Just in time for Halloween and from the “you just can’t make this stuff up” department we have this tale of hilarity. Rob Gutro is a Deputy News Chief in the office of Public Affairs at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. He writes a number of science stories, like this one on hurricanes or this one on the Gulf Oil spill. But, he also talks to ghosts. I’d like to ask him to ask the dead these questions: “Is climate change dead too? Is heaven green? Does hell use a coal powered furnace or is it nuclear or solar driven?” Inquiring minds want to know.
NASA worker brings a scientific eye to his hobby: Talking to the dead
Medium and NASA Meteorologist Rob Gutro tries to communicate with a possible ghost beneath a bookstore in Baltimore.» LAUNCH VIDEO PLAYER
By J. Freedom duLac Washington Post Staff Writer
Rob Gutro was driving to the wake of a co-worker’s stepfather when a ghost began to speak.
“I kept hearing the name Cindy Lou,” Gutro recalled. “I had no idea what that meant.” But he knew this: Once again, somebody who’d died had something to say.
By day, Gutro is a meteorologist who works as deputy news chief at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, communicating the nation’s scientific work to the public.
By night (and whenever else the entities get in touch), he talks to the dead.
“I have an ability to communicate with and understand ghosts and spirits,” Gutro said.
During his off-hours, away from NASA’s advanced technology, Gutro actively seeks encounters of another kind by traveling to haunted houses and other historic sites where spirits might be found.
Sometimes, he said, entities seek him out. So it was, on the way to the wake this summer, that the disembodied voice in the car asked Gutro to deliver messages to his grieving friend and NASA colleague, Cynthia O’Carroll.
Gutro obliged, pulling her aside at the ceremony and saying he’d been hearing the name Cindy Lou. “I believe your dad has come to me,” he told O’Carroll.
She cried.
“My dad used to call me Cindy Lou,” O’Carroll said later. “But the thing that really touched me and made me cry was when Rob said, ‘Your dad said thank you for taking care of your mom.’ Just the way he said it sounded like the way Dad would have said it.”
Gutro is quick to acknowledge that some NASA scientists – and plenty of non-scientists too – approach his work with considerable skepticism. “Some people do think that mediums are crazy,” Gutro said. He shrugged.
There’s no scientific consensus on ghosts and spirits; the word paranormal, after all, means something beyond scientific explanation. But Gutro, who used to work as a forecaster for the Weather Channel’s radio division, insisted that the science behind his experiences with entities is sound.
Read the entire story here
h/t to WUWT reader “Bob”
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Myron Mesecke says:
October 28, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Do they use a Magic 8 ball too?
“Is the climate warming?”
It appears so.
Reply hazy. Try again later.
By the way, my post should be read with a certain amount of sarcasm. I don’t mean to demean the work done here by Watts and the moderators, but posts like this are infinitely frustrating because picking on people who believe in ghosts, scientist or not, is futile. This thought might add the right color to the previous comment. I forget sometimes that my full meaning does not come through on blog posts. I am a very sarcastic person. This sarcasm really applies to the Chaplin cell phone user comment. I really do wonder sometimes if you’ve run out of ideas, or grow tired of talking about the same things (even though they merit discussion).
Anthony, if this is meant to lead to discussion of serious issues, such as the meaning of consciousness, awareness, belief systems and the like, then it should be set up in a way that objectively approaches the issues. On the other hand, if this is just a chance to make fun of someone for their unusual beliefs, it is uncomfortably out of place on this blog.
As someone who checks in with WUWT every few hours to see the latest information, I love to see new posts as much as anyone. But I would prefer fewer posts of more substance.
The PR department must be groaning at this and wondering how to limit the damage, or you could take the view of Sir Patrick Moore about such things. He says “There’s one born every minute”.
Doubtless he would describe the sceptics as ‘deniers’!
Dave F says:
October 28, 2010 at 11:32 pm
If only scientists were allowed to have open minds, perhaps one of them could explain Charlie Chaplin’s cell phone user.
