Religion, the paranormal and ufology: criteria for acceptability

The paranormal must accept the standards of scientific research if it is to be taken seriously

Image by Mira Cosic, Astrologer from Pixabay

OPINION / THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEW OF SENTINEL NEWS

Most of the earliest scientists, before the modern era, were above all religious, and without them many fields of science would not have progressed. Conversely, it's undeniable that religion has sometimes held back the development of some of the so-called exact sciences.

The 19th century saw aberrations with spiritualism, then paranormal research appeared in the 20th century. However, there was no consensus on this discipline. It could even be said to have been scientifically unsuccessful, due to a lack of reliability and reproducibility of experiments, statistical falsifications and methodological biases. However, science had to make a break with dogmatism and assess, at some point or other, whether a being's consciousness can have an influence beyond the surface of its skin, or real extrasensory perceptions. 

In the media, this field has seen its share of notorious frauds: for example, Uri Geller's rigged spoons, whose alloy twisted thanks to a simple addition of body temperature. The James Randi Educational Foundation, whose founder in 1996 was an expert in illusionism, offered a million-dollar prize to anyone able to demonstrate a paranormal fact. No glass-sealed, microscopically-marked spoon ever came back bent during a rigorously-controlled scientific protocol. It's a fact that for over two decades, the prize has been offered and no one has won, for lack of any tangible proof. 

Religious writings are splendid, but the fathers of religion had to carefully expunge many of the inconsistencies they contained, particularly in the apocryphal gospels, to facilitate their acceptance by the general public. It's no secret that these original writings contained a great many contradictions. From a vengeful and very prejudiced god in the Old Testament, he is transformed into a god of Love in the New, and in the face of the rise of critical thinking and knowledge, many passages or explanatory interpretations of religious texts have had to be modified or have been modified according to religious currents.

Religious reflections were held on the subject of these inconsistencies, with the aim of resolving them and making them less perceptible to the general public. These inconsistencies were often intrinsic, sometimes in opposition to modern science, such as the fact that in the Old Testament most illnesses were considered punishments for faults committed against God, and psychiatric disorders were seen as the result of supernatural or demonic influences. These theological inconsistencies were carefully avoided by the clergy, and are still debated in enlightened ecclesiastical circles. 

Despite the many revisions to the religious doctrinal narrative, modern texts still contain differences due to their multiple authors. Semantic analysis of ancient texts has also revealed not a single source, but many different redactors, with characteristics all their own. The clergy were also careful not to overemphasize the sanctity of certain supposed cases of miracles or levitations, which were the result of human religious fervor. Clearly, while for some unconscious or deliberate falsification was acceptable to promote dogma, for others the maneuver was considered too risky and counter-productive.  Mankind has been inventing deities and religions for millennia, and there's no serious reason to believe that this is any different for today's dominant religions.

A large number of reincarnation stories, originating from very young children and difficult to explain, have been reported. At a conference on parapsychology, it was confirmed to me that these stories tend to come from geographical areas with a strong reincarnation culture, influenced by Hinduism and Buddhism. This regionalization of memory afterglow cases, supposedly linked to cultural factors, does not meet with consensus. Canadian psychiatrist Ian Stevenson is known to have attempted to scientifically prove reincarnation, but his work has been widely rejected by the scientific community.  

It's also worth noting that there has often been an over-representation of religious people in historical ufological circles. Moses' story of the burning bush, and the tendency to culturally integrate the supernatural and the divine, is certainly no stranger to the easier acceptance of the UFO phenomenon in this category of the population. But which way is the chain of causality pointing? Is the emergence of religions facilitated by the existence of an external phenomenon, or do religious texts encourage confusion with the UFO phenomenon?

To date, "paranormal" studies have not led to the discovery of a new mode of action, and have stumbled on very random and inconclusive results. There have been references in the literature to extensive secret military research leading to applications. Since civilian research into the paranormal has come to nothing, even though it has been carried out by academics, it would be a bit risky to claim that the military could have succeeded in obtaining evidence: it is far more likely that it led to identical negative results.

