Positively Non-Religious

(photo by Tom Maglieri)

Now this is intriguing.  Daryl Bem, an accomplished and respected psychologist, has found evidence that he claims shows people are influenced by events that haven’t happened yet.  Oddly enough, his research is going to be published in a very prestigious scientific journal, but with an editorial commentary that’s skeptical.  The full manuscript can be found here.

Bem ran a number of experiments where the usual causal mechanisms happened in the reverse order, yet the results are open to the interpretation that events in the future somehow had an impact on students’ behavior.  For example, in one experiment, students were shown a list of words.  Then, they were asked to remember words from the list.  Then, random words were selected from the list, and students were instructed to type these randomly-chosen words.  The paper reports that students were more likely to recall words at time 2 if they were words that they’d be asked to type at time 3.  The effect is small, but still better than chance.

As in all things paranormal and seemingly supernatural, color me extremely skeptical.  Bem openly admits to believing in the paranormal, so it’s possible his bias could’ve influenced the outcomes somehow.  It’s also possible that he’s been running enough of these experiments over a long enough time, that a statistically significant difference was bound to crop up in some of them, giving the appearance of a real effect of premonitions, when the results are actually due to chance variations.

Also, here’s a good blog post from Psychology Today that is skeptical of Bem’s findings.

(via)

Reductionist Materialism wants to stay in a mechanistic, Newtonian view of the universe. It rejects possible implications of 20th century Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, and studies concerning consciousness, because this means metaphysical ideas which are closely linked to certain spiritual ideas,…

The Secret, “The Law of Attraction,” and all of that new-age talk of quantum mechanics isn’t science — it’s just BS.  There remains no credible evidence for anything supernatural.

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-03-07/

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/secrets_and_lies/

(via anneripcurl)

Excellent link!  This may come in handy the next time I come across someone insisting otherwise.  They’ve got a great store, too, with some really cool t-shirts, etc.

khdnblog:

posnonrel:

khdnblog:

In which we examine the news of the latest and most recent claimed discovery of Noah’s Ark.

Dude, you left out one important possibility:  it’s a filthy stinkin’ hoax.

Not exactly; my entire article is steeped in skepticism, and you’ll notice that I point out several problems with the assertion that it is the real ark.

I do try strike an honest stance at the end, namely that if in fact this thing is found to be genuine (a possibility I doubt), I would necessarily have to adjust my views. That’s how honest, rational thinking works. If on the other hand it turns out to be…ah…not the Ark at all, well, so what? I already reject Young Earth Creationism, so it’s not as though my faith would be in any way impacted by the announcement that yet another “not the Ark after all” has been discovered.

While I could say more for your citation of Myers (the man is a coward and an intellectual weakling), the link he provides is interesting. I might do a story on it tomorrow, so thanks for that.

You’re welcome.  Thanks for being a good sport. 

All I said was that you didn’t mention the possibility that it could be an outright hoax … which you didn’t.

Out of curiosity, what makes PZ a coward and a weakling, in your eyes?

khdnblog:

In which we examine the news of the latest and most recent claimed discovery of Noah’s Ark.

Dude, you left out one important possibility:  it’s a filthy stinkin’ hoax.