tim@unc.UUCP (12/18/83)
John doesn't seem to have seen any part of my article except the flames, judging from his reply, so in the interest of rational discussion I will explain my major points here with connotations as neutral as possible -- I had no idea he was so sensitive. (However, I will say this: the fact that there is emotion in an article does not mean that there is no content; it means simply that the poster is not being dishonest by concealing his feelings about the issue.) Psychic powers are not important to religion as I see it. All major (and most minor) religions have tales of leaders with miraculous and unbelievable powers. Believing these is about as bright as believing the claims of a traveling medicine salesman. The stories of miracles are there to awe the common folk, and to cause them to respect and fear the institution's power. They are completely tangential to the business of religion, which is to provide an explanation of the world (a cosmology), provide a model for consciousness alteration and exploration, and provide a moral system. (I exempt here those miracle stories in which the miracle itself has some symbolic significance, such as in the myriad Dying God legends.) A personal desire for miraculous powers is common. After all, they would be fun to exercise, would reduce vulnerability to the whims of circumstance, and would make sure that we got invited to all the best parties. Grandiose daydreams often reflect this, and certainly there is nothing wrong with having them. However, these powers are not relevant to morality, cosmology, or consciousness exploration. The moral responsibilities of a being are the same regardless of whether or not it can bend spoons without touching them (or whatever your pet psychic power is). Consider some psychic power, then consider some machine that could simulate its effects. Would possession of the machine have any moral significance? Clearly not. How then would the fact that it is an inherent ability rather than a machine change this? Psychic powers are irrelevant to cosmology because there is no end to the number of possible explanations for them. Three of the most common are: (1) the world is an illusion, and thus there is no limit to what may be accomplished within its scope; (2) there is a nonempty set (perhaps containing only a single member) of immensely powerful beings who shape the universe, who have granted these powers to those who please them; (3) the physical world is causally dependent on a world which is easier for minds to manipulate than the world of matter. The existence, or personal possession, of psychic powers in itself provides no way to select one of these alternatives over another, and thus sheds no light on cosmology. Finally, psychic powers are irrelevant to consciousness exploration since they are of the external world, while the exploration is an internal phenomenon. (If you perform astral projection or some similar practice, you will manifest miraculous powers during your sessions, but these will be of the nature of dreams, not physical events.) Summarizing the above points, I utterly fail to see what the realization of psychic powers has to do with religion. Why is the discussion in net.religion instead of in net.sf-lovers or net.comics (both of which I subscribe to and enjoy, I hasten to add)? How about net.egotrip? On to another topic: terminology. I really dislike the phrase "latent powers and abilities", because it doesn't really say anything. When I was eighteen, I couldn't program a computer. Now I'm twenty-two and pretty good at it. Would you call this "manifesting a latent ability"? If not, why not? Yet there was nothing (well, not much) mystical about my realization of this latent ability. I hope that you will make an effort to be non-hostile in your reply, as I have been here. -- Tim Maroney, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill duke!unc!tim (USENET), tim.unc@csnet-relay (ARPA)