Unravelling The Universe

Ben Sinclair's Unravelling The Universe is a good YouTube channel to follow on paranormal issues. He's done interviews with some of the biggest names in the field: Bruce Greyson, Stanley Krippner, Gregory Shushan, etc. There's a lot of valuable material on a lot of subjects.

Further Testing On The Enfield Knocking Phenomena

In 2010, Barrie Colvin published an article documenting that some knocking phenomena in several paranormal cases had a different acoustic quality than normal knocking. More recently, John Fraser did some research on the subject and wrote about it in a book he published last year, Poltergeist! (Washington, United States: Sixth Books, 2020). Chapter 6 of that book discusses some work he did with James Tacchi to replicate Colvin's findings. Colvin, Fraser, Tacchi, and others who have written on this subject over the past several years have made suggestions for further research and added further qualifiers to Colvin's initial findings. For example, Tacchi was able to duplicate the acoustic properties of paranormal knocking by normal means when the audio recorder was around 15 feet away. But the distinction between normal and paranormal knocking seems to hold up when the recording device is closer to the source of the knocking. You can read Fraser's book and the other relevant sources if you want more details.

I don't know much about acoustic issues. I've been able to follow some portions of these discussions, but haven't been able to follow others. However, I've done a lot of research on a poltergeist case, Enfield, for which we have a large amount of relevant information and audio recordings. I want to discuss some examples of relevant incidents and information from that case that Colvin, Fraser, Tacchi, or anybody else who's interested could look into. For example, as Fraser mentions in his book, it's important that we know how close the audio recording device was to the source of the knocking, and it would be good to have a knock done by normal means in the nearby context for the sake of comparison. I know of some incidents on the Enfield tapes that meet one or more of the relevant criteria, and there's a lot of potential to find more such incidents on the tapes.

Should we dismiss unbelievers because of their bias?

Stephen Braude wrote:

Moreover, it is not clearly to the skeptic's advantage to rely heavily on the Argument from Human Bias. For one thing, because human biases are not limited to the domain of the paranormal, the application of the argument extends beyond the boundaries of parapsychology. For example, we could use the argument to challenge every scientific lab study based on instrument readings and ordinary human observation. After all, scientists have at least as much at stake, and therefore at least as many reasons for perceptual biases, as do witnesses of psi phenomena. In fact, they may have more, given the intimate connection between their lab work and career interests. Furthermore (and even more important), the Argument from Human Bias cuts two ways, against reports by the credulous and the incredulous. If our biases may lead us to malobserve, misremember, or lie, then we should be as suspicious of testimony from nonbelievers as from believers. If (based on their favorable dispositions) we distrust reports by the apparently credulous or sympathetic that certain odd phenomena occurred, we should (by parity of reasoning) be equally wary of reports by the incredulous or unsympathetic that the alleged phenomena did not occur (or that cheating occurred instead). Although philosophers and scientists who fancy themselves to be tough-minded and impartial are often reluctant to concede this point, there have been exceptions. (The Limits Of Influence [Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc., 1997], 26-27)

He quotes C.J. Ducasse:

…allegations of detection of fraud, or of malobservation, or of misinterpretation of what was observed, or of hypnotically induced hallucinations, have to be scrutinized as closely and as critically as must the testimony for the reality of the phenomena. For there is likely to be just as much wishful thinking, prejudice, emotion, snap judgment, naiveté, and intellectual dishonesty on the side of orthodoxy, of skepticism, and of conservatism, as on the side of hunger for and of belief in the marvelous. The emotional motivation for irresponsible disbelief is, in fact, probably even stronger - especially in scientifically educated persons whose pride of knowledge is at stake - than is in other persons the motivation for irresponsible belief. (27)

Braude goes on:

Ducasse's caveat about irresponsible disbelief is buttressed by a wealth of evidence. For one thing, according to Stevenson (1968, p. 112), experiments have revealed some interesting ways in which peer pressure and other contextual factors can apparently influence a person's perceptions or perception reports. But even apart from the experimental evidence, the history of parapsychology chronicles an astounding degree of blindness, intellectual cowardice, and mendacity on the part of skeptics and ardent nonbelievers, some of them prominent scientists. (27)

Regarding the significance of bias in general, whether the bias of believers or unbelievers, see here.

