The
Ground of FaithEditorial
Note from the Editors
This journal is affirming and supporting the life and work of the Christian churches, with their varying theologies, and it aims to do so by giving examples of how science, mysticism, and human spiritual experience also affirm the core of Christianity. We present some items of general interest, and then articles to do with the theme of this issue: “The Kingdom of Heaven,” arguably the continuing theme of the journal, issue after issue.
The St. Stephen quotations can be read as if they were the words of a modern mystic, and be found valid for us, or not.
We would like to draw your attention to some interesting and relevant resources. You might also like to check the identity of the production team. Submission of articles, and both positive and negative correspondence welcomed.
We would like to draw your attention to the section headed Experience towards the end of the Journal, which has much interesting material.
General articles
Sjoerd L. Bonting
Emeritus
professor of biochemistry and Anglican theologian, Goor, the
Netherlands.
The Rev. Prof. Emerit Bonting has kindly consented to be listed amongst our consultants in the mean time.
After receiving a doctorate in biochemistry at the University of Amsterdam in 1952 he went to the United States, working at various universities and the National Institutes of Health. In 1965 he returned to the Netherlands to be chairman and professor of biochemistry. In 1985 he returned to the US to be a scientific consultant of NASA for the development of biological research facilities on the International Space Station (1985-93). He published 363 scientific papers, edited 9 books, and sponsored 52 PhD dissertations. He received 10 awards/prizes.
He studied theology in his 'spare time' (1957-1963), and was ordained priest in 1964. During his Nijmegen time he founded and served four chaplaincy congregations for English-speaking persons in the East Netherlands. Since retiring from active scientific work and returning to the Netherlands in 1993, he has engaged himself full-time in the science-theology dialogue. He has published 6 books and 68 articles and is a frequent lecturer in this field.
Bonting's web-page <http://www.chaostheologie.nl/> See also Bonting's personal story under “Experience”.
Spirit and Creation
Dr. Bonting begins:
Pneumatology, the doctrine
of the Holy Spirit, is a neglected area in Christian theology. 'No
primary Christian doctrine has been left so undeveloped
dogmatically,' yet 'the Bible is the Book of the Spirit,' wrote
Wheeler Robinson in 1928. There existed a vivid awareness of the
Spirit in the early Church, as shown by 302 references in the NT
against 195 in the OT.
[ Dr. Bonting's thought-provoking article ]
What this Journal has been suggesting about 'The Kingdom of Heaven'
If you are a new reader of this journal and want to get a picture of where our argument has been leading over the past two years, you can of course browse through the index on the Home Page, and click on articles that interest you. On the other hand some such overview as the following, may be helpful.
It could reasonably be said that our
journal is nothing but an exploration of the meaning and
implications of Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven, or the
Kingdom of God. Wikipedia has a good general article about the
Kingdom of Heaven.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Heaven>
And
another site lists all the occurrences of 'the
Kingdom of Heaven' in the first three Gospels.
<http://www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/kingdom.html>
The article in this journal, “The Kingdom of Heaven and Spiritual Development”, makes a strong case for maintaining that Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom could only be understood by the more spiritually developed. I quoted:
Mark 4.10-11: Unto you
it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them
that are without, all these things are done in parables: that seeing
they may see and not perceive; and hearing, they may hear and not
understand.
In this central teaching Jesus was leading his followers beyond the legalism of an earlier stage of development to a knowledge of unity with God and with neighbour, namely Love. Jesus did not deny the value of law, but pointed beyond it. Love God and neighbour, “on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
The teaching is made more universal by the writer of Ephesians 4.6, speaking of a God who is in all, through all, and above all. Paul, in 2 Cor.12 writes:
I will come to visions and
revelations of the Lord. I knew a man in Christ above fourteen
years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell: or whether out of
the body, I cannot tell : God knoweth:) such a one caught up into
... paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful
for a man to utter..
Paul is plainly talking about an advanced stage of insight into the nature of Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom. Peter's visions in Acts 10 broke down his beliefs about “unclean” foods, and “unclean” Gentiles or non-Jews. Peter's guidance from Spirit about three men who sought him, one being the Roman Cornelius, suggests that both Peter and Cornelius became aware of participating in what we might call, “a wider order of consciousness,” which in their terms would have it that they were “guided by the Holy Spirit”.
