Adopted Universe

Typical, I go to the newsstand and return home with both a copy of Fortean Times and one of Skeptical Inquirer. Surprisingly the FT actually contained plenty of debunking and complaints about rampant misinformation and hoaxes (along with some articles from the Weekly World News 8-] ). Just as interestingly, the SI basically stated that skeptics, by definition, do not dismiss possibilities offhand - they are as skeptical of their own skepticism as they are of the theories they study.

At first all the debunking of religion and parapsychology began to get me kind of down; it seems like the world of believers is strangely random and rather credulous, but the skeptics have the scientific method on their side. So the universe is becoming less and less magical in my head, with fewer possibilities for the hidden, the magical, to exist at all or ever have existed. Are there no surprises to come in the future, no OBEs, no cryptids, no dimension beyond ours that allows the 'dead' to walk? No future past death? No old hidden civilizations? Then I watch programs that, using the bounds of science, allow some interest to remain. The other night there was a fascinating docu about robotics in the renaissance and before. Not electric of course, although a battery was invented back then, but of clockwork and water, torque and springs and gear ratios. If it amazes us that Da Vinci could create a programmable lion from clockwork, when our only known way is with chips and electricity, is it possible that some distance in the future, perhaps after our next dark age, civilization will be amazed that we could create programmable things from only chips and electricity? What will their workings be? Shame I won't be around to find out.

All this also made me start to think about things like Atlantis and aliens and so forth. It struck me that especially the Atlantis adherents are very like adopted children unhappy with their parents for imposing discipline. "Maybe my REAL parents are a king and queen. Maybe I am a prince/ss in reality and someday they'll come for me and I can eat cake all day." The seeming mundanity of a working world full of starvation, political inanity and blue collar work could certainly lead some to think, "maybe there is a REAL civilization, maybe it had magic machines that could do EVERYTHING easily, and everyone could eat cake all day." And if they find evidence of it, maybe they were a part of it in the past or will be someday in the future. Contact from Atlantis spirits, Lemurians, aliens etc. are a definite way for someone to be able to declare, "I am special, I have this word/knowledge/past history that I don't have now but I can at least carry it within me to raise myself above this mundanity." Maybe that explains claims of ESP, cult membership, even religion - to raise oneself above others by harboring this specialness that is secret or special, that others don't have. "Well I saw a ufo." "Well I can speak to the dead." "Well MY house is haunted." So there!

Does that explain my disappointment (maybe disenchantment is a better word)? Probably. But the reality is that so much still exists that hasn't been explained or discovered by science. Heck, if a coelecanth can show up living, anything can, really. What if all the unknown 'dark matter' in space is the 'body of God'? What if ufos really are time travellers? What if ghosts are emotional imprints that sometimes walk among us? Can science really explain everything at the moment? Nah. But no matter how skeptical things get, at least I can feel reassured that we know that we don't really know much about anything, and anyone who claims to is an idjit. What happens after death? We don't KNOW. Will FTL travel be viable in 100 or 1000 or 1000000 years? We don't KNOW, no matter if our current equations tell us it's not possible, ever. So I guess I'll just savor the memory of things that I've seen that baffle me, enjoy the stories of things that other people see that baffle them, and continue to read both FT and SI.