The USA and Russia have abandoned the search for the position of enemy submarines using psychics. The Stargate operation cost $20 million and was abandoned two decades later. We can deduce from this that the rate of extra-sensory false positives was disappointingly low compared with the effectiveness of the real-life underwater chases depicted in the film "In Pursuit of Red October". When a Western or Russian ballistic missile submarine leaves its home port, it is followed, as far as possible, by an opposing attack submarine. In the case of a Russian submersible, it is also often tracked by the USA's extensive underwater detection network. 

According to FOIA documents, Scientology has successfully infiltrated the CIA to promote paranormal research.  Russel Targ and Harold Puthoff's work on remote vision was considered pseudoscience. Psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann attempted to replicate thirty-five studies, but it was impossible to reproduce the positive results according to the original experimental procedure. They discovered that cues left in the protocols used were the reason for the initial success rate. This non-replication has also been observed in research such as the famous Stargate program. In the end, none of the recent experiments, if conducted under properly controlled conditions, showed positive results. 

Conversely, it is not impossible that future scientific discoveries will bring to light subtle interactions that are still unknown. As part of the SETI program, we are trying to find electromagnetic or luminous signatures from a technology, even though such signals propagate at a derisory speed compared with the size of the Universe. Who knows whether the signals of a highly advanced interstellar communication system are still totally eluding our instruments, which are neither calibrated nor designed for such detection?

Immaterial thought

Scientists like Roger Penrose have argued that the known laws of physics cannot explain a phenomenon of consciousness based in the human brain, and have hypothesized a quantum mechanism interacting with neurons to explain it. Others, such as Marvin Minsky, believe that the complex functioning of the brain does indeed allow it to be the seat of consciousness, and that the laws of physics do not stand in the way. 

Doctors, for their part, have long noted that, in the event of serious accidents to the skull, substantial functional, cognitive or memory losses are linked very specifically to the affected areas of the brain providing these skills. This high degree of localization excludes intangible mechanisms of consciousness, which would have been completely unaffected in such accidents. There are also inflammatory or neurodegenerative diseases that are perfectly visible on CT scans, triggering symptoms of dementia, as well as major cognitive losses following cancerous tumors or strokes, where the hemorrhage kills neurons.

A phenomenon such as UFOs, with proven materiality - radar responses, infrared sensor detections, ground traces - can hardly be reduced to a psychic paranormal phenomenon with no proven materiality. Nor is there any scientific consensus on the relevance of the paranormal, its study having been hampered for decades by its non-reproducibility. Researchers have tested a number of psychedelics for consciousness-altering effects, but paranormal effects were not forthcoming. On the other hand, the MK-ultra program in its day used them more successfully, to gain mental control over its targets.

Another example of our brain's ability to operate very quickly and very well without our awareness, which can distort our perception: one person described in detail the memory of a dream in which she was being harangued in a public square, then guillotined in front of an excited and particularly aggressive crowd. She then awoke to find that, in reality, a book had just fallen on her neck. The entire memorized scene was created in a split second at the moment of sudden awakening. The implementation of false memories, and the existence of a selective memory necessary to maintain a good psychic balance, is a very well known phenomenon that can explain commonly reported premonitory accounts.

Collective works such as "La Parapsychologie devant la Science" (Parapsychology in the Face of Science) and published studies struggle to establish proof of the relevance of this discipline, as shown by the research carried out by the SRI at Stanford from 1972 to 1991. In the end, throughout the 20th century, one fiasco followed another in attempts to demonstrate the relevance of the paranormal and clairvoyance using scientific methods. Some renowned scientists tried to link avant-garde concepts such as the famous EPR paradox or quantum phenomena, but without any collegial success. Quantum entanglement became a philosophical debate when it is first and foremost a problem of interpretation of real experiments, and the common misconception that the EPR effect could be used to transmit information instantaneously over great distances is widespread. 