Factors Involved In Evaluating Star Of Bethlehem Theories

We get media stories on the star of Bethlehem at this time of year, especially about the claims of people who advocate astronomical views of the star. Here's a post I put up on Facebook last year that briefly outlines four of the factors we should take into account when evaluating theories about the star.

Confusing The Author Of Nature With The Editor Of Nature

"…scientists who regard the phenomena investigated by psychical researchers as impossible seem…to confuse the Author of Nature with the Editor of the scientific periodical, Nature; or at any rate they seem to suppose that there can be no productions of the former which would not be accepted for publication by the latter!" (C.J. Ducasse, cited in Stephen Braude, The Limits Of Influence [Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc., 1997], 20)

How Replicable Should The Paranormal Be?

Critics of the paranormal often object that paranormal events should be documented in scientific experiments if such phenomena actually occur. It's also common to object to decreases in reported paranormal activity over time or from one region to another, as if we should expect more consistency if the paranormal actually exists.

There are a lot of problems with those objections (e.g., the documentation we already have from scientific experiments), and Stephen Braude discusses some of those problems in his recent book. What I'm quoting below isn't meant to be exhaustive. I doubt that Braude intended to cover all of the ground involved, and I'd include other factors from a Christian perspective:

As time went on, more and more people, both in and out of the field of psychical research, took seriously the possibility that physical mediums might in fact be PK agents and therefore the actual cause of phenomena attributed by others to surviving spirits. And even when the mediums and other spiritists resisted this belief, the fact remains that the belief was increasingly "in the air" and difficult to ignore as growing numbers of secular researchers began to investigate the phenomena for themselves. But this can only have had a chilling effect on the psychology of mediumship generally. Mediums knew that even some sympathetic investigators considered them to be causes of - and not simply vessels for - paranormal physical phenomena. So they now had a concern that quite possibly had never entered their minds before - namely, that they might have powers they couldn't control and that conceivably could do great harm.

It's not surprising, then, to find that Eusapia Palladino's impressive phenomena in the 1890s and first decade of the twentieth century were less impressive than those of Home twenty years earlier. And it's even less surprising to find that many of the mediumistic "superstars" in the next several decades of the twentieth century had increasingly less intimidating repertoires of phenomena. For example, by the time we come to Rudi Schneider in the 1920s and 30s, the most sensational phenomena tended merely to be medium-sized object movements. And more recently, alleged PK superstars such as Nina Kulagina and Felicia Parise produced even smaller-scale phenomena.

Moreover, it's interesting to note how PK superstars in the latter half of the twentieth century seemed to suffer greatly when producing their phenomena. Their spiritistic predecessors typically went into a trance or at least into a state of passive receptivity, and occasionally they were tired afterwards. But more modern PK stars have more thoroughly accepted their role as the originator of their physical manifestations, and they seem quite clearly to be making a conscious effort to achieve those results. But of course, since they acknowledge their own role in the production of the phenomena, it's not surprising that they should have to work hard (say) to make a cigarette or pill bottle move a millimeter or an inch. In fact, consider how convenient effortful PK is psychologically - that is, from the psychic's point of view. If PK subjects feel it's necessary to expend a great deal of energy to produce only a small effect, then (in a careless line of thought characteristic of much self deception) it can easily seem to them as if their life or health would be endangered by trying to produce a phenomenon worth worrying about….

So, practically speaking, investigators may simply have to acknowledge a law of diminishing returns in applying controls. Besides, it would hardly be surprising if at some point (given human psychology), continually tightening controls simply snuffs out the phenomena. And how readily that occurs will undoubtedly vary from one subject to the next, just as our inhibition-thresholds vary widely in many familiar life contexts. I believe that's one reason why laboratory phenomena are so modest compared with phenomena in natural settings, if the phenomena can be duplicated at all in the lab. As I've argued elsewhere, since we really are nowhere close to knowing what psi's natural history is (i.e. its function or purpose - if any - in real-life settings), for all we know it may be similar in crucial respects to familiar phenomena or abilities (e.g., sexual performance, athletic skills) that can only be evaluated in their natural contexts, not in the straitjacketed conditions required for formal experiments.