So then, the claim is that “The Kingdom of Heaven/God” refers to a stage of spiritual development where there is an awareness of participating in a spiritual-physical whole, of being “in Christ”, in “The Kingdom”.
To enter this Kingdom, this knowledge that in the flesh or not, one has eternal life, John 3.3 has Jesus saying, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.” Paul puts it thus, “Know ye not, that so many us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life.” It seems that Paul also agrees there is a rebirth.
Talk of being born again, being baptized into Christ's death, and newness of life, does also imply an afterlife. Paul, a former Pharisee, certainly believes there is an afterlife. Read 1 Cor. 15. Jesus' words on the cross, “Today thou shalt be with me in paradise”; Luke 16 The story of Dives and Lazarus; Matt. 22.30, Mk 12.25, Lk 12.25 –we shall be like angels in heaven, neither marrying nor given in marriage, among many other references, imply that Jesus accepted the reality of the afterlife. Lloyd Geering, in his Christianity without God, argues that the story of the resurrection arose a generation after the crucifixion. That argument can be seen to be nonsense, if we read Paul's Galatians, 1 and 2. Paul based his life and teaching on his experience of the risen Christ. He mentions his visit with Peter in Jerusalem, perhaps four years after the crucifixion. Can we think for one moment that Paul and Peter failed to discuss the crucifixion and the resurrection appearances? It would be possible to maintain that Paul and Peter imagined the appearances, but that would be quite unreasonable in face of today's strong evidence for the reality of the afterlife. See eight links under Resources/Reference in our Home Page; see the whole of our February 2004 and June 2004 issues.
Whether or not we agree with some details of James Fowler's and Jim Mora's stages of spiritual development (article below), they deserve careful examination. Fowler lists difficulties that may be encountered at each stage, and awareness of being 'reborn' into a sense of being in Christ, participating in the Divine, is at the latest levels of development. We might consider however whether it is appropriate to think of earlier stages as 'inferior', any more than we might think of childhood as being 'inferior' to adulthood. These are stages that we can go through, and realistically they are stages that are still alive and well even in the most spiritually developed person. The person who becomes aware of participating in the Divine, and is self aware, will notice relapses into legalism, and will observe that in times of great stress, their God seems to revert to being the Man in the sky whose mind needs to be changed by pleading. We can note also that young children do love, do care for others, can be moral, can have a sense of the presence of God, and so on. As we mature we do see the Divine in a very different light. The advantage of being 'born again' and being aware of participating in the Kingdom, is that one can value what is healthy and good in the earlier stages, and be tolerant of frameworks of thought that one may have discarded.
Can we describe the state of being in the Kingdom? Over the seven years that we were talking with St. Stephen, he was helping us get our heads and hearts around the idea. St. Stephen's Do we experience Jesus Christ more when we die? (article below) does convey much of the feeling. But a lot of things have to happen within us before we can not only feel but more or less know. As St. Paul would put it, flesh always fights against Spirit.
Meaningful coincidence, or synchronicity, helps us to know. We might describe answered prayer as meaningful coincidence. Answered prayer helps us to know. Perhaps surprisingly though, synchronicity is written about by QM physicists, who in their own ways show that the Kingdom is truly infinitely wider than Church and Christianity. For instance we shall be much rewarded if we study what David Bohm has to say, also Spinoza (in the same issue.) In knowing the Kingdom we also know the Sovereignty of God. When we look at a fractured and pluralistic world, drowned in an information overload, accepting this sovereignty will not come easily. We can also look at some scientific background.
See also Victor MacGill <http://www.vmacgill.net/>, Dr. E.A. Johnston, and Prof. Sjoerd Bonting in the present issue.
The Kingdom of Heaven and Spiritual Development
1 Cor. 3.1-2: And I
brethren, could not speak unto you as spiritual, but as unto carnal,
even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not
with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now
are ye able.
1 Cor 13:11: When I was
a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a
child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
Mark 4.10-11: Unto you
it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them
that are without, all these things are done in parables: that seeing
they may see and not perceive; and hearing, they may hear and not
understand.
James Fowler: Stages of Faith
Reader
Anna Clayton of Christchurch NZ drew James Fowler to our attention.