It's true that AIs have far superior computational capabilities to humans, perfectly applicable to the manipulation of very large amounts of data, but if it's a question of common sense and adaptive competence to new situations, we're still a long way off the mark. A computer program written by humans has no intrinsic intelligence of its own. It makes highly relevant choices from a large amount of data extremely quickly, but unlike biological intelligence, it is not in itself intelligent. It gives the illusion of great skill and intelligence without actually possessing any, and can therefore be highly misleading to those who use it. ChatGPT has proposed scientific references that don't exist, struggles to explain the reasoning that leads it to a result, or generally seems to regress in its operation when new software versions are updated.

Stock market algorithms continue to drive the rise of the stock market, totally disconnected from economic and industrial realities. As a consequence of the system, market capitalizations are in some cases over 100 times higher than companies' total sales or real profits, and as already mentioned, conversational AI sometimes generates totally absurd content. Judgment, sensitivity and complex decision-making seem to be the remarkable specificity of biological emotional intelligence. 

We can therefore imagine a conscious will which, although the product of natural evolution, can be artificially and genetically modified, extracted from its initial body envelope, to interact with a technological interface on an exploration vessel, provided it is supplied with essential nutrients and kept alive. These situational bio-intelligences, asleep during long, high-velocity journeys in interstellar space, could be reactivated for decision-making in situ, in a planetary environment or for complex tasks. Sustaining and stabilizing life forms embedded in a technology and activating them punctually must certainly pose particularly difficult problems to solve, but this would have the enormous advantage of being able to miniaturize space probes housing them. 

In any case, it would be less risky than taking entire crews into the harsh conditions of space travel for long and highly uncertain exploration missions. While from an ethical point of view, this may seem undesirable, it must be put into perspective with the need for large-scale exploration prior to stellar expansion, in order to perpetuate the future of a civilization.   

Admittedly, the hypothesis of a biotechnological imbrication of UAP is far less seductive than psychokinesis, telepathy or the reassuring clairvoyance of the future. We must always be wary of what seems very seductive. Clearly, one can seriously doubt the relevance of the clairvoyance proposed in daily newspaper advertisements, which are perfectly permissible by law despite their purely lucrative nature. As long as the law remains permissive, the media will continue to prosper at the expense of their victims' credulity by sponsoring and advertising manipulators of all stripes. 

The world of science is not exempt from prolonged stubbornness in lines of research that potentially lead to dead ends. But unlike the dogmas of ancient religion, it learns from its mistakes, selects the most relevant theories and refines them as the data become available. To cite one example, the observations made possible by the latest generation of space-based instruments such as the James Webb telescope, showing galaxies far too old for the age of the Universe, are on the way to being explained by a permanent trickle of rivers of stellar matter, enabling them to be created much more rapidly and thus keeping the dominant theory momentarily intact until another, more elaborate one replaces it.  

Obscurantism

Generally speaking, we can only deplore the lack of a generalized, more enlightened education, the lack of enthusiasm among new generations for scientific careers, and the many ancestral beliefs that persist throughout the world. In the United States, for example, a few dozen kilometers from the Grand Canyon, religious communities are convinced that they are the chosen children of a creation that is just 6,000 years old, even though the water at the bottom of the canyon, hundreds of meters high, only carves its groove one millimeter per century. Their belief makes them reject the reality of scientific fact, and in this case, a geological reality that is clearly visible close to home. 

In addition to the strategic and defense issues at stake, the place occupied by religion in the USA is another possible reason for the policy of absolute secrecy on UAP, maintained at all costs by the Pentagon and the US government. It is noteworthy that, in the perception of a significant proportion of the hierarchical decision-makers briefed, the phenomenon is interpreted as diabolical and to be absolutely hidden from the general population. As long as this tendency persists, and mentalities are always slow to evolve, full official disclosure on the subject is likely to be a long time coming. 