(Dangerous Pursuits [San Antonio, Texas: Anomalist Books, 2020], 10-11, 69)

A Tribute To Maurice Grosse

(I'll be citing Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's Enfield tapes. "MG" will refer to tapes from Grosse's collection, and "GP" will refer to those from Playfair's. MG28A is Grosse's tape 28A, GP11A is Playfair's tape 11A, etc.)

In the mid 1990s, Maurice Grosse appeared on a BBC television program, Video Diaries, to tell his life story. You can watch the program here and here. He discusses his background as an artist, his military service in World War II, meeting his wife, his Judaism, how the premature death of his daughter led to his work on paranormal issues, and his work as an inventor and businessman. But I know him mainly from his work on the Enfield Poltergeist. I want to say more about him from that perspective.

Hugh Pincott, who was Honorary Secretary of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) at the time when Grosse started on the Enfield case, was one of the contributors to Melvyn Willin's recent book on Enfield. Pincott recalls how Grosse became involved in the case and comments on the controversy surrounding his involvement. Grosse was a new member of the SPR and had been asking them to assign him to a case. After the Daily Mirror started going to the Hodgsons' house to report on the poltergeist that was occurring there, one of their reporters contacted the SPR to send somebody out to help the family:

A formulation of the fine-tuning argument

A new paper from physicist Luke Barnes:

Abstract

A new formulation of the Fine-Tuning Argument (FTA) for the existence of God is offered, which avoids a number of commonly raised objections. I argue that we can and should focus on the fundamental constants and initial conditions of the universe, and show how physics itself provides the probabilities that are needed by the argument. I explain how this formulation avoids a number of common objections, specifically the possibility of deeper physical laws, the multiverse, normalisability, whether God would fine-tune at all, whether the universe is too fine-tuned, and whether the likelihood of God creating a life-permitting universe is inscrutable.

"A Reasonable Little Question: A Formulation of the Fine-Tuning Argument"

A Tribute To Peggy Hodgson

(From left to right: Janet, Billy, Peggy, Johnny, and Margaret Hodgson.)

(I'm going to be citing Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's Enfield tapes below. I'll use "MG" to refer to tapes from Grosse's collection and "GP" to refer to those from Playfair's. So, MG12A is Grosse's tape 12A, GP58B is Playfair's tape 58B, etc.)

The one person involved in the Enfield case who probably witnessed and suffered more than anybody else, and contributed to the good that's been done through the case more than anybody, is Peggy Hodgson. Her story ought to be told more than it has been.

In early November of 1977, apparently while at his own house one day, Maurice Grosse recorded some of his thoughts on the Enfield case:

How to treat coronavirus

In general, there are 4 or 5 main ways to "treat" Covid-19:

1. Vaccine.

This would be the best. However, it's also the one that takes the longest time to develop, involves the most extensive research, costs the most money, and so on. It's at least a year away. And that would be extremely fast. By comparison, consider that a vaccine was eventually developed against Ebola, but it took approximately 5 years. If I recall, I think it only arrived last year in 2019. Yet 5 years is more typical of the timeframe in vaccine development.

2. A new drug.

This would take slightly less research effort and time than a vaccine. Even if we accelerate it.

3. An old drug.

By this I mean a drug that has been used in other diseases or conditions but is re-purposed for the use in Covid-19. This is where most of the drugs we hear about in the news would be categorized. Such as chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine. These drugs were anti-malarial drugs and also used in rheumatoid diseases like lupus. Today medical experts are trying to re-purpose them for use in Covid-19. However, contrary to what most the media is reporting, there isn't much good evidence that these drugs will work - at least not yet. There is promise and hope, but only time will tell. By the way, in case anyone is interested, here is a summary of all the clinical trials we are working on to date. It's not comprehensive, but it's close.

