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Posted: **Thu May 16, 2013 9:21 am**

Robert Tulip wrote:

Society has a moral responsibility to teach people the truth.

Society cannot teach people the truth - because we don't know what the truth is. We do know what is a great lie and a deception, and we do know how easily people can be misled.

I would like to share this article transcribed from a newspaper called 'The Two Worlds' March 26th 1948.

What Has Spiritualism achieved since 1848?

Spiritualism, during a century of existence, has proved survival to millions of people in many countries. It has saved a myriad of stricken mourners from despair. It has forced innumerable scientists to admit its claims after a hostile enquiry. It has explained so-called 'miracles' by spreading a knowledge of natural law.

After saying that, I find it hard to answer the question, 'What has Spiritualism achieved since the Rochester rappings?'

It is always difficult to estimate the effect on society of a revolutionary idea. The change takes so many forms. Often, it is indefinite. Progress is seldom a move in a straight forward direction.
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Besides, it must be recognised that proof of our claims have not been confined in a 'movement'; in my view, they will never be. Over and over again, spirit guides have declared, 'There are too many organisations already. They have always failed us. We intend to permeate society with our revelations, not to build up a new body or establish a new Church'.

The result of the permeation is, indeed, remarkable.

When I was a boy, the trappings of funereal woe spread grief wherever they were seen. Horses dragging along hearses wore ugly plumes that were as black as coal. Hired mutes looked like ravens walking to the gallows. The horrors of Hell were preached from the pulpit, by Soloman Eagles who told of the wrath to come.

Anglicans sang, at burial services: 'Day of Wrath! O day of warning! Heaven and Earth in ashes burning!'

They chanted, 'Worthless are my prayers and sighing' and 'While the wicked are confounded'.

I recall, too, the abyssmal gloom of the hymn: 'When the solemn death-bell tolls, for our own departed souls, When our final doom is near.'

Even the poorest workers spent the insurance money on a funeral that would impress the neighbours. After it, they handed round ham sandwiches made from meat they had often kept for weeks to consume after what was a ceremony of which 'savages' should have been ashamed. Christianity then seemed to be based on fears of the anger of a vengeful deity.

Today, much of that has gone - and yet the only new teaching about death that has come to the world to effect the change is the teaching that has poured through humble mediums that, even today are subject to punishment intended to stop 'witchcraft' and 'vagrancy'.

Preachers at funeral services now frequently speak of the 'dead' as people present in the congregation. Death is regarded as a release and not as a prelude to punishment. Cremation is becoming more and more general, largely because Spiritualist teaching has insisted that the idea of a physical resurrection is ridiculous.

Spiritualism, too, has done much to bridge the gap between religions that not long ago were almost openly at war. People belonging to all the Christian sects except the Catholics, the Salvationists and the Plymouth Brethren have all shared our platforms. So have Buddhists, Moslems and Hindus. I have myself spoken on Spiritualism in the mosque at Woking.

The earthly reasons for our failure to organise Spiritualism into a mighty army are many. For one thing, it is almost impossible to control mediumship, most of which has started spontaneously in families outside our ranks. It would be hard, indeed, to evolve a way of placing it under management, even if we had the financial means with which to endow it.

As for our religious services, many former Christians used to ritual and a liturgy are dissatisfied with the comparative coldness of our lack of a formula. On the other hand, most Agnostics who become convinced of Survival cannot fit themselves into devotional practices. Many folk to whom we prove our cause prefer to remain inside the orthodoxies from which they cannot mentally free themselves. They object to the fact that we do not hail Jesus as 'divine'. Only in the framework of the democratic systems of Britain and the United States can Spiritualism function with any freedom. It is, indeed, in those countries where, apart fromt he healers in South America, nearly all mediums are to be found.

No, most of the results of a century of Spiritualist propaganda are hard to fasten down or to explain in words that would not need much qualification. It has been an enfranchising mission. It has swept away infinite prejudice. It has been a unifying influence, whereas most of the other ideas born in the field of religion have become barriers between nations, between classes and between sects.

But in the case of most of its adherents, fervent in their early days, what was a fervour has become merely an acceptance. That is one reason why the statement, 'There are perhaps 1,000,000 Spiritualists in Britain' can neither be proved nor controverted. People enquire, they receive proof, and then they drift back to the churches in which they spent their childhood - or else they give up religion altogether.

Our speakers, since they cannot threaten a Hell or promise a Heaven, cannot continually interest them. And, except in the home circle, mediumship loses its attraction soon after its wonders have ceased to excite.

