PARAPSYCHOLOGY - A Lawyer Responds to Prof Sagan

7/28/2019 PARAPSYCHOLOGY - A Lawyer Responds to Prof Sagan

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A lawyer responds to Prof. Carl Sagan a Scientist/Astronomer - about theAfterlife and the Paranormal****************************************************

Contents1. Opening statement

2. Rebutting Prof. Carl Sagans arguments:i) Why dont channellers give verifiable information?ii) Channellers are making up the voices and the contents of channelling areall trivial and puerileiii) Its all wish-fulfillmentiv) The Fox sisters were faking it

3. Some Conclusions

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1. OPENING STATEMENT

A number of debunkers and closed minded skeptics mistakenly call upon Dr CarlSagans skeptical writings to justify their own closed minded debunking, anti-afterlife, anti-psi (all paranormal) beliefs.

One of my colleagues even suggested that whilst the debunkers group on the EastCoast regard Dr Carl Sagan as one of the giants of science - of astronomy, theyalso see Dr Carl Sagan, the way Christian Fundamentalists see Jesus.

Dr Carl Sagan was never a debunker. Nor was he closed minded. He himself saidin chapter 12 of his book The Demon Haunted World, If some good evidence forlife after death were announced, Id be eager to examine it . So he said.

Sagan would call himself an open minded skeptic, a critical thinker, a paranormalanalyst. But after reading his writings on the paranormal I state that in hisperception of the paranormal, he is fundamentally wrong.

Dr Carl Sagan was a theoretical scientist. He was not a hands on practicallaboratory scientist. He was not an empiricist using scientific method to measurepsi. He was not someone who was regularly empirically testing the paranormal inthe field or in the lab.

He was NOT expressing an empirical, scientific view, but a personal, subjective,non-empirical view about the paranormal.


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This means Sagans conclusions inevitably are subjective, unsupported by hardcore empirical evidence. And as it is universally accepted, anything subjective canbe subject to complete invalidation.

Sagans book is not about the afterlife. As a matter of fact, the afterlife is ancillary,not fundamental to his argument. Clearly then, he has not shown that hesystematically analyzed the plethora of objective psi evidence. Sagan states thatIf some good evidence for life after death were announced, Id be eager toexamine it but he has not even canvassed, studied and empirically analyzedany objective evidence for the validity of the paranormal and the afterlife thedifferent areas of objective evidence presented by some of the most intelligentscientists, empiricists on this planet earth of the past and of the present. That is anegregious failure on Dr Sagans part.

Sagan, inevitably, had a restricted perception about the evidence for theparanormal and the afterlife (about psi - as a whole). The fact is that Dr CarlSagan is not to be regarded as having objective authority on the paranormal or theafterlife. His above mentioned book is full of descriptive observations andreflections as perceived by a skeptic.

From his writings it is clear that Carl Sagan has not, as some other physicists havedone, identified that afterlife activity is totally compatible with quantum physics orthe sub atomic physics argument about the afterlife - higher level of vibrations thananything on physical earth.

If he did not agree with that, he should have given a rebuttal of the quantumphysics explanation of psi. But he didnt. He failed to do that. He avoided that. Heby-passed the sub atomic physics argument of physicists such as Sir Oliver Lodgeand quantum physics argument of Dr Fred Alan Wolf which would have knockedout or at least would have raised reasonable doubts about Sagans negative, anti-afterlife, anti-paranormal partiality.

Sagan raised a number of issues about mediumship, channeling, spiritualismgenerally. But then in his examples he deals with the mediums themselves, notwith psi . In his examples he imputes that all mediums and all psychics are notgenuine, appear to mislead and especially in the case of channellers, come upwith trivial information.But that is ad hominem - he attacked the particular psychic not rebuttingmediumship not rebutting the actual psychic evidentiary process of channeling.

