From Rob Sheldon
Why can’t the paranormal and spiritual realms be subject to scientific analysis? The materialist says “Because they don’t exist.” and therefore all signals are spurious and a waste of resources.
The intelligent design theorist says “coherence is not just a sign of extra dimensions, but a sign of front-loaded purpose”. Therefore the paranormal might not be “spooky action-at-a-distance” but a design feature of simultaneous causation. If A is correlated to B, it may be that A doesn’t cause B, or B cause A, but previous design C causes both A and B such that they are correlated.
Lipstick and breast cancer are correlated, but neither causes the other.
But if we look at the meta-studies, if we ask, what is the benefit of studying the paranormal versus ignoring it? We find the curious phenomenon that the Enlightenment advanced precisely where it ignored the paranormal. Thus it would seem that studying the paranormal wasn’t merely a distraction, but a degradation of science.
Stanley Jaki argues in “The Savior of Science” and several of his other books, that bad metaphysics, such as looking for paranormal effects, waylaid the nascent scientific progress of the Greeks, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Caliphate and even the Jewish Kabbala. Only the severe discipline of the Enlightenment materialism could negotiate the shoals of bad metaphysics.
I’ve come to a similar answer, though phrased a little differently. Inasmuch as the paranormal and spiritism are “personal”, possessing the characteristics of contingent personality, then it is dangerous to study them as a machine. This is like BF Skinner studying humans as if they were a computer program.
Economists can tell you the danger of doing this. Not only does this give the wrong answer, but it even gives the wrong questions. What makes people people, and what makes the divine divine is precisely the personal, and therefore science does a disservice to theology when it reduces the personal to machinery. But worse, it invites the ghost into the machine.
More precisely, the Bible condemns even the exploration of the occult, because of its parasitic relationship to persons.
We all understand computer viruses. And thanks to global warmists, we are beginning to understand the power of positive feedback and what money does to our science models. But we have yet to understand what psychology does to common sense, or what evolutionary biology does to our sanity.
Inasmuch as the paranormal is personal, it is forbidden for the same reason that the occult is forbidden–it infects our mind.
Thoughts? – UD News