He and Jim Marion, below, will stimulate much thought about
spiritual development.
Read the following link for a short
general discussion of Fowler's
picture of spiritual growth.
<http://www.hope.edu
/academic/psychology/335/webrep/faithdev.html>
In the next link Fowler suggests six levels of faith: 1. Intuitive-projective 2. Mythic-Literal 3. Synthetic conventional 4. Individuative reflective. 5. Conjunctive. For 6, he begins, “Stage 6 is exceedingly rare. The persons best described by it have generated faith compositions in which their felt sense of an ultimate environment is inclusive of all being. They have become incarnators and actualizers of the spirit of an inclusive and fulfilled human community.
Click to read about Fowler's 6 levels of faith. <http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/fowler.htm>
Jim Marion's Seven Levels of Consciousness
Jim
Marion's biographical note <http://www.watershedonline.ca
/biopage.html#Marion>
The Rev Struan Duthie of Christchurch, NZ, writes:
I have been reading an interesting book called "Putting On The Mind Of Christ", by a man called Jim Marion, who follows Ken Wilbur's thinking closely, and is a fan of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila. The book is about growth in spiritual consciousness through stages which parallel developmental theorists like Piaget.
The reason he says that we do not communicate easily as Christian pilgrims is that we are often on another level of development. But the book seems to answer in a mystical way the important question, "where to from here?" Or, "how do I keep going onwards in my own journey?"In doing this he says we need to understand the developmental stages of Christ, which are common to all major religions.
Marion was a monk.
Order the book Putting on the Mind of Christ
<http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio ?show=HARDCOVER:USED:1571741739:16.95>
The table below is Copyrighted
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THE SEVEN LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS |
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1. The Archaic Consciousness of Infants |
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2. The Magical Consciousness of Children |
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3. Mythic Consciousness – Pre-Adolescence |
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4. Rational Consciousness |
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5. Vision-Logic Consciousness |
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6. Psychic Consciousness |
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The Dark Night of the Senses |
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7. Subtle Consciousness |
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The Dark Night Of the Soul |
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THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF A HUMAN AS A REALISED DIVINITY |
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Christ Consciousness-The Causal Level |
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Non-Dual Consciousness: Ascension into the Kingdom of Heaven |
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A third classification of levels of
consciousness
Victor MacGill
It is very similar to the first two, but would be easier for many people to understand. It is the system expressed by Spiral Dynamics. Spiral Dynamics came out of the ground breaking work of Clare Graves. He was a friend of Abraham Maslow, who formulated the often utilised "hierarchy of needs". Anecdotally, Abraham Maslow is recorded as having written to Clare Graves saying "you got it right".
Coming from a scientific psychological perspective, this classification is very consistent with the other two systems and in fact Don Beck, who was a student of Clare Graves, works closely with Ken Wilber. Click this link for more information on Spiral Dynamics <http://www.vmacgill.net/spiraldynamics.html>
The Rev. Dr. David Bell: Memory Beyond the Brain
Dr.
Bell, editor of the “Methodist Theological Review”,
consultant for this journal, is a member of the UK Scientific and
Medical Network which includes many academics who write in the field
of science and religion, and who, in the light of developments in QM
physics, consider the old mechanist-reductionist paradigm to be
inadequate.
The 2005 “Memory Beyond the Brain” Conference [of the SMN] at the University of Lincoln [UK] was another highly successful event. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the first of this series in 1995 and, comparing the two, I have formed the distinct impression that the SMN activities have promoted a definite shift in attitudes about the nature of science and spirituality in both scientific and religious communities.
The key speakers for me were Prof Gary Schwartz asking the question “Does Everything have Memory? Systemic Memory and the Evidence from Transplant Patients” and Dr Pim van Lommel, a cardiologist examining the implications of his research in Near-Death Experiences. Prof. Schwartz’s home page <http://veritas.arizona.edu/> gives an extensive overview of the nature and reach of his experimental programmes. “The VERITAS Research Program of the Human Energy Systems Laboratory in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona was created primarily to test the hypothesis that the consciousness (or identity) of a person survives physical death.” [Their research concerning the survival of the late Susy Smith is most interesting.]