Further, Dr Sagan repeatedly tends to inductively interpret a singular paranormalactivity such as mediumship and then formulates a general principle aconclusion imputing the afterlife does not exist. That is not correct. That is afundamental flaw in logic. There is not just one area of evidence for psi/afterlife. Myresearch shows that there are at least twenty three different areas of empiricalevidence for the afterlife hitherto unrebutted see www.victorzammit.com
http://www.victorzammit.com/articles/www.victorzammit.comhttp://www.victorzammit.com/articles/www.victorzammit.com


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Because his research was restricted, he inevitably came to restricted conclusionsand failed to discriminate between the genuine, the legitimate and the specious.His conclusions, as we shall see below, were based on critical omissions anddeletions, many assumptions and errors and many unfounded, unsubstantiated

generalizations.

2. Rebutting Dr Carl Sagans arguments:

i) Why dont channellers give verifiable information?

Sagan says: # How is it, I ask myself, that channellers never give usverifiable information otherwise unavailable? Why does Alexander the Greatnever tell us about the exact location of his tomb, Fermat about his lastTheorem, James Wilkes Booth about the Lincoln assassination conspiracy,Herman Goering about the Reichstag fire? Dont Sophocles, Democritus andAristarchus dictate their lost books? Dont they wish future generations tohave access to their masterpieces?

This is an example of Sagan presenting an argument with insufficient informationabout the afterlife. One essentially has to perceive the afterlife holistically musthave the full and extensive available knowledge about afterlife matters.

First, as to verifiable information for years we have been having highly giftedmediums, such as John Edward who was giving verifiable information live everytime he was performing mental mediumship for television. And those few skepticswho vociferated opposition were not able to rebut J Edward. At his best, JohnEdward obtains information verified by the sitters which is so specific with some ofthe sitters, the chance of the information being allegedly guessed is more thanone in a million and at his very best, in one 2 billions something NO debunkerwas ever able to match.

I myself watched some fifty television of John Edward episodes and I also attendedone of those huge meetings of John Edward 20,000 in the meeting and confirmthat unless one claims fraud the results were absolutely brilliant.Probabilities were beyond reasonable doubt consistently favoring John Edward. Ifsome debunker raises the issue of fraud or cold reading forget it. Of thethousands of meetings John Edward had, it would be nave and stupid in theextreme to even imagine John Edward doing deals with different frauds each timeto cheat and lie to the public every time he had an afterlife meeting.

As to Fermat, Booth, Goering et al, Sagan makes a fundamentally erroneousassumption that the human condition is constant on physical earth and in theafterlife. He should not assume that human variables such as thoughts, feelings,sentiments, motivation, higher drives for status, priorities, accomplishments,ambition, justice, rewards and punishment in the afterlife are just like on earth.Nor can Carl Sagan think that to contact someone from the afterlife you can just go


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to any medium giving the impression that it is as easy as picking up the telephoneor sending a fax or emailing anyone you like. It is not like that at all.

That is secular Sagan rationalizing from limited restricted psi information.Those who are fully informed could have told Sagan that there could be

insurmountable problems for an afterlife entity trying to make contact with us onphysical earth. Highly credible sources transmitted highly credible informationabout the conditions of the afterlife.

It may have been that when you were on earth you held extremely strong beliefsthat the afterlife does not exist. You believed that we are just like a candlelight inthe darkness of the universe when the light goes out, thats it! Nothing elseexists. And when you died you saw your physical body dead and you found thatyou have consciousness with all memories intact, a live spirit, a duplicate solidbody of your dead physical body. You may have seen people around your deadphysical body you tried to talk to them but they did not respond great confusionsets in. I cannot be dead you say, look I still have a solid body! We are highlycredibly informed from the other side that there are many people like this stay inthis horrible confusion which sometimes turns into despair for thousands ofyears! Now, if Hermann Goering was one of these people, certainly he would notbe answering any of Carl Sagans questions! The afterlife is constituted of different realms at different levels of vibrations thelowest and darkest, the most horrible to the highest where the light is, wherevibrations are operating at a faster rate and conditions are so great, they arebeyond description. Now a person with low vibrations, say Alexander the Great, willend up in the lowest, darkest realm. If Alexander the Great crossed over withextremely low vibrations because of systematic extreme brutality, Alexander is notlikely to make contact with anyone. There will be problems of locating where he is

