Physicist Ulrich Mohrhoff paper entitled "Radical Non-Locality": on the relevance of quantum mechanics for psychic phenomena

In a previous post, I criticized some "paranormalists" (i.e. people who research or write about paranormal matters) as pseudo-intellectuals. I argued that some of them reflect serious ignorance about philosophy and science, specially quantum mechanics, and that they tend to abuse QM to justify their idiosyncratic or personal metaphysical opinions about "consciousness", psychic phenomena, spirituality, UFOs or whatever.

In order to avoid misunderstandings of my previous post and just for the record, I want to be stress the following: I'm NOT suggesting that QM is irrelevant to all the above topics (in fact, as I argued in this post, some serious scholars see QM, in its standard interpretation, as relevant even for the topic of God's existence). My criticism is, rather, aimed at those paranormalists who pose just one interpretation of QM as the "only one" or "true one" (when actually there are several interpretations of QM and nobody knows which one is the correct one), and from there they pretend to settle complex philosophical matters like realism vs anti-realism, the origin of consciousness, the principle of causality and so forth.

Recently, physicist Ulrich Mohrhoff alerted me about his most recent paper dealing with QM and non-locality published in the Journal of NonLocality (you can download the paper here). Mohrhoff argues, against the beliefs of some paranormalists and spiritualists, that even though it is true that the discovery of radical nonlocality of the quantum world renders intelligible the possibility of paranormal correlations, it is not justified to infer that quantum mechanics is of any help in explaining how paranormal phenomena come about.

Some writers seem to hope that QM will provide the scientific explanation of consciousness and consciousness-related phenomena (e.g. psychic phenomena), but they have to reply to the challenge posed by thinkers like Mohrhoff. 

Moreover, there are other professional physicists who draws wholly different metaphysical consclusions from the same evidence of QM. For example, in my interview with physicist Marco Biagini, he said "Quantum physics tells us nothing about consciousness, and this fact tells us much about the nature of consciousness: it tells us that consciousness is not a physical process... The laws of quantum physics consist of a system of mathematical equations in abstract matematical spaces and therefore consciousness becomes a preliminary necessary condition for the existence of such laws; the intrinsic conceptual nature of the laws of physics is in my opinion the most direct rational argument supporting the existence of a conscious intelligent God, since a concept cannot exist independently from a conscious intelligent mind conceiving it."

Biagini's is posing a scientific argument for the immateriality of consciousness and the existence of God based on QM and the ontological nature of the laws of QM.

There are also other non-materialistic views of QM, as explained by philosopher Hans Halvorson:

 As you can see, the debate about the ontological implications of QM is far from being settled. Perhaps the paranormalists will turn out to be right, but they need to address competing explanations and views about QM.

Read my interview with Mohrhoff here.

Philosophy of Physics conference at University of St Andrews: Leading philosophers of physics discuss the relations of contemporary physics with metaphysics, God and consciousness

At University of St Andrews, leading philosophers of physics discuss the importance and relevance of physics for important philosophical questions, like consciousness, the origin of the universe, causality, time, God, etc. Some of the contributors are philosophers James Ladyman, William Lane Craig, Hans Halvorson, and Alastair Wilson:

Hans Halvorson lecture on quantum mechanics and the mind:

William Lane Craig lecture on God, Time and the Theory of Relativity:

Naturalist philosopher James Ladyman lecture on metaphysics naturalized:

Chris Hooley lecture Quantum Mechanics and Causality:

Panel Q&A:

Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth by agnostic scholar Bart D. Ehrman

I'm not a "fan" of Bart D. Ehrman's works. As I've proved in detail in this post, I think Ehrman has an axe to grind against the evidence for Jesus' resurrection. As a former Christian believer and a current agnostic, Ehrman is extremely hostil to Christianity and, as consequence, when debating the evidence for the resurrection, he's prepared to DENY his own published academic works (which supports the facts that are relevant to assess the historicity of the resurrection) in order to win the debate. This is a misleading approach which I think is improper for a serious scholar.

You can watch this misleading and sophistical approach by Ehrman in his debate against William Lane Craig regarding the historicity of Jesus' resurrection:

Another problem which is evident of Ehrman's work about the historical Jesus is his misuses of the criteria of authenticity (a common, but very subtle, approach of some liberal scholars). Craig explains this with especific examples from Ehrman's work in this lecture:

However, leaving aside the above critical considerations, I think Ehrman's recent book defending the historicity of Jesus' existence is a good book. He criticizes a position known as "mythicism", i.e. the view defended by some ideological atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, naturalists and materialists according to which Jesus of Nazareth never existed. (Yeah, these are the same guys who have created "organized skepticism" and are intentionally misleading both professional scientists and the general public about the evidence from parapsychology).