It is intriguing. I would guess it is a joke by the director or CC taken over from some kind of science fiction narrative: talking without wires .
I am sure if one searches enough there will be a science fiction account pre 1928 foreseeing the mobile. Jule Verne had a lot of prophetic stuff that was created in the 20th century, for example.
A walk on part to intrigue viewers.
Pity this article. I don’t warm to lots of snide put-downs. Why not stay with what you know rather than venture in pronouncing on what you have not rigorously investigated. I feel pretty sure you have not rigorously investigated the issue of the reality of supernatural things like ghosts, or you would not start off with a WaPo level of observation.
This whole area needs rescuing from sentimental fraudsters on the one hand, and ignorant dismissive put-downers on the other hand. There is more to this area of reality than Carl Sagan could concede, and it deserves more careful, objective handling – looking at the best evidence on all sides, not just the mediocre evidence that is always used to make Straw Men.
Just like Climate Science.
Some years ago a comment by David Suzuki annoyed me when he ridiculed anyone believing in spontaneous human combustion, illustrating how gullible the public was, and then proceeded to say that the only thing he had read about it was in an airport paperback . As there is at least a century and a half of eyewitness reports, and very credible witnesses some of them are, and not explained by the usual ‘candlewicking’ explanation, I thought he only displayed his own hubris.
Likewise , some of the comments here and in the Washington Post do the same.
Here is the comment I posted there, with no apology.
“jbraggins wrote:
Obviously none of the commentators so far have researched the subject in any depth if at all.
The spirit life is as different from the present life as the macro world is to the nano world.
I suggest reading the literature on the subject going back at least 150 years, a very good collection of research is in Victor Zammit’s e-book “A Lawyers Presents the Case for the Afterlife” which was available free a few years ago, in which he presents evidence that would succeed in a court of law for the existence of the afterlife, and offered $10,000 for anyone who could refute it.
Please don’t knock something you know virtually nothing about.”
I should have added that from being a believer in AGW it was only through reading the literature that I changed my views.
Richard Sharpe says:
1. There’s no such thing as an atheist in a fox hole.
I understand what “reds under their beds” is, I think, but what are “atheists in foxholes?”>>
I just said there’s no such thing! Oh… you want a definition of what it is so that then you would not what it is that doesn’t exist. Got it. Back in the day when armies fought to a stand still, each side would “dig in”. Take up positions from which they could shelter from and return enemy fire. A fox hole was just a small hole that could shelter perhaps one or two soldiers. A fox hole in use was a fox hole with a soldier in it, bullets, shrapnel, bombs going off all around him, the prospect of an enemy soldier appearing at the edge at any moment with bayonet fixed and finger on the trigger looming in his mind and wondering if that was worse or better than getting orders to jump out of the fox hole and charge the enemy line. At that moment you might find many young men pleading with God to let them live through this, but you won’t find any mumbling to themselves that God is illogical and on the face of the evidence doesn’t exist.
Neil says:
————————————————————————————-
October 28, 2010 at 2:08 pm
@David UK,
Plenty of scientists are Christians, and there isn’t one whit of scientific evidence to support the central tenants of Christianity, and nobody thinks they are all that strange.
————————————————————————————–
Peter Jackson had an uninvited experience with a Ghost. So he mentioned it to his wife. saying, hey, I was in bed and I saw a Ghost and she said, “oh, was it the screaming lady.” It was. So when the script for ‘Bones’ came to him, he found it interesting and took on the movie.
A British Javelin champion was in the telegraph talking about money so I happend upon this by accident. They asked what was his worst investment. He brought a house you see. And he never saw it, but visitors would always comment on it. He’d go out shopping and come back and his windows would be open. SO, he it drove him a bit mad and sold it. (Also from the Telegraph).
So, I used to dismiss readily any storys about Ghosts. Peter Jackson doesn’t strike me as a B/S’er. And neither did the other guy. As i’ve heard many, many stories before, I’ve decided it’s no laughing matter. Even though it’s difficult for me to place in my Christian view. As for the Bible. As for the ‘no evidence’ part of the bible. Shame on you. Here’s your punishment: Repeat 100x what the Apostle Peter states ‘…the earth was formed out of water and by water…!’ 2Pe ch3 v5 It’s not science. But it is true. :-).