and other huge problems for him of darkness and aggression from other lowentities. In such circumstances Alexander is not likely to be in a position to answerquestions put by Carl Sagan through a medium about Sagans intellectualcuriosities. If a person like Sophocles or Dimocritus or Aristarchus when on earth sufferedtoo much pain, depression or any sustained negativity, almost certainly, thatperson would not want to return to the environment where he/she had thosenegative experiences. Under those conditions, the earth would be just like aSkinner Box - an environment where severe punishment is anticipated. It is also most relevant that afterlife entities do not all have equal skills intransmitting information to those still on earth. There are those who are mostproficient and those who have no skills at all in communicating with us on earth.Just because some people were brilliant or notorious or aggressive when on earthdoes not mean they have any special skills in transmitting information to us here.

If these abovementioned known names are in the realm of the light there are noincentives for them to come anywhere near physical earth. Of course, there areexceptions, but the hugely better conditions for the normal, decent folk in therealms of the light are immensely superior to the much darker earth plane. Why


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would they bother to pass on information which they may think is totally irrelevantand immaterial to the real purpose of living on physical earth? It would be different if there was a heart to heart link if there was love. We areinformed from the other side that love is the most powerful force in the universeand physical death can never sever heart to heart love connection. A loved one will

make the effort to draw close and will come into our aura light vibrations beingemitted from the body. But again, there are rules about contacting those still onearth. Sometimes the contact has to be sharp and short for reasons of energytransmission. It just may be that Alexander the Great, Sophocles and the others didmake contact with their own loved ones on earth and with the knowledge they havefrom the other side, they may regard giving out additional knowledge to strangersas vexatious, trivial, totally unnecessary and irrelevant.

Dr Carl Sagan was thinking like Carl Sagan - a secular, intelligent human being onearth, as a materialist layperson in relation to the paranormal and the afterlife. Hewas making assumptions and projecting his own view of physical conditions onearth onto the afterlife spirit dimension the laws of whose operation he had notstudied, not professionally investigated and is on record for not conducting oneempirical psi experiment to test psi for validation.

ii) Sagan: channellers are making up the voices and the messages that comethrough channellers are trivial and puerile banal homilies.Sagan says: # CHANNELLING: Since most people know how to talk, andmany from children or professional actors have a repertoire of voices attheir command the simplest hypothesis is that Ms Knight makes Ramthaspeak all by herself, and that she has no contact with disembodied entitiesfrom the Pleistocene Ice Age. If theres evidence to the contrary, Id love tohear about it.(p191-2 1st ed.).

There are many empirical ways that psychic investigators have proved thatmediums are not simply making up the voices that come through them.In order to understand them we need to distinguish the different kinds ofmediumship which Sagan lumps together under the heading of channelling. Inmental mediumship, as it is usually understood, no spirit occupies the body or theaura of the medium. In trance mediumship, the spirit actually takes over the voice-box of the medium and because of this the voice will sound different to themediums own voice. And in direct voice mediumship the spirit speaks through avoice box constructed of ectoplasm which is independent of the mediums voiceboxalthough still having elements of it.Here Sagan claims that Ms Knight is not contacting any spirit. No one is using her

voice box to project a voice-sound different from her natural voice. Implied in this ofcourse, is that Ms Knight is a making a fraudulent claim. Otherwise Sagan asks,why could not the entity in Ms Knight give us information as to how conditions werethen some 35,000 years ago when the spirit was on earth? Carl asks some 22questions he would ask if only Ms Knights entity would answer them. But hisconclusion about what comes out of Ms Knights is that the alleged spirit offers lotsof banal homilies.


