Surveying the landscape => A paranormal, religious future?

Instinct is a big topic.  I wonder what you think when I call instincts - information objects?

Here is maybe the best Psi paper so far, full of evidence and careful with metaphysics of spirit.  Careful - as well - to whack Materialism for its metaphysics.

Taking the second point first: Penrose states in that video (towards the end) that his take on quantum collapse is the opposite to others who think that consciousness causes collapse. He thinks that collapse triggers a conscious experience (if I understand him correctly). As I said earlier, Penrose insists that he is a materialist although he is more open than most to admitting that he doesn't understand how to address certain problems that materialism poses - such as the Hard Problem.

As for instincts, I have had my rant about this at various times on this forum( and Skeptiko before that). I just don't see how genetic "hard wiring" can produce behaviours and actions in a new-born. As I have related before, I watched the birth of a lamb in a field (I am a lifelong urban dweller with little to no experience of farm or country life). As I continued to watch, the lamb got to its feet and walked around its mother to find the teat. How can that be "hard wired" when DNA is a protein factory and the genetic code is, from what I have read, a code for producing the different proteins needed to build the corpus of the beast? How do proteins program behaviour or teach a new-born lamb to walk? Any robotics engineer will tell us that the combination of actions required to coordinate walking is immensely complex. Yet a dumb lamb with no exposure to training from its elders will walk within minutes or, at most, hours of entering this world. It *knows* how to walk.

Whether that *knowing* can be termed an "information object" is something I don't really know how to answer. I am not hung up on terminology and would frankly rather see and use plain language to describe or explain. It often seems to me that scientists and other specialists can't consider their field respectable unless and until they have invented some arcane and exclusive jargon that only those "in the know" will be familiar with.

Has Witch City Lost Its Way?

Kathryn Miles

They’re hip, business-savvy, and know how to cast a spell: How a new generation of witches and warlocks selling $300 wands conquered Salem.

The popularity of witchcraft is a growing national trend. Twenty-first-century witchcraft, including its commercial products and services (such as psychic readings), is big business, netting about $2 billion annually in the U.S. In many ways, Salem has become a mecca for this, with as many as 5,000 of its 43,000 residents identifying as practicing witches and untold thousands passing through as part of a spiritual pilgrimage. Witchcraft also drives much of the tourism in Salem: More than one million visitors descend on the city each year, spending about $140 million annually, a chunk of it at stores like Hex. Officials here also estimate that 35 percent of Salem’s annual tourism revenue is gained in October, when the city hosts Haunted Happenings, a month-long celebration that includes everything from a yoga retreat at the Satanic Temple to an official Witches’ Halloween Ball.

Many Americans Say They Believe in Ghosts. Do You?

Anna P. Kambhampaty

Such beliefs have pervaded American culture and media for centuries. But some researchers are now studying whether their rise may be tied, in part, to the rise over the last few decades of Americans claiming no religious preference.

“People are looking to other things or nontraditional things to answer life’s big questions that don’t necessarily include religion,” said Thomas Mowen, a sociologist at Bowling Green State University.

For a continuing study on religion and paranormal belief, for example, Mr. Mowen said he is finding that “atheists tend to report higher belief in the paranormal than religious folk.”

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Do you believe in Ghosts? Paranormal team finds possible hints of spiritual activity at Legacy Museum

Shiann Sivell

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Octavia Spencer Says Her House Is Haunted By A Ghost And, You Know What, I Believe Her

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Richmond Register: The paranormal is normal

Artists around the country have been influenced by otherworldly contacts, hauntings and healings, along with alien activity on Earth. These encounters are reflected in their work, some of which is on display at The Speed Museum in Louisville.

With our own experiences, and a profound interest in cryptids, monsters and aliens, Mason and I were drawn to the exhibit like Mothman to a flame.

There are 200 objects in the show, “Supernatural America: The Paranormal in American Art,” which was five years in the making.

It’s the largest display The Speed has undertaken, and they’ve done an amazing job, organizing it into four sections: America as a Haunted Place, Apparitions, Channeling Spirits/Rituals and Plural Universes.

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Paranormal investigation team hopes for answers in SC city

Robert Jordan

One of Bautista’s favorite memories is her first investigation with team. At Grove Point Plantation in Savannah, she and another team member contacted the spirit of a little boy. Part of their equipment was a voodoo buddy (a heat-seeking teddy bear) that is really good for use with child spirits. They asked the spirit to touch it. She said the spirit literally flung the bear across the room — it went flying off the table.

“I was losing it; it freaked me out a little,” Bautista said.

