Bravo Mr. Hart. I too have had a few such instances where it would have been easy to dismiss them as merely startling coincidences (and in my prodigal years did so), but on serious reflection it became inescapable that there had to be something beyond coincidence involved in these experiences. Personally, I believe this is how God (and the saints), and --in some instances-- darker forces beyond, most commonly communicate with us. I too, cannot understand or explain these experiences, but I most definitely believe them viscerally and in my heart.

Thanks to Dr. hart for another beautiful essay. Consciousness is, certainly a mystery. But there's no doubt, that, atleast in this life, it's inextricably interconnected to the brain.


Without a cerebral cortex, for the content of consciousness, and the reticular formation, in the "waking up'', or "stimulating'' of the cerebral cortex, so that it can do its job, consciousness would not exist. now, that's not to say that there's a soul, that "attaches'' itself, for lack of a better word, to the brain, indeed, I believe that the soul does exist, although, it's not composed of parts.


The late neurobiologist, John Eccles, concluded that, the "mind'' or "soul'', attaches itself to the left cerebral hemesphere. Most neuroscientists disagree, but his ideas are interesting. One of his last books, "How the self controls its brain'', gave an eccentric, but intruiging account, of, how, in his mind, "phycons'' communicate, using quantum energy, with the submicroscopic dendrites of neurons. The "phycons'', presumably, being without material components, and part of the soul, so to speak (since it's immaterial).


Speaking of which, there are some, who argue, that the utter strangeness of the quantum world, make it an apt candidate for explaining consciousness.


One thing we must be careful of, of course, is the temptation of superstition. Humans seem to have a great propensity for thinking that events "mean'' something greater than the sum of their parts. I could suggest, respectfully, that Dr. Hart may have been reminded of his former girlfriend, by some smell, or sight, that triggered a limbic lobe set of neuronal firings, and it's merely a sad conincidence that she died on that day. Otherwise, what could be the "message'' that she was trying to convey? Not of her death, since he found out about it, in the usual way.


People seem to have all sorts of "feelings'' that they interpret supertitiously. I cannot count how many times, I, have had "feelings'' that turned out to be nothing. And, sometimes, we think that events, that coincided have some "meaning'', and yet they do not have any intrinsic meaning to them. and yet, we behave as if they do, and we end up creating a "self fulfilling prophecy.


There are cases where people feel the "presence'' of a recently deceased loved one. But many neuroscientists believe that, the strees, triggers firings in the neurons, that constitute the parietal lobe, creating, in effect an "hullucination'' of the loved one.


I think that we must acknowledge the profound mystery of consciousness, and yet, resist the all too human tendency to allow superstition to invade our consciousness.

Marilynne Robinson's recent ABSENCE OF MIND is a substantial contribution to discussion of this question.

There is a great deal we don't know. And yet, we try very hard to explain the pieces of ignorance that surprise us. As in religion, where atheists agree with fundamentalists that the Bible is completely literal, we have atheists agreeing with occultists that the unknown is known and predictable. Perhaps there's a pattern there.

I prefer Mr. Hart's approach. Wonder and innocence are not limited to children nor should they be.

@Gene (and others..)

here is a review by D.B.Hart:

http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/features/in-self-defense


thanks Mr.Hart!

When I was 19, my friend Ellen, who was 18, died. I wasn't with her that night, but all through the evening I had a growing sense that something was wrong. When I finally picked up the phone to call her family home, her brother was already on the line to tell me they had taken her to the emergency room -- he had just called me, but I picked up the phone before the first ring. Just a coincidence? Yeah, maybe.

Very good reminder of the wonder of being human... I have had dreams that, in some sense, later came true. They have been infrequent, but real, if not scientifically provable, chiefly because I didn't attach any real importance to them at the time.

For awhile they bothered me. Why or how could I know of something before it occurred? What was the point of knowing if you didn't know that you knew except in retrospect.

I have come to believe that those dreamland premonitions are a kind gift from God to me. They are not for me to act upon but rather represent His reassurance to me that He is in control of this universe and intimately aware of the details of every occurance - both what is and what will be. He is so aware that He can even reach our subconcious minds with warnings of what will be. And because He knows both me and what will be, I can trust Him with my future.

@ Bret Lythgoe

You seem not to have noticed the rest of the story. Hart speaks of what "seemed in retrospect a premonition" and then talks about another man's dream; these two together, at the moment of their friend's death, makes easy talk of "coincidence" a bit silly. It also makes your use of the word "superstition" totally irrelevant to the essay.

***Consciousness has not been explained until one can provide a
comprehensive picture of how the mind not only “fits” the world, but
also “intends” and “constitutes” it as an intelligible phenomenon. And
that is not the straightforward mechanical problem it is often
mistaken for***

Well said. It is not a mechanical problem at all, at all, and that’s
why consciousness cannot be “explained” as if it were one phenomenal
thing in the world along side others. The nature of our acquaintance
with the reality of consciousness is quite other than the nature of
our acquaintance with the reality of the intended world of things,
emotions or objects of thought. And there is the evidence for
transcendence.

Mr. Voegelin writes:


On the one hand, we speak of consciousness as a something located in
human beings in their bodily existence. In relation to this concretely
embodied consciousness, reality assumes the position of an object
intended. Moreover, by its position as an object intended by a
consciousness that is bodily located, reality itself acquires a
metaphorical touch of external thingness. We use this metaphor in such
phrases as "being conscious of something," "remembering or imagining
something," "thinking about something," "studying or exploring
something." I shall, therefore, call this structure of consciousness
its intentionality, and the corresponding structure of reality its
thingness.

On the other hand, we know the bodily located consciousness to be
also real; and this concretely located consciousness does not belong
to another genus of reality, but is part of the same reality that has
moved, in its relation to man's consciousness, into the position of a
thing-reality. In this second sense, then, reality is not an object of
consciousness but the something in which consciousness occurs as an
event of participation between partners in the community of being.

In the complex experience, presently in process of articulation,
reality moves from the position of an intended object to that of a
subject, while the consciousness of the human subject intending
objects moves to the position of a predicative event in the subject
"reality" as it becomes luminous for its truth. Consciousness, thus,
has the structural aspect not only of intentionality but also of
luminosity. Moreover, when consciousness is experienced as an event of
participatory illumination in the reality that comprehends the
partners to the event, it has to be located, not in one of the
partners, but in the comprehending reality; consciousness has a
structural dimension by which it belongs, not to man in his bodily
existence, but to the reality in which man, the other partners to the
community of being, and the participatory relations among them occur.
If the spatial metaphor be still permitted, the luminosity of
consciousness is located somewhere "between" human consciousness in
bodily existence and reality intended in its mode of thingness.