Dr. van Lommel’s presentation of his research (accessed in “Consciousness and the Brain”, Lancet Dec 2001) can only be described as magisterial in its sweep and painstakingly exact in its drawing of conclusions [See Dr. Van Lommel's website <http://www.mercola.com/2002/jan/2/soul.htm> for a good picture of his work. ed.]
Some of the case histories were memorable. For example, a patient had an NDE in which he experienced an old man helping him. He could remember the old man vividly. Some ten years later the patient’s mother was dying. On her death-bed she confessed to her son that his biological father was a Jewish man who had been deported to the concentration camps and subsequently perished. She handed her son a photo of his father. It was the face of the old man he had experienced in the NDE. During the NDE all the brain functions of the EEG had been flat, and according to conventional science it was impossible for such a memory to have imprinted itself in short term memory.
The upshot of all the presentations was to make clear that the conventional models of science do not adequately explain the data of being human. Application of quantum physics analogies to the phenomena of consciousness and memory can be misleading in a number of ways. New explanations are emerging which take consciousness and memory as primary informational fields in the universe. Pim van Lommel argues that if this is the case, our whole and undivided consciousness is simply not observable or measurable in the physical world. To put that into my words, we cannot know all that we are, we only get hints of it.
On a personal level, I found the Conference intellectually stimulating. I was also able to put up the following poster (paper) which got some attention in an audience discussion during the Conference.
[ Rupert Sheldrake, Memory, and Reductionism ]
St. Stephen: Do we experience Jesus Christ more when we die? -- or Experiencing the Kingdom
July 16, 1976
I wanted to ask about Jesus Christ, whether we are with him all the time, and whether we experience him more when we die.
Hear the words that you
have spoken!
Are we nearer to him when we die?
Look at the things that we
know,
things that we have been taught:
That he is our Lord, is
ever with us, that he is always close.
This we must
understand,
for there is no journey that we must take,
not one
thing that we must cast off,
for the nearness of our Lord.
In our minds it may be
conceivable that when we have cast off one barrier, or one body, we
might see him more clearly. But .. “See?” is that the
right word?
For the Lord is a presence and a being-with, not as
an individual, but as all pervading, and as with all.
What we should ask is “How
must I recognise the Lord here with me now?
How must I look for
him that I may see him?
But not with a physical eye to do the
seeing
but with the eye of my heart,
and with the eye of my
emotions.
Feel great joy, and you
feel the Lord,
Feel great love, and you feel the Lord,
Feel
great happiness, and you feel the Lord.
Feel first these things,
for often we look for a feeling that is greater than our experiences
that we have each day.
We must find for ourselves
strangeness,
in order to recognise what is ordinary.
What we
seek is a heightened sense of emotion
that we have through our
understanding.
If when we feel love,
and
we understand completely what it is that we love,
then the
emotions do heighten,
and we feel ourselves comforted, or
protected from all harm.
And our emotions are heightened at these
times
through the knowledge of when and where the protection and
love come.
Then we will recognise the Source of these emotions.
Would it not be a strange
Christ,
that he should be at a distance,
and only come under
special circumstances to special people,
that they might
recognise him on occasions that are seldom.
He would indeed
become a stranger to us.
He is ever with us.
The
understanding even that we have of ourselves
is often the
understanding of his presence with us.
The sorrow we feel at
times,
when we are not pleased with our own thoughts and
feelings,
is the sorrow he feels with us.
The joy that we feel
when we are pleased, when we are happy, when we are content,
is
his joy, his contentment,
for he is with us.
Let us not think that it is
for special people, or that we must experience an emotion that we
have never experienced.
For each of us experience the Lord, and
have continued to experience him, even at this moment, for he is
with us.
Think not to judge that you
yourselves are lacking
that you have not been at one with our
Lord,
for in truth you cannot be separated, if you would use that
term.
The closest you will ever
be to the Lord,
is when you are least conscious of him.
For
the more that you are true to yourself,
and the least conscious
of yourself,
you don’t say “I know that I am me, for
I feel that I am me!”
The knowing is in being.
There are times when many,
through their seeking,
as they might look upon their image in a
mirror,
might say: and truly cry out with joy,
“I see
the Lord! I feel the Lord!
Now at this wonderful moment I am
experiencing the Lord!”
They symbolically have stepped
beyond themselves
and have but observed what is always there.
I have said that the most
distant thing
is closer to you than the tongue of your mouth.
