Why We Believe

Nice work Sharon,

When I started reading the article I thought it was going to be another believer, fluff piece. By the end I was happy to see an alternative perspective start to come through. In my research into the paranormal, I always take the stance that I don't believe in anything but possibility. I was in over 20 different states last year alone researching and investigating reports of paranormal phenomena. Two times last year I investigated reports of vampires (I take an objective but open minded approach to any reported mystery). Some of your visitors might enjoy reading all about my crazy real life supernatural adventures in my free Legend Trippers Journal (http://www.w-files.com/legendtrippersjournal.html).

For those of you who are a bit more scientifically minded, I just released some level headed scientific method op eds on www.GetGhostGear.com with links right on the home page.

Keep up the good work!
Noah Voss

Very interesting indeed. I don't know why people decide to get all uppity about this. I mean it's not very groundbreaking. The mind is a powerful thing. I mean, if I'm in my room and the closet is open. If I were to have a dream about someone being in the closet and wake up, rather then check the closet, out of fear I go back to bed. I know there isn't anything in the closet, however I'm still frightened to check.

This brought me back to when I was a child and had watched some sort of special about Alien abduction or some sort. When I went to bed last night I had fallen asleep with my hand pressing into my eyes. Which often blurs your vision for a moment when you wake up. And I woke up in the middle of the night and I could have sworn that there was an alien of some sort standing in front of my door. Needless to say, I turned towards the wall and promptly shut my eyes, hoping for either a quick death/ return to sleep.

Obviously there was no alien/apparition and it was simply my hand pressing into my eyeballs for a moment, but because I had watched something on aliens, I believed I had seen one. My mind had made it real. And when I told my friends, I didn't care what they said. I had seen what I had seen. They didn't believe me, but they didn't have to, I knew the truth.

I just remembered that and how I had figured that out a few years later, and I thought it was interesting to say the least. Mind of matter I suppose. Or in this case rational thought.

Also, laughing at the people who have personal vendetta's against the writers/articles and believe that this is the worst thing to grace Newsweek ever. Just because someone has a different viewpoint doesn't mean it's right, and doesn't mean you have to listen.

Sharon Begley is grossly ignorant of the serious research being done on the paranormal, and Newsweek should be embarassed for unleashing her. She quoted Michael Shermer four times in her article, and Shermer, a materialist who reduces all reality to matter in motion, including events inside our brains, is the most notorious debunker of all things spiritual in the English-speaking world. Shermer is not a credible scientist with an open mind, but an illiberal idealogue who refuses to take at face value the claims of thousands of normal, healthy people tht point with force to a strange world that he is afraid to face. And Begley comes across as someone just like him. And so does Newsweek with its loyal but foolish declaration. Instead of reading Shermer, she should get acquainted with the ground-breaking research on reincarnation by Ian Stevenson, or the eye-opening (and eye-popping!) books on spirit attachment by psychiatrists like Louise Ireland-Frey, or the latest research on the near-death experience by dozens of physicians all over the world. As for ghosts and poltergeists, no psychical researcher is dumb enough to say they don't exist. The only question for them is what their nature is. Begley often does good work, but in this particular article she was out of her league. Worse than that, she left readers with the impression that if they were smart, they would be as narrow-minded as she iand Shermer are. That kind of mind set leads quickly to nihilism -- a cruel legacy for a writer to leave behind her.

Shortly after graduating from college, I agreed to house-sit a friends home and take care of her two dogs for the weekend. She was taking her two kids to Sea World for the weekend. Before leaving she gave me a tour of the house and instructions on feeding the dogs. One of her last instructions concerned the bedroom I was going to sleep in. She told me to leave the door open. When I asked why she told me "the ghost" does not like it closed. It makes him mad." Being a rational college graduate, I thought nothing more about this. He simply attributed it to her being superstitious.

After eating dinner, feeding the dogs and watching TV I went to bad. I closed the door as much out of habit as anything else. Some where around 1 - 2 in the morning, I was awakened by a pounding on the bedroom door. I thought it must be my friend and that I had somehow locked the door. I called out to "wait a minute" and started to get up. Then I heard the sound of something crashing to the floor. I stepped out into the hallway and called out for my friend. No response. As I walked down the hallway I could see a plant that had been on a coffee table in the middle of the living room on the floor. I went through the family room and called in my friends husky. I was concerned I had a burgler in the house.

While holding the husky's collar I checked the front door. It was locked. I looked outside for cars. Only the neighbors cars were around. All of the windows in the house were closed and locked.

The husky and I then went back to the living room. I bent down to look at the plant on the floor. When I did, I saw my breath in front of me. The area around the coffee table was very cold. It was summer and my friend did not have air conditioning. I took the husky forward through the living room and towards the laundry room. The husky halted, started growling, appeared to be staring at something and the hair on its back was up.
I did not see anything.