Contemporary philosophical discourse has no conventionally accepted
language for the structures just analyzed. Hence, to denote the
between-status of consciousness I shall use the Greek work metaxy,
developed by Plato as the technical term in his analysis of the
structure. To denote the reality that comprehends the partners in
being, i.e., God and the world, man and society, no technical term has
been developed, as far as I know, by anybody. However, I notice that
philosophers, when they run into this structure incidentally in their
exploration of other subject matters, have a habit of referring to it
by a neutral "it." The It referred to is the mysterious "it" that also
occurs in everyday language in such phrases as "it rains." I shall
call it therefore the It-reality, as distinguished from the
thing-reality.

As a matter of curiosity, has anybody reading this ever had a vivid dream or apparition of anybody telling them that they had just died or soon would only to discover that the person in question lived on for quite some time? Or do you know someone to whom this happened? I'm not talking about hunches or gut feelings or moods, but visionary experience.

Or have you or anyone you know had an apparition of a dead person who told you something about the real world that no one including you knew to be the case, only to discover that the report was true? Or false?

I would like to believe these experiences, or some of them, are real, but of course I can't prove it. I can't disprove it either, and to dismiss them as superstition is to rush to judgment.

Best,

Richard

@Richard
I believe the whole point is summed up in your last paragraph. We don't know.

One must be very careful about concluding that just because something isn't explained by science now it can never be explained. I call this "Haldane's Error", after the famed physician J.S. Haldane, who thought back in the early 1900's that he had proven that no 'mechanistic theory of heredity' was even possible:

On the mechanistic theory this [cell] nucleus must carry within its substance a mechanism which by reaction with the environment not only produces the millions of complex and delicately balanced mechanisms which constitute the adult organism, but provides for their orderly arrangement into tissues and organs, and for their orderly development in a certain perfectly specific manner.

The mind recoils from such a stupendous conception; but let us follow the argument further... This nuclear structure or mechanism must, according to the mechanistic theory, have been formed within a very short period by the union of two others - a male and a female one. How two such mechanisms could combine to form one is entirely unintelligible, and the observed details of the process tend only to make it, if possible, more unintelligible. When we trace each nuclear mechanism backwards we find ourselves obliged to admit that it has been formed by division from a pre-existing nuclear mechanism, and this from pre-existing nuclear mechanisms through millions of cell-generations. We are thus forced to the admission that the germ-plasm is not only a structure or mechanism of inconceivable complexity, but that this structure is capable of dividing itself to an absolutely indefinite extent and yet retaining its original structure...

There is no need to push the analysis further. The mechanistic theory of heredity is not merely unproven, it is impossible. It involves such absurdities that no intelligent person who has thoroughly realised its meaning and implications can continue to hold it.

Reading this passage, it's striking how clearly he recognized the functional requirements that a mechanism for inheritance would have to meet. But he could imagine no physical arrangement that could satisfy those conditions, and concluded that therefore such a mechanism was impossible. Indeed, he insisted that a 'spiritual' explanation was the only remaining option. However, we've since discovered DNA.

What if Dr. Haldane had decided to "push the analysis further"? Might we have discovered the structure of DNA decades earlier?

This is a fascinating topic. I grew up in the Christian faith, but spend decades roaming the fringes of skepticism/agnosticism. Going beyond just vivid dreams and strange premonitions, I had a series of unexplainable incidents that occurred with the illnesses and deaths of my parents a few years ago that are still puzzling. An example of one of those events: In early December 2006, I went to a local restaurant for dinner (my husband was out of town on business). Minding my own business while reading a book, I paid no attention to other patrons at nearby tables. Suddenly, a woman was standing next to my booth. She had been sitting in the large booth across the way with her family. She seemed nervous and smiled tentatively. I did not know this person. She hesitated and then said that God told her in a very strong vision to come over and tell me that He loves me very much and would give me strength to deal with with the difficulties that were coming. She said she felt very uncomfortable telling me this (a total stranger) but was compelled. I was stunned and quite touched and thanked her. I told my husband, who thought it was quite eerie. Two weeks later (to the day), my 79-year-old Mother unexpectedly had a massive stroke and died two weeks later without any recovery, leaving my 92-year-old Father grief-stricken and alone, except for me and my husband. The woman's comments came back to me many times during the crisis and again 18 months later when my Father went through his own illness and death. I had other strange "coincidences" and events during that process (and some vivid dreams, which may portend the future), which I will not go into here, but needless to say, I am now back with the faith (although I still suffer from some skepticism) and my husband moved from disbelief to very strong belief through the process. Consciousness is indeed mysterious.

Sincerely, Barb

I once had a strong inescapable feeling that toast was burning in the next room. When I went into the kitchen, lo, the toaster was stuck in the "on" position. Sixth sense... or sense of smell? You decide.



btw: Bret Lythgoe

No, obviously not of her death, but of her regret.

Once while we were on vacations away from the country, my father suddenly told us that someone close to him had just died, that he had felt something rush through him that felt distinctively like someone saying goodbye. It turned out not to be the person he assumed, but that same afternoon the mother of his best friend, whom he had known since childhood and had a close relationship with, had just died unexpectedly.

I heartily receive what Joe Carter is attempting to communicate in this essay. And because I receive it, it is causing me to experience a bit of friction with my Catholic faith. Perhaps some of the other correspondents here can help me. CCC 2116 reads as follows:

***2116 All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to "unveil" the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.***

Now, I do not agree with this passage in the Catechism. Not because I am in the habit of consulting astrologers and psychics (I'm not), but because I am unable to square it with the overall spirit of Christianity. For instance, not only is the bible -- both testaments -- absolutely replete with "omens and lots," but it would seem to me that, since Christians are required to believe in the absolute sovereignty of God and His providence, that all the hairs of our head are numbered and that sparrows cannot fall to the ground without Him knowing about it, it follows that God also knows about our unsettling experiences. He knows about the circumstances that gave rise to them, He knows how we will interpret them, and He has a plan to use this to His glory. It would seem that Christians have a duty to investigate any uncanny events or coincidences we happen to experience, and to try and discover God's will therein. In fact, no serious Christian could possibly regard a strange coincidence as anything other than God tapping on the window of his heart. And how in the world does any of this disclose "a[n ostensibly sinful] desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings..." ?