Oliver Ramsay says:
October 28, 2010 at 9:34 pm
SunSword says
” Analogous to this, when the brain dies the mind continues — because most of it is not “in” the brain.”
—————-
Of course it’s not. It’s in the gut! There are thousands of times more afferent nerves from the gut than there are efferent ones. They keep busy telling the brain what to think. Maybe that’s why ghosts smell so bad.>>
Evidence to the contrary abounds. Consider the male of our species. As any attractive woman can attest, they are prone to thinking with neither their gut nor their brain, they are hostage to another part of their anatomy. True, when exposed to stimulus that activates this portion of the male anatomy, behaviourists notice a pronounced incidence of males sucking in their gut. The brain being encased in bone, it is not possible to determine if the brain also gets sucked in, but in the presence of an attractive female of the species it has been noted that males make more “bone headed decisions”, a colloqial saying that may be rooted in science.
One would think that the female of the species would exhibit a reverse variation of the symptoms, but empirical evidence suggests not. Open for example, any men’s magazine, and you will find it full of ads featuring attractive women in order to draw attention to the products being sold. Open any women’s magazine on the other hand, and you will find it full of ads featuring attractive women in order to draw attention to the products being sold. Only the products are different.
It’ll only take a photo.
—————————————————————————————
Peter Jackson interview
Personal loss led Peter ‘Lord of the Rings’ Jackson to find comfort in ‘The Lovely Bones’ and then direct its Oscar-nominated adaptation.
By Will Lawrence
Published: 4:49PM GMT 04 Feb 2010
Peter Jackson and Saoirse Ronan on the set of The Lovely Bones
Oscar-winning filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson believes in ghosts, because he saw one.
“It was about 20 years ago in New Zealand in an apartment that Fran, my wife, had,” says the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong. “One night I woke up and there was a figure in the room. She was really scary – her face was like a silent scream. She glided across the room and disappeared into the wall.”
Jackson wondered whether his imagination had run wild. He told Fran in the morning. “And she said, ‘Was it the woman with a screaming face?’ We had never spoken about it. She had seen the same ghost two years earlier. So I do believe in some energy, a spirit or a soul, and there’s a version of it in our latest film.”
The film is an adaptation of Alice Sebold’s best-selling novel, The Lovely Bones, which recounts the story of ill-fated teen Susie (played by Saoirse Ronan), lured into an underground den by her neighbour, George Harvey (Stanley Tucci, in an Oscar-nominated performance), a paedophile and child-killer, and then raped and murdered. As she passes on to the afterlife, she looks back on the world she’s left behind.
“I would say this is the most difficult project I’ve taken on because the book is not set up to be easily made into a film,” says Jackson.
The main problem is the way “heaven”, or the afterlife, is depicted, and Jackson has been criticised for the changes he has made to the book. Sebold’s “otherworld” is a hazy and somewhat mundane realm. “Yet we wanted to portray heaven in a way that would help us to tell the story, and the mundane version didn’t help us with the narrative. She has to discover the truth about her murder and then move on in her afterlife.”
So Susie’s otherworldly realm in Jackson’s film looks like a pulsating, shifting Salvador Dali painting. Surreal dream imagery sweeps across a fantastic landscape. “We did use dream imagery, and the different visions we see in the afterlife represent Susie’s emotional state.”
The story also plays out on Earth, and Jackson feels a connection to the events that unfold. “I find that the older that I get, the more I start to think about what happens when you die; you start to think about uncles and aunts that you’ve lost, some of which were a similar to age me and Fran now.”
Jackson’s mother, Joan, died three days before the 2001 release of The Fellowship of the Ring; Alice Sebold’s book came out the following year.
