There Is No Psychic Contact with The Dead

If the alleged psychics could make contact with disembodied souls, then we’d have a vital piece in the puzzle about the possibility of life after death, the existence of souls, and God. But without exception, they all seem to be liars, frauds, dupes, or just seriously confused.

Many people have claimed to be able to communicate with the dead. If the dead person’s body is long gone in the cemetery, yet we are able to continue to talk to them, then that might constitute evidence for the autonomy of the soul. Again, the problem is that so many of these cases have been exposed. The reasonable person is in a similar position to the one that Hume said we are concerning miracles. Evidence showing the dependence of the mind on the brain is ubiquitous. If someone makes a paranormal claim that contradicts that evidence, then we must ask ourselves: Is it more likely that the person claiming to have had an out-of-body experience or contact with a non-physical soul is lying, deceived, mistaken, or that they are correct? Those who claim to be contacting the dead through séances or psychic means are often using magicians’ cold reading techniques to draw information from living relatives who want to make contact. In many cases, the psychic has even surreptitiously researched information to give back to the bereaved. On the popular television show, Crossing Over, John Edward typically interviews audience members before the cameras go on to find out who they want to contact and what they want to know. Then hours of vague questions, shotgun predictions, and stabs in the dark are filmed and edited down to give the appearance that Edward was able to give detailed and unprompted information about the sought after dead person. The television audience does not get to see the rest of the evidence that makes it clear that Edward is little more than a carnival showman.

Fraudulent psychics will also notice subtle body language cues, clothing, facial expressions, and other details about a person for guidance in directing their allegedly psychic inquiry. Given how often they are lying, mistaken, or misguided, anyone claiming to have contacted the world of non-physical souls must meet a substantial burden of proof to show that they are not employing trickery or making a mistake. To date, that burden of proof has not been adequately met. The Internet is awash with embarrassing video footage of the popular psychic Sylvia Browne flubbing one attempt after another to psychically solve crimes and divine information from the dead. In one tragic example, she tells some devastated and mourning parents whose daughter died of a disease that had nothing to do with her heart that she was murdered with a gunshot to the chest. Notice the way that both parents and Montel Williams struggle to find some possible interpretation to make Browne’s blind, vague, groping answers fit the case:

Mother: My daughter Michelle was 17 years old. She’ll be gone 5 years the 21^st. Sylvia, I don’t know how she died. Please, if you can, how did she die?

Sylvia Browne: She was shot.

(Parents looks confused and skeptical.)

Montel Williams: Circumstances around her death?

Mother: She just collapsed in her room.

Sylvia: I don’t know, but something looks like it hit the chest.

(Mother shakes head.)

Mother: They found nothing on the autopsy.

Sylvia Browne: I don’t care, but it looks like something hit her in the chest.

Father: They did an autopsy, they did whatever they do. She was a healthy child. And she just fell out in her in room. Just fell like golf clubs fall over.

Sylvia Browne: I know, just went down. I don’t know but there was something that hit her in the chest. I’m telling you.

Father: No.

Mother: Could it be her heart, Sylvia?

Sylvia Browne: I could have been her heart. But you know, something sharp.

Montel Williams: Let me ask the question—did she play sports?

Mother: Yes.

Montel Williams: Could she have been, in this last year alone, there have been two young men come home from baseball practice having been struck in the chest earlier and died, and there was no bruising.

Sylvia Browne: That’s right, yeah. Was she any place before this when she could have been hit?

Mother: (shaking head) Possibly, but I don’t think so.

Sylvia Browne: Because it seems like it was almost like a shot.

Father: Could it have been toxic shock syndrome?

Sylvia Browne: Yes, it could. She had really long lashes, you know when you look at her sideways. A very straight nose, and a full mouth. A beautiful girl.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4296044311996545984&q=sylvia+browne&total=243&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3

By the time they are all done speculating about Browne’s fraudulent reading, they have 4 different hypotheses, none of which seem to fit with the facts: The daughter was shot. She was hit in the chest at sports practice. Something sharp hit her in the chest. Or she had toxic shock syndrome. Then, conveniently, Browne changes the subject to a safe discussion of how beautiful the daughter was.