An example of these Jesus denialists is naturalist writer Richard Carrier. In this article in infidels.org website, Carrier wrote "Jesus might have existed after all. But until a better historicist theory is advanced, I have to conclude it is at least somewhat more probable that Jesus didn't exist than that he did. I say this even despite myself, as I have long been an opponent of ahistoricity

Since some atheists suffer of what I've called Jime's Iron Law, Carrier has became a kind of "atheist superstar" among the popular sub-culture of online atheists and skeptics. Even though Carrier's arguments in general tend to be unshophisticated, childish and extremely biased (see this example), his influence among young online atheists is important. Therefore, a proper reply to his historical fallacies and bad scholarship is needed. Ehrman's book provide some refutations of positions like Carrier's.

In the scholarly world, the "Jesus denialism" or mythicist position is widely rejected by historians and scholars, including atheists, agnostics and other anti-Christians scholars, like Ehrman. The historical evidence for the existence of Jesus is very strong, even better than the existence of many other ancient persons (whose existence nobody denies).

It is clear that the motivation for positions like Carrier's is, essentially a product of extreme atheist hostility against and emotional repulsion of Christianity plus Jime's Iron Law. However, truth-seekers and rational persons of any theological persuasion have to address the arguments of these people, not simply to unmask their purely ideological and emotional motivations (after all, a person  with an ideology X could still be right).

Previously, Ehrman has confronted denialists and mythicists in debates:

But his book is an extended attack of the mythicist position and a defense of Jesus' historicity.

Ryke Geerd Hamer's German New Medicine in CNN en Espanol (Spanish). Info from Spain

Zetetic Chick from Spain informs me that an physician from Argentina named Fernando Callejon, who has studied with the controversial German medical doctor Ryke Geerd Hamer (the discover of the German New Medicine) was interviewed in CNN in Espanol. You can watch the interview here:

If you don't understand Spanish, don't worry, just watch the video (I'll summarize the interview for you below). Dr.Callejon discusses the case of her daugther Barbara, who in 1995, was diagnosed with a extremely malign for of bone cancer called Edwin's Sarcoma, which affected Barbara's face, as you can see in this picture below:

In that year (1995), under the pressure of such brutal, vital and dramatic situation, Dr.Callejon traveled to Spain to learn under Dr.Hamer his German New Medicine and if it could be of help in the case of her daughter. Having mastered the principles of the GNM, Callejon understood that Barbara's cancer was the healing phase of a self-devaluation conflict (in Hamer's terminology). According to Hamer, except in the cases of mechanical problems (e.g. compressing vital organs or functions), such kind of proliferative tumour is (biologically speaking) innocous, i.e. not fatal. When the healing phase is finished, the health is restored (this is a little bit more complex, but suffices to my purposes in this explanation).

Having identified and understood the conflict of Barbara, the family Callejon decided to NOT use any conventional treatment (which in the case of Ewin's Sarcoma, is very brutal, due to tthe putative aggresiveness of this form of bone cancer). They use only the GNM plus some natural therapies. Fortunately, Barbara's tumour was regressing slowly until its complete remission, as you can watch in this picture:

Currently, Barbara is 30 years old and enjoys of an excellent health (you can see her in a recent picture in the above video). Since 1995, Callejon works (as a physician) with the GNM which he has developed into the so-called Psycho-Biological Medicine, which is the same GNM with original theoretical and therapeutic contributions of Callejon himself.

As Zetetic comments in her blog, it is surprising to find such controversial medical theory being discussed in CNN. The propaganda against the GNM and Hamer himself is amazing, specially on the internet (with whole websites dedicated to debunk it), but it is less known that Hamer's findings have been tested by several conventional physicians, without finding any evidence against his theories.

After reading most of Hamer's books in English and German, I think he has made a major contribution  about the origin of cancer (and other major diseases), even though I'm critical of Hamer's political speculations and conspiratory theories, the rate of healing which he defends with his GNM, the therapeutical approach of the GNM (based mainly on the solution of the biological conflict, which is not feasible for some patients) and the anti-scientific, dogmatic and purely popular presentation of his scientific work. I'll discuss these problems in future posts.

If you want to learn more about the principles of the GNM, see this website. Also watch this long German documentary about Hamer's whole theory (press the bottom in the video to activate English subtitles):

Also, read this interview for my blog with a writer of the GNM.

A comment on the pressupositions and assumptions of liberal biblical criticism and scholarship about the Historical Jesus

A careful study of the debates about the historical Jesus as contained in the literature of biblical criticism, reveals some interesting things, that I hope to discuss in the future. A certain pattern between liberal and non-liberal scholars can be discerned, and I think each group of scholars deserve an analysis.

In this moment, I'd like to share some of my current conclusions about liberal scholarship in biblical criticism. I choose this group of scholars (instead of jewish, evangelical, etc.) because such liberal scholarship is very, very influential and a proper discussion of it is deserved. 

This post doesn't pretend to be an exhaustive assesment of liberal scholarship, nor to be valid for "all" liberal scholars. You should understand this post as an introductory (if long) commentary only.

I've found that, as a rule, one can find some questionable (and even argueably false) pressupositions in liberal scholarship, which largely determines its conclusions (some of them, pluralistic) regarding the historical Jesus.

These pressupositions are:

1-Metaphysical naturalism and atheism

2-Strong anti-Christian prejudices, specially the assumption that early Church's view of Jesus is guilty until proven innocent, i.e. assumed to be false (or fabricated) until proved to be true or historical.