This is certainly not the first time that the recent catachism's claim to be "a sure norm for teaching the faith" has fallen a little flat with me. I have no desire to put myself at enmity with the Church, but I just can't feel my way into agreement with this one.

Dr. Hart - you touch on it in your article, the idea of the classical model of the soul as understood by medieval philosophy (and before?) would have no difficulty classifying your phenomenon. This "Science of the Soul" is nearly lost to us today, and, in fact, it's almost embarrassing to talk about in some circles, despite its functional accuracy in describing its subject.

It is hard to speak technically and remember that the material world is subject to the immaterial. The soul comes first, so to speak, and has fewer laws and strictures to which it must submit.

This is the world of the saints, where an Irish monk in a field has a leisurely conversation with another monk paddling in the Irish Sea; or where Padre Pio performs inter-continental bi-location to smack one of his penitents who is entertaining temptation. Superstition? Maybe you just haven't been smacked yet.

We will all experience pure consciousness someday, and we can get closer to it before then through contemplation. It used to just be known as the Christian life.

My own experience: A vivid dream in the middle of the night in which my brother was saying "we'll have to call him in the morning-- we might as well call him now". I woke up & waited for the phone to ring; answered on the first ring, heard from my brother of our father's fatal accident.

@Matt Beck,

I don't think that's what the Catechism is saying there. You're right, there are plenty of "omens and lots", not to mention dreams, etc... in the Bible.

If I had a dream that my best friend had just died, it seems it would behoove me to call her and make sure she's okay. I hardly think God (or the Church) would condemn that, even if she is fine and I'm left to conclude that it was bad shrimp at dinner or whatever.

I think the point the Catechism is trying to get at here is that we are not to take the initiative in attempting to "tell the future", most especially through means of the occult. Fooling around with Ouija boards is not the same thing as suddenly having an unshakeable feeling that something is very, very wrong and then calling home to check up on things.

Mr Ingles,

This is what Mr Voegelin says:

A plant is a plant. You see it. You don't see its physical-chemical processes, and nothing about the plant changes if you know that physical-chemical processes are going on inside. How these processes will result in what you experience immediately as a plant (a rose or an oak tree), you don't know anyway. So if you know these substructures in the lower levels of the ontic hierarchy (beyond the plant which is organism) and go into the physical, chemical, molecular and atomic structures, ever farther down, the greater becomes the miracle how all that thing is a plant. Nothing is explained. If you try to explain it in terms of some mechanism, you have committed the fallacy of reduction.
If you deform your experience by trying to explain what you experience by the things which you don't experience but which you know only by science, you get a perverted imagination of reality—if you see a rose as a physical or atomic process.

These following studies and videos confirm this 'superior quality' of existence for our souls/minds:

The Mental Universe - Richard Conn Henry - Professor of Physics John Hopkins University
Excerpt: The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things.,,, Physicists shy away from the truth because the truth is so alien to everyday physics. A common way to evade the mental universe is to invoke "decoherence" - the notion that "the physical environment" is sufficient to create reality, independent of the human mind. Yet the idea that any irreversible act of amplification is necessary to collapse the wave function is known to be wrong: in "Renninger-type" experiments, the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The universe is entirely mental,,,, The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy.
http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf

Miracle Of Mind-Brain Recovery Following Hemispherectomies - Dr. Ben Carson - video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3994585/

Removing Half of Brain Improves Young Epileptics' Lives:
Excerpt: "We are awed by the apparent retention of memory and by the retention of the child's personality and sense of humor,'' Dr. Eileen P. G. Vining; In further comment from the neuro-surgeons in the John Hopkins study: "Despite removal of one hemisphere, the intellect of all but one of the children seems either unchanged or improved. Intellect was only affected in the one child who had remained in a coma, vigil-like state, attributable to peri-operative complications."
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/19/science/removing-half-of-brain-improves-young-epileptics-lives.html

The Day I Died - Part 4 of 6 - The Extremely 'Monitored' Near Death Experience of Pam Reynolds - video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4045560

Blind Woman Can See During Near Death Experience (NDE) - Pim von Lommel - video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3994599/

Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper (1997) conducted a study of 31 blind people, many of who reported vision during their Near Death Experiences (NDEs). 21 of these people had had an NDE while the remaining 10 had had an out-of-body experience (OBE), but no NDE. It was found that in the NDE sample, about half had been blind from birth. (of note: This 'anomaly' is also found for deaf people who can hear sound during their Near Death Experiences(NDEs).)
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_1_64/ai_65076875/

Quantum Consciousness - Time Flies Backwards? - Stuart Hameroff MD
Excerpt: Dean Radin and Dick Bierman have performed a number of experiments of emotional response in human subjects. The subjects view a computer screen on which appear (at randomly varying intervals) a series of images, some of which are emotionally neutral, and some of which are highly emotional (violent, sexual....). In Radin and Bierman's early studies, skin conductance of a finger was used to measure physiological response They found that subjects responded strongly to emotional images compared to neutral images, and that the emotional response occurred between a fraction of a second to several seconds BEFORE the image appeared! Recently Professor Bierman (University of Amsterdam) repeated these experiments with subjects in an fMRI brain imager and found emotional responses in brain activity up to 4 seconds before the stimuli. Moreover he looked at raw data from other laboratories and found similar emotional responses before stimuli appeared.
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/TimeFlies.html

In The Wonder Of Being Human: Our Brain and Our Mind, Eccles and Robinson discussed the research of three groups of scientists (Robert Porter and Cobie Brinkman, Nils Lassen and Per Roland, and Hans Kornhuber and Luder Deeke), all of whom produced startling and undeniable evidence that a "mental intention" preceded an actual neuronal firing - thereby establishing that the mind is not the same thing as the brain, but is a separate entity altogether.
http://books.google.com/books?id=J9pON9yB8HkC&pg=PT28&lpg=PT28

“As I remarked earlier, this may present an “insuperable” difficulty for some scientists of materialists bent, but the fact remains, and is demonstrated by research, that non-material mind acts on material brain.” Eccles

"Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder."
Heinrich Heine - in the year 1834

A Reply to Shermer Medical Evidence for NDEs (Near Death Experiences) – Pim van Lommel
Excerpt: For decades, extensive research has been done to localize memories (information) inside the brain, so far without success.,,,,Nobel prize winner W. Penfield could sometimes induce flashes of recollection of the past (never a complete life review), experiences of light, sound or music, and rarely a kind of out-of-body experience. These experiences did not produce any transformation. After many years of research he finally reached the conclusion that it is not possible to localize memories (information) inside the brain.
http://www.nderf.org/vonlommel_skeptic_response.htm

Scientific Evidence That Mind Effects Matter - Random Number Generators - video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4198007

Genesis 2:7
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

As well it should be noted that, counter-intuitive to materialistic thought (and to every kid who has ever taken a math exam), a computer does not consume energy during computation but will only consume energy when information is erased from it. This counter-intuitive fact is formally known as Landauer's Principle. i.e. Erasing information is a thermodynamically irreversible process that increases the entropy of a system. i.e Only irreversible operations consume energy. Reversible computation does not use up energy. Unfortunately the computer will eventually run out of information storage space and must begin to 'irreversibly' erase the information it has previously gathered (Bennett: 1982) and thus a computer must eventually use energy. i.e. A 'material' computer must eventually obey the second law of thermodynamics for its computation.