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Why did not Sagan select the classic work of, for example, Arthur Findlays On theEdge of the Etheric for something substantive about the afterlife transmissions tous humans on planet earth. Or noted American attorney Edward C Randallsclassic, The French Revelation The Extraordinary Eyewitness Account of theGifted medium Emily S French highly important transmissions? Or Silver Birchs

classics, including, Light From Silver Birch about the purpose of life on earth some nine books - and what we are to expect in the afterlife. For other profoundtransmissions which challenge our values, beliefs, philosophy and structures. Thenfor other profound transmissions Sagan should have read carefully Here andHereafter by Anthony Borgia series how a relatively high ranking Catholic prieston crossing over insisted on channelling information back to us because what hepreached on earth was wrong. We have NEVER ever come across rebuttals ofthese particularly excellent transmissions from the afterlife. All we get is they cantbe true because there is no afterlife. That is inevitably unacceptable. Rebuttingmeans you take every afterlife evidence and empirically explain why the evidenceought not to be admissible as valid evidence.

Why has not Sagan rebut these classic works? Why pick on a comic books forliterature and not on a Shakespeare? Why does Sagan deliberately ignore theestablished international classics and deal with trivia? Why did Sagan pick on JZKnight whom the paranormalists themselves do not even suggest as an example ofqualitative spirit transmission and not deal with brilliant trance mediums such asJohn Sloan, Maurice Barbanell and automatic writer mediumship of AnthonyBorgia ?

A professional psi empiricist would tackle the issue of mediumship empirically - notas Sagan did, wanting us to take him seriously on the paranormal by justexpressing a descriptive armchair philosophical personal, non-empirical, non-scientific, not an objective view about trance mediumshipHow would Ms Knights trance-mediumship be tested empirically? At least fiveways:

a) I would expect Sagan to do a voice test on the medium using a voice-machineanalysis unit (see Voice Machine Analysis) before the channelling and afterchannelling and to the graph voices. There are other electronic ways to measurethe vibrations of voices and do at least four to six extended trials. No actor wouldbe able to beat electronic voice box under sustained conditions. Definitive variancebetween Ms Knights own particular vibrations and the external entity vibrationswould be easily detected electronically see below.b) do an EEG brain scan to test if there would be a repeatable significant differencein Ms Kinght before and during trance. Harvard trained Professor Charles HHapgood has reported work in this area with gifted medium Elwood Babbitt seeVOICES OF SPIRIT. He found that whenever a spirit entered a medium, the EEGand other variables became significantly different to the mediums own physicaland verbal variables.c) do a before/after testing on all other biological variables, e.g. blood pressure.(see b above),


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d) whenever possible, do a comparison analysis of expression. Different styles oflanguage use can be empirically measured by experts,e) investigate and test the content for correlation with transmissions made throughother highly credible trance mediums such as John Sloan, Maurice Barbanell andEdgar Cayce who transmitted messages, among other things, dealing with the

urgent problems of to-days world not just banal platitudes .More baloney detection applied to Sagan himself:

In his channelling section, Carl Sagan again falls into the trap listed in his ownbaloney detection kit as observational selection when he picks on the lesserconvincing and ignores the spectacular results.

Further baloney detected is Sagans 'argument from authority.' Imputed in hiswriting is that he tries to give himself authority as a scientist to speak aboutdefinitive (psychic) matters that are not part of his professional repartee. He has noobjective authority.

Begging the question. He says on what is being stated in channeling: People payattention to these puerile marvels mainly because they promise something like old-time religion, but especially life after death, even life eternal. Here Sagan makes adenigrating statement and tries to give the answer for it. That is technically aninadmissible statement.

iii) Its all wish-fulfillment.Sagan states, how readily we are led, how easy it is to fool the publicwhen people are lonely and starved for something to believe in.

