Evidence for the paranormal

The evidence for the paranormal falls into three categories:
* spontaneous experience
* laboratory experiment results
* rational logic

Let's examine each in turn.

Spontaneous experience

Countless people claim to have experienced unexplainable phenomena throughout history. Even today there is no shortage of those with tales of the supernatural to tell. As an experiment simple raise the topic with any group of friends, family or co-workers and it's highly likely at least one will have experienced something remarkable.

Now the human senses and mind are fallible, and it's easy to misinterpret perfectly "natural" events as something out of the ordinary.

Let's say (conservatively) the probability of such error is 99% (I know we're fallible, but not that fallible!). So the chance of 1 spontaneous experience being true is just 1%. But the chance of there being at least one actual experience from 100 is 65% (1-0.99^100). From 500 experiences the chance of at least one being true is 99% (1-0.99^500).

From every single reported anomalous experience the chance of at least one being true is as near certainty as it is humanly possible to be (given our perceptual limitations).

Laboratory experiment results (parapsychology)

For some considerable time the discipline of parapsychology has been studying psychic phenomena under laboratory conditions. The field began with the work of Joseph B. Rhine at Duke University in the 1930s.

Although effects found in the laboratory tend to be less dramatic than spontaneous experiences, and despite some individual experiments being subject to criticism the collected results of parapsychological research provide a substantial body of evidence for the existence of human capability and phenomena residing outside the realm of understanding afforded by conventional science.

The Parapsychological Association's Parapsychology FAQ states "To be precise, when we say that "X exists," we mean that the presently available, cumulative statistical database for experiments studying X, provides strong, scientifically credible evidence for repeatable, anomalous, X-like effects. With this in mind, ESP exists, precognition exists, telepathy exists, and PK exists." Among the major contributors to the FAQ are 7 PhDs and 2 BScs.

Rational logic

Conventional science is very successful at describing and predicting the phenomena that lie within its domain. It is also quick to denigrate the existence of anything that lies beyond its domain, ie the paranormal.

However, science itself admits its inability to fully comprehend reality in the uncertainty principle of quantum physics. Essentially this says our knowledge of any particular unit of matter or energy (and hence of the physical universe, and reality itself) is inevitably imperfect.

Even those not fortunate enough to have had a paranormal experience are surely aware of the non-physical part of their own nature. It is most apparent in our freedom of choice (free will). We can all choose to have coffee or tea, to walk or take the subway, put on the TV or listen to music etc etc etc... Yet there is nothing in the physical, deterministic, model of our being that permits such choice.

Given that we are more than atoms and molecules, ie a mind as well as a body, then it is easy to postulate that our non-physical mind (soul, spirit) is subject to laws other than those governing the physical, ie those in which the paranormal may be possible.

It may never be possible in the physical realm to prove beyond all doubt the existence of the paranormal. We can simply consider the evidence (and our own experience). But remember it is equally impossible to disprove the reality of the paranormal.

Evidence for the paranormal

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