Browne charges thousands of dollars for her “services.” James Randi has openly contested her as a fraud and repeatedly challenged her to take his $1,000,000 test for psychic or paranormal phenomena. She has refused.

There is No Right To Religious Belief

Part of the confusion in discussion about God concerns “having a right to believe” what you want, or people “being entitled to their opinions,” or “being free to believe,” or having religious freedom. It is clear from many things that believers say (usually it is some form of belief in God that is being defended by this route) in these conversations that they believe that these principles of freedom or entitlement are true, and that give us epistemic license with God matters that is unlike what we have in other arenas. You’d immediately find a new one if your doctor said that you have incurable cancer and only 6 weeks to live, and when you asked why she thinks that, she said, “Well, everyone entitled to believe what they want, it’s a free country after all.”

When people makes these comments about religious matters what they seem to be suggesting is that religious freedom is akin to physical freedom or the right to be unrestricted in your activities. You have a legal right to assemble, a right to free speech, a right to free movement and so on. And in all those cases, that moral and legal right preserves your ability to do and say what you want (with a few notable exceptions.) Those rights say nothing about the content of your free speeches and actions. They assure that a whole class of activities be available to you. So with freedom of religion or the legal right to practice and pursue the religious activities of your choice, you are entitled to the same sort of openness.

But having the legal and moral right to say or do a wide range of things should not be confused with having epistemic justification for them. Being free to do it doesn’t remove epistemic accountability or responsibility. Your entitlement to the opportunity to pursue a wide range of activities doesn’t render all of those activities wise, reasonable, correct, or true. You have a right to free speech, and that means you can stand up in a public forum and shout that 2 + 2 = 5, but obviously that doesn’t make it true. Legally and morally you have a right to fall down on your knees and worship the great Juju at the bottom of the river Limpopo. You can burn your house down as a sign of dedication to him, get yourself tattooed from head to foot with images of him (What does the great Juju look like anyway?), or you can go wait on a mountain top for him to come take you to the next realm of existence. But doing all of that would probably be completely silly. Given what you know about the world, such beliefs and activities are clearly irrational, even though you are entitled to espouse them and act accordingly.

Satisfying epistemic standards of justification is a completely different question than the question of rights. Being reasonable, as we saw previously, is a complicated matter. But at the very least, what will render a belief justified is that you have some evidence or some reasons that you take to be sufficiently indicative of the truth of a claim, and that pass some minimum standard of support that we all recognize as acceptable. People can and do ignore the evidence frequently. But it’s a deep confusion to mistake the fact that one can do it for good reasons that one should. You can go to the corner store and spend your entire retirement savings on jelly beans, but being able to do it doesn’t render the act justified. Consider the difference between a murder defendant who tries to excuse her actions by saying that she killed the victim because she had a gun and he was standing there, and the defendant who shot the victim because he had her cornered and was making it clear that he was going to kill her if nothing stopped him. The latter is a good defense, the former is no reason at all.

Let’s distinguish between a right to religious freedom, a right to assembly, and a right to have the religious belief of your choice. Once we look at it closely, it becomes clear that it doesn’t make any sense to say that you have a right to religious beliefs at all. That sort of right is unintelligible, so no such right exists.

First, the right to religious belief is nowhere in the U.S. Constitution or the United Nation Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The moral and legal rights we all have are of a different category than belief. Rights impose duties on others. When you possess a right, than creates some obligation on the part of others to provide something to you. In the case of negative rights, they amount to being assured of having the option to pursue a range of activities without encumbrance. No one can act to restrict you, and they fulfill their duty to you simply by not messing with you. Positive rights are entitlements to receive something more substantial from others than inaction—they have to get up off the couch and give you something to fulfill their duty to you. So your right to an education imposes a duty of paying taxes or some kind of response on others to make sure that you get what you have coming to you.

When we say you have a right to believe what you want, what could that mean in terms of duties for others? Is it a negative right such that they must not present any obstacle to your believing? We could oppose your believing something either with our words or with our actions. Does your putative right to believe impose a duty on me not to say something to the contrary when you claim you believe that 2+2=5, or that the Earth rests on the back of a giant turtle, or that God created the world 6,000 years ago? No, clearly not. People can and do believe patently false things. But there are no good reasons for why the rest of us cannot say otherwise, try to talk them out of it, or point out that what they believe is patently false and contrary to the evidence. In fact, one might argue that when somebody has a crazy idea, especially if it is going to contribute to harm to the rest of us, the rest of us have an obligation to speak up. Your so-called right to believe doesn’t mean that I have to nod my head and agree with what you say.

