The Demon-Haunted World_ Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan [108]
[* Violating the rules for ‘Oraclers and Wizards’ given by Thomas Ady in 1656: ‘In doubtful things, they gave doubtful answers... Where were more certain probabilities, there they gave more certain answers.’]
Many of these doctrines are rejected out of hand by fundamentalist Christians and Jews because the Bible so enjoins. Deuteronomy (xviii, 10, 11) reads (in the King James translation):
There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.
Astrology, channelling, Ouija boards, predicting the future and much else is forbidden. The author of Deuteronomy does not argue that such practices fail to deliver what they promise. But they are ‘abominations’, perhaps suitable for other nations, but not for the followers of God. And even the Apostle Paul, so credulous on so many matters, counsels us to ‘prove all things’.
The twelfth-century Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides goes further than Deuteronomy, in that he makes explicit that these pseudosciences don’t work:
It is forbidden to engage in astrology, to utilize charms, to whisper incantations... All of these practices are nothing more than lies and deceptions used by ancient pagan peoples to deceive the masses and lead them astray... Wise and intelligent people know better. [From the Mishneh Torah, Avodah Zara, Chapter 11.]
Some claims are hard to test - for example, if an expedition fails to find the ghost or the brontosaurus, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Others are easier - for example, flatworm cannibalistic learning or the announcement that colonies of bacteria subjected to an antibiotic or an agar dish thrive when their prosperity is prayed for (compared to control bacteria unredeemed by prayer). A few -for example, perpetual motion machines - can be excluded on grounds of fundamental physics. Except for them, it’s not that we know before examining the evidence that the notions are false; stranger things are routinely incorporated into the corpus of science.
The question, as always, is how good is the evidence? The burden of proof surely rests on the shoulders of those who advance such claims. Revealingly, some proponents hold that scepticism is a liability, that true science is inquiry without scepticism. They are perhaps halfway there. But halfway doesn’t doit.
Parapsychologist Susan Blackmore describes one of the steps in her transformation to a more sceptical attitude on ‘psychic’ phenomena:
A mother and daughter from Scotland asserted they could pick up images from each other’s minds. They chose to use playing cards for the tests because that is what they used at home. I let them choose the room in which they would be tested and insured that there was no normal way for the ‘receiver’ to see the cards. They failed. They could not get more right than chance predicted and they were terribly disappointed. They had honestly believed they could do it and I began to see how easy it was to be fooled by your own desire to believe.
I had similar experiences with several dowsers, children who claimed they could move objects psychokinetically, and several who said they had telepathic powers. They all failed. Even now I have a five-digit number, a word, and a small object in my kitchen at home. The place and items were chosen by a young man who intends to ‘see’ them while travelling out of his body. They have been there (though regularly changed) for three years. So far, though, he has had no success.
‘Telepathy’ literally means to feel at a distance, just as ‘telephone’ is to hear at a distance and ‘television’ is to see at a distance. The word suggests the communication not of thoughts but