“Death starts to become a fact of life and the book I found very emotional and very comforting. If the book hadn’t been comforting in that way I wouldn’t have thought about doing the movie.”
Susie’s tragic story also struck a chord with Jackson as a parent. “It does show how quickly disaster can strike, which is how life works. We have a 12-year-old daughter and she’s seen the film and she said, ‘Dad if it was me, I would have gone down that hole with Mr Harvey, too.’ It’s good that aspect of things can be portrayed.”
Jackson is currently in New Zealand, picking up his producing duties. This year he produced Neill Blomkamp’s sci-fi sleeper hit District 9, and is now working on Steven Spielberg’s eagerly awaited Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.
“With Tintin, the filming and motion-capture is all done. Now we’re doing the post-production, which takes about two years. The film is very European and close to the book. You can imagine what Andy Serkis does as Captain Haddock!” While that visual effects magic goes on at Jackson’s Weta Workshop, Jackson and his wife (and long-time collaborator) Fran Walsh are revising the script for The Hobbit. The project encompasses two films that chart Bilbo Baggins’s adventures in the novel, before bridging the gap between the conclusion of The Hobbit and the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring.
“I thought that there might be something unsatisfying about directing two Tolkien movies after Lord of the Rings,” says Jackson. “I’d be trying to compete with myself and deliberately doing things differently. I want it to be natural. So I thought about who might be an interesting director? It was an obvious choice.”
He chose Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo Del Toro. “He’s going to make the movie he wants. He doesn’t want a carbon copy of me; he is who he is and he’s terrific. It’ll be very, very interesting.”
• The Lovely Bones is released on Feb 19.
—————————————————————————————
The Article wasn’t about Ghosts. Steve wasn’t pushing Ghosts. They tend to be a nuisance. And are dismissed readily. I am actually glad that someone with some brains is actually deciding to look into this. The only time in my life i can remember, where I go ‘Help’ and nothing comes out of my mouth, was in the presence of something standing by my bed in the early hours while on vacation in Henley-on-Thames. I don’t know what it was. It moved out of the room without making a sound.
and I dismiss it. I used to laugh at this stuff until I read the Peter Jackson article as I respect his integrity even though I don’t really know him. Here is the British Athlete from the telegraph…..
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Steve Backley
The former javelin world record holder on octopus ink, being as big as Beckham (in Finland), and living in a haunted house
Steve Backley: give him a Rubik’s Cube and he’ll be as happy as Larry. Photograph: Tom Jenkins
Hi Small Talk, have you been expecting me?
We have indeed, Steve, how the heck are you? Ready and willing, Small Talk!
That’s good to hear, Steve. Unfortunately, Small Talk isn’t in such fine fettle. For as we speak Small Talk is being mocked and abused by colleagues for admitting that until a few minutes ago it had not been aware that octopi can squirt ink and … [Incredulous laughter] How can you not know that?!
What, you mean you knew? Of course I knew! Everyone knows that.
Really? How did you find out? Oh come on, it’s one of those things that you pick up as a kid from cartoons and so on.
[Sceptically] Which cartoon? I don’t remember, but that’s where I got most of my general knowledge! I bet if I ask my four-year-old what an octopus can do he’ll know.
OK, go ask him … Actually, now that I think of it, I can tell you how else I know: once when I was fishing for squid in New Zealand, we were shining a light on the top of the water to see all the crustaceans or whatever and I lifted a squid on to the boat and the captain went ballistic at me! He kept saying it would stain the deck of the boat. Apparently you’re supposed to lift it into a bucket of water.
[Testily] What colour is the ink? Black.
OK. And octopi blood is blue. Did you know that? No, I have to admit I didn’t [chastened chuckles]
1-1! Can you handle another question? Go for it.
Actually, it’s an easy one … because it’s not really a question at all, just the mandatory tee-up for the product you’re promoting today: what is so good about Alfa Romeos? Ah, well let me tell you first of all that they are the sponsor of UK Athletics so we’re very appreciative of their support. Beyond that, they’ve been a big hit in the car world recently. They’ve got a great fleet of cars. It’s a very refined car now I think, I’m certainly not a petrol head and I’ve enjoyed it very much.