Does your having a right to believe impose some duty on the rest of us to restrict our actions? Does it entitle you to not be harassed, physically coerced, kidnapped and brainwashed, tortured, blackmailed, or otherwise physically forced to say and act like you don’t believe it? The answer here is no too. You do have rights that impose duties on the rest of us to refrain from physically encumbering you, but it’s not your right to believe that imposes those duties on others. The reason I shouldn’t kidnap, harass, torture, or physical coerce you is not that your beliefs might be adversely affected, it’s that your body or your physical well-being would be compromised. Those things would cause you pain and suffering. And pain and suffering are bad in and of themselves, not because they have anything to do with your beliefs. It would be immoral and illegal for me to slowly burn a kitten to death, but the reason that would be wrong has nothing to do with kitty’s beliefs. Cat’s don’t have beliefs, nor do they have religious affiliations.

You have a legal and moral right not to have your physical freedoms encumbered, and that rules out those sorts of abuses. Nowhere in the Constitution, or American legal precedents, or in thoughtful theories of morality, rights, and duties will you find an assurance against physical abuses that is based upon a right to believe. Your right to physical freedom is a basic human right to itself and is not built upon something more fundamental like a right to belief.

We can make sense of rights talk about things like freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, a right to vote, a right to legal representation, a right to be treated as an autonomous moral agent. For all of these rights other people can do things that will impair or prevent you from doing something. You might get physically prevented from voting--and we want to make sure that doesn't happen. You might be prevented from assembling--and we want to make sure you are able to do so. You could be deprived of a fair trial, and so on.

But what could anyone do to make you stop believing something? I can talk to you. I can argue with you. I can try to persuade you that what you believe is mistaken. But there’s nothing morally wrong with any of these. You don’t have a right to not have me criticize your reasoning, although you can walk away and not listen if you choose. If I kidnap you, threaten you, or brainwash you to change your beliefs, then clearly I have violated your rights. But it's not your right to believe whatever you want. It's your basic freedoms to be unencumbered. Arguing with you, making a case against something you believe, or showing you evidence that makes it clear that what you believe is mistaken are not things you have a right to protected from. You do not have a right against my claiming that something is false when you think it is true. I do not have a duty to refrain from speaking my mind when you believe something that is unreasonable. (And the same goes if I am the one being unreasonable.) Nor do you have a right to be protected from anything that might change your mind.

Torture, threats, and physical coercion don’t really seem to change people’s beliefs anyway. When the north Vietnamese tortured American POWs and made them confess their conversion to communism on film, what the POWs did to stop the torture was say the words that their torturers wanted to hear. But often they didn’t really believe them, and everyone watching the taped confessions knew that and didn’t hold the confession against him.

In some even more extreme cases, it might be possible to really change someone’s beliefs, but doing so seems to require a much more radical alteration of everything about them. The Simbianese Liberation Army kidnapped millionaire heiress Patty Hearst. After months of abuse, starvation, rape, and torture she was seen helping them rob a bank in San Francisco. A jury, unsympathetic to her defense that she was brainwashed and forced to collaborate, found her guilty of ban robbery and convicted her to 7 years in prison. This was perhaps the closest to successful attempt ever at changing someone’s belief structure, and it still didn’t work. What they did wrong to her should not be characterized primarily in terms of violating her putative right to belief. And her case makes it clear that we probably couldn’t really change your beliefs by force even if we tried the most extreme measures. So another deep flaw in the notion that people have a right to belief what they want is that there is any way to take one’s beliefs away. How can you have a right to something that can’t, even in the most extreme circumstances can’t be taken away? The POW and Hearst examples make it even clearer how thin and off the mark the “I have a right to believe what I want” response is when someone who disagrees presents contrary words to the view. The response is an ill-frame evasion, nothing more. No such right exists or is even intelligible. And the bogus right to believe certainly can’t be a defense for having no good justification for what you believe is true when you live on my block, vote for presidents, have children, elect school board officials, and a host of other actions that have a direct bearing on the lives of the rest of us.

