The Civil Rights of Parapsychology

[Sandy B]

I thought this blog by Dr James Carpenter echoed my own thoughts about the efforts of skeptical organizations to separate parapsychology from the rest of science and to disenfranchise and harass individuals who identify themselves as being psychic. Dr Carpenter makes the connection between discrimination against parapsychology and discrimination based on race.

The Civil Rights of the Mind | First Sight

I was reviled and threatened politely in my psychology classes for being involved with Rhine, and reviled and threatened impolitely in the streets and police stations for being a “N-lover.” I sensed absolutely no connection between these things at the time, nor for many years. But lately I see one. Parapsychologists have been rendered invisible in academia for a long time. It is not only racism that makes the in-group dismiss and segregate a group of others. It can be anything that makes the group seem sinister. This makes everything way uphill for those dismissed, no matter the disclaimers.

Parapsychologists want to contribute to our common, normal understanding of human nature, and the only place this can really take place is in the context of normal scientific exchange and debate. One moral I took away from civil rights activism is that respect is never given, it’s only taken. I’m happy that the times may have moved along, and our work has matured, and that some of us (Daryl, Dean, Rupert, Brian, and many others) have the nerve to push hard at taking respect.

[mszlazak]

Great !!!!!

[Open Mind]

I agree with his comments.

[Craig Weiler]

I think that the same can be said for psychic people. We will need to push to be recognized for who we are and to remove the stigma and superstition surrounding our abilities. Too many people suffer needlessly as a result of the silence.

[Sandy B]

Originally Posted by Craig Weiler

I think that the same can be said for psychic people. We will need to push to be recognized for who we are and to remove the stigma and superstition surrounding our abilities. Too many people suffer needlessly as a result of the silence.

When you have angry mobs putting on masks and showing up to harass you, it gets difficult to come forward.

[Sandy B]

Will psychics be the next community to "come out of the closet"?

Anderson Cooper: "The Fact Is, I'm Gay." - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast

[Sextus70]

Originally Posted by Sandy B

When you have angry mobs putting on masks and showing up to harass you, it gets difficult to come forward.

I actually prefer those obnoxious arrogant self called "defenders of reason" using evil Santa Claus (Just joking! I know who Randi is) T-shirts than cults who actually killed people in name of their twisted inhuman beliefs. Fortunately, most atheists, although showing a significant amount of hate and resentment, haven't get to that extreme.

Regards!

[eveshi]

Originally Posted by Sextus70

I actually prefer those obnoxious arrogant self called "defenders of reason" using evil Santa Claus (Just joking! I know who Randi is) T-shirts than cults who actually killed people in name of their twisted inhuman beliefs. Fortunatelly, most atheists, although showing a significant amount of hate and resentment, haven't get to that extreme.

Regards!

I agree. As much as I dislike large parts of the skeptic movement, they cause at least no bodily harm to people and are even opposed to such things.

I think there is some truth in the following picture:


The Fundy Atheist may well be an annoying jerk , but if I compare him with the alternatives, he isn't that bad after all.

[Sandy B]

Originally Posted by Sextus70

I actually prefer those obnoxious arrogant self called "defenders of reason" using evil Santa Claus (Just joking! I know who Randi is) T-shirts than cults who actually killed people in name of their twisted inhuman beliefs. Fortunately, most atheists, although showing a significant amount of hate and resentment, haven't get to that extreme.

Regards!

Hmmmm...

http://thechrist.gr/en/686/license-k...rders-history/

In the past hundred years or so, the most powerful atheist regimes—Communist Russia, Communist China, and Nazi Germany—have wiped out people in astronomical numbers. Stalin was responsible for around twenty million deaths, produced through mass slayings, forced labor camps, show trials followed by firing squads, population relocation and starvation, and so on. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s authoritative recent study Mao: The Unknown Story attributes to Mao Zedong’s regime a staggering seventy million deaths. Some China scholars think Chang and Halliday’s numbers are a bit high, but the authors present convincing evidence that Mao’s atheist regime was the most murderous in world history. Stalin’s and Mao’s killings—unlike those of, say, the Crusades or the Thirty Years’ War—were done in peacetime and were performed on their fellow countrymen. Hitler comes in a distant third with around ten million murders, six million of them Jews.

[Vesalius]

Sandy, doesn't this just show the dangers of allowing an executive group or individual the licence to shape a country according to a strict ideology?

Is it likely that these regimes murdered people BECAUSE they were atheistic, or they murdered people AND were atheistic?

It looks there are deeper roots to the problem, roots that theists and ideologues all share - non co-operators or outsiders become dehumanised. Once personhood is diminished, inhumane acts become easier.

But your original post is actually very perplexing. I don't doubt that some skeptics are well-meaning in their protest against psychics - they are thought to cause genuine harm to the bereaved - but Right-to-Lifers might genuinely believe that they are preventing actual harm against a person when they harass (and worse) abortion clinics. Unless we categorically know the truth of all the ideas surrounding these cases (ie materialism, life-after-death, soul in an embryo etc), the individuals at the receiving end of the harassment (psychics/abortion doctors/clients) have a legitimate case for their civil rights being transgressed.

Where it gets perplexing is if you imagine a truth is discovered, and actual harm is known to be caused by pyschic practitioners/abortion doctors/non-believers, should the dissenters against that truth be allowed to be harassed even then?