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***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The invaluable Jeff Lindsay has posted an interesting item on his blog regarding the portion of the Book of Mormon that is set in ancient Arabia:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAn Update on Maps of the Arabian Peninsula Showing Nahom-related Names\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Some time back, I was deleting some old computer files when I came across a curious item. \u00a0I\u2019m not quite sure where it came from, nor who wrote it nor when, but it\u2019s addressed to me:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you want to know if Mormonism<\/a> is hurtful \u2013 listen to the critics. Validate their experiences, don\u2019t diminish them. Don\u2019t blame their trauma on their faithlessness.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cInvalidating people who are really struggling with religious issues tends to increase their self doubt and hopelessness. They feel broken and alone for not fitting in with the indoctrination.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI would recommend that you Dan Peterson recuse yourself from any such conversations in the future. Your own talk shows that you have the smell of blood on your hands if not the stain.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSpeak to struggling members leaving the JW or Christian Science or other faiths also being disrupted by the Google age. Mormon bitter apostates are no less traumatized.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I suppose that I\u2019ll respond to it here, since I can\u2019t recall whether or not I responded directly to its author and since it expresses sentiments that I\u2019ve encountered more than once. \u00a0(I won\u2019t bother with the hyperbolic claim that I have blood on my hands, nor with the unreasonable demand that I should never again enter into discussions of the merits or demerits of my church and faith.)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n First of all, yes, it\u2019s important to respond to earnest and suffering people\u00a0with as much charity and sympathetic understanding as one can muster. \u00a0That, I think, goes without saying for any serious disciple of Christ and, for that matter, for any reasonably decent person.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Having said that, however, I don\u2019t think that listening to critics is the only<\/em> thing that one must do in determining whether Mormonism is \u201churtful.\u201d \u00a0Don\u2019t the voices of those who seem to be satisfied<\/em> with their Church membership count, as well? \u00a0And don\u2019t we need to try to sort truth from falsehood? \u00a0Might some sociological and statistical and other data not be useful?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n At the height of\u00a0a messy and angry divorce between two people who have been one\u2019s good friends, it would seem to me to be unfair and unwise simply to take\u00a0at face value the complaints or allegations of one spouse about the other.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Talk of \u201cvalidating,\u201d and of not \u201cinvalidating,\u201d the experiences of people who claim to have been hurt seems to me a reasonable request if it signifies taking them seriously and responding empathetically. \u00a0If, however, it means that one must believe everything such people say and grant its complete accuracy without question, then it strikes me as a form of emotional blackmail and as remarkably cavalier and indifferent toward truth.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n To take a dramatic parallel: \u00a0There are, of course, genuine rapes. \u00a0And rape is a terrible crime. \u00a0Moreover, rape victims have often, historically, been treated with cold and wounding skepticism. \u00a0I should hardly need to say that such responses are horribly wrong. \u00a0On the other hand, not every allegation of rape is true \u2014 and those who are accused of the offense are also entitled to a fair hearing and to justice.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ve never been overly interested in paranormal phenomena \u2014 what\u2019s sometimes called psi<\/em> \u2014 such as clairvoyance, ESP, and spiritualism. \u00a0My worldview doesn\u2019t demand that they be authentic or true. \u00a0Pretty obviously, though, their authenticity, if confirmed or even strongly evidenced, would tend to undermine certain reductionist materialist dogmas in a way that would be congenial to things that matter much more, and much more directly, to me.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In recent years, I\u2019ve begun to wonder whether I shouldn\u2019t take a more serious and open-minded look. \u00a0I had long thought that such things had been definitively discredited, but now I\u2019m not so sure. \u00a0The first inkling that I had in that direction was a brief discussion, in one of his books (I no longer remember which) by the prominent Anglo-American philosopher John Hick, who had spent some time reading through the publications of England\u2019s Society for Psychical Research. \u00a0He had emerged from that reading much more impressed than I had expected he would.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Then, several years ago, I read\u00a0The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death<\/em><\/a>, by Gary E. Schwartz<\/a>, and I<\/em> was more impressed than I had expected to be.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Thereupon, I read\u00a0Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind<\/em><\/a> by the late Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer<\/a>, and, again, I was surprised and impressed.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ll probably never get around to it, but it would be fascinating to seriously read through the publications of the London-based Society for Psychical Research, which may well have been relegated to the academic fringe not because its work wasn\u2019t sound and rigorous but because its conclusions are ideologically incompatible with certain reigning dogmas.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been thinking about the SPR again since I read Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality<\/em><\/a> by the controversial psychologist and professor Dr. Dean Radin<\/a>. \u00a0Think of him what you will \u2014 he, personally, isn\u2019t my focus at the moment \u2014 his brief discussion of the Society for Psychical Research is interesting.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Society was founded around 1882 by, among others, the physicist Sir William Barrett, of the Royal College of Science in Dublin, Ireland. \u00a0Its members included the physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, who became famous for his contributions to wireless telegraphy; the physicist Baron Rayleigh, brother-in-law to the British prime minister Arthur James Balfour and eventual winner of the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the inert gas argon; the astronomer Samuel P. Langley, director of the Smithsonian Institution; the great Harvard philosopher and psychologist William James; the astronomer Simon Newcomb, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; the German physicist Heinrich Hertz, the first person to provide conclusive proof of the existence of\u00a0electromagnetic waves (who died sadly young at 36); and Edward C. Pickering, director of the Harvard Observatory.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The British physicist J. J. Thompson, who won a Nobel Prize in 1906 for his discovery of the electron, served for thirty-four years as a member of the Society\u2019s Governing Council. \u00a0The French physiologist Charles Richet, who later won a Nobel Prize for his research on anaphylaxis, served as president of the Society for a time.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And so forth.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n These weren\u2019t mere pseudoscientific crackpots, lightly dismissed \u2014 and they believed that they had found solid evidence for psychic phenomena. \u00a0My sense is that many of their studies haven\u2019t been refuted. \u00a0They\u2019re simply out of fashion and no longer read.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps it\u2019s time to dust some of their volumes off and take another look at their work.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I close, though, with a pair of items from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u00a9:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n