Well that’s great. Now then, is there any exciting British javelin talent we need to know about? It’s pretty good on the women’s side. There’s a female thrower called Goldie Sayers and she came fourth in Beijing and she’s holding the limelight in the javelin. As for the men, there’s Mervyn Luckwell – but it’s luck by name but not by nature at the moment: he can throw far but he needs to learn how to deliver at the championships, which is a whole science in itself.
How did you get into the javelin? My father was a pretty decent middle distance runner in his day and I grew up going running with him and thoroughly enjoyed it. So I was kind of around the athletics scene but because I was quite big I didn’t have the physical conditions for middle distance running and one day I saw these guys chucking a thing around a field and thought ‘that looks like a laugh, I’ll have a go at that’. So that’s what I did. But it was no Cinderella story, quite the opposite in fact. I was bloody awful at first! But I enjoyed it and it seemed to make sense so I started on my journey, gradually making progress. By the end of the first year I was ranked fifth in the country for my age. And then I broke my arm and had a year off!
Tell us this, Steve, with your phenomenal throwing prowess you’d probably have made a decent quarterback: did you ever consider a lucrative move into American football? I probably couldn’t have made it as a quarterback because that’s a very technical position but I’ll tell you what, there was some interest as a baseball pitcher. Pitchers are massively reliant on a fast arm more than technique. My sort-of-nemesis, Jan Zelezny, tried out for the Atlanta Braves and they were very impressed with his speed of relase, which was over 100mph, which only the top pitchers can do, but his aim wasn’t so flash. In fact, at this media day they set up to have another look at him he hit a Japanese photographer, which I found quite amusing. But apparently in the Atlanta Braves stadium, only three people have ever thrown a home run from the plate where you hit from, which is about 120 yards or something… and he did it with his first throw. You see, throwing flat wasn’t so easy but once you have to put a bit of elevation into it like a javelin thrower he was brilliant.
So would you have fancied a crack at that? For sure! For no other reason than they earn a hell of a lot more money than a javelin thrower!
Sound reasoning. By the way, have you ever been to Finland? Yes, I have. Javelin is the national sport in Finland. You know, here in England I may occasionally get recognised when I’m at Sainsbury’s or wherever but I cannot walk around the streets of Finland – I’m like David Beckham there!
Seriously? Yeah, it’s hilarious!
So presumably you go there whenever you need a morale boost? I used to spend a lot of time there but since I’ve retired I’ve not been back.
Any idea why the Finns are particularly taken by the javelin? I don’t know where their love of the javelin came from, to be honest. I think it fits the personality of the race – you know, tall, strong guys, almost like Viking shapes. They’re pretty … um, how can I describe the Finns? They’re quite an unusual crowd actually. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. I think it’s the simple bravado of being able to throw something farther than someone else that is in line with their mentality.
Sounds plausible to Small Talk. Then again, the only thing Small Talk knows about Finland is that exceptionally dark heavy metal bands abound there … They do, yeah.
Javelin and death metal: it’s a heady mix! Are you a headbanger? I don’t listen to heavy metal, I skipped that bit.
So what sort of music do you listen to? I like a wide spectrum really. A bit of pop, a bit of dance, a bit of Motown, that kind of thing.
Did you have a particular song you listened to before competing to motivate you? I did actually. I had the same track that I listened to for my whole career: It was Soul II Soul, Back to Life. The words, the rhythm, it’s just one of those timeless tunes. You still hear it on the radio.
And when you hear it on the radio now do you feel an immediate urge to fling a javelin? [Chortling] I do yeah, I’m one of Pavlov’s dogs! The only thing is it doesn’t work any more: I was at my kid’s school sports day the other day and someone convinced me to chuck a kid’s javelin. I flicked the first one and got a round of applause and then they said ‘go on, throw a big long one’. And the juices were flowing and I said to myself ‘right, this one’s going over the fence.’ So I lashed it with all I’ve got … and it went the same distance as the first one. I just turned around and said ‘that’s why I’ve retired!’. You know when you put your foot on the gas and nothing happens? That was me. A horrible, horrible feeling.
