A Recent Development...

I have begun uploading video comparisons to these blog posts. If you would like to watch them, I am told you can do so by visiting YouTube or clicking this link: http://www.youtube.com/user/ProfessorLamott?feature=mhee

Defining "Paranormal"

The term “paranormal” as defined by Merriam Webster’s dictionary reads:

 adj \ˌpa-rə-ˈnor-məl, ˈpa-rə-ˌ\ : not scientifically explainable

This is an extremely broad, yet succinct, definition.  And this definition in the reason I’m baffled that synonyms like “supernatural,” “spectral,” “mystical,” and “occult” are commonly used in its place.  This is utter nonsense and most likely the act of the speaker to invoke a kind of sensationalism into his parlance.

Paranormal phenomenon is simply something that cannot immediately be explained through science.  This does not mean that it will not EVENTUALLY be explained through science.  According to this definition, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum might use the term “paranormal” with respect to climate change, since there is apparently a popular disagreement on what seems to me, anyway, like solid scientific fact.  But science is constantly being debated…as is the paranormal.

This is an interesting site to explore, as I’ve done some consulting for the organization in years past:

http://paranormalresearchsociety.org/

Supernatural Skepticism

The scales are tipped in the favor of skeptics, simply because it is a lot easier to accept the unexplainable as a fraud or fake, rather than expending the effort to prove the veracity of a particular event, object or entity.  With the aid of archetypes, like those hypothesized by Carl Jung (see Wikipedia article), people are more apt to explain the causes of potential phenomena by chalking such results up to the images or concepts that already reside in their minds, as though the seeds have already been planted in their brains and the ensuing confirmation in reality is therefore deemed less-than-reliable.  It’s like the housewife who finds an image of the Virgin Mary burnt into her toast; it’s much less a sign, than it is an example of wish fulfillment of this particular person’s need to validate her faith.  I doubt, if she was say, Muslim, or Hindu, that she would see that same image in that same piece of burnt toast.  This is an extreme example, but nonetheless an example that skeptics of the “unknown” use often. 

The mind attempts to settle the unexplainable before it has a chance to use its mechanisms of logic to deduce a definitive root cause.

However, efforts to prove the unexplainable as fraudulent should be met equally with efforts to prove the veracity of the unexplainable.  Pursuits of either result should be equally weighed.  What is outside the realm of human comprehension is something that one cannot dismiss as not existing. This is basically a more complex version of that age-old question: “If a tree falls in the woods, and you are not present to see or hear it, does it make a sound?”  If you fall into the camp that believes this means the tree doesn’t make a sound, then you are most likely a skeptic, and perhaps also an individual who is likely to disregard claims of the existence of the supernatural or paranormal.  If you fall into the camp that believes the tree has most likely made a sound, even though you were not witness to the event, well, you are most likely a person who subscribes to logic, to deductive reasoning, and someone who is more likely to investigate claims of the supernatural and allow your mind to be open to the possibility of “something else” – something that exists beyond the scope of our comprehension, something that we are not readily aware of, or might never understand in our lifetimes, but it’s something for which you cannot deny the possibility of existing.