And
the Lord is with you, as is the blood in your veins.
But unless
you bleed, are you conscious of this blood?
The emotions that are
heightened at this time,
is a bleeding out of your
consciousness
that the presence within you can be viewed
from
outside yourselves.
These times are wonderful
to behold;
but do not allow them to take from you the
knowledge
that the blood that is Christ’s, flows in your
body.
Do not seek to bleed
so
that you might prove that you have blood.
If you bleed,
rejoice,
for then you recognise your Christ with another sense.
Do not despair also when
others who see themselves bleeding, and are filled with joy of
another and a different recognition, and say “I see the
Christ!”
Do not weep for yourself, that you do not bleed.
[To read more of Stephen, see previous issues, and open the Stephen Home Page <http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~cocks/> ]
Jim Thornton on the Critique of Lloyd Geering's Christianity without God
We asked a friend of Lloyd Geering to comment on last issue's Critique: Jim Thornton, former Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Canterbury, NZ. He has kindly done so, and is happy to allow comments on his comments, to help point up some of the issues raised by Geering's book.
He begins, “On the dangers of accepting uncritically the writings of scholars who, like Geering, have become celebrities, I entirely agree with you. Even the most distinguished scholars in whatever field are, of course, all fallible and are likely to make significant mistakes, sometimes even mistakes of major importance. I am confident that Geering himself would unhesitatingly agree with us both on this point, for he always welcomes and encourages critical reactions to his own writings, and he would hate to think any of his writings were to be “taken as gospel”.
[ Thornton's comments, and our comments on his ]
Communications from our readers
The Rev. Terry O'Neil, Australia, writes
Could you describe the taste of a tomato? What relevance did any of your articles have to
the September newsletter's theme and
Jesus' response to the Samaritan woman. What was there to aid her in her quest for such an experience?
All I read was intellect, intellect, intellect. And some poetry to give some heart to counter all the brain. Possibly Tom Collins' statement that these things cannot be put into words, may help guide you in selecting suitable titles for future issues. Again, Tom Collins' statement can be applied to describing the taste of a tomato. But at least, if you enjoy the taste, you could encourage others to try it for themselves.
Editor's Comment
Touché! Love God and love neighbour, on these two hang all the law and the prophets. The problem is that our minds often get in the way with our many differing beliefs and judgements, and the stage of our spiritual development is also a factor. Also whether or not we have in some way surrendered our self-centredness to the God that is in all, through all, and above all. I consider that Stephen, in this edition, does come close to expressing the feeling that would result in truly tasting, truly being fed, in the Spirit.
Anna Clayton, Rev. Struan Duthie, Prof. R.M.Cocks
The communications of readers Anna Clayton and the Rev. Struan Duthie can be found under the Article heading “The Kingdom of Heaven and Spiritual Growth.” Dr Cocks's contribution comes after the next article.
Experience
My experience
Sjoerd L. Bonting
In 1985 I decided to resign from the chair of biochemistry at the Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in order to become a scientific consultant for NASA Ames Research Center on the design of biological research facilities for the International Space Station.
In June 1985 my wife Susan, youngest son Peter and I flew to California to make arrangements and to buy a house in Sunnyvale. Being an Anglican priest since 1954, I was happy to find a place as assistant priest at a local parish church. [During the twenty years in Nijmegen I had been a chaplain to English-speaking persons in the Eastern part of the Netherlands, founding and ministering to four chaplaincy congregations in the area].
After our trip to California my wife Susan fell ill with what at first was diagnosed as pneumonia. But after a period of diagnostic tests and exploratory surgery the verdict came in October, three weeks before our planned move: lung cancer, metastasized, untreatable, except for palliative radiation treatment. After a family counsel, my wife decided to stay in Nijmegen for the radiation treatment. She wanted Peter and me to move on the appointed day of November 1st and set up the house. She would stay with a friend during the radiation period and then join us for the remaining months of her life. Her last words, when I overcome with grief I took leave of her, were: "Don't be sad, I shall be alright."