It was still farther than the kid’s throws, though, right? Just about. And they were only four and five!
Speaking of children, what was your favourite toy as a child? A Rubik’s Cube.
Did you complete it? Yes. I taught myself to do it. I think that sums up my personality: I wouldn’t put it down until I worked out how to do it.
How long did it take you? I think my fastest was 47 seconds. I picked one up the other day for the first time in about 20 years and did it in four and a half minutes and I was quite pleased with that. The system that I devised still applies.
Who is your favourite TV detective? I’ll say Starsky and Hutch because as a kid I had a Starsky and Hutch car. I used to love the way they jumped across the bonnet to get into it.
Would it be fair to say that that is the most iconic vehicle in TV history? Or is it overshadowed by the A-Team fan and the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine? I think so, but what type of car was the Starsky and Hutch one? I can’t remember.
Nor can Small Talk. How about we say it was an Alfa Romeo? Good one!
Steve, have you ever seen a ghost? I had a ghost in my first house, which I bought when I was 20. I never saw it but it came and visited some guests. It wasn’t a particularly friendly ghost and my friend described it materialising in the night as a beast that scared the living daylights out of him. It was bizarre.
So let’s get this straight: it marched around in the middle of the night and your guests saw it but you never did. Do you, by any chance, happen to be a sleepwalker? [Guffaws] Well we never really got to the bottom of it, I just moved. But weird things happened. For example, I went out and locked all the doors and when I came back all the doors and windows were open. That happened a couple of times and it wasn’t burglaries or anything.
Did you look into the history of the house? Not really. There were all sorts of theories, from World War bunkers and so on. I tried to dismiss it but once I started buying into it I just thought I’ve got to move.
When you were trying to sell it, did you mention to prospective buyers that it might be haunted? No. But I think I can get away with it because I never actually saw anything. And if in retrospect anything happened, I deny all knowledge!
That’s the spirit! Thanks for your time, Steve. It was a pleasure. Bye bye Small Talk.
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Mark:
and
What do you base these assertions on? You also say that the “ethical imperative” is a “basic instinct and sensory truth” but that faith is “other than sensory”. It would be helpful if you supported your assertions instead of just stating them. As far as I can tell, you are saying that Stalin lacked the ethical sense organ (a conscience, I guess) simply because you think your view of morality is better than was his or that you can view morality and he couldn’t. But morality is right vs. wrong, and naturalism has no rational basis for believing in right and wrong. The universe just is. There is good nor bad and the actions of people are neither good nor bad, they just are. Where in the blind laws of chemistry and physics is the basis of morality?
Mark:
And what in the naturalistic world view leads to the conclusion that communism, genocide, eugenics or just the plain killing of those you don’t like is wrong? Survival of the Fittest has no problem with any of these.
Someone mentioned Velikovsky? I’d Never heard of her. So I did a bit of digging:
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In 1950, Immanuel Velikovsky culminated decades of research with a book titled Worlds in Collision that “proposes that many myths and traditions of ancient peoples and cultures are based on actual events.” His approach was interdisciplinary, a rarity in the 20th century, taking into account astronomy, physics, chemistry, psychology, ancient history, and comparative mythology.
He noted, for example, that Venus, the second brightest object in the night sky, was not mentioned by the earliest astronomers. He proposed that the planet was a newcomer to our solar system, a comet, appearing in historical times with an irregular orbit that caused catastrophic events on our own planet.
Coming in close contact with the Earth, the latter’s rotation altered, making it appear that The Sun had stood still, a phenomenon reported on in the Book of Josue. What has come to be known as Joshua’s Long Day is corroborated by the texts of the ancient Chinese, Japanese, Egyptians, Babylonians, and Mayans; the East Asians reporting a extremely long sunset, the Mexicans reporting an extremely long sunrise.