So I really can't make any sense of the claim that you have a right to believe what you choose. Even if people have the right, that doesn't give anyone the right not to be criticized, corrected, argued with, or refuted by the evidence. And it doesn't give you the right to continue to believe something that is patently false when you know better and all the evidence is against you.

Furthermore, it’s not even clear that other people can do anything to stop you from believing what you want to, even if they tried really hard. I have certainly been in lots of prolonged philosophical debates with people where no argument I could muster and no reasons I could give were adequate to dissuade someone of something that I thought was totally unreasonable. Sometimes I can convince someone, and sometimes they convince me. But I didn’t violate their bogus right to believe by convincing them to change their minds, nor did they do some belief injustice to me by trying or succeeding in getting me to change mine. In fact, I consider it a great benefit to have someone straighten me out—they’ve given me something very valuable that they didn’t have to.

So the right to believe that people keep talking about really doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s not a negative right—it imposes no duties of restraint on others that weren’t already covered by your real rights. It’s not a positive right—I don’t have to pay taxes or make some positive contribution to your being able to form beliefs. You’re going to do that, no matter what I do or don’t do. Nothing I could do would make it possible for you to form beliefs whereas you couldn’t before. And nothing I might withhold will make it impossible for you to form beliefs.

What renders a belief reasonable is that a person has good reasons for it. They have done a good job of gathering the evidence, they have considered it carefully, they have reflected on the various ways in which they could be wrong, they have taken alternative views seriously, and they have arrived at an informed view about what the evidence indicates or supports. It doesn’t acquire justification and it is not reasonable simply because you can believe it, or because of some entitlement to religious freedom and tolerance. Our freedoms include lots of things that are positively stupid to do. Having a right to pursue those mistakes doesn’t render them wise, supported by the evidence, or thoughtful.

Another problem with the so-called right to believe is that no one really thinks it’s true. If somebody told you that a principle they live by, one of their fundamental beliefs, is that whites are superior to blacks, or that the Jews ought to be exterminated, you would not accept that they have a right to believe that. We would be scandalized if some claimed that for them it is an article of faith that the Holocaust didn’t happen. If a mother said to the cancer specialist that she has a right to believe that her son doesn’t have leukemia even though all the test results say otherwise we would say she’s unfit. Or imagine if the doctor asserted that he had faith that your child has leukemia. You’d go get another opinion. If a teacher claimed that he has a right to believe that the Earth is flat if he wants to, we’d take our kids out of his class and file a lawsuit. If a car mechanic told you that he just has a feeling that your car needs a $100 repair, but no more specific evidence, you’d find another mechanic. We would invoke more stringent standards of evidence for a mere $100 car repair than we demand from people concerning their most profoundly important religious views.

People can and do believe a lot of things, and many of them are patently and obviously false. Calling it a "belief" and invoking some mysterious right to it doesn't render it true or reasonable or well-supported by the evidence. In fact, you probably think that a person has a duty not to believe something as inflammatory and hurtful as the racial superiority claim or the leukemia diagnosis unless they could show that they have met the highest standards of evidence. So why is it with religious beliefs we have reversed this and the religious believer doesn't have to offer any evidential support whatsoever? We can't simply take it on faith that blacks are inferior, or that women are not as smart as men, or that homosexuals are pedophiles. So why do we give people a free pass when they take it on faith that there is a God and that God told them to do all sorts of things?

Confusing Possible with Probable and Having a Right to Believe

People are often confused about the difference between possible and probable. In the context of questions about the reasonableness of religious belief, or whether or not someone is epistemically entitled to believe in God, many people will defend their belief say that “God exists,” or “God has a plan in which all suffering serves a greater good,” by asserting or arguing that it is possible that God exists, or that God has a plan. That is, they make the inference from the fact that there is a possibility, even a very small one, that X is true, to thinking that it is therefore reasonable to believe that X is true.