I have no idea what I experienced. Sure my friend planted a thought in my head about the "ghost" but I did not believe in ghosts. My friend did not say anything about the pounding on the door, the plant being knocked off the table or anything about "cold spots". I was questioning my own imagination through this whole event, until the husky growled. I do not know why it growled. I never saw what it "saw". All I know is that something happened. Something I did not create. Something I did not imagine and the only living creatures in the house at the time were me and the husky.

Go figure.

Shortly after graduating for college, I agreed to house sit a friends home and take care of her two dogs for a weekend.

This article is deeply insulting to people who have had paranormal experiences, past live memories, or just simply have an open mind.

The truth is, there is some much evidence to support things like reincarnation, only the most hardened of skeptics can dismiss it.

Just because something can't be "proven" scientifically doesn't mean it's not real. It just means the science to prove it just doesn't exist yet.

Ms. Springen: I am instructed and informed by the report that the brain operates both with "reality" and "illusion" using the same structures. I have looked a many DSM IV diagnoses and observed that many DX are "merely" hypertrophic forms of ordinary activities or consciousnesses. Thanks... AP

Bill Nye, the harmless children's edu-tainer known as "The Science Guy," managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.

As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.

But don't tell that to the good people of Waco, who were "visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence," according to the Waco Tribune.

Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College's Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption.

But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: "God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars."

The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.

At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled "We believe in God!" and left with three children, thus ensuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they'd always suspected.

This story originally appeared in the Waco Tribune, but the newspaper has mysteriously pulled its story from the online version, presumably to avoid further embarassment.

This moronic scumbag Samuel J. Wurzelbacher "Joe the Plumber" had his AZ driver license suspended

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/128323

Wurzelbacher, who lived in Mesa in 2000 and had an Arizona driver's license, had his driver's license suspended by the Arizona Department of Transportation Motor Vehicle Division on May 4, 2000, following a nonpayment of a court-imposed fine for civil traffic violations, according to court records.

...owes nearly $1,200 in back taxes, according to public records, still owes more than $700 to the Mesa court system.

Records show he was cited for failure to stop at a red light and for failure to provide proof of insurance on Feb. 9, 2000, in a black Dodge truck at the intersection of Dobson and Baseline roads in Mesa.

After failing to pay his original fine of $627.50 issued in March 2000, his license was suspended and the fine was handed over to a collection agency along with a 16 percent surcharge. The now-resident of Holland, Ohio, still owes $727.90 to the Mesa Municipal Court, according to court records.


Hopefully the collection agency will break both of his legs so he'll never be able to walk nor work ever again. This typical Republican scumbag deserves it.

Sharon Begley writes, speaking of Randi, Shermer, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, et al, "Too bad that as they fight the good fight for rationality, their most powerful opponent is nothing less than the human brain." Too bad Ms Begley apparently hasn't read either Dr. Elizabeth Mayer's book, Extraordinary Knowing, or the 2007, 800-page tome, Extended Mind, which reviews and assesses more than 120 years of scientific evidence supporting the rational belief "that the materialistic consensus which undergirds practically all of current mainstream psychology, neuroscience and philosophy of mind is fundamentally flawed." No, not all belief in the paranormal is based on brain activity activity carried to an extreme, but may also be grounded in an open, scientific mind.

Sharon Begley writes, speaking of Randi, Shermer, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, et al, "Too bad that as they fight the good fight for rationality, their most powerful opponent is nothing less than the human brain." Too bad Ms Begley apparently hasn't read either Dr. Elizabeth Mayer's book, Extraordinary Knowing, or the 2007, 800-page tome, Extended Mind, which reviews and assesses more than 120 years of scientific evidence supporting the rational belief "that the materialistic consensus which undergirds practically all of current mainstream psychology, neuroscience and philosophy of mind is fundamentally flawed." No, not all belief in the paranormal is based on brain activity activity carried to an extreme, but may also be grounded in an open, scientific mind.

Why is it that when ever someone is "believed" to be the reincarnation of a passed life that the poor reanimated spirit is always someone famous? Kinda makes me glad that in my passed life I was but a poor chamber pot / spit-tunecleaner. Ahhh... no were but UP baby... no were but UP!

Why is it that when ever someone is "believed" to be the reincarnation of a passed life that the poor reanimated spirit is always someone famous? Kinda makes me glad that in my passed life I was but a poor chamber pot / spit-tunecleaner. Ahhh... no were but UP baby... no were but UP!

Hey, this article shows that we are wired to believe. So, I just happen to believe that God put that in us. We are hardwired to search for something to fill the void. Many choose to believe that which is not truth because it satisfies them. How much better to believe that which is ultimate truth and therefore ultimate life. I liked the part where research says this even evident at age two. Belief is a foundation of society.