It's a pity that US legislators haven't yet succeeded in passing binding government transparency laws on UAP, but perhaps they'll succeed next time. Recently, Member of European Parliament Francisco Guerreiro proposed a law on the subject to the European Parliament. Clearly, there is a growing awareness of the significant problem that UAP can pose on a global scale. 

If skepticism in the field of ufology clearly demonstrates a lack of knowledge or objectivity, with all the elements of the case not taken into account, on the contrary, in the field of the paranormal and the religious sphere, skepticism is visibly much more justified. Rationalism is even sometimes taken to extremes, as can be seen in Luigi Cascioli's 2002 lawsuit against the church for abusing popular credulity. A study shows that a third of believers in the USA think that God speaks directly to them. The media are beginning to see this as a danger to democracies. It's no secret that, while religion should in theory bring fulfillment and balance to people, it is also often diverted from this initial objective, as the excesses of extremism, even to the point of endangering states, sadly demonstrate.

Generally speaking, religious writings contain no knowledge superior to that of their time, and those that contradict modern knowledge are generally removed. Some researchers have a priori succeeded in establishing archaeological reasons why Bethlehem was not inhabited 2,000 years ago. According to them, the town did not appear until later, when the New Testament was written. Nevertheless, the Vatican has recently taken a step into the modern world by studying the theological impact of the announcement of the probable detection of extraterrestrial civilizations. The icing on the cake is the fact that, as early as the 1940s, it is said to have passed on to the United States information on top-secret Mussolini documents relating the crash of an exotic flying object, despite the death penalty incurred by circulating them. After the war, this object was transported to the USA for study. 

Curiously, billions of people around the world believe in religious concepts that have no objective, demonstrable basis. Exceptional scientists have failed to gain acceptance for the existence of paranormal phenomena in most academies of science, and paradoxically very few scientists seek to investigate the UAP phenomenon in depth, even though it has been detected in large numbers by reliable instruments. For political reasons, our decision-makers still seek to maintain an absolute blanket of secrecy on the subject. 

As the sciences have progressed, certain scientists have tried to reconcile religion and knowledge by postulating parapsychological theories that are still far from being accepted consensually. Man is a religious animal who conceptualizes increasingly sophisticated religions over time. When a particularly gifted prophet emerges from the near-constant percentage of the population who are a little mythomaniac, and succeeds in creating a hard core of disciples over several generations, a new religion is born. 

New sects emerge, better suited to modern beliefs, and fashion cults out of supposed encounters of the 3rd kind to their advantage. The vengeful, angry Gods of antiquity who cast spells like the seven plagues of Egypt are being replaced by cosmic friends who will help mankind solve its problems.  

However, science is increasingly adopting a diametrically opposed analysis, such as the dark forest theory, to explain Fermi's paradox and complete the theory of the great filter. Sapiens on Earth competed with Neandertal, Denisova, Florensis, Luzonensis, Naledi and many other formidable predators. 

On an interstellar scale, selection could be much tougher than on a planetary scale, at least if certain advanced civilizations make the analysis that only their non-visibility or the destruction of competitors allows them to survive over the very long term. Added to this is the stability and availability of their home world's exhaustible resources. Our famous "cosmic brothers" could well program the gradual extermination of divergent cultures through birth control if integration fails.

Computer simulations suggest that it is possible that only a dozen or so perennial and robust galactic civilizations will ultimately survive between one and two billion years from now, out of millions of potential emerging candidate civilizations from the two trillion planets in our galaxy alone. 

While religion has thrived for millennia, the century of spiritualism is over and the century of the paranormal seems to be in a bad way, will the current century be the one of ufology consensually recognized by Science and supported by political power? The large number of radar recordings and those of other sensors scanning even beyond the Kármán limit are on the way to providing proof of the existence of a real exogenous phenomenon. Their declassification will be a major event. It is already clear that the UAP phenomenon will not be solved through the prism of religious and paranormal superstitions, but only through science.

Translated from French by Guillaume Fournier Airaud

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0