3-Religious pluralism (the view that God has revealed himself in several religions, or that all or several religious traditions are true. Also, the view that no particular religion is divinely privileged).

Currently, I'm trying to systematize (with precise references) all the pressupositions that I've found in these scholars, but I'll focus only in the above three in this post.

Metaphysical naturalism and atheism

The more obvious and influential underlying belief of most liberal scholars is metaphysical naturalism and atheism. This belief implies the non-existence of God and, as consequence, the impossibility of miracles (i.e. divine actions on nature beyond nature's purely physical laws). 

Regarding the historical Jesus, this pressuposition implies:

-Denial of the possibility of Jesus' bodily resurrection. Since Jesus' resurrection is by all parties considered the best example of what a miracle would be, the denial of this event implies the falsehood of all of the New Testament claims of it.  This implies that Christianity is false. (But note that this conclusion is not based on the historical evidence, but in a priori metaphysical considerations about the existence of God).

John Dominic Crossan's position is telling of this view: "I do not think that anyone, anywhere, at any time brings dead people back to life" (Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, p. 35). If it is supposed to be a philosophical position (not merely a personal subjective belief), then Crossan's position is acceptable only if an omnipotent God doesn't exist.

After all, if God exists, then certainly it is at least possible that, given his omnipotence, he could rise Jesus (or any other person) from the death. Since God's existence guarantees this metaphysical possibility, the whole discussion would be (in this case) if the historical evidence supports (or not) the case for Jesus' actual resurrection. If God exists, the historicity of Jesus' resurrection becomes a matter of evidence.

But an atheistic-naturalistic position like Crossan's settle the matter even before we sit down on the table to look at the evidence. The evidence is irrelevant because God's non-existence implies the non-factuality of the resurrection. The whole discussion is settled by a philosophical assumption.

This is clearly a close-minded position, similar to studying precognition assuming that "I do not think that anyone, anywhere, at any time can know the future through paranormal means". Would you rely in any parapsychologist or psychic researcher who study the evidence for precognition with such assumption in mind?

Likewise, would you rely in any historical Jesus scholar who studies the putative resurrection of Jesus with such view on mind?

Obviously not (unless that you strongly agree with such pressupositions). Materialists would agree with the anti-precognition assumption and most anti-Christians would agree with the anti-resurrection assumption. But open-minded researchers and truth-seekers won't: They will ask for specific EVIDENCE (scientific, philosophical and historical) for such pressupositions and wouldn't take them for granted. They won't take for granted any assumption which begs the question for the event under investigation.

Strong anti-Christian prejudices, specially the assumption that early Church's view of Jesus is guilty until proven innocent, i.e. assumed to be false (or fabricated) until proved to be true or historical

Again and again, you will find (either explicitly or implicitly) among liberal scholars the assumption that the early Church fabricated a theologically coloured view of Jesus, and that such fabrication is contrary to the facts of Jesus' teachings, sayings and deeds.

I've found that this assumption is extremely appealing for anti-Christian readers (in the same way that the skeptical assumption that putative paranormal phenomena are product of wishful thinking, ignorance of science and superstition are very appealing for materialistic readers), but truth-seekers and objective researchers will demand sufficient evidence for this assumption. 

In parapsychology, there is a long tradition of fraud, incompetence and deception, but it is not reason to think that all the cases are product of fraud, incompetence and delusion. Likewise, many parapsychologists and people who have had psychic experiences are believers in psi, the afterlife and God, but it is not reason to think their paranormal bias invalidates their experiences or conclusions. They could be right even if they were biased in favour of the paranormal or spiritual world.

Like in case of parapsychology, simply arguing that the early Church's members were strong believers in Jesus and hence biased towards him is not a compelling reason to think they fabricated the traditional view of Jesus, because precisely what we have to explain is WHY (contrary to their religious beliefs) they become strong believers in him (in particular, why strong monotheistic jews would become convinced that Jesus was divine. They were biased against the view that any man could be God; therefore, it is reasonable to think that some important event or events in Jesus' life convinced them, beyond any doubt, that Jesus was divine... if their conclusion is right or wrong is precisely what we have to research and we cannot simply "assume" that they were wrong in his view of Jesus. Such assumption reveals strong prejudice).

In a grotesque way, some liberal scholars write as whether their readers all share their anti-Christian assumptions. They seem to think anti-Christianity is being taken for granted. But any truth seeker won't take for granted any position which begs the question about the matter under scrutiny. You have to be open to all the relevant possibilities, including the possibility that the traditional portrait of Jesus be true.

I consider that this implicit assumption by liberal scholars is the most dangerous, misleading and insidious one. For anti-Christian readers, it is "so natural", "so obvious" that the supernaturalistic view of Jesus was an invention of the Church, that no much discussion about it is necessary. Only "Christian fundametalists" would believe in such Jesus.