Immanuel Velikovsky was too eminent a scholar to be dismissed outright as a kook, and he counted some respected people among his friends. (See The Einstein-Velikovsky Correspondence). Nevertheless, his Catastrophism was rejected outright by a scientific establishment that couldn’t stomach an interdisciplinary challenge to its dogmatic Uniformitarianism, even after Velikovsky’s predictions about the temperature of Venus and radio activity from Jupiter were proven true.
Stephen Jay Gould summed up mainstream scientific opinion, saying, “Velikovsky is neither crank nor charlatan – although to state my opinion and to quote one of my colleagues, he is at least gloriously wrong … Velikovsky would rebuild the science of celestial mechanics to save the literal accuracy of ancient legends.” Velikovsky would counter that “the ancient traditions are our best guide to the appearance and arrangement of the earliest remembered solar system, not some fancy computer’s retrocalculations based upon current understanding of astronomical principles.”
While recognized as “neither crank nor charlatan,” Velikovsky and his ideas were denied a hearing in what same to be known as the “Velikovsky Affair.”
Australian philosopher David Stove, took up the Velikovskian cause in a 1972 essay – “The Velikovsky story: the scientific mafia.” He begins, “The story of Velikovsky’s theory, its reception, and its subsequent confirmations, constitutes one of the most fascinating chapters in the entire history of thought; and it is one which is still unfolding.”
While acknowledging the book’s “enormous appeal to what I call the ‘anti-fluoride belt’ in modern societies,” he says “the books convinced me of two things: that a thesis of extraterrestrial catastrophes in historical times is at least a distinctly live option; and that in historical times Venus has done- something peculiar, at any rate.”
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……………….hhhmmmmm.
I do not want disparage Mr Gutro but unless he lands a least a $250,000 grant to study and report the catastrophic effects of AGW on disembodied spirits and has it published in peer reviewed literature ( American Metaphysical Letter – MPL), I cannot grant him high status.
Now if he were to publish a study showing increased and accelerating conversion of gentle spirits to violent poltergeists with increased SST or CO2, backed up by a Paleodemonological study of pottery shard pits showing no increase in poltergeist conversion during the mislabeled MWP nor decrease during the mislabeled LIA, that would certainly gain him very high esteem
Richard Wright:
I do not mean that Joe Stalin lacked the ethical sense. He justified his empire’s actions in terms of what was best for the world- the ethical goal. He just had, we both contend, errors supreme in his rational consideration of what ethics requires.
When I call ethics sensory and instinctual, intuitive and precedent to rationality, I mean to refer to the basic instinct to do good that all humans possess. I assert that there is such a thing inn the case of ethics by my own personal experience as apparently a holder of the ordinary human brain. I communicate it based on the other item of evidence for this claim, that everyone else not ‘crazy’ possesses this same instinct apparently and avowedly, and my trust that each human can relate to this sense.
I assert that faith, though theoretically possible to be rational based purely upon internal experience just as with ethics, is not precedent to rationality as are sight and taste, because it appears from the above two evidences of the ethical imperative to be not at all evident:
I have found no instinct to belief in Jehovah or Brahman or Apollo in my own mind, though emotional benefits I have reaped in my religious years from faith. I observe no such in the behavior and speech of my fellow humans- many of them claim guttural knowledge of deity, but the claim is always to a different deity (and thus a different knowledge) and coincidentally the one popular in that place and time.
Thus, I do not believe faith is before reason, and if isn’t it must be rational- and to believe without evidence is irrational.
Best,
Mark
Neil says:
October 28, 2010 at 2:08 pm
@David UK,
Plenty of scientists are Christians, and there isn’t one whit of scientific evidence to support the central tenants of Christianity, and nobody thinks they are all that strange.
Oh, I’m so sorry, you’re right of course. I personally believe in Fung Shui, acupuncture, the tooth fairy and goblins. And CAGW. (Just kidding about that last one – I’m not that gullible).