4. Covalescent plasma therapy.

This is a treatment that's been around for years. In a general sense, it's been around even as far back as the Spanish flu in 1918. It was used to some degree in the first SARS pandemic or SARS-1; our pandemic is SARS-2. Many medical experts working in infectious disease and vaccine development have been pushing convalescent plasma therapy (e.g. Peter Hotez at Baylor, Arturo Casadevall at Johns Hopkins, Ian Lipkin at Columbia University). Basically it's just transferring the antibodies (in blood plasma) from someone who has recovered from Covid-19 to someone who has been infected with Covid-19 (as treatment) or to someone who is at high risk of infection (as prophylaxis). So the elderly, the immunocompromised, health care providers. There wouldn't likely be enough for the general population, but we can target at-risk groups and perhaps even areas that are seriously affected (e.g. NYC, Seattle). This could help diminish the virus' spread so that we can get a better handle on things. Clinical trials are already under way. It should move much faster than vaccine development. The medical technology is available today and as such comparatively easy to implement. The major issue is rolling it out. I'm referring to logistics like setting up blood banks, asking for blood donors (though the donation would require much less effort on the donor than, say, donating blood at the Red Cross), and so on.

5. Supportive care.

This is primarily what we're doing now. For the sickest patients, i.e. patients in the ICU with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) which is the leading cause of death in Covid-19 patients, it's basically just trying to give them oxygen, help them breathe better via mechanical ventilation, make sure they stay well-hydrated with fluids, maintain their nutritional status, put them in a prone position (i.e. lying face down) which has been shown to significantly help reduce mortality from ARDS, etc. All this is far better than we had, say, in 1918 with the Spanish influenza, but it falls short of an effective treatment against the SARS-2 virus itself.

References

Ian Lipkin on convalescent plasma therapy

Peter Hotez on convalescent plasma therapy

"A Seattle Intensivist’s One-pager on COVID-19"

"Should we use #hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) +/- azithromycin to treat #COVID19?"

It's not rocket science

Militant atheist Fasta Parian argues:

you cant philosophically reason a rocket into space and you cant philosophically reason something into existence.

1. Not surprisingly, Fasta Parian is confused. There are multiple lines of arguments for the existence of God. And there's nothing illogical or unreasonable about arguing for God on the basis of logic and reason which are the tools of philosophical inquiry.

2. For that matter, science itself is argued for on the basis of logic and reason. Science can't even get off the ground (pardon the pun) if the scientist abandons logic and reason.

3. Science qua science can't prove the existence of God, but science qua science can't disprove the existence of God either. However science can provide evidence which supports premises in an argument for God. Of course, the atheist could say science can provide evidence which supports premises in an argument against God. If so, that's fine. My point is at worst science qua science is neutral with regard to the existence of God (but see #2). The real debate over the existence of God lies deeper than what science qua science is able to demonstrate.

4. Besides, it's not as if Fasta Parian even attempts to substantively interact with any reason for the existence of God. For example, I already gave Fasta Parian medical scientific evidence for the existence of the supernatural, the paranormal, miracles, and related phenomena (e.g. NDEs) - and keep in mind it was Fasta Parian who asked for the evidence - but Fasta Parian impatiently dismissed it all.

5. However none of this affects me nor bothers me as a Christian. Why should it? After all, the Christian can present reason and evidence for the atheist, but it's up to the atheist to do whatever he wishes with the evidence. If he wishes to ignore it or mock it rather than interact with it, then that's on him. The Christian doesn't lose anything. All the loss is on Fasta Parian's end.

It's like if a physician tries to save the life of a dying patient, but the dying patient just hurls insults and ridicule at the physician and refuses treatment (rather than asking honest questions about the treatment). That's fine, the physician can simply move onto someone else, while the patient can remain in their condition until they expire if that's their wish. No one is harmed except the patient, but that was their choice. Just like it's Fasta Parian's choice to reject reasonable arguments and evidences for Christianity.

Is the coronavirus a bioweapon?

There's a conspiracy theory floating around that claims the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19) was a bioweapon engineered by China.