The most dangerous consequence of this assumption is that it subtly mislead the readers into creating a double standard in evaluating the sources: Christian scholarly sources are considered biased and unreliable, but liberal scholarly sources (even if admitted to be a little bit biased too) will be considered most reliable. Hence, they will tend to believe the latter over the former (without realizing that the whole conclusions are, largely, based on question begging philosophical and theological assumptions and pressupositions against Christianity). This blindness become extreme and unchangeable, when the reader in question SHARE the same philosophical and theological assumptions.

An analogy do exists in the pseudoskeptical literature: When you read the works of James Randi or (specially) Martin Gardner, you get the impression that patapsychologists are a bunch of incompetent and credulous pseudoscientific researchers, eager to "prove" that the "paranormal" exists, not smart enough to realize that they're being fooled by magicians masked as "psychics" or "mediums". This is the actual view that you get reading these books and people familiar with the pseudoskeptical literature (specially of Martin and Randi) will know that I'm being accurate.

Materialistic readers will, as a rule, agree symmpathetically with Randi or Gardner's portrait of parapsychology. They won't "see" that they are being misled by their own anti-paranormal prejudices. they will believe that their anti-psi position is implied by the best results of science. Exactly the same applies to historical Jesus research: Liberal scholars, and readers sympathetic to them, take for granted a bunch of anti-Christian assumptions (specially about the extraordinary powers of fabrication and invention of the early Church, who apparently and inexplicably weren't interested in the truth), and sincerely believe that their view is based on the best results of current biblical criticism research. Pure self-delusion.

Truth-seekers won't set up a such apriostic double standard: They will subject each scholar with the same critical rigour, weighting the scholars' arguments and evidence in their own merits. They will ask if the scholar's presuppositions (like Crossan's) promotes an open-minded minset about the evidence (and how such pressupositions affects the reading of the data), or if they close the doors, a priori, to certain possibilities. They will be open minded (but critical) of the philosophical and theological assumptions behind the scholar's position and will subject such philosophical views to rigurous critical examination on the light of contemporary philosophy.

Religious pluralism

Besides to atheism, another important motivation of some liberal scholars is religious pluralism. There are at least two kinds of religious pluralism:

1-The view that God has revealed himself is several religions, hence making several of them "true". This view doesn't necessarily excludes an event like Jesus' resurrection, but undermines its exclusivity and importance for understading Jesus' nature. For example, it will be claimed that Jesus' resurrection is product of Buddhist practiques, Yoga, Chi Kung or any other known or unknown practique, religious or mystical exercise (subtly implying that whoever perfects such technique or exercise can be raised like Jesus. The implication is that Jesus' resurrection is not unique nor implies anything divinely special about him).

This view seem to be popular among paranormal believers and fans of parapsychology or spiritualism (judging from the e-mails that I received in my "experiment" to test the readers' prejudices) who, in general, have not idea of the literature about biblical criticism and scholarly discussions about Jesus. 

However, as far I know, no prominent historical Jesus scholar or professional historian defends this kind of pluralism about Jesus, and this for several obvious reasons:

a-No credible historical or serious scholarly evidence exists for Jesus knowing (let alone, mastering) any of the putative "resurrecting" practiques or exercises mentioned by the pluralist. It only exists in the pluralist's speculative imagination, without any evidence supporting it, and which is motivated exclusively by the (perhaps unconcious) desire to undermine the traditional view of Jesus.

b-No credible evidence exists that such "resurrecting" practiques do exist and are effective to produce resurrections in the same sense as applied to Jesus (i.e. that when they're mastered, they can actually cause a person to be raised from to dead into a immortal physical body). Again, this is pure speculation, not supported by any empirical or historical evidence (compare the skeptic of parapsychology speculating about alternative, purely speculative and non-evidenced based fradulent scenarios to explain the psi evidence away).

Again, this position is too telling of having strong prejudices against the traditional view of Jesus and no scholar will attempt to defend this position. No evidence will help him against informed scholarly criticisms.

Note: Such wild speculations wouldn't be accepted by the pluralist if posed by a skeptic against psi or afterlife phenomena. The pluralist won't accept as reasonable or plausible alternatives that "perhaps" all the evidence for reincarnation, mediumship and psi experiences "could" be caused by a bunch of alien beings manipulating us from their spaceshifts, or by scientists from the future who are testing mind control experiments with us (or by a Cartesian demon playing with us). 

Such speculations won't be accepted as plausible alternatives by the same pluralist who speculates about Jesus' resurrection being a consequence of Jesus' mastering of Yoga.

2-The view that God has NOT revealed himself in any religion, which implies that no religion is privileged. 

This is the view adopted by many liberal scholars. The adventage of this position is that it is compatible not only with several religions (hence, making a politically correct view of Jesus palatable to everyone) but even with atheism. If no religion has been privileged, then the atheist and secularist reader will have no objection to a portrait of Jesus based on that assumption.

Prominent New Testament scholar Marcus Borg is a telling example of this kind of religious pluralism: "A second problem is that the notion of supernatural intervention tends to privilege Christianity (Will the real Jesus please stand up? pp. 127)

As consequence, the view of Jesus that Borg accepts is a view which "undermines a widespread Christian belief that Jesus is unique, which is commonly linked to the notion that Christianity is exclusively true and that ‘Jesus is the only way." ( Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, p. 37. Emphasis in blue added)".