Here is another example of Sagans specious reasoning applied to Sagan himself:submitting an answer to his created negative predicament. Here Sagan is referringto the time when Zwinge Hamilton Randi, professionally trained trickster, organizedthe greatest hoax in Australia in 1986.

Unlike Sagan who treats the general public as gullible, I state that that there is asignificant percentage of the public which is astute and not gullible or easily fooledor easily mislead. But there is a very tiny minority which tries to fleece the public,those who are NOT psychic, not gifted mediums, have no psychic skills but claimthey are and who are vultures, illegally exploiting some of the gullible members ofthe public.

About Sagan citing the Randi affair: many people know Randi as one of thegreatest conmen in history where he conceded that he cheated, lied, distorted,misled, misguided, used fraudulent conduct and according to Sagan used heinoustrickery - - in Sydney Australia to fool the innocent public. He accepted that. Thereis no record that Sagan misquoted him about the Sydney incident. There is norecord that Randi ever objected to Sagans work. What is on record is that Randisupported Carl Sagan until his death.


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Other objective observers saw the Randi hoax in Sydney in a different way to howSagans interpretation of the event: Randis hoax was uncovered and the eventbecame his greatest humiliation and embarrassment of his life. He went homelicking his wounds.

The Hoax: the Carlos affair or how Randis fraud on the public began.

Carl Sagan reports in his book, among other things, that Randi suggested to theexecutives of Australian Sixty Minutes that they generate a hoax from scratch,using someone with no training in magic or public speaking, and no experience inthe pulpit. Randi picks on his young tenant Jose Luis Alvarez who wentthrough intensive training, including mock TV appearances and press conferences.He didnt have to think up the answers, though, because, to fool the public, he hada nearly invisible radio receiver in his ear, through which Randi prompted.Emissaries from Sixty Minutes checked Alvarez performance.Further, a press kit full of lies, deliberately concocted to mislead, misinform andto fool the public, allegedly drafted by Randi, (fraudulently) stated that this Alvarezwas some kind of a New Age guru which is taken over by some ancient soulwhen he channels.

One show according to Sagan was in Sydney at the Opera House, on Sunday 21stFebruary 1988. The Hall would have been half full. Most of those who would haveattended would have been from the skeptics group. Only a small number ofinnocently curious would want to see for themselves if this guru Alvarez wasgenuine. Why? Because Australians, unlike Americans, are very skeptical.

Perhaps its their convict ancestors, perhaps it is the land itself that makes themthat way or perhaps because Australia is a very young country with no conditionedentrenched culture, history or tradition. Relative to and compared with other peoplein the world, Australians are usually very skeptical.

Those in the New Age who heard this alleged guru immediately dismissed him asfake, a fraud and a bull-artist. Why? Because the voice did NOT change, as whathappens to genuine trance mediums. In his delivery when under the fake trance,he sloppily shouted and at times screamed but in his own natural voice. It wasvery embarrassing. The professional mediums thought something was terriblywrong promoting his imposter.

In another interview with some of Australias toughest journalists, most of whomwere convinced they were dealing with a fake, this Alvarez could not stand thetough, aggressive questions put to him. When at one stage, it was put to him thatanyone can reduce his heart beat by putting a rubber ball under his armpit andsqueeze, Alvarez response was to run away from the interview in greatembarrassment. His coaching by Zwinge Randi to fool tough journalists miserablyfailed.

Comment: professionals are puzzled by this episode because:


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No commercial mainstream television station, especially Sixty Minutes willparticipate in fraudulent conduct. It is against all strict ethics and expressly statedregulations of television, press and radio media in Australia. Knowing andunderstanding the tough journarlists in Sixty Minutes, these journalistsinevitably

would say, its absolute rubbish that this station will be involved in fraudagainst the public. Yet we have Carl Sagan claiming that Zwinge Randi and amajor mainstream television station co-operated to fool the public, to knowinglyfraudulently report to the public that a fake guru was genuine. Ought not this alone raise reasonable grounds that Carl Sagan was fooled aboutthis one not having basic discerning powers and reasonable discrimination toidentify that which is real to that which is pure anti-paranormal propaganda dishedto him by someone who conceded he is a professional trickster and a fraud? Manypeople would expect more from Carl Sagan. Pity, a theoretical scientist beingfooled because what was related to him was consistent with his own negative anti-paranormal prejudice. He swallowed it hook, line and sinker! Further, it will be a criminal offence to knowingly pursue fraudulent conduct. On acivil level Sixty Minutes would be liable for unspecified damages for causingstress, injury, anxiety, severe embarrassment, humiliation and even nervous shock- with some people.

So much for Carl Sagan telling everyone not to accept anecdotal evidence - anddeluding himself he is being astute, non-prejudicial, implying he is objective andempirical. It is very sad really. It just shows how easy it was to fool materialisticeasily led scientist Carl Sagan who deep down wanted to accept informationconsistent with his own untested subjective partiality notwithstanding hismisconstrued adage, 'Ill investigate all evidence.'

Conclusion on this item: Sagan was not acting as an informed scientist - he wasnot empirical, not objective and certainly not scientific - not astute, not able todetect baloney.

iv) The Fox Sisters Were Faking It.Sagan# and the Fox sisters. The third issue I want to deal with is when thisCarl Sagan makes an untrue statement about that little girl who had beena conspirator in a nineteenth century flim-flam spirit rapping, in whichghosts answered questions by loud thumping grew up and confessed itwas an imposture. (p 230)

Carl Sagan is referring to the incident of how modern spirit contact started in 1848.He deletes and omits anything not consistent with his skeptical partiality that isunfair, unreasonable and unbecoming of someone with a science background.Using the fine art of baloney detection kit I find that he:

a) ignores critical information which contradicts his negative beliefs,b) misreports the facts,c) makes too many self-serving assumptions,


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The facts, very briefly, of this significant incident which are accepted are: it was notjust one little girl. These were the major players, two sisters in Hydesville, NewYork in 1848, Margaret and Kate, then aged 14 and 11 years known as the FoxSisters. In March that year began rapping noises in the house into which they just

moved. Everything was done to identify the disturbing noise but one had any ideawhere the rappings were coming from.

The contemporaneous reports show that the noises terrified the children anddestabilized the family. Then Kate challenged the unseen power to rap the numberof times she clapped hands. Every time she clapped, the correct number of rapsfollowed, and the correct raps were given of the number of fingers or hands heldup. So the unseen force could both hear and see. Questions were asked to theunseen entity and the correct answers were given. From then onwards a system ofcommunicating followed and intelligent answers were given. The critical messagefrom the unseen entity was that he was a tenant there and another person by thename of Bell murdered him. That was in 1848. And although the police tried to findthe body immediately after the report, the body was not until 1902- 54 years laterwhen a skeleton in the same residence was found buried deep in the basement,thus corroborating what Margaret and Kate Fox told the police.

Evidence not in dispute is that both Margaret and Kate became very poor, destituteand suffered severe depressive alcoholism- in fact both drank themselves to deathin 1892 and Kate a year later. Reports state between 1848 until they died theycontined as mediums. This provoked the rationalists who opposed them bitterly naturally enough.

In 1888 Margaret, to the surprise of many claiming that the strange rappings hadcome about by cracking her toes. One very well known report states that a

journalist offered Margaret $1,500 for an exclusive if she recanted.

One would say that under those irresistably alluring conditions, Margaret, Kate oranyone else in the world who suffered from extreme alcoholism and poverty wouldsay anything for money!

Just two and a half years later, Margaret recanted her confession. Not only wastheir alcoholism out of control, they had a grudge, perhaps legitimately, against herother elder sister Leah who married into money. It is reported that Leah also wasable to have their children taken away from Margaret and Kate and took much ofthe money they made from their work.