Why is scientific evidence the only credible evidence? There is plenty of historical evidence that Jesus lived, was crucified, and rose from the dead. In fact there is more historical evidence for these than for most other things that we accept without question. The problem of the scientist who is of a purely naturalistic world view is that the physical world is all that there is – not because science says so, but because science, by definition, can only examine the physical world. It is the naturalistic world view that prevents consideration of the supernatural and leads to its ridicule by those who think too highly of themselves.
The Christian believes God created the laws of nature and so there is a rational basis for science. That is, without laws of nature, science can’t exist. But why should there be laws of nature at all? Why should there be constants in nature? Laws cannot explain themselves. The atheist has no rational explanation for the orderly and predictable nature of the universe. This is an evidence for God. It is not scientific evidence, but evidence nonetheless. Stephen Hawking freely admits this in “A Brief History of Time”. And Einstein also believed in God. And Newton, Pascal, Galileo, etc. No doubt some on this forum think that these are/were all crazy and irrational.
Mark:
That’s fine but hardly scientific. If your personal experience is to be the judge than you are in good company with people of faith. And according to surveys, at least 88% of the world’s population believe in God, so that also fits well with your evidence for ethics based on statistics, and so I would think that might give you pause.
You say that the ethical sense exists like the 5 senses but where is it’s organ? What explains it? What in your world view rationally explains morality if we are nothing more than the product of time + chance + physics and chemistry? Morality is predicted if we posit the creator-God of the Bible, but it is not expected at all in a naturalistic world view. And I think we would all agree on the importance of predictability.
RICHARD FEYNMAN:
“………………..The way I see it is what we are doing is we are exploring. We are trying to find out as much as we can about the world. But what ever way it comes out, nature is there, and it’s going to come out the way she is. And so when we go to investigate it we shouldn’t pre-decide what it is we are trying to do except find out more about it!…..”
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FRom BBC 4 Horizon…
Richard Wright says:
October 29, 2010 at 6:50 am
And what in the naturalistic world view leads to the conclusion that communism, genocide, eugenics or just the plain killing of those you don’t like is wrong? Survival of the Fittest has no problem with any of these.>>
Humanity left the survival of the fittest rule behind centuries ago. We haven’t been subject to that imperative for an extremely long time. We have concluded at the intellectual level we are best served by other constructs. While there may be no right or wrong in the survival of the fittest model, humanity has rejected that model and adopted a model (or variety of models I suppose) governed by our intelligence. As these models are governed by intellect rather than the rules of evolution, there is in fact such a thing as right and wrong, and it is central to what divides us from the animals.
As for Mark’s assertion that man has a natural instinct to do good, this is also a fallacy. If you’ve ever been in a city where the police went on strike, you would know how incredibly fast society breaks down into gang warfare. The only instinct we have left is toward tribalism, and that is entirely a defensive notion of grouping together to protect “us” from “them”. It allows for leadership to raise emotions on issues to the point that they trump logic and en masse do what is evil. But it is intellect that returns them from acting out of hate and anger to consider that what they are doing is wrong. If hate wins, they rationalize the killing in their own minds. If intellect wins, they say this just isn’t right, and desert. There’s no instinct involved in doing good.
During the pass-over event, It was instructed to believers (but not non-believers) of the Jewish God to: ‘………… take lambs blood and mark the sides and tops of the door frames of the houses where they eat the lambs.’ As a christian i always thought it curious that they had to mark the sides………and the top of the door frames. I supposed for a long time that this was to be done in this fashion so whom ever this was a message for; they didn’t miss noticing the blood and kill the first born in the house but instead, ‘passed-over’ that house’s habitants. The more satisfactory explanation came to me recently from Beth Moore: It represents the blood stain pattern of Christ on the cross. Hands for the door posts. Head denoted by blood on the top of the door frame……and the dripping blood to the ground for his feet. It’s a prophecy. A foretaste. A shadow of what was to come and a reminder to Christians (in the future) that the blood of christ works both in to the future and the past.’..because no one comes to father except through me!’. There is always a reason for even the minutest detail. It’s the way he works.