In other words, no supernatural intervention (e.g. Jesus being raised from the dead by God) assures that Jesus is not unique. Hence, religious pluralism about Jesus is acceptable. (Note that it implies that if Jesus' resurrection happened, then it is reasonable to posit God as the plausible cause of this event and hence to accept that exclusivism is plausible too because Jesus would be "privileged" among other spiritual teachers. Christians couldn't be accused of being unreasonable to hold such belief, provided the case for the resurrection is a good one).

Pushed by this purely theological prejudice, Borg is forced to re-define the meaning of "resurrection" in purely subjective terms: "For me, the truth of Easter is very simple: the followers of Jesus, both then and now, continue to experience Jesus as a living reality after his death. The post-Easter Jesus is a experiential reality"(ibid. p. 124)

Such "simple" conclusion is warranted only if Borg's theological prejudices (against supernatural interventions, religious exclusivism, Jesus' bodily resurrection, God as a personal and transcendent being, etc.) were true. But there is not reason at all to accept them, in fact there are good historical and philosophical reasons to reject them.

Such prejudices and assumptions are massively question begging (against the traditional view of Jesus) and threat to create a largely fictional and artificial (but culturally very palatable) portrait of Jesus, which satisfies the desires of spiritually-oriented people who are sympathetic of religious pluralism.

All the above prejudices become painfully obvious in specific instances or pieces of evidence supporting exclusivism and the traditional view of Jesus (for example, when discussing the evidence for Jesus' exclusivistic self-perception, or the evidence for a physical resurrection body interpretation in the New Testament, for example in the case of Borg's egregious, purely subjective and contrary to evidence opinion about it).

I'm fortunated to having been familiar with the pseudoskeptical literature before I began to study the historical Jesus. The pattern of misdirection learned from pseudoskeptics to explain the evidence away is very similar to the pattern used by some liberal scholars to explain the evidence for Jesus's teachings, identity and (putative) resurrection.

The study of pseudoskepticism opened the way to this journey...

The Quantum Vacuum is NOT nothing: Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin, PhD explains why

Atheist and naturalist Alexander Vilenkin is one of the world's leading cosmologists and theoretical physicists. In the following video, you can watch Vilenkin explaining that the so-called "Quantum Vacuum" is NOT nothing:

This fact is very relevant to discussions about the first premiss of the kalam comsological argument for God's existence, namely, the premiss "Whatever begins to exist has a cause".  Since the universe began to exist, it follows that it has a cause. 

Confronted with this evidence, atheists have been forced to mispresent science and claim that "virtual particles" comes from the quantum vacuum and hence from "nothing", in order to claim that the causal principle is false. (You won't see the same atheists challenging the causal principle in any other field like biology, medicine, history, parapsychology, etc. For example, they never would claim that a new disease, or putative psychic phenomena or a new biological species "come from nothing". They'll say, with dogmatic confidence, that new biological species came from random mutations plus natural selection or putative psychic phenomena are caused by fraud and delusions. They will only challenge the causal principle as applied to the universe's beginning and in the context of arguments for God's existence).

It is pretty sure to say with some confidence that if your ever see an atheist claiming that, you have in front of you an intelectually dishonest sophist and charlatan, someone totally unreliable and unwhorty of intellectual respect.

Virtual particles coming from the quantum vacuum are NOT an example of something coming uncaused from nothing, because the quantum vacuum is NOT nothing, as explains philosopher William Lane Craig:

Craig uses the example of a magician doing a magic trick, in which the magician makes appear something (e.g. a rabbit) apparently from "nothing". In this case (supposing that professional magic is real, which is not), at least you have an "efficient cause" of the rabbit's coming to being, namely, the magician himself. So, even in the case of magicians appearing something from thin air, you have not an example of something coming uncaused from nothing at all.

But the atheists who challenge the causal principle try to make us to believe in a more radical, anti-scientific, non-evidence based, extremely credulous and entirely faith-based conclusion: that something can come from literally nothing at all (not even from an efficient cause) and that such "something" is the universe itself (even if we have NEVER experienced something coming from nothing, and even if the whole scientific enterprise is based on the view that facts and events which begin to exist have causes which are passible of scientific explanations in terms of some causal mechanism like random mutations plus natural selection, viral infections or political decisions).

Atheists who claim that something can come from nothing cannot offer any evidence (let alone, scientific one) nor any proven example of something coming to exist uncaused from nothing. It's pure wishful thinking and charlatanism put on the service of an misleading, egotistic and pseudoscientific atheist agenda.

This is powerful evidence for Jime's Iron Law.

Pseudo-intellectualism: the dark side of the paranormal community. A personal reflection

One of my areas of interest, parapsychology and afterlife studies, have a lot of positive features. But it has also a dark side: a tendency towards pseudo-intellectualism, superficiality, wishful thinking, sectarianism, dogmatism and soft-minded minset. This dark side could be one of the reasons of the margination of these studies in academic circles.