I don't know how or when it started. Tom Cotton broached the theory back in January:

We still don’t know where coronavirus originated. Could have been a market, a farm, a food processing company.

I would note that Wuhan has China’s only biosafety level-four super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/CtuU2czBLp

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) January 30, 2020

I would add: BSL-4 labs represent the highest level of containment for deadly pathogens. There are only about 50 BSL-4 labs in the world.

My thoughts:

Drugs against coronavirus

I see a lot of people strongly urging doctors to use the drug hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin as a remedy against the coronavirus or Covid-19. I guess that's in large part because Pres. Trump has been pushing the same drug quite a bit. However:

1. The evidence for the drug in human beings - not in vitro ("test tubes"), nor in vivo in animals (e.g. mice), but in human beings - is still predominantly anecdotal or low quality studies (e.g. here).

Sure, there may seem to be hundreds of coronavirus sufferers who have dramatically improved thanks to this drug combination, but one could say similar things for homeopathy, Chinese medicines, chiropractic manipulation, and so on.

At best, at this point, hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin may indeed be promising, and perhaps it will be proven to be safe and effective in treating Covid-19 in the near future, but there remains much work to be done in order to demonstrate these hypotheses.

2. I realize people are demanding a fix stat. It looks like governments have fast-tracked a lot of the trials. Indeed, it seems to me like we're moving about as fast as we can. However, there are limits to how fast trials can move. We can't time travel.

3. Suppose we have several friends who are badly injured and need to go to the emergency department. So we get them into a car and drive them to the ED as quickly as we can. Suppose we speed, run red lights, and zigzag through traffic to do all we can to get our friends to the ED as soon as possible.

Nevertheless if we're decent people then I presume we wouldn't attempt to run over pedestrians or drive through stores with people shopping or anything like that. As much as we wish to save our friends, all things equal, we wouldn't necessarily want to endanger other people's lives in order to do so.

I realize the analogy is not entirely analogous, but dropping the analogy my point is simply that we may believe this drug will save our friends and family. However, in this case, we wouldn't (or shouldn't) wish to endanger the lives of others in case it doesn't work in other coronavirus patients even if it works in the ones we happen to know.

(Of course, I'm sure we could concoct hypotheticals where it might be morally licit to risk the lives of others in order to save our loved ones.)

4. Finally, as I mentioned in a previous post, there are about 40 other coronavirus therapies doctors and scientists are currently working on spread out across approximately 200 trials. So I don't understand why the focus on this one particular drug when we have about 40 other coronavirus drugs or therapies we are trying. It's not as if this drug hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin is head and shoulders better proven than several of the other drugs or therapies (e.g. here).

The course of coronavirus

It doesn't look like the numbers or percentages are entirely accurate. However it's still useful as a generic schema for how the coronavirus seems to be playing out.

Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin redux

....be put in use IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST, and GOD BLESS EVERYONE! @US_FDA @SteveFDA @CDCgov @DHSgov

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2020

1. I've recently discussed hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin here.

2. That said, the following 7-minute video says exactly what I've been trying to say but far more clearly, succinctly, and perhaps even objectively (I admit I can get carried away in debate). It's non-partisan and focused on the medical science. His conclusion is like mine: it's promising, but (thus far) based on limited evidence.

Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin

....be put in use IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST, and GOD BLESS EVERYONE! @US_FDA @SteveFDA @CDCgov @DHSgov

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2020

1. Sure, hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin is promising. However I fear Trump is overselling it. It's far from a panacea at this point in time. Maybe that'll change in the future, but the problem is it's still to be determined. (Edit: A Stanford pathologist's opinion.)

2. In other words, hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin in combination to treat COVID-19 still needs to be proven through clinical trials. That's the standard to ensure safety and efficacy. However, right now, the evidence for hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin is primarily based on case reports. Case reports have sometimes or perhaps often fallen by the wayside in light of further investigation.

3. Same goes for other hopefuls like chloroquine, remdesivir, lopinavir-ritonavir, etc. These likewise need to undergo the gauntlet of clinical trials to demonstrate safety and efficacy. And some of these antivirals are already undergoing clinical trials (e.g. I've mentioned Stanford and remdesivir in the past).

