think everything can be (including you and
me and existence itself, heh).

For example, there are quite a number of paranormal cases on record
of people who completely disbelieved the possibility of the
paranormal, who then reported a singular striking occurence of it
in there own life, and then never reported anything like it ever
again. These people were not prone to thinking they had some kind
of experience since they didn't believe such an experience was
possible in the first place.

The death rate is also a well known statistic that can and has been
calculated in order to discern the probabilistic "chance" nature of
people knowing what they should not be able to know, when someone
is going to die (who was in perfect health the day before). I can
assure you as much as the sun rises, that such cases have occurred.
Some things simply do go beyond "chance". Psychical research has
moved beyond trying to prove the existence of the paranormal, and is
now trying to explain it, and fit it into the framework of what we
know already about the mystery of our physical reality. In fact,
even with the existence of the paranormal - what indeed does it
prove? For the hoped for Holy Grail is still not found - just
because thoughts can be perceived beyond the 5 senses doesn't
show us what really is going on - or even more important, prove
we have a soul. Which after all, is the ultimate mystery of them
all - or maybe its all just "chance"?? The "chance" explanation
is even harder to believe.

John