Now for Sagan to state that the little girl who was then conspirator and that sheconfessed would be most fundamentally misrepresenting what actually took place.

Sagan ignored other most relevant information which would have raised more thanjust reasonable doubt to his interpretation of the Fox sisters incident. By leavingout important contradictory information Sagan in fact is trying to mislead, misguide


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and misinform the reader. Sagan tries very hard to make the reader accept hisargument that there was absolutely nothing significant to follow in this incident.That is most unfair certainly not an empirical argument at all.

Moreover, Sagan refers to just one little girl in relation to the incident - not even

mentioning her name and her sisters name - known in American and world historyas the famous Fox Sisters. This was because, I submit that the reasonable levelheaded intelligent reader would go to the Net to get the full story of the Fox Sistersand how spirit contact became popular in the United States and gets the full storyof what really happened in Hydesville and what happened to Margaret Fox.

Further, by misreporting the facts, Sagan too was trying to denigrate and destroyany credibility the Fox Sisters had.

I challenge skeptics and others to duplicate the noise just by cracking the joint oftheir big toes I know I'd find that no one on earth can do that! Nor did Saganquestion the toe cracking explanation something which, for informed people isnot a physical possibility- especially when they wore socks and shoes in New York.

Instead Sagan blindly accepts the explanation because Sagan was not empiricalenough, not objective and scientific enough to question everything until it can beindependently substantiated. He emotionally wanted to accept the misinformationbecause that would be consistent with his own anti-paranormal negative partiality.

3. Some Conclusions

Dr Carl Sagan, the astronomer, scientist, fails in his critical thinking, in rebuttingthe paranormal/afterlife in many important respects as shown above. He did notshow he had the means to construct a reasoned argument against the validity ofthe empirical evidence for the paranormal. He built the straw-man argument concocting something fragile himself so that he could rebut it- to delude himself, todelude the skeptics, to delude the debunkers. He ignored the qualitative andincluded the vexatious. He illegitimately tried to use his status as a scientist torebut the empirical evidence of the paranormal he does not understand, he did notresearch or he had ignored. He preached about critical thinking and violated everyrule in the book.

Balanced against Sagans denigration of the public describing them as being over-gullible, I submit that a greater proportion of the people are searching for somemeaning in life because of what they themselves experienced traditional beliefsand science cannot explain. They have legitimately argued that their history andtradition, the values and beliefs have failed them.

That is not being gullible, that is not being dogmatically indiscriminatelysuperstitious - that is not being easily led. That is being intelligent.That is an attempt to reconcile their role in the universe with the given life on earthin a particular environment.


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To impute that only Carl Sagan has the answers about what to accept or not toaccept or to state only scientists or the skeptics or the debunkers know what isgoing on- is to make a most erroneous statement fundamentally inconsistent withwhat we know about materialistic scientists, what we know about closed minded

skeptics and debunkers. Many see these as losers, defeatists and over-sycophantic to those who hand out funding.

Accordingly, whereas Dr Carl Sagan might have been a good astronomer, he failsmiserably in empirically showing why the objective, empirical evidence forparanormal and the afterlife not be accepted.Notwithstanding anything herein before stated, here is my justification for notlabelling Dr Carl Sagan as a closed minded skeptic (thanks to Nobel Laureate Prof.B Josephson and Dr Dean Radin for their drawing my attention to this quote:)"At the time of writing there are three claims in the ESP field which, in my opinion,deserve serious study: (1) that by thought alone humans can (barely) affectrandom number generators in computers; (2) that people under mild sensorydeprivation can receive thoughts or images projected at them; and (3) that youngchildren sometimes report the details of a previous life, which upon checking turnout to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other waythan reincarnation.

From: Sagan, C. (1995). The Demon Haunted World. New York, Random House,page 205A LAWYER PRESENTS THE CASE FOR THE AFTRLIFEwww.victorzammit.comNovember 05
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PARAPSYCHOLOGY - A Lawyer Responds to Prof Sagan

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