Althought there are exceptions in the contemporary scene (e.g: serious and brilliant scholars and writers like Dear Radin, Stephen Braude, Chris Carter, Charles Tart, Bruce Greyson, the late Ian Stevenson, Michael Prescott and some others) you also find some people (I don't want to mention them) who are examples of the pseudo-intellectualism that I've mentioned. Let's call the latter (for the purposes of this post) "paranormalists".

Just for the record: This post is also an attempt in rigurous self-criticism (because I consider myself to be part of the "paranormal community" and a defender of this field, and  on reflection I think some of these criticisms have applied to me in the past and, perhaps, could still apply).

These are some of the disappointed features that I've found in some of the paranormal literature which I find are telling examples of pseudo-intellectualism:

1-Misunderstandings and abuses of quantum mechanics: When you read standard technical works in quantum mechanics, you realize that this field is extremely complex and that nobody knows what are the actual ontological implications of the theory. One reason for this is that any physical theory has two parts: a mathematical core and an interpretation of the theory itself. Currently, there are around of 10 different interpretations of QM which are compatible with the mathematical core, and some of these interpretations are incompatible with each other (e.g. some are deterministic and other indeterministic). Nobody knows which interpretation is correct, even thought the Copenhagen interpretation tend to be dominant.

However, in popular works of "paranormalists", sometimes you get a superficial explanation of these important points of QM, and they tend to represent the theory in terms of just one interpretation. And from this, they speculate about the nature of reality, psychic phenomena, afterlife, God, etc. (For example, some of them claim that QM has refuted empirically metaphysical realism or that free will has been proved by QM, which is the case only IF some interpretations of QM are true and even in this case with certain qualifications).

This approach by "paranormalists" testifies their ignorance, not only of QM, but of philosophy too. They pretend to settle complex philosophical questions appealing "only" to ONE interpretation of QM, as whether QM is co-extensive with metaphysics. Metaphysics has to be scientifically informed, but science alone almost never settle metaphysical disputes (even though it only be because science itself is plagued with implicit metaphysical assumptions). 

The paranormalist criticizes the reductionistic "scientism" which is rampant today in academy, but they themselves assume a "scientistic" view pretending that science alone (=QM plus parapsychology) is everyhting we need to settle long philosophical disputes. Such position is not only naive, but hypocrital.

This is one reason why serious scholars (even the ones sympathetic to dualism and theism) tend, as a rule, to take with a grain of salt the works of "paranormalists" and to be skeptical of their views (of course, there are other reasons for this, too).

2-Fetishism about "consciousness" and ignorance about current and sophisticated scholarly debate about it: Some paranormalists talk about "consciousness" in a naive, misinformed and dogmatic way as the key to answer almost everything which is mysterious about the universe. Even "UFOs" don't escape from the idea of being "mental projections", "projections of consciousness", "fields of energy created by our minds" and so forth.

I don't deny this possibility about UFOs. But jumping to such conclusions ignoring the best and most serious literature about ufology (which suggest that the phenomena is independent of our minds or not reducible to them, at least in many cases) is clearly pseudo-intellectual, superficial and irresponsible. Having sympathies for Jung's ideas don't suffice to settle the complex questions about UFOs.

Also, some of them ignore current scholarly debate about consciousness. They ignore that wholly different concepts of it have been developed by scholars, and that "consciousness" is seen differently in its nature and meaning according to different worldviews and metaphysical positions. For example, in naturalism "consciousness" is at most a property, not a thing. In theism, consciousness is a (basic) substance, not a property. (Failing to understand this simple, but deeply important point, precludes the paranormalist to understand what consciousness can and cannot do, because the categories of substance and property have argueably wholly different general properties, regardless of their specific ones).

For example, if consciousness is a property (e.g. of the brain), the destruction of the brain would imply the destruction of consciousness. This is why naturalists don't accept survival of consciousness. But if consciousness is a substance (as defended by theism), then the the destruction of the brain doesn't imply the destruction of consciousness. Therefore, survival of consciousness is evidence for consciousness being a substance, not a property, and therefore is evidence for one of the basic claims of theism. (Note how an understanding of consciousness, as a property or as a substance, have implications to reflections about competing worldviews).

Also, some paranormalists have wholly arbitrary and personal definitions of "consciousness". It seems they ignore the criticisms against their personal definitions of it (precisely because they ignore the ongoing current debate about it). They have a naive and simplistic understanding of the problem.

Some of them talk about "universal consciousness" in a way reminiscent of mysticism, pantheism or quasi-pantheistic views, but they rarely define or articulate what they mean by it.

3-Failing to include the facts and phenomena that they believe in into a comprehensive worldview.

This point is objectionable only among "intellectuals" and writers. People who are not intellectuals, but are "fans" of the paranormal things, cannot be objected on this basis (because it is not their function to give a comprehensive or systematic organization of their beliefs).

