🚀 go-pugleaf

m (mbackues@micron.net) wrote:
: Lawrence R. Mead wrote:
: > 
: > m (mbackues@micron.net) wrote:
: > : chkcorea wrote:
: > [much crap deleted]
: > 
: > For you two crazy advocates of alien abduction, where are the purported
: > conscious abductions and in what medical/scientific journal were they
: > reported in?
: > 
: > I didn't think so.
: > 
: 
: The only scientific publication I read is _Science_, and no, they don't
: run reports of alien abductions.  I also don't think that abductions
: have anything to do with intelligent non-human beings called 'aliens',
: though I'm not going to try to explain my perspective on this now.  I do
: however have an observation to make about two assumptions contained in
: your question.  The assumptions are:
: 
: 1) Advocates of alien abduction are crazy.  
: 2) Reports of abductions lack credibility unless they appear in
: scientific or medical journals.
: 
: Clearly, no respectable scientific or medical journal would run papers
: written by people who are considered crazy, so it is not possible for
: reports of abductions to appear in such publications.  The absence of
: such reports in such publications is then used to support the assertion
: that advocates of alien abductions are crazy.  
: 
: A person could call this circular reasoning, though I wouldn't use the
: word reasoning this way.

Your reasoning, not mine. Yes, unless an abduction is sufficiently well
documented and recorded, perhaps with physical evidence, in a peer
reviewed journal, then the evidence is substandard and not acceptable.
If you are worried about dreams or illusions, then there are standards
of evidence for these as well.

: I do concur that many or even most people who are interested in or have
: been involved with 'abduction' experiences are missing a few screws, so
: to speak.  Just as the people who want to get stoned are generally the
: ones who get stoned, the people who are fascinated by or fearful of
: 'paranormal' phenomena are generally the ones who get tangled up in it. 
: The fascination itself involves a kind of insanity.  The mental
: incompetence of many of those who have such experiences does not
: demonstrate that the experience is not 'real' however.  This would be
[snip]
I used the word "crazies" in the meaning of "use of bad judgement" not
*clinically* crazy. 


-- 

Lawrence R. Mead (lrmead@whale.st.usm.edu) 
ESCHEW OBFUSCATION ! ESPOUSE ELUCIDATION !
http://www-dept.usm.edu/~physics/mead.html