"Those devices can yield only approximations to a structure (of information) that has a deep and "computer independent" existence of its own." - Roger Penrose - The Emperor's New Mind - Pg 147

Landauer's principle
Of Note: "any logically irreversible manipulation of information, such as the erasure of a bit or the merging of two computation paths, must be accompanied by a corresponding entropy increase ,,, Specifically, each bit of lost information will lead to the release of an (specific) amount (at least kT ln 2) of heat.,,, Landauer’s Principle has also been used as the foundation for a new theory of dark energy, proposed by Gough (2008). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle

"Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day."
Norbert Weiner - MIT Mathematician - Father of Cybernetics

This ability of a computer to 'compute answers' without ever hypothetically consuming energy, until information is erased, is very suggestive that the answers/truth already exist in reality, and in fact, when taken to its logical conclusion, is very suggestive to the postulation of John 1:1 that 'Logos' is ultimately the foundation of our 'material' reality in the first place.

John 1:1-3
In the beginning, the Word existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.

(of note: 'Word' in Greek is 'Logos', and is the root word from which we get our word 'Logic')

This strange anomaly between lack of energy consumption and the computation of information seems to hold for the human mind as well.

Appraising the brain's energy budget:
Excerpt: In the average adult human, the brain represents about 2% of the body weight. Remarkably, despite its relatively small size, the brain accounts for about 20% of the oxygen and, hence, calories consumed by the body. This high rate of metabolism is remarkably constant despite widely varying mental and motoric activity. The metabolic activity of the brain is remarkably constant over time.
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/16/10237.full

THE EFFECT OF MENTAL ARITHMETIC ON CEREBRAL CIRCULATION AND METABOLISM
Excerpt: Although Lennox considered the performance of mental arithmetic as "mental work", it is not immediately apparent what the nature of that work in the physical sense might be if, indeed, there be any. If no work or energy transformation is involved in the process of thought, then it is not surprising that cerebral oxygen consumption is unaltered during mental arithmetic.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC438861/pdf/jcinvest00624-0127.pdf

The preceding experiments are very unexpected to materialists since materialists hold that 'mind' is merely a 'emergent property' of the physical processes of the material brain.

in further note: Considering computers can't pass this following test for creating new information,,,

"... no operation performed by a computer can create new information."
-- Douglas G. Robertson, "Algorithmic Information Theory, Free Will and the Turing Test," Complexity, Vol.3, #3 Jan/Feb 1999, pp. 25-34.
http://www.evoinfo.org/

,,Whereas humans can fairly easily pass the test for creating new information,,
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/atheisms-not-so-hidden-assumptions/#comment-357770

,,,thus these findings strongly imply that we humans have a 'higher informational component' to our being,, i.e. these findings offer another line of corroborating evidence which is very suggestive to the idea that humans have a mind which is transcendent of the physical brain and which is part of a 'unique soul from God'. Moreover this unique mind that we humans have seems to be capable of a special and intimate communion with God that is unavailable to other animals, i.e. we are capable of communicating information with "The Word" as described John 1:1.

Though the authors of the 'Evolution of the Genus Homo' paper appear to be thoroughly mystified by the fossil record, they never seem to give up their blind faith in evolution despite the disparity they see first hand in the fossil record. In spite of their philosophical bias, I have to hand it to them for being fairly honest with the evidence though. I especially like how the authors draw out this following 'what it means to be human' distinction in their paper:

"although Homo neanderthalensis had a large brain, it left no unequivocal evidence of the symbolic consciousness that makes our species unique." -- "Unusual though Homo sapiens may be morphologically, it is undoubtedly our remarkable cognitive qualities that most strikingly demarcate us from all other extant species. They are certainly what give us our strong subjective sense of being qualitatively different. And they are all ultimately traceable to our symbolic capacity. Human beings alone, it seems, mentally dissect the world into a multitude of discrete symbols, and combine and recombine those symbols in their minds to produce hypotheses of alternative possibilities. When exactly Homo sapiens acquired this unusual ability is the subject of debate."


The authors of the paper try to find some evolutionary/materialistic reason for the extremely unique 'information capacity' of humans, but of course they never find a coherent reason. Indeed why should we ever consider a process, which is utterly incapable of ever generating any complex functional information at even the most foundational levels of molecular biology, to suddenly, magically, have the ability to generate our brain which can readily understand and generate functional information? A brain which has been repeatedly referred to as 'the Most Complex Structure in the Universe'? The authors never seem to consider the 'spiritual angle' for why we would have such a unique capacity for such abundant information processing. This following short video, and verses, are very clear as to what the implications of this evidence means to us and for us:

Modus Tollens - It Is Impossible For Evolution To Be True - T.G. Peeler - video
http://www.metacafe.com/w/5047482

Genesis 3:8
And they (Adam and Eve) heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day...

John 1:1-1
In the beginning, the Word existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.

These following studies, though of materialistic bent, offer strong support that Humans are extremely unique in this 'advanced information' capacity:

Darwin’s mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds:
Excerpt: There is a profound functional discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. We argue that this discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language or culture can explain. We hypothesize that the cognitive discontinuity between human and nonhuman animals is largely due to the degree to which human and nonhuman minds are able to approximate the higher-order, systematic, relational capabilities of a physical symbol system (i.e. we are able to understand information). http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Penn-01062006/Referees/Penn-01062006_bbs-preprint.htm

Origin of the Mind: Marc Hauser
Excerpt: "Researchers have found some of the building blocks of human cognition in other species. But these building blocks make up only the cement footprint of the skyscraper that is the human mind",,,
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/ic-all-the-way-down-the-grand-human-evolutionary-discontinuity-and-probabilistic-resources/#comment-341275

Matt, Beck: "God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds" (Hebrews 1:1-2). There was a time in which God might have spoken to mankind in various manners, but the Incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of God is the final Word of God to the human race. It is wrong to pursue other avenues of divine revelation; the very term "occult" suggests that "the secret things belong to the Lord our God" (Deuteronomy 29:29). It is a demonic disposition that seeks divine knowledge through forbidden avenues, no matter how we might "feel" about the matter.

