Thanks to modern technologies and bright human minds, science has mastered the exploration of our material universe as never before possible in this epoch… from the tiny world of cells and molecules within us, to the vast expanses of space around us.
Pure genius!
At the same time, science is in its infancy 1) at acknowledging (through string theory) multiple dimensions superimposing our own physical dimension and 2) at realizing (through quantum physics) the capacity of consciousness to affect matter and energy… but conventional scientists remain in almost complete denial of the grandest reality of all: that intelligent life—brilliant life!—flourishes in countless vast and complex worlds, universes and dimensions right here and all around us. That they should deny such basic truths?…
Sheer idiocy!
Noble Savage World 
These are points that I continue to hammer but we need to understand a few things about the world of science and investigation.
One of the very best scientific skills is the ability to ignore inconvenient and uncomfortable evidence, sometimes even to the point of upholding patently absurd theories rather than consider other evidence.
The history of science is rich with examples, far too many to list but including some of the greatest luminaries. As a single ‘for instance’, the great Lord Kelvin stoically maintained that the age of Planet Earth was no more than 25 million years, despite mounting evidence that he was colossally wrong.
Theories are often doggedly held, notwithstanding their inherent looniness. The presence of marine fossils in strata near the top of what are now mountains was attributed to global elevated sea levels in the geological past. When asked where the water went in the interim periods, no answer was forthcoming.
Whilst the practice of science is based on rigorous examination, scientists are human and are sometimes given to either rubbishing new evidence or ignoring it. This is what is currently happening to EVP/ITC.
Eventually, of course, evidence continues to accumulate and rubbishing and ignoring no longer works. Eventually, EVP/ITC will have to be addressed seriously even by the most ardent rubbishers.
To maintain that we can believe only in what we can see and measure is to exclude nearly all of current particle physics and quantum theory because much of it is hypothetical. It is hypothetical because it is the generation of theories to explain the observations.
And this is how science actually works. Something is observed and theories are generated to try to explain the observation. Over a period of time, the theories are tested until eventually concensus is reached which either accepts or rejects the theory. And note the word ‘concensus’ because is is NEVER unanimous.
And this is where there is currently a gulf between science generally and EVP/ITC. Observations have been made and theories have been offered to explain the observations. A handful of scientists around the world are applying rigorous theinking and examination. The rest are either rubbishing or ignoring the evidence of EVP/ITC.
We might have to wait for the balance to shift.
Les
Hi Les,
I take an occasional jab at science for a couple of reasons. When I was young I read most of my dad’s issues of Science News and Skeptical Enquirer, and scientists were pretty ruthless in their “debunking” of afterlife, UFOs, and most things spiritual and paranormal. Even though I was agnostic at that time (and most of my life until the past 17 years or so), I was real uncomfortable with the cruelty of the crusades against beliefs that gave people comfort and reassurance. So science is due a few barbs of its own…
Now it’s obvious to me that science has been dead wrong in many of those crusades. More and more evidence is rubbing up against scientists today that spiritual existence is a reality, getting their attention… but they’re resting on their laurels. Sticking with the familiar blinders of Newtonian science. When people choose to remain compacent in their delusions, sometimes it takes a bit of a shake-up to get them to open their minds to honest evaluation of themselves and their beliefs.
Mark
I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist or a “materialist.”
Those are cute belief systems though. 😉
S.
Stephen,
The words ‘atheist’ and ‘agnostic’ have become hopelessly confused in the last couple of decades.
Atheism did not start out as a ‘belief system’. We had theism (belief in deities), monotheism (belief in a single deity), pantheism (belief in multiple deities) and atheism (no belief in deities). This makes atheism the opposite of a belief system.
Agnosticism is the practice of not believing any proposal or claim until it has been proven beyond reasonable doubt, including the claims of all theists. (All true scientists are agnostic in their examination of any proposal or claim.)
The words ‘atheist’ and ‘agnostic’ are now used interchangeably by many commentators and even protagonists of one view or the other; heavy clouding and hopeless confusion of the issues under discussion is the inevitable result.
I am agnostic, which means that I will decide on the veracity of EVP/ITC when I have accumulated enough information to move it into the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ category.
Similarly, I am open to the concept of the existence of a deity or deities but, after a lifetime of asking questions, the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ is still way out past Pluto.
I have in the past deliberately baited the proselytisers of particularly looney religious claims who richly deserved to be baited, but no longer. In many parts of the world, this will just get me killed outright. It is a characteristic of religious extremism that the wilder their claims, the more extreme they are. In today’s world, this includes mass murder as a religious message and a daily tool.
However, some logic must come into consideration.
The human experience is that everything has a beginning and an ending, even the Universe that we can see. This framework of thinking would allow that somewhere there might be a single source of this universe, many universes or even an infinity of universes. It is therefore conceivable that there could be a progression of our ‘spirit’, for want of a better description, that might reveal more of such a concept. But, we don’t know and we aren’t likely to know in our Here and Now.
Les
That was meant tongue in cheek Les. 😉
Unfortunately many scientifically minded people treat the notion of nothing existing beyond these three dimensions as absolute fact when that hasn’t been proven by the scientific method at all. And that despite provocative anecdotal and other information, including the math of modern physics alluding to higher dimensional spaces, too. When atheists, and I mean by that those that view this physical realm as all there is (and yeah I’m aware of the technical etymology of the term), act as though that view is scientific fact, which it isn’t, it is indistinguishable from a Christian Fundamentalist’s belief in a bearded skygod, heaven, and hell.
I think science might someday prove the existence of higher spaces beyond mathematics, what we may call the afterlife. MIGHT. Until then we must recognize that all we know exists are these three dimensions. But to say with conviction that nothing lies beyond, that it’s part of the canon of objectivity, is little more than wishful thinking…going on the same “hunches” that allow Baptists to cross that boundary of faith they so often wish others would cross to be “saved.”
S.