Lawrence R. Mead wrote:
>> m (mbackues at 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.
****
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
much like interviewing a few dozen prostitutes, finding out that they're
not as mentally competent as most people, and then deciding that pimps
don't exist. There is of course other evidence for the existence of
pimps besides taking the word of prostitutes, but such evidence would
not be found if the possible existence of pimps was dismissed before
additional evidence was sought.
Personally, my assumption that pimps exist isn't based on physical
evidence of their existence which I trust. I assume that they exist
because I can predict their existence based on what I understand of
human thinking. Everyone has to look for whatever kind of evidence that
they themselves can trust however.
Mark