It is often a criticism of scientists of various sorts (and an apt one at that), that they tend to mistake correlation for causation. I wonder if Mr. Lythgoe's entry doesn't push too far in that direction?

James Kindt: My point was not to definitively dismiss, Dr. Hart's interpretation of what happened. I don't know what the explanation is, for his experience. He thinks that, it might have been a "premonition'' of her death. Maybe it was. But what would be the purpose, of such a premonition? After all, it was not to inform him, of her death, because he found out about it later. I could see its purpose, if he would have been deprived of the oppurtunity, to be informed of her death later, in the usual way. But he wasn't. so it seems to be, superfluous. I have the greatest respect, for Dr. Hart, and his integrity, and intelligence, but I just don't understand its point. But I'm definitely not saying that it didn't happen. I don't know. As far as the friend's dream, we have to take the friend's word for it. Maybe, the friend is lying, for whatever purpose, or not remembering the dream accurately. After all, we tend to forget dreams quckly, after we wake up, and it's possible that, the stress, and horror of her death, clouded his interpretation and/or memory of his dream. Or, it's possible, that it was a result of something supernatural. As I stated, I believe that the soul exists. But we don't add any credibility, to this belief, by not being at least somewhat skeptical of "near death'' occurrences. My conclusion, is to remain agnostic as to what caused these events, but open, to supernatural explanations.


Paul: Your comments, seem a little ambiguous. But I gather, that what you mean by the mistake, of mixing correlation with causation, refers to neuroscience. I think that, it's fair to say, that, the empirical evidence, is beyond rational dispute, that the brain, is the cause or at least one of the causes of consciousness. Now, neuroscience can only come to conclusions, regarding what's empirically verifiable, and any cause or causes, outside this sphere, cannot be commented on by neuroscientists, qua, neuroscience.

Mr. Hart,

Thank you for a very thought provoking article.

I had the honor of ministering to my mother in her final days. During one of her last days of "orthodox" consciousness she requested that I read to her Psalm 23. I read the Psalm and we talked briefly and soon after she slipped into some state of semi-consciousness. The next day as I sat with her, she stirred from her semi-conscious state and asked me why she was sitting at a table, remembering our reading of Psalm 23: "you prepare a table before me" I reminded of that piece of passage and that she was at the table that Jesus had prepared for her. I then asked her if there where others at the table and she answered yes but she couldn't make out their faces. I told her that she should go take her seat and then she slipped back into unconsciousness never to regain lucidity.

I am convinced that I had the opportunity to witness a glimpse into the eternal through my mother and that I will be forever blessed.

This experience has also caused me to ponder from time to time, just what is consciousness. Is what we define as a normative/orthodox state of consciousness in a way a hindrance to us seeing the spirtual/eternal world? Also when the veneer of normative consciousness is peeled away, in this instance I am thinking of a curtain be pulled back, are we freed up to see the spiritual world?

Once again, a great article and thank you for taking time to compose it.

And, what about NDE's? (near death experiences) Especially the reports of patients dying on the table or at motor vehicle accident sites and then returning to describe, with particular knowledge, of things they never possibly could have been able to see otherwise. These are happening frequently enough so that nurses and health care professionals are needing to be advised as to how best to react to these unique occurrences. I'm with Hart here.

Matt Beck:

I'm in full agreement here with other commenters that you are misinterpreting the Catechism, which is warning against seeking occult means of trying to force secrets out of the future (that's what divination means, right? and it's *divination* that that passage is forbbiding). As that passage read, the problem is that such practices "all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers." Note that it does not say that such "hidden powers" don't exist. Sure, it says that such methods are such practices are "falsely supposed to "unveil" the future," and it is right in saying that because no one can "unveil" the future, because if they did they would be seeing as God sees. This is not possible unless by the grace of God, and though "hidden powers" may grant certain people visions of possible things to come, that does not amount to a true unveiling, as the knowledge of the future obtained by occult means is bound to leave veiled much that may later ensnare a soul. Moreover, the passage is right in pointing out that the large majority of these people are complete charlatans. And, again, the few that are not are still bound to lead a person astray, because even with such hints we can't *unveil* what is to come, and we may be led to despair or complacency, where hope and faithful perseverance are what is needful. In any case, my point is simply that the Catechism in this passage is pointing out the danger of *divination*; it is not saying that such all premonitions or private revelations are false. Not by any means.

"But what would be the purpose, of such a premonition?" asks Bret Lythgoe?

"Purpose"?

What is the purpose of noticing a sunset? Yet we all do it now and then.

Bret,

I think that your clarifying post is very judicious. Of course I would, since it is close to mine. But I personally would not conlude that such an experience was superfluous, if real. For one, we are to understand that we are all spiritually connected, especially with those with whom we have shared our lives. For another, such events can function as signs of the compassion and foreknowledge of Providence. If we see through a glass darkly, sometimes, through the grace of God, we do see.

Best,

Richard

Mr Lythgoe,

Why do you assume that such an event, if real, had the purpose of conveying any information at all? It might just have been contact. The whole issue was whether consciousness often seems to know things that common sense would tell us it shouldn't.

Anyway, Dr. Hart used to be my professor, so I sent him an email to ask him about his friend's trustworthiness. He sent me the original version of the column above, from which the first paragraph was removed for reasons of space, and said I could post the missing lines. So-

"Tomorrow it will be twenty-five years since the death of a friend of mine whom I shall here call Angela. I withhold her real name not to protect her memory or to spare the feelings of her family—she was an only child and both her parents have passed away—but because the story I want to relate involves another friend who has given me leave to tell it on the condition that I do not compromise his privacy. I shall call him Jacob, and the only preliminary remarks I need to make about him are that he is a person of absolutely impeccable honesty, and that he would never invent a tale about something so painful."

Science has no explanations?

Four or so rational possibilities, matching what we know of Psychological phenomena; especially, Denial, and tricks of the mind:

1) Someone HAD called Jacob right after the accident. But his mind had gone into Denial/suppression; he only began to face the knowledge later, in a dream. Which seemed like a "premonition" to him when he got the next call 3 or so days later.