But among some paranormalist "intellectuals", you get only a vague articulation of their beliefs into a system. At most, they define themselves as "spiritualists" or "anti-materialists", but clearly it only shows the adoption of a particular metaphysical view, not a whole worldview (some "spiritualists" will claim that that Spiritualism is a worldview, but reading the spiritualistic literature you find that there are many important differences between them, including something as basic and empirical as the existence of reincarnation, and that perhaps we could talk more properly of "worldviews", not one worldview... some of them accepting God, some of them reject it or being agnostic about it altogether).

They fail to examine if "universal consciousness" (which in many cases is meant to imply the future dissolution of the "self" or ego into some "colective consciousness"), for example, fit better in naturalism, theism, pantheism, etc. They fail to discuss whether personalistic features like consciousness, human reason, moral sense, free will and so forth fit better in a theistic worldview, or on the contrary fit better with impersonalistic worldviews like pantheism, naturalism and so forth.

For example, some defenders of "universal consciousness" believe that the "personal ego" and the "personal self" is pure illusion (note the implication of this view for morality, which only makes sense among actual, non-illusory, rational and free persons). The ultimate fate of each of us would be a kind of "dissolution" into a "collective sea of consciousness" or something similar. Note that the implication of this view is very similar to what naturalism holds! (both views implies the extinction of PERSONAL consciousness and identity, only that the naturalists hold it as happening inmediately after biological death, while the "we all are one" paranormalist poses it as a state reached after sucesive spiritual evolutions, including perhaps several reincarnations).

When pressed to justify their positions, they argue that their views are based on mystical experiences (or a combination of them plus quantum mechanics (?) and parapsychology). But parapsychology and quantum mechanics are not worldviews, but empirical sciences. At most, they tells us that some phenomena, posited by certain worldviews, do exist and can even point out to certain worldviews about others (for example, QM, in its standard interpretation, suggest that theism makes sense in QM and gives us absolutely not reason at all to accept atheism based on QM alone). And parapsychology and afterlife research by themselves tells us nothing about theism or atheism, except that what theism has traditionally posited (e.g. the existence of the soul and a spiritual dimension) is probably true.

They for example argue that parapsychological experiments shows that our personal, indivual consciousness is connected with other individual consciousness, and "hence" it is evidence that actually "we are all one great consciousness". Obviously this is a silly non-sequitur: The fact each of us is (paranormally or spiritually) connected with another ego-center of consciousness don't imply that "we are all one great consciousness". Connection doesn't imply identity (otherwise, the connection between mental states and brain states would imply that the mind is identical with the brain, a conclusion that the paranormalist who accepts the afterlife would reject). Perhaps we're all connected to each other, but it doesn't imply that our personal ego, self or identity is or will be destroyed or dissolved into a "sea of consciousness" (whatever it means!).

And mystical experiences are just a part of broad spiritual and religious experiences, some of which conflict with each other, and could (if you take seriously the spiritual world and ufology) be caused by external agents (e.g. aliens, spirits, etc.) to fool you. Mystical experiences by  themselves don't settle the matter about the nature of reality, even they'are important to this metaphysical discussion.

4-Egregious and flawed concepts about God: Many paranormalists consider themselves "believers in God". But exactly what means "God" to them?

Some will say that God is a kind of "energy" which permeates the entire universe (or something like that). But what exactly do they mean by "energy"? A physical energy? A spiritual energy? Presumibly, it is the latter. But what is a "spiritual energy"? The energy of a spirit (= unembodied person)? These reflections tend to be absent in the works of these paranormalists.

They don't specify if they believe in a personal God (a spiritual person with superlatives attributes which is the ground and source of all physical and non-physical reality), and when asked explicitly they deny this personal concept of God (which they, erroneously and again by ignorance, attributes to the Christian concept of God... which certainly is personal, but not all the personalistic concepts of God are Christian. In fact, in classical Christian theism, the anthropomorphic concept of God is largely rejected on behalf of a personal concept of God defined analogously).

The "theistic" paranormalist tends to conflate "personal" with "anthropomorphic", precisely because they have no idea of the literature about the problems related to the concept of God. They reject a straw man, created largely by the secularist propaganda of atheists.

Therefore (and here appears their pseudo-intellectualism and illogical thinking in full expression), often they ascribe personalistic properties to that "energy" (e.g. the property of being "intelligent", conscious, good, having purposes, plans and intentions in order to organize the universe, etc.). For example, they say, based for example on NDEs, that such energy is "pure love" (note that love, in the highest spiritual level beyond pure animal instinct, is a property of persons). 

Obviously, all of these specific properties of such peculiar "energy" are properties TYPICAL of persons, not of non-personal entities, forces or energies like the law of gravity, entropy, quantum vaccum, atoms, electrons, DNA, etc. So, the paranormalist tend to verbally to reject the personal concept of God, but implicitly such concept is fully implied in the properties that they ascribe to the "energy".

An egregious example of this is Deepak Chopra. Confusing "personal" with anthropomorphic (and with Christian fundamentalism) you read see this pearl in his criticism of Dawkins: "This assumption is false on several grounds. The most basic one is that God isn't a person... Therefore, reducing God to a Sunday school picture and claiming that the Book of Genesis--or creationism in general--competes with science isn't accurate. Fundamentalism hasn't played a role in scientific debate for generations. Einstein pointed out that he didn't believe in a personal God but was fascinated by how an orderly universe and its physical laws came about."

