The ever-narrowing window
Recently I've come across This website, "jref", the James Randi 1 million dollar challenge on paranormal activity. It's really made me wonder about the past.
You see, back hundreds of years ago, before internet tracking and constant video filming, people could sneak around and claim they had the psychic ability to read minds or move things or heal you with their thoughts. Even though it was never put to a rigorous scientific test, there were voodoo shamans in Africa, women slaughtered as witches that could cast physically harming spells, and psychics that killed goats.
But since 1964, a man has offered a challenge to anyone claiming supernatural powers. If you can do something that is unexplainable, he gives you 1 million dollars. You simply have to perform that feat in testing conditions that the claimant and JREF agree upon, these conditions from the foundation's side, no more troublesome than making sure it isn't obviously faked.
And though many have applied, when the details were put down on paper and the mystic showed up, he/she couldn't perform the feat beyond what would be attributed to random chance.
So it wasn't until recently that people finally started believing that the super-powerful mental magics were faked. That witches that can turn you into a frog are impossible, and noone can cut a piece out of you with their mind, or bend spoons.
The idea didn't go away, however, it just narrowed the window. Now psychic feats are believed to be an increase in the chance that one can see something with the mind (they need a jumping off point, they're thinking of someone with the letter C - does this sound familiar to you), or the ability to turn on and off street lights more frequently than is normal. Not that they can do it at will, just more often.
What's frightening is the same fraction of people have heard of stories of these random-based feats as back in the day when witchcraft was known to be out there somewhere.
Take the knowledge that no FBI or US News organization has ever praised a psychic for solving a crime, finding a kidnap victim or corpse. Maybe through sheer random chance one or two psychics have been right. Or that the American Cancer Society says Faith Healing cannot cure cancer or any other disease. But still people believe. Or that any of the psychics on tv today that have been asked to perform for this money don't say he's a fraud, rather they dodge the question or agree and don't show up.
It makes me wonder, now that the window's been narrowed, will it ever fully close? Or will people just continue to guess that there's something bigger out there, and promise each other they're correct through anecdotal evidence.
Now I'll apply this logic to something less popular to question - religion. As Science narrows the window of exactly how long the world took to create, evolution, and light from stars and how they relate to the age of the universe, God gets a tinier and tinier window to work out of, and must become more and more cryptic and devious in his methods. When Science was young and people believed the earth was flat, it was frequently attributed to God's will that the stars travelled the sky and the sun came up in the morning. Then science came, and God had less to do. When they finally decided the world was round, Gods new job was to keep us on the earth for fear of falling off. Now Gravity's taken that burden off his hands.
Dinosaurs are a big question mark, as there's no mention of life before humans in most religious texts. So now God had to be sneaky and bury dinosaur bones and age them so that we have reasons to believe something's going on. I've heard the belief that Carbon Dating is suspect, but I guarantee that belief won't last long.
And, like in James Randi's foundation, why has God not decided to come out and verify God's existence. Is a creator so desperate for faith beyond reason, in this world of reason? Sounds like a rigged game.
The point here is this - the window for supernaturalism shrinks the more we pay attention to our surroundings. When can we start saying with affirmation, there's no more room to operate in? When does the window become so tiny that most (of course there will always be some crazies) people can agree there's nothing unexplainable?
You see, back hundreds of years ago, before internet tracking and constant video filming, people could sneak around and claim they had the psychic ability to read minds or move things or heal you with their thoughts. Even though it was never put to a rigorous scientific test, there were voodoo shamans in Africa, women slaughtered as witches that could cast physically harming spells, and psychics that killed goats.
But since 1964, a man has offered a challenge to anyone claiming supernatural powers. If you can do something that is unexplainable, he gives you 1 million dollars. You simply have to perform that feat in testing conditions that the claimant and JREF agree upon, these conditions from the foundation's side, no more troublesome than making sure it isn't obviously faked.
And though many have applied, when the details were put down on paper and the mystic showed up, he/she couldn't perform the feat beyond what would be attributed to random chance.
So it wasn't until recently that people finally started believing that the super-powerful mental magics were faked. That witches that can turn you into a frog are impossible, and noone can cut a piece out of you with their mind, or bend spoons.
The idea didn't go away, however, it just narrowed the window. Now psychic feats are believed to be an increase in the chance that one can see something with the mind (they need a jumping off point, they're thinking of someone with the letter C - does this sound familiar to you), or the ability to turn on and off street lights more frequently than is normal. Not that they can do it at will, just more often.
What's frightening is the same fraction of people have heard of stories of these random-based feats as back in the day when witchcraft was known to be out there somewhere.
Take the knowledge that no FBI or US News organization has ever praised a psychic for solving a crime, finding a kidnap victim or corpse. Maybe through sheer random chance one or two psychics have been right. Or that the American Cancer Society says Faith Healing cannot cure cancer or any other disease. But still people believe. Or that any of the psychics on tv today that have been asked to perform for this money don't say he's a fraud, rather they dodge the question or agree and don't show up.
It makes me wonder, now that the window's been narrowed, will it ever fully close? Or will people just continue to guess that there's something bigger out there, and promise each other they're correct through anecdotal evidence.
Now I'll apply this logic to something less popular to question - religion. As Science narrows the window of exactly how long the world took to create, evolution, and light from stars and how they relate to the age of the universe, God gets a tinier and tinier window to work out of, and must become more and more cryptic and devious in his methods. When Science was young and people believed the earth was flat, it was frequently attributed to God's will that the stars travelled the sky and the sun came up in the morning. Then science came, and God had less to do. When they finally decided the world was round, Gods new job was to keep us on the earth for fear of falling off. Now Gravity's taken that burden off his hands.
Dinosaurs are a big question mark, as there's no mention of life before humans in most religious texts. So now God had to be sneaky and bury dinosaur bones and age them so that we have reasons to believe something's going on. I've heard the belief that Carbon Dating is suspect, but I guarantee that belief won't last long.
And, like in James Randi's foundation, why has God not decided to come out and verify God's existence. Is a creator so desperate for faith beyond reason, in this world of reason? Sounds like a rigged game.
The point here is this - the window for supernaturalism shrinks the more we pay attention to our surroundings. When can we start saying with affirmation, there's no more room to operate in? When does the window become so tiny that most (of course there will always be some crazies) people can agree there's nothing unexplainable?