2) Jacob had a fight with his ex just before the accident, and wished out loud she would have an accident; which she did, in a self-fulfilling prophesy. Later his mind was in Denial. Or he simply did not want to tell the truth about it. Feeling guilty.

3) This story is fictional?

4) J's ex girl had called him just before ... she was to attempt suicide by "accident"; telling him she was about to "leave." He had forgotten this, or suppressed it; but remembered it later as a dream. The dream was vivid ... because it was based on a real conversation.

5) This is one of tens of thousands of daydreams we have in everyday life; one of the very few that coincidentally seemed to come partially true. As one in thousands, atching about the usual ratio of daydream-to-reality correspondences. (While note, even here, the correspondence was not perfect; a "journey" vs. Death).

No scientific explanations?

My mother mentioned at breakfast one morning that she had dreamed of my father's Aunt Susan the night before. In the dream, Aunt Susan said that it was time for her to go and she wanted to say goodbye. There were eight of us around the table and we talked a bit about this. At work later that day, my father got a telegram from home telling him that Aunt Susan had died the night before.

For Barb S: when I was a teenager, I had a similar experience to yours, except I was the one carrying a message to another (a teacher at my school). The message made little sense to me, but it was specific and personal---the teacher said she understood exactly what it meant, and that she needed to hear it. "Compelled" is an accurate word for the way I felt about delivering the message to her. It was a strange experience, one that I have pondered for 35 years. Just last month I looked up the teacher's current address in order to write to her about it. The timing of this article is fortuitous.

Joe,

Absolutely none of those is a scientific explanation. They are all wild suppositions, and most of them are clearly ruled out by the story. ANyway I have dutifully relayed your remarks to Dr. Hart and I can communicate the following:

1. It was Dr. Hart who heard three days later. Jacob was informed the morning after the event, and only hours after his dream. The denial explanation is ridiculous, as there was no time delay.
2. They had had no fight, were fast friends, but hadn't been in contact for a few months. They never argued about anything.
3. The story is true.
4. Angela was a sane and perfectly happy person who had never spoken of suicide to anyone.
5. If you say so, though there is no reason apart from metaphysical prejudice to suppose as much.

IMO, In terms of probability, the simultaneity of their experiences and her death being purely coincidence is, probably far smaller than the probability of, oh, fairies carrying messages between their guardian angels. But, of course, one must cling to one's superstitions.

If you make enough naturalistic assumptions, you can explain this and most such events away. But to do that axiomatically smacks a bit too much to me of what Karl Popper used to call "promissory materialism." Yes, it is quite possible that this striking story is grounded in ordinary psychological processes, but it is not certain. I can understand those who dismiss it without a thought, but I am not quite ready to join their number. Call me agnostic on the subject.

One of the reasons I keep the door open on the possibility of some events of this sort reflecting a cause outside our present scientific paradigms is that I am a Theist and I believe in the existence and survival of the soul and a Providence that can make contact between souls possible when, perhaps, natural possibilities would preclude it. But that is really of interest to no one but myself. I would never advance this as a reason for others to take the truth value of some of these stories seriously.

Another, more intellectual reason is that if these stories are completely and always explicable by naturalistic assumptions, then we are dealing merely with mundane reality and little or nothing is added to the sum of human knowledge. But if the contrary is the case, then the implications are revolutionary. Our paradigm of the world and the mind/body relationship will be shattered at a stroke, and we will have to reconstruct our understanding of the order of things in fascinating and unforeseeable ways. THAT interests me.

So I listen to what others tell me of their experience and "store it all up in my heart." It may be that we are after all nothing more than thinking meat bound for the compost heap. But we may be something more, and it pleases me to keep my intellectual options open. I impose on no one, conclude nothing, but just observe and contemplate. I am more than content to see what, if anything, develops in these matters on the frontiers of knowledge in my little time left under the sun.

Best,

Richard

Once I attended the funeral of an elderly cousin and glanced across the graveyard to see the tombstone of a person who died fifty years earlier with the exact name of a friend of mine--who later died that day. I wonder at this 'uncanny' happening. Perhaps God is emphasizing the importance of death for each individual person. My friend who died, while unknown to history, was beloved by God and important to him--as Augustine wrote, "God loves us as if there were only one of us to love."

Thanks for the article. Your comments were interesting. Having said that.... how would you like to live with the "gift" of precognition? To suddenly "see" events in future time and know that after you have "seen" the event, there is nothing you can do to alter the outcome?
How about having a casual conversation about an on going event and you make a statement " I think this is a likey outcome.... Then it happens almost exactly as you discribed the "possibility?
Thanks for your time....

As David said, these experiences are far more common than we might suppose. The reason for this is that if we penetrate deeply enough into our own nature and our own consciousness, we come to realize that all things are connected in mysterious and invisible ways. Time and space are not the barriers they superficially seem to be.

I had the experience of a precognitive dream while I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Ivory Coast in West Africa. One night, I dreamed that I was riding my little Honda 70 through the streets of Abidjan. I saw that there had been an accident, with many people standing around the scene. I stopped my motorcyle, got off and looked briefly. I got back on my motorcyle, but looked down and suddenly saw that my left arm was covered with blood. I woke up abruptly then and concluded that the dream was just subconscious anxiety about riding a motorcyle in the wild African traffic. Two nights later, I was riding my motorcyle across Pont Charles de Gaulle in Abidjan when I skidded and fell. I had a severe compound, commuted fracture to my left wrist, and my arm was bleeding where the ulna had penetrated the skin. This just seems too specific to dismiss as coincidence.

I have also had dreams in which I believe I made real contact with someone I was very close to. Not because the person was dying, but simply because we shared a connection on a very deep level. I recently had a dream in which a lovely Irish girl, whom I had dated while I was a student in Paris decades ago, appeared to me. She seemed as absolutely delighted by the encounter as I did. We greeted each other ecstactically and joined hands, smiling. Then, she seemed to dissolve in a swirl of colored light, and I awoke. I lay in bed, glowing with the same feeling that had suffused our relationship so long ago: pure, innocent joy. Of course, there was no accompanying, real-world event to lend veracity to the dream...only my conviction that it was a genuine encounter.

As Saint Augustine said, "Men travel across the oceans and climb the mountains in search of adventure and conquest, all the while competely unaware of the unfathomable depths that lie within them." (Or something like that...I didn't bother to look up the exact quote.)

Could one of those mysteries be how our hearts/conscieneces can become 'hardened ' , no longer capable of recognising our own humanness and that of the other , our close connectedness and oneness , that what hurts and demeans the other can hurt oneself too !