The number of things that are possible is infinite. But in general, we do not think that the fact that something is possible gives us good reason for thinking it is true. Part of the confusion is related to people’s views about “having a right to believe what they want,” or “being entitled to their opinions,” or “being free to believe,” or having religious freedom. It is clear from many things that believers say in these conversations that they believe that these principles of freedom or entitlement are true, and that what they mean is that religious freedom is akin to physical freedom or the right to unrestricted in your activities. You have a legal right to assemble, a right to free speech, a right to free movement and so on. And in all those cases, that moral and legal right preserves your ability to do and say anything (with a few notable exceptions.) So with freedom of religion or the legal right to practice and pursue the religious activities of your choice, you are entitled to the same sort of openness.

But having the legal and moral right to say or do a wide range of things should not be confused with having epistemic justification for them. Your entitlement to the opportunity to pursue a wide range of activities doesn’t render all of those activities wise, reasonable, correct, or true. You have a right to free speech, and that means you can stand up in a public forum and shout that 2 + 2 = 5, but obviously that doesn’t make it true. Legally and morally you have a right to fall down on your knees and worship the great JuJu at the bottom of the river Limpopo. You can burn your house down as a sign of dedication to him, get yourself tattooed from head to foot with images of him (What the hell does the great JuJu look like anyway?), or you can go wait on a mountain top for him to come take you to the next realm of existence. But doing all of that would be completely stupid. Given what you know about the world, such beliefs and activities are clearly irrational, even though you are entitled to espouse them and act accordingly.

I’m not even really sure what it means to say that someone has a right to believe some claim. That right is nowhere in the U.S. Constitution or the United Nation Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The rights we all have legally and morally amount to being assured of having the option to pursue a range of activities without encumbrance. No one can act to restrict you, and they fulfill their duty to you simply by not messing with you. These are usually called negative rights. Positive rights are entitlements to some actual action on the parts of others. They have to get up off the couch and give you something to fulfill their duty to you. So your right to an education imposes a duty of paying taxes or some kind of response on others to make sure that you get what you have coming to you.

But when we say you have a right to believe what you want, does that mean that people have an obligation to not say something to the contrary when you claim you believe that 2+2=5, or that the Earth rests on the back of a giant turtle, or that God created the world 6,000 years ago? I guess it’s possible for you to believe that, although I find it hard to believe that anyone really does, even when they say they do. But your so-called right doesn’t mean that I have to nod my head and agree. I can and will point out that you are wrong, and give you my reasons why. Does your so-called right to believe entitle you to not be harassed, physically coerced, kidnapped and brainwashed, tortured, blackmailed, or otherwise physically forced to say and act like you don’t believe it? No. It’s not your alleged right to believe that guarantees that other people can’t do that to you. You have a legal and moral right not to have your physical freedoms encumbered, and that rules out those sorts of abuses. No where in the Constitution, or American legal precedents, or in thoughtful theories of morality, rights, and duties will you find an assurance against physical abuses that is based upon a right to believe. Your right to physical freedom is a basic human right to itself and is not built upon something more fundamental like a right to belief.

Furthermore, it’s even clear that other people can do anything to stop you from believing what you want to, even if they tried really hard. I have certainly been in lots of prolonged philosophical debates with people where no argument I could muster and no reasons I could give were adequate to dissuade someone of something that I thought was totally unreasonable. Sometimes I can convince someone, and sometimes they convince me. But I didn’t violate their bogus right to believe by convincing them to change their minds, nor did they do some belief injustice to me by trying or succeeding in getting me to change mine. In fact, I consider it a great benefit to have someone straighten me out—they’ve given me something very valuable that they didn’t have to.

So the right to believe that people keep talking about really doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s not a negative right—it imposes no duties of restraint on others that weren’t already covered by your real rights. It’s not a positive right—I don’t have to pay taxes or make some positive contribution to your being able to form beliefs. You’re going to do that, no matter what I do or don’t do. Nothing I could do would make it possible for you to form beliefs whereas you couldn’t before. And nothing I might withhold will make it impossible for you to form beliefs.