Maybe half the cases the team gets involve paranormal activity, he said. Some people have gotten upset because they believe their property is haunted, but the team didn’t find anything. “

We don’t make up stories, we tell them like it is,” Welsh said. “It’s kind of like fishing; sometimes you don’t catch things, you don’t even get a bite, but you keep on coming back.”

And when they find something? Most of the time it’s playful spirits, Welsh said. In 30 years of investigations, he has met a malevolent entity once, maybe twice.

For a continuing study on religion and paranormal belief, for example, Mr. Mowen said he is finding that “atheists tend to report higher belief in the paranormal than religious folk.”

That makes some kind of sense, but reflects poorly in the way that religion is taught. When I was learning about Christian beliefs, the whole basis of the belief system is a collection of many paranormal happenings, of varied kinds. It reflected a deep fascination and interest in things which happened to people. Somewhere along the road, that kind of fascination seems to have faded from view. I don't have answers, just an observation.

might have posted another story about this group? ->

Meet the Paranormal Moms Society

Ivana Rihter

Each woman has a different story about how they got interested in the paranormal. Growing up in River Lake, Illinois, Carpenter-Chaidez knew at a young age that her house was haunted. Every night, after her mother tucked her in, Carpenter-Chaidez would grip her covers and wait. First, the sliding closet door would slowly creep open, inch by inch. She lay paralyzed in her bed with her blankets as her only protection. Then the lamp would begin its nightly dance. It was an old-school design: Cranked once, the bottom light would turn on; cranked twice, the top light came on; a third crank turned everything off.
She would hear the clicks of the lamp as the middle bulb flicked on, then both bulbs turned on, then both turned off, leaving her in darkness, staring directly into the shadow that appeared behind her closet door night after night. “I even remember my blankets being tugged off the bottom of the bed,” she says. If she called for her mother, she was always met with a scolding for getting out of bed or throwing off her blankets.

Eventually, she grew up and left that house, but the feeling of powerlessness and fear she experienced there stayed with her. Now, she wants to make sure that no one else ever has to feel that way.

might have posted another story about this group? ->

Meet the Paranormal Moms Society

Ivana Rihter

How Ghost Hunting is Like Living with Lyme Disease

Christina Diane Campbell 

The silhouette of Diane’s head shakes back and forth. She’s captured nothing more than my face across the room, probably two pale orbs of white cheeks beneath shadowed eyes.

“Are you cold?” I ask. I’m speaking to the spirits presumably hovering in the wood-tinged air. Because I so often feel half dead myself, I imagine the ghosts’ existence is not unlike my own. Do they have trouble warming up, too? But if doctors can’t understand why I’m always cold, why do I think I can learn anything tonight about spectral metabolisms? I ask again anyway.

Paranormal investigators apply logic and analysis to phenomena that don’t lend themselves easily to logic and analysis. Tests and data are important, because otherwise how can you be sure of what you’re experiencing? Take EVPs. Each suspected recording of a ghost’s voice is ranked on a scale of A to C. In order to qualify as a top-notch “Class A” EVP, two or more people must listen to the recording and both hear the same words. A good paranormal researcher doesn’t say, “Hey Bob, do you hear the voice saying, ‘Get out’?” but rather, “Hey Bob, what do you hear between 3:30 and 3:32?”

One went to heaven, the other to hell | Two East Tennesseans share their near-death experiences

Robin Wilhoit, John North

Priscilla McGill knows it's possible. She says it happened to her in March 2017 after she was struck by a vehicle while walking across Woodland Avenue west of Central Street in North Knoxville.

"At first, I just remember like sitting on a cloud in light and peace and calm," she told 10News. "No fear, none."
The experience forever changed her.

A Blount County man told 10News when he collapsed years ago in a stabbing, he ended up going through literal hell.

IIRC this was pretty popular on Netflix and might still be...

edit: #10 in the US at least for today...

One went to heaven, the other to hell | Two East Tennesseans share their near-death experiences

Robin Wilhoit, John North

typical sudden 'attractive' and 'repelling' experiences. The difference between ones pattern, and the other/s pattern/s, when one's network suddenly becomes unshielded. Allowing the alteration of ones pattern towards the others pattern, as their pattern/s are laid down on your network. The difference between the patterns being the experience itself. Life altering towards the average.

Some of them already knew this - in their own way - over 2000 years ago. Yet today, some still do everything they can to hide, to distract, the others away from such knowledge when they start groping their way towards it. Yet this knowledge cannot be hidden, because our experiences themselves are made of the very stuff they try to hide.