4. By contrast, there already exists a reasonable therapy to tide us over until we can develop antivirals or a vaccine. It's called convalescent plasma therapy (serum antibodies). I think it'd be better to prioritize (in the interim) convalescent plasma therapy. I've described this in the past (e.g. here). Basically what plasma therapy would entail is taking the antibodies of someone who has already recovered from COVID-19 and transferring the antibodies to someone else. This can be done for treatment and/or prophylaxis. Plasma therapy would confer passive immunity to people. This is what infectious disease experts like Ian Lipkin (Columbia University), Peter Hotez (Baylor College), and Amesh Adalja (Johns Hopkins University) have been saying for weeks now.

We could do this for health care workers on the frontlines, the elderly, the immunocompromised. They're at higher risk than the general public of developing COVID-19 and dying. It'd likely be a monthly injection.

Again, plasma therapy is available right now. It's not theory, but reality. There's no large scale clinical trials required. We can start implementing it today.

To be fair, there are some medical issues to be dealt with in certain patients (e.g. allergic reaction), but that's outweighed by its tremendous benefits.

The real challenges are not in the medical technology but logistics (e.g. obtaining enough blood donations from those who have recovered from COVID-19, setting up blood banks, distribution).

Swab tests and blood tests

Nicholas Christakis has a good Twitter thread about testing for the coronavirus here. Thanks to Steve for sending it to me. By the way, I've followed Christakis' work in the past. He's good in terms of the medical science.

However, in case people don't wish to read his thread, here are what I perceive to be the main takeaways in non-technical language:

1. Everyone has been talking about "testing". What this means is swabs. Like they'll swab the back of your throat and your nose with a Q-tip thingy, then send it off to a lab to process, and eventually send you back a result. Swabs reveal the presence of coronavirus.

2. However, if someone has had the coronavirus, but recovered, then a swab test won't reveal the presence of coronavirus inasmuch as their immune system would have more or less eliminated coronavirus.

3. Instead, we need a blood test (serology) in order to reveal someone who has had coronavirus but recovered. That's because blood tests will reveal antibodies our immune system has produced against the coronavirus. So blood tests are basically testing or looking for the presence of antibodies against the coronavirus.

(By the way, that's generally how vaccines work too. Vaccines provoke our immune system to create antibodies against a particular disease.)

4 We need to be doing both types of tests. Swab tests and blood tests.

5. If someone has recovered from the coronavirus (i.e. there are antibodies present in their blood), then they are effectively immune from the coronavirus.

6. Also, they aren't contagious.

7. They can go back to school or work, go shopping, run errands, whatever. As such, Christakis argues, it would be good for our economy and society if we can prioritize finding out who is immune to the coronavirus so we can send people back into the work force and so on.

8. What's more, as there are more immune people walking around, this will confer a degree of herd immunity on society at large. The immune will be like a buffer to keep others from getting infected with coronavirus.

(Again, this is the same with vaccination in general. For example, if some people aren't vaccinated against the measles, but if everyone else is vaccinated against the measles, then the greater "herd" will protect the "weaker" ones in the herd who aren't immune from the measles and prevent the "weaker" ones from getting the measles. That's because the measles can't spread through the entire population unchecked if enough people are vaccinated and immune to the measles. The measles can't cut through a community if it hits a wall of immune people.)

9. When we have tested a representative sample of people, we will be able to have more accurate statistics. Christakis states we might find the fatality rate is "much lower than we have been fearing".

Coronavirus overview

A good basic overview of everything about the coronavirus pandemic. People should be more or less up to speed with the broad facts after watching the video.

Faith in the face of coronavirus

I agree with the first half more than the second half:

"Is Faith Futile In the Face of the Coronavirus?" (Erik Manning)

Plasma therapy for coronavirus

Here is an interview with an infectious disease and vaccine expert named Peter Hotez (MD, PhD). However I just want to excerpt a segment from the interview. The excerpt starts at approximately 16 minutes.