Chopra conflates the notion of God as being a person with "fundamentalism". This is an example of the conceptual naiveté and philosophical unsophistication that I've discussed in this post. Certainly, fundamentalists believe that God is a person, but the reverse is false: not all who believe that God is a person are fundamentalists.

Former atheist champion, the late scientistic philosopher Antony Flew became a deist who concluded about God this: "I accept the God of Aristotle who shares all the attributes you cite [self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent and omniscient being]. Like Lewis I believe that God is a person  but not the sort of person with whom you can have a talk.  It is the ultimate being, the Creator of the Universe."

 Note that Flew's God is personal, because as a trained philosopher he knows that attributes like "omniscient" implies personality. Does it make Flew a six day creationist? Obviously not. But Chopra doesn't undertand this because he has absolutely not idea of the concept of God in classical and contemporary theology and philosophy. No hint of sophisticated reflection on the concept of God is being advanced in Chopra's works.

Chopra prefers to knock down the simplistic view of God taught by pseudo-intellectualistic Christian preachers at the Sunday school, instead of carefully addresing the sophisticated views of first-rate classical and contemporary thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, Richard Swinburne, etc.

Regarding Einstein, the fascination for the laws of nature and the universe is not an objection against the view of God as personal. At most, it shows that Einstein was a pantheist. But Einstein was a physicist, not a theologian nor a trained philosopher, so hardly Einstein's personal opinion is going to settle the theological-philosophical problem of the nature of God.

Chopra's superficiality is telling in the following passage. After saying that God is not a person, he has not problem in using the property "intelligence" as applied to his non-personal concept of God: "So at bottom, the real question is this: Do we need an all-pervading intelligence to explain the universe? Forget the image of God sitting on a throne, forget Genesis, forget the straw man of a Creator who isn't as smart as a smart human being. The real debate is between two world views:

1. The universe is random. It operates entirely through physical laws. There is no evidence of innate intelligence.

2. The universe contains design. Physical laws generate new forms that display intention. Intelligence is all-pervasive"

Note that Chopra's second alternative is not incompatible with the first one. Materialists accept that the universe operates entirely through blind, mechanical and unguided physical laws AND that these laws generate new forms that display intention (e.g. the law of unguided biological evolution generates human beings who are intentional agents). They reject innate or intrinsic intelligence but accept supervenient intelligence displayed by some biologically complex organisms. This is the standard position of materialist and Darwinist scholars. Therefore, Chopra's understanding of the "debate" is superficial, false and misleading.

That intelligence is "all-pervasive" is fully compatible with God being a person. Perhaps what Chopra means is that intelligence is INTRINSIC in the structure of the universe, i.e. the physical energy and laws of this universe are, themselves, "intelligent".

Now, the intelligence of physical laws (if it were the case) doesn't exclude the existence of a intelligent designer who have designed them. After all, my cell phone is an intelligent one (a smartphone), but it doesn't suffice to conclude that a trascendent (=beyond my cell phone) creator of my cell phone doesn't exist. On the contrary, the evidence for such smartphone is evidence for the existence of a intelligent designer of it.

Regarding the universe, it is spectially the case given the evidence that the universe (with its intelligent laws) began to exist. And this implies a cause. Therefore, the "intelligence" of the physical laws cannot be the explanation of the origin of the universe, because such laws began to exist too. Therefore, it points out to a intelligent cause that created such universe with such "intelligent laws". Hence, Chopra has not given any compelling reason to think that God, if exists, is not personal. On the contrary.

Regarding God sitting on a throne, I don't know ANY sophisticated Christian thinker who thinks such a ridiculous thing. Indeed, for Christians, God is immaterial (therefore, it is impossible to him to be sitting on something, let alone in a throne). The biblical passages which suggest divine corporeity are interpreted metaphorically, not literally (because the Bible has several literary genres and proper interpretation and exegesis is dependent on them), as any person familiar with theological and biblical literature would know. 

Regarding a God  who is not so smart as human being, no informed Christian could properly believe such a thing, since God is supposed to be perfect and omniscient, therefore (by definition) he's INFINITELY more smart and wise than any other being, including humans. A Christian believing otherwise wouldn't be a Christian, because he would believe in a God incompatible with Christian theology.

Again Chopra is beating a straw man and misinforming the public about Christian theology. 

It is fine if you don't believe in God or in any particular religion or worldview. But serious intellectuals have to make an effort to represent the views of their opponents in the most charitable, strongest formulation. Otherwise, they're pseudo-intellectuals and sophists.

I think Chopra is a good man and good writer (at least stylistically speaking), but he's a unreliable source of information about sophisticated philosophical and theological matters, in which he exemplifies the pseudo-intellectualism, misinformation and (unintentional, I suppose) misdirection that I've discussed in this post.

I'll discuss more exemples of pseudo-intellectualism in the paranormal world in future posts.