After Christmas I realized from our daily telephone calls that Susan had become too weak to travel across. So I booked flights for Peter and myself, and we arrived at her bedside on the morning of Jan. 11, a day after our 35th wedding anniversary. We found her asleep we thought, but soon we realized she had died peacefully during the night, unknown to anyone [after her treatment ended she had moved into a vacant staffroom in the senior home where she had worked as a volunteer for the the past several years]. After the funeral Peter and I flew back to California to resume our lives as best as we could.
Two weeks later, when I had retired to bed in our Sunnyvale home, I woke up with a very vivid experience of Susan's presence. She said to me: "Don't be sad, I am alright." There was no recurrence, so I ascribe it to her spirit still dwelling on earth at that time, wishing to reassure me before departing to the intermediate state.
See also Bonting's article in this issue.
Celebrating Susy Smith’s Soul
Preliminary Evidence for the Continuance of Smith’s Consciousness After Her Physical Death. <http://veritas.arizona.edu/susy.htm>
Near Death Experiences and Pim van Lommel
Read this website. <http://www.mercola.com/2002/jan/2/soul.htm>
How can we decide about the reality of an experience of a “dead” person?
The previous two websites go a long way towards answering that question. But let's discuss the case reported in our last issue: A young man, Lee Campbell, was one of those sucked out into space, out of Flight 811 because of a faulty door, on a flight from LA to New Zealand. While the flight was in progress, his sleeping mother, Susan, in Christchurch N.Z., awoke to see him standing over her bed, smiling down at her. When in the morning the accident was announced on the radio, with the assurance that the plane had completed its journey, and that most of the passengers had survived, Susan knew that her son Lee was one of the dead.
Such appearances around the time of death are not unusual, and whether we think of the experience as telepathic, or that the “dead” Lee was truly present, most of us would be inclined to accept that some kind of paranormal communication of Lee's death had occurred. Those knowing Susan would no doubt trust her not to make up stories, and when Sjoerd Bonting reports his moving experience with his wife, two weeks after her death, we will trust him too. He is a highly educated and responsible person, very familiar with standards of scientific evidence, and the event is of such significance to him, that he is prepared to risk telling about it in public. We warmly thank him for taking that risk.
We may come up against people reporting such experiences whom we suspect to be romancing. We would do that because of a kind of intuition. But it is the person we would suspect, not the class of story. Putting intuition, though, to one side, what kinds of scientific investigation can we suggest?
We know that science is a methodology developed by the human mind for the disciplined investigation of what can be processed by the human mind. It observes, records, measures, makes hypotheses which are supported or refuted, and often evaluated statistically. Other implements of the mind, are technology, the arts, sports, as well as warfare. Science is a general methodology varying between different fields of study, not a philosophy. In itself it is not a belief about the nature of things.
Scientists and people who are strongly sceptical about “the paranormal” are usually staunch adherents of the Reductionist philosophy. Reductionism is the belief that we can understand reality best by reducing it to its smallest components, and that all that exists is the result of random combination of energy in varying forms, and the universe is mindless, and purposeless. They are much strengthened in that belief by the enormous advances in science, medicine, and reduction in superstition, in the past 400 years.
The paranormal challenges the basic premiss of their successful philosophy, and they will have none of it. All experiences of the paranormal must be illusory, and unhealthy.
Yes, as a philosophy, Reductionism has been most successful. But we might well argue, that if one's philosophy, or presuppositions, lead us to consider countless normal people as deluded, then it might be a good idea to enlarge one's philosophy and see whether these experiences have something to say about the truth of things. In last issue's critique of Prof Lloyd Geering's Christianity without God it was remarked that Geering (seemingly under the influence of Reductionism) did not seem willing to countenance the idea that any contemporary of Jesus could even had an illusory experience of the resurrected Jesus, and that the story was made up a generation later.