Today , The Church celebrates the Feast of Queenship of our Mother ; she has been much maligned for her words at Fatima - " only I can save you " . Yet , when we look at cases of persons like Ted Bundy who grew up in a good family but went under influence of pornography , lost awareness of the dignity of persons and became a serial killer - the terrifying end result of what is called total possession or hardening of hearts !

To take such cultures and persons back into the womb of the goodness of a Mother , to take in with compassion her sufferings and thus to regain the capacity for compassion for others and thus repentance - would not The Father have foreseen need for such when He sent her into our midst !

And to look at The God given dignity - that we have a Mother, who is Queen of heaven and earth !

A Queen who can keep persons/cultures from being in the roles of the enemy influenced Ahab- Jezebel couple , who could callously take away life and vineyards of the 'neighbor' ..a neighbor, as close as in one's own womb ..
A Queen , who can release persons from the dominion of the 'control spirit ' by helping them to have trusting hearts of a child who can see the goodness of a Father ..and thus keep them from ways of wickedness ..greed ..

May our Mother become truly Queen of our hearts and lives ... of our consciences ..to take away idols of hatreds and hurt memories , to help us to look at each other with the awarness - that we , as persons , whether born or unborn , has a Queen for a Mother and all the potentials that it entails ! :)

Mr. Lythgoe,

Everything depends upon what consciousness is--a matter which neuroscience is by its very nature incapable of deciding. For if consciousness isn't essentially a material phenomenon or if it is significantly immaterial (even if not entirely so) then neuroscience can essentially do no more than point to correlations. It's a non sequitur of extraordinary proportions to suggest that that the correlation of certain events in the brain just is an adequate or sufficient causal explanation of human action or perception. Neuroscience has yet to explain, for instance, how a purely material brain can comprehend abstract and immaterial properties--such as greenness or intelligibility or the infinite set of prime numbers starting with two. And even if for every act of type x you had some neuron firing pattern of type y, that would be insufficient to infer that you had fully explained x's obtaining. To do so is to fail to distinguish between primary and secondary causes or necessary and sufficient ones. At any rate, how could scientists, who study only the material world, say anything at all about the interaction of the immaterial with the material. Looks to me like neuroscientists aren't careful enough about avoiding the fallacy of begging the question if they think they've got human behavior and consciousness explained.

Some random answers to the above:

Those who believe firmly and overwhelmingly in such things, are fated to have their lives incapacitated to some degree. By belief in effect, in magic. And neglect of practical reason. As the Catechism warned.

These things are statisticalloy likely. In an average day, we might think about 100 people; in the course of a lifetime, a tends of thousands people, a million times. Out of those one million tries, at least one or two are going to look somewhat like premonitions. Nothing impossible about those odds; not at all.

For that matter, are our witnesses of "impeccable," of absolutely certain character? I've never met any such person; the perfect person or witness is a Victorian myth. And the Bible verifies this: "All have sinned." Even Dr. Hart's articles fudge on facts (For example, his suppression of the the primary document of Ososius, in the Hypatia article).

Do the participants themselves sincerely believe their stories? Perhaps not. But Even honest memories, can be "false memories." The mind plays tricks on us: "Denial" is a unversally accepted concept in Psychology. The mind cannot face some things - and suppresses/represses them. Expressing them, only indirectly. In symbolic form, like dreams. Classic Freudian analysis; the most defensible part.

The mind does strange things; watch out. If we dream something we have the power to make true? Then watch out; your unconscious may make it happen; as what is called a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Should you go ahead believing superstitiously? Consider: belief in such things, makes you likely to slip, to make what you say, happe. And so the person you are most likely to damage, is yourself. Belief you are going to have an accident, can cause one.

Were there no conflicts, no angry and destructive thoughts, mindgames, between the old lovers? Who knows the mindset of old lovers; normally in fact there are strange conflicts, that the conscious mind does not face. Who knows what strange motivations these old lover felt: do you know for sure, what you pretend to know? That they were on perfect terms? Even the "ideal couple" sometimes finds odd statements, coming out of their mouths.

If such things can be explained by new scientific/naturalistic explanations, then often much IS added to our knowledge: new scientific knoweldge, after all.

Whereas if we explain them in miraculous/magical terms? Then we have remained back in the old magical/animistic mindset, of our technologically backward, starving ancestors. Who often crippled themselves, with unrealistic belief in sorcerers, necromancers, witches, augurs especially; and their magic and enchantments.

Those who believe in such things, the Bible tells us, are not Christians.

It is surprising to find that so many core First Things readers, are not Christians; though they usually ( hypocritially?) presented themselves as such.

Joe,

I am not sure that any commenter above has claimed to "believe firmly and overwhelmingly in such things". Certainly Dr. Hart has not.

You mention "such things" a number of times. You assure us that the Bible tells us that those who believe in "such things" are not Christians, and accuse First Things readers of masquerading as Christians on the grounds that they are prepared to entertain as possible notions that you assume must be false (I say assume, because you have presented no evidence that the notions are false, just speculations that could be). I would be interested in having you give examples of such passages. I am not aware of any such. As I read the Bible, one who relies on Christ for his reconciliation with God is a Christian. Holding erroneous beliefs that do not compromise that reliance is no disqualification.

Finally, you offered earlier five "scientific" explanations for Dr. Hart's story. As was pointed out already, none of them is scientific. These are naturalistic explanations. You are confusing science with naturalism - they are not the same thing. To be sure, science assumes naturalism, but as a methodological limitation, not as an ontological fact. That limitation was first placed, and for many centuries observed, by Christians who did not think for a minute that mechanistic nature was all there was to reality.

Joe,

Setting aside the pretense to scientific explanation in your posts as well as the latent supposition that material explanations are a priori the correct explanations of any given phenomenon, suppose just for a moment (do what you must to suspend you disposition against the supernatural) that such a thing really happened. Well, in that case, there would be a degree of damage to the one who refused to believe them. And that damage would be not only a damage to the volitional faculty but to the epistemic one as well.

Thanks, Richard. You're right, we do see through a glass darkly. I simply don't know what to make of these experiences, but they certainly should be treated with respect.


Linda L. : you're right, these experiences may just be about contact. We just don't know enough, about how the world works, to either dismiss these experiences, or wholeheartedly accept them.

Paul: I'm not so sure that I agree with you, that neuroscience is incapable of determining what consciousness is. That all depends, on whether all aspects of consciousness are accessible, to empirical investigation. If so, then, in principle, consciousness could be explained, fully by scientific inquiry.


