I've never seen anyone take idle speculation in fiction so seriously...

People spend their whole lives going to Star Trek conventions, dress up in the outfits, and actually learn Klingon, buy into the mindset, and you get upset because a guy writes a short series of articles about it?

Parapsychology is hardly a religious belief. It is an up and coming science in the branch of psychology.

Dear, dear, James. This is fiction, is it? It just entertainment, and has no serious impact, right?

Then how do we account for a bevy of individuals, yourself being a handy reference, who have suddenly started believing ghosts, witches, and divination -- is a science?

Belief in these phenomena is not a science, and parapsychology is not belief in these things, it is (at best) an attempt to investigate them (and, at worst, not science in the slightest), much as science has also attempted to investigate questions surrounding religious beliefs. (e.g. "Do people recover faster with prayer?" (Yes, actually, so far.) "What does archaeology have to say about the bible?")

What laws of physics does this "science" use to explain mind reading? What forces allow the brain to move things from a distance? Where is this spiritual plane in which the spirits and dead souls of parapsychology exist?

Oh! They'll be discovered in the future, right? And in the future, we certainly won't discover even more evidence for the existence of God (like the big bang was) angels, etc.? One set of beliefs is "science" -- because you want it to be -- and one is "religion" -- because you want it to be.

Ask James Randi how scientific he thinks parapsychology is, much less the beliefs they typically investigate. He hates religion, but at least he can recognize parapsychology as being the same kind of thing.

So again, where did you get the idea mind-reading, ESP, Ouija boards, psychic hotlines, etc. were a form of science? When did you become convinced of this?

Know those little commercials they put inside a Star Trek episode? They do that because they think you'll be influenced by what you watch.

Maybe all those advertisers are wrong each time they make those multi-thousand-dollar bets.

But my money's with them.

Gene Roddenbury should be commended for creating a future society which is both believable and exciting, and for bringing joy to more people over the world than belief in God, in my opinion, could ever hope to.

James, there are about 2 billion Christians in the world. Even if only half of them are happy, that's a lot more than have been influenced by Gene Roddenbury.

And no, Gene's vision of the future isn't believable. I enjoy science fiction as much as the next guy, but the science in Star Trek is about as believable as the Easter Bunny.

Hey, if its okay to get lost in something you think is "fantasy" why not try religion? It's got a better track record. Sure 32,000 dead is bad. But it beats the heck out of 100,000,000.

Now this is interesting!

There is an episode from ST:TNG where some genetically engineered children have the ability to levitate objects. The enhancements to their immune system caused problems which were fatal to normal humans.

Now that levitation business. What if Jesus didn't WALK on water? Suppose he just levitated himself over it at a low altitude, like 2 inches. Someone observing at a distance might say he was walking on water.

The demons Jesus cast out. Are they the same as LOA in voodoo?

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS asks: What is man that thou art mindful of him? Then it answers: A little lower than angels. What powers do angels have?

What if human beings do have psychic powers and are supposed to have psychic powers and Christianity has nothing to do with Jesus Christ but the name? Ever read the Gospel According to Thomas. The Catholic Church was corrupted by Roman paganism centuries ago.

Check out:

OLD SOULS by Tom Shroder

Dal Timgar

Tim:

Your observations are dead-on. God is dead in Roddenberry's mind, but the supernatural lives on disguised in the robes of science.

And, of course, your reward for revealing the emperor's nudity is to be savagely criticized.

So it goes.

Various responses...

To Ben's statement:

You boggle me. On the one hand you seem to be going for a straight scientific outlook, but on the other, seem to be defending traditional religion. You can't have it both ways, buckaroo. Religion of any kind is inherently anti-scientific.

By saying such things, you imply you don't understand science -- not even the basics!

Science is the study of repeatable, material phenomenon. (Do I have to explain this?) A scientist devises a theory, and designs and executes an experiment which will disprove or match up with his hypothesis.

Religion, on the other than, tends to be about (a) things which are not material (values, God, or a spiritual realm, for example) and (b) things which are not repeatable (miracles, spiritual experiences).

Things like religion, law, history, art, and ethics aren't anti-scientific, they're just outside it's scope of inquiry. Science can't tell us what values to adopt, what books the Library of Alexandria contained, nor whether God exists or not. (If you think otherwise, please tell me what experiment you would run.)

Of course, there are some religious views which are anti-scientific,. For example, many (particularly in the New Age) seem to have adopted the idea popularized by Richard Bach -- that reality itself is merely an illusion.

(This originates from the Hindu concept of "Maya", and explains, in part, why Hinduism never gave birth to science: if reality is just an illusion, why assume there are universal laws guiding it? Why assume the illusion is of any benefit at all? Enlightenment is all about discarding the illusion, which is to say, giving up on reality, or our attachment to it.)

But that's certainly not true of every religious system or adherant.

Was Issac Newton "anti-science" because he believed in God? Or Copernicus? Or Galileo? How about Ben Franklin? Or Michael Faraday? Or Gregor Mendel? Or Lord Kelvin or James Clerk Maxwell? Or Max Planck? Was Einstein "anti-science" because he frequently appealed to the idea of something like God? Is Steven Hawking "anti-science" when he does the same?

Rob:

... the supernatural lives on disguised in the robes of science.

Too true!

I'm reminded of Michael Crichton's comments that environmentalism, for example, was a form of religion popular among urban atheists. (Hence my topic on the left, "The Church of Gaia.")

The advantage I and other pro-science Christians have over many of our critics is that I at least know what my religious beliefs are. In constrast, those who think science gives you clear, definite answers about the supernatural (as Ben seems to think) seem to have confused science with a religion.

Tim,

Ever thought of taking some of your blog posts and editing them into a series of short essays for a book? You seem to have a pretty good collection of them. They've been through at least a minimal review process as blog postings.

If I got more than, say, a few hundred hits a day, I'd probably think about it. But I take that low number as a market signal concerning demand. If people aren't demanding what I'm already offering for free, then I have no reason to expect they'd pay $17.50 for it. :-)

But thanks for the kind compliment (I think, and am hoping I'm not being presumptuous), regardless.

You're not bad yourself, by the way.

Thanks, and yes it was intended as a compliment. There are a lot of very unique thoughts here, and well argued. Of course, maybe a book would be premature since the publishing industry currently prefers people who can do their own advertising (i.e. celebrity authors). But there has to be some kind of niche you're not reaching.

To solve the "marketing/popularity" problem, I could ghost write; now who would like to adopt these views? Who is an utter tabula rasa on such subjects?

Heh! I know: "Jay-Z on religion in Star Trek."