Reductionism partly gained impetus from the physics of Isaac Newton, which led people to see the universe as machinelike. So ingrained is this philosophy, that there is widespread resistance to the findings of today's quantum physics, which also thinks holistically, sees consciousness and mind as an aspect of all reality, and has thinkers writing on meaningful coincidence. We might long for reductionists to study Bell's Theorem, the EPR effect, Heisenberg and the experiment effect, the thinking of David Bohm, and ever so much else, and to stop treating academics like lepers when they study the paranormal. Most defensive of reductionism, are the Skeptics, or CSICOP. They are an action group aiming to debunk reports of the paranormal. James Randi, one of their founders, and their front man, is well known. Less well known is his lack of scientific training, and of a proper conscience. There are many examples to be found on the Internet of his improper use of experimental data. One very public example was on a Discovery Channel programme where he was ostensibly testing the dowsing ability of a number of subjects. They were being tested for their ability to dowse for water, and also for metals. Statistically they did very well for water, and very poorly for metal. But Randi could not allow the good statistics, so he averaged the good and bad results, thus destroying the evidence. Further examples of his seeming lack of integrity. <http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/articles/keen/jamesrandi.htm>
We must acknowledge that there is much rubbish written by those who accept the reality of the paranormal, well deserving of debunking, both by Randi and anyone else. But at the same time we should be well aware that when Reductionists attack responsible study of the paranormal, they too can behave unethically, with little regard for the evidence, and write things that are plainly false. It would also be silly not to acknowledge the more usual case that both Reductionists and Holists do behave ethically.
It is the case that ESP and Clairvoyance can be studied in the laboratory, under proper controls, using statistical evaluation. But the really important life-changing paranormal events cannot be studied in this way. The methodology of the Law Court is plainly helpful in these cases.1 We hear from the experiencers, we hear character witnesses, the circumstantial evidence, and so on, the jury will consider numbers of other similar cases concerning trustworthy people of good character. The Prosecution will make their points as cogently as possible, and so will the Defence. The jury will come to the decision. We will have a thoroughly thought out decision, based on many pros and cons. We will not have mathematical proof, but the decision will perhaps have greater weight than that made after studying statistical probabilities. It is good to be familiar with the classic work of William James and F W H Myers, who present a great number of most convincing case histories stories where the argument for the Prosecution and for the Defence have been made with the utmost care and detail.
Many of the scholars who study this kind of phenomenon are of the highest calibre, thoroughly aware of what is required for rigorous work. Consider Professor Bonting who is writing in this issue; or the work of Rev. Sir John Polkinghorne former Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge, or that of members of the Academy of Religion and Psychic Research, many of whom at one time were professors of philosophy, or William James, F.W.H. Myers, many of the investigators for the Society for Psychical Research, scholars sponsored by The Templeton Organisation, and many of the members of The Scientific and Medical Network. One may or may not disagree with their philosophy, but it would be quite unreasonable to question their competence
Prof. R.M. Cocks: The Testimony of Witnesses
The evidence that people have conversations with dead relatives is based on the testimony of witnesses. Testimony is a perfectly reasonable basis for accepting factual claims and is constantly relied upon in courts of law. To call testimony merely anecdotal and not ‘scientific’ is to falsely malign a highly regarded method of fact finding. The truthfulness of testimony is based almost wholly on the character of the witness. Ad hominem attacks on witnesses are perfectly relevant and justified, if true. If a witness is biased, alcoholic, insane, a liar or otherwise unreliable, this throws his testimony into doubt. If a witness is universally regarded as sane and reliable, with a propensity neither for hysterics nor lies, then her testimony should be regarded as sane and reliable. The witness must also have been in a position to witness what he claims to have seen. If the witness is short-sighted and was not wearing his glasses, or if was not physically in a position to have seen what he claims to have seen, then his testimony can also be discounted. Such factors do not apply to most cases of people claiming to talk to the dead.
It is not good enough in a court of law to say I do not like your testimony. If you wish to dispute someone’s testimony you must bring forth facts that contradict the claims made, or you must bring attacks against the person to demonstrate that they are not in fact reliable. The possibility of visitations from the dead do not violate any known laws of science. You may not like it. It may throw your materialist assumptions into question, but that does not offer evidence of any kind to allow one to justifiably reject the testimony. One wonders what evidence a skeptic could produce to show that all who make claims of visits from the dead must be mistaken. It would be greatly appreciated if the skeptic could produce this evidence. The burden of proof is then on them.
Courts have recourse to multiple methods to settle factual claims. If the factual claim involves a single event (e.g., a person’s murder), then we are talking about a narrative involving a detached incident; namely, anecdote. Testimony is one of the key appropriate methods of determining the facts in all such isolated cases, as opposed to demonstrating something which may be true for all time, such as what happens when sodium is mixed with water. The anecdotal character of testimony does not by that very fact count against it.
1 Advocated by Victor Zammit in his website.