That the brain, particularly the cerebral cortex, is inextricably involved in consciousness, is fact, as established as any other. Now, we simply don't know, from a scientific standpoint, whether a brain sufficient, for consciousness, but there's no doubt, that it's necessary.


I don't think that I would agree with you, that seeing colors, or having other sensations, is not a material process. It can be pinpointed, in the nerves, the spinal cord, the occipital cortex (for vision), and the somatosensory cortex (for bodily sensations) the activity that occurs, when one experiences these things.


Now, you may be on firmer ground, with respect to contemplating mathematical truths, for example. They're of a universal sort. But even here, the brain, particularly the frontal lobes, are brightly illuminated during mathematical calculations.


I, as i've said before, do not doubt the existence of the soul. It exists, in my view. But we must be careful, not to dismiss the findings of neuroscience. It's my belief, which may change depending on subsequent evidence emerging, that the brain, is the source of our human traits, in this life, and when a person dies, the soul, is released.

I learned as a child that God is everywhere, that He is one and that in Him we live and breath and have our being. I also learned that we are seperated from God and as a consequence from one another and further that we are blinded to the unity of His creation. Through his Grace our blindness is only partial, we see as through a glass, darkly. Maybe the answer to these phenomena is that occasionally we glimpse the underlying unity, a unity not bound by time and space. God gives us many hints to the nature and authur of our existence, none bind us to accept them as such but force us to struggle with the inadequices of our vision with a little humble pie thrown in for posterity. Maybe they tell us that we are not discrete entities full and complete within our selves and that these events point to a trickeling between, a dipping into the unity of all things, a foretaste of that for which we yearn.

Mr. Lythgoe,

I'm sure you'll think my reply too hasty. But their are syllabi and lectures to write, articles to revise, blogs to compose, etc. The Fall semester commences; and so I fear I must compose in a hurry. Needless to say, I think your riposte begs the question. For neuroscience can only fully explain consciousness if consciousness is a fully material phenomenon. But neuroscience investigates only material realities. And looking only at the physical one cannot decide whether or not a given phenomenon is entirely a physical or material reality. Your argument begs the question in the same way that arguments for materialism do--we experience only the material and so the material must be all that is. But such an inference is both a non sequitur and begs the question. I submit that your argument is formally identical to the problematic argument for materialism.

By the way, I think you might find Stephen Barr's book on modern physics and ancient faith of interest. As well, Rob Koons has recently co-edited a volume (The Waning of Materialism) that merits careful study here. Barr's book is with Notre Dame and Rob's with Oxford.

Paul, often, the criticism is made, that neuroscience has only been able to provide "correlations'' between human traits, such as consciousness, and particular brain areas, such as the frontal lobes. And, that correlation, does not necessarily mean causation. This is a good point. But at least the correlation has been made, which is more than we can say for any other explanation of consciousness. That is, what correlation has been made between, say, consciousness, and some spiritual entity? We have not, scientifically, shown any "spiritual activity'', that corresponds with consciousness, or any other activity. So, although it's a legitimate point, that, just because it's been shown, that there's neural activity, that's associated with consciousness, it does not necessarily mean that the neural activity "caused'' the consciousness, at least the correlation has been made, which is not the case scientifically, with any activity of the soul. so it's a little ironic, that this criticism is being made, with such force, since, a fortiori, it can be made, with even greater force, with respect to the soul.


Again, though, this is with respect to science. Certainly, the scientific method, is not the only way to ascertain what exists. I do not adhere to the outdated "verification principle'' advocated by A.J. Ayers,and other radical empiricist thinkers. I believe that the soul exists, but I think that one comes to know this, not through science, or in particular, neuroscience. As I've stated before, one can only investigate those realities, scientifically, that are accessible, empirically, and deductively.

Mr. Beck, divination and the other activities that you explain are forbidden by the Church involve active seeking. The events reported here were not sought. The difference seems to me to be the same as receiving a surprise gift versus shopping on one's own behalf.

Mr. Lythgoe,

Science as science cannot of course say anything about spiritual entities or agents. Nor can it say anything about the soul. These things are beyond the capacity of science and the training of scientists. These belong to philosophy and theology, which, as physicist Steven Barr notes, deal with things higher and greater than science as such.

I had a flash of a dream where my head hit the windshield and I saw it crack. I drove very carefully for a couple of weeks and forgot about it and slid on some ice, hit a telephone pole and hit my head on the windshield.
Maybe time is somewhat fluidic and notable events can ripple backward and be perceived ahead of time.
Somewhat related: My wife had a very gentle dog, a golden retriever mix, and a guy came over to fix the oil burner at a house she was watching for relatives, and the dog started barking like crazy at him. It was very unusual behavior for her. Animals seem to have an awareness that we don't.

Paul, you're right, I've never claimed otherwise. Certainly, an absolute distinction , must be made between legitimate empirical science, such as neuroscience, that, I think we all support, and the unwarranted extrapolation, made, by some atheistic materialists, that matter is all that exists. This goes beyond what science is capable of doing.

The book, "Ancient Faith, Modern Science, by Dr. Stephen Barr, looks very good, I bought a copy, but I haven't read it yet, but thumbing through it, it looks very good. Thanks, Paul, for the suggestion.

Joe,

Dr. Hart did not suppress the Orosius quote in his Hypatia piece. That's a ridiculouys claim. He correctly pointed out that it does not say what Gibbon implies it says. As Orosius is one of the three Christian historians who figure in my dissertation, I know his work well, and there is not a shred of evidence there for the fables of Alexandrian Christians burning a library.

This may seem off point here, but it does suggest that it is you who should learn a thing or two about scientific method.

It is often a criticism of scientists of various sorts (and an apt one at that), that they tend to mistake correlation for causation. I wonder if Mr. Lythgoe's entry doesn't push too far in that direction? A Queen who can keep persons/cultures from being in the roles of the enemy influenced Ahab- Jezebel couple , who could callously take away life and vineyards of the 'neighbor' ..a neighbor, as close as in one's own womb ..

"Joe says: Science has no explanations? ..." Joe is "whistling by the graveyard." I sympathize with Joe because I used to not believe stories like this. I became a believer of the possible veracity of such stories after I experienced several of my own. We sceptics find it difficult to believe anything unless we have personally experienced it, and then we have to experience it a few times before we're willing to admit that what seemed to have happened really DID happen. Doubting Thomas lives and he is us!