What renders a belief reasonable is that a person has good reasons for it. They have done a good job of gathering the evidence, they have considered it carefully, they have reflected on the various ways in which they could be wrong, they have taken alternative views seriously, and they have arrived at an informed view about what the evidence indicates or supports. What renders a belief probable is that it is more likely than not to be true. There is a greater than 50% chance that it is correct. It is not probably that you will win the $100 million lottery tomorrow. Although it is possible. And many people will believe unreasonably that they will win, contrary to all the evidence in front of them. They don’t have a right to believe that as far as I can see. Beliefs aren’t the sort of things that fall within in the purview of rights and duties. People just have them. And it’s an unfortunate thing that so many of them are as silly, unreasonable, and unjustified as they are. We should all be doing a lot more to try to prevent that from happening. We should do much more than nod our heads and say, “Well, people are entitled to their opinions,” and walk away, but obviously we shouldn’t resort of any kind of physical coercion to stop it. We should all be prepared to say about something that someone else says is true that we disagree with, “No, that’s mistaken. Here’s why….” And we should all be prepared to listen, think about it, and maybe accept it when someone says it to us. Let’s practice out loud: “That’s bullshit!” “You’re wrong!” “Why would anyone with any sense believe such nonsense?” “But there’s a mountain of evidence against that silliness.”

If you’re still confused about the difference between possible and probable, here’s a long list of things that that are possible—there’s nothing contrary to logic that renders them false like “there are no married bachelors,” but most people do not think they are true or probable.

It is possible that there was no Civil War
It is possible that the Holocaust didn’t happen.
It is possible that the Apostles made it all up.
It is possible that Mohammed made it all up.
It is possible that someone slipped something into Jesus’ drink before he was entombed to make him look dead.
It is possible that Jesus was walking on a sandbar at low tide.
It is possible that wearing a raw steak hat wards off disease.
It is possible that eating three year old rotten duck eggs is good for your health.
It is possible that your positive pregnancy test is a false positive.
It is possible that your negative pregnancy test is a false negative.
It is possible that even though you are taking birth control pills exactly as prescribed everyday you are pregnant.
It is possible that the government is watching everything you do and hiding it very well.
It is possible that there was no Jesus.
It is possible that Christopher Marlowe wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays.
It is possible that having sex with a virgin cures HIV.
It is possible that eating the flesh of your enemies gives you power.
It is possible that birth defects are caused by wickedness from a past life.
It is possible that the Detroit Lions could win the Super bowl.
It is possible that fever is caused by demon possession.
It is possible that the earth rests on the back of a (invisible) turtle.
It is possible that lightening is thrown by an angry Zeus.
It is possible that natural disasters are God's anger with sinners
It is possible that the moon is made of green cheese.
It is possible that the stars are light shining through tiny wholes in a
heavenly orb that surrounds us.
It is possible that the moon landing in 1969 was faked on a secret Hollywood set by NASA.
It is possible that aliens conspired with Oswald to kill JFK.
It is possible that the CIA is responsible for 9-11.
It is possible that there is a secret Christian society -the Knights Templar--that run the world governments.
It is possible that Jesus married Mary and had kids.
It is possible that exorcisms cast out the devil.
It is possible that the juice and crackers actually turn into the body and blood of Jesus in your mouth
It is possible that Poseidon rules an underwater kingdom.
It is possible that wishful thinking can help you win the lottery
It is possible that wearing your lucky underwear will help you win the basketball game
It is possible that Santa exists.
It is possible that there are still dinosaurs.
It is possible that dunking an accused witch underwater will reveal whether or not she is a witch.
It is possible that giving someone the evil eye will actually harm them.
It is possible that failing to pass on a chain letter will bring disaster to you.
It is possible that hexes work.
It is possible that you can concoct a love potion from herbs.
It is possible that crossing yourself will ward off evil spirits.
It is possible that blessing someone who sneezes helps protect their soul.
It is possible that if you concentrate you can levitate.
It is possible that martial arts masters can channel chi.
It is possible that tossing spilt salt over your shoulder improves luck.
It is possible that opening an umbrella indoors or breaking a mirror is bad luck.
It is possible that the bumps on someone's head indicate personality traits.
It is possible that conceiving in the spring produces boy babies.
It is possible that swinging a wedding ring on a string in front of a pregnant woman's stomach will reveal the sex of the baby.
It is possible that bad things happen on Friday the 13th.
It is possible that people do more wild things on a full moon.
It is possible that plants can think and have feelings.