Spiritualism, whatever the weaknesses of the bodies that proclaim it, is the only religion out of which a new world can be born. The orthodox creeds are dying because of the narrowness of their doctrines and because of the dreary reiteration of texts and hymns which no longer have a meaning.

By Hannen Swaffer 1879 - 1962

I have typed this directly from the newspaper article because I think it is so very well expressed. And I think it demonstrates that it is not just the intellect that needs to be fed....but the soul.....What does the soul feed on? Hope, I suppose. Anything which suggests that there is more to us than flesh and blood, like music, poetry, love, compassion.....feeds the Hope......long may it do so.

Posted: **Fri May 17, 2013 7:12 am**

Penelope wrote:Society cannot teach people the truth - because we don't know what the truth is.

Hi Penelope

This is precisely where Dawkins’ book The Magic of Reality is so valuable. “Truth” is another of those elusive words, like faith and love, which have been corrupted by long usage in ways that are highly dubious. But Dawkins’ point is that we do know what truth is, because scientific evidence is reliable, and science is constantly advancing in its explanation of truth.

Science presents abundant information about truth, a term that Dawkins is happy to use in an accurate metaphysical sense, although of course with his empiricist prejudice he would deny that his discussion of truth is at all metaphysical. Consider, in The Magic of Reality, by “creating models and testing them”, science brings us “closer to the truth” (p22). And “evolution … has real evidence to demonstrate the truth of it” (p31). Any suggestion of a “truth” that is incompatible with science is wrong.

Penelope wrote: there is more to us than flesh and blood, like music, poetry, love, compassion.....feeds the Hope......long may it do so.[/i]

Yes, we also have nerves and organs. And language and culture. It is hard to show how language is ultimately material. But all that mean is that we need a more imaginative understanding of the nature of matter, encompassing the symbolic communication that we have evolved as material entities. Hope is neural.

Posted: **Fri May 17, 2013 9:52 am**

There's no question that people feel empowered by their spiritual beliefs, even if those beliefs aren't supported by evidence. The beliefs of a Spiritualist, such as belief in an external soul, can not only be individually inspiring but a positive social force as well. I'm reading on Wikipedia that most Spiritualists in the 1800s supported causes such as the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage.

I think this is Penelope's point. Certainly many of us are drawn to the mystical sense of the universe and this is much of the appeal of religion. A strictly empirical view is seen by many as too sterile.

Many theists perceive criticism of Creationism as criticism of all religious belief and, unfortunately, this is the usual tone of the dialogue. I would suggest that it isn't Creationism, per se, that needs to be addressed as a "pervasive cultural ignorance" but ignorance itself. The sad truth about Creationism, though, is that it does actually promote ignorance and suppression. In this respect there's a world of difference between Spiritualism and Creationism. Spiritualists aren't rigidly tied to literal dogma that must reject scientific knowledge about evolution and the geologic timespan. The difference is between seeking truth and suppressing it.

Posted: **Fri May 17, 2013 10:53 am**

I wanted to thank you for your post geo., but it won't let me, I think because I already thanked Robert, so please consider yourself thanked won't you?

There is a lot of evidence for the existence of the soul, and I grew up with a very nonchalant attitude to such, because it was in such abundance in my childhood home. The benefit was that it never scared me......I was used to rappings and things transporting themselves around. Grew up accepting it, so to speak.

What does puzzle me, is why people didn't continue to investigate such phenomena. There are books written by such luminaries as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and by Hannan Swaffer and many other books written eloquently by educated people. This piece is about Conan Doyle's and Sir Oliver Lodge's son who was killed in the first World War and he wrote a famous book called 'Raymond'. Btw, this article, to be fair, is anti spiritualism.

At the time, sceptics were wary of debunking the mediums’ claims. Today, there are counselling services for the bereaved, but during the First World War and after, comfort and consolation were hard to find in a Britain that valued stoicism and the stiff upper lip. In many cases, grief-stricken relations heard what they wanted to hear and glossed over holes in the medium’s story. A similar boom in communication with the dead came after the American Civil War. It’s said that a séance even took place in the White House itself.

In Britain, perhaps the most famous of the mediums’ dupes were the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the physicist Sir Oliver Lodge. Both were grief-stricken by the loss of their sons in the First World War. Doyle’s son Kingsley died in the flu pandemic of 1918, weakened by the wounds he had received at the Battle of the Somme. Both men were scientifically trained, but seem to have suspended their disbelief in the séance rooms they frequented.

Raymond Lodge was Sir Oliver’s youngest son. He was killed by a shell fragment in Flanders in 1915. Yet, exactly a week after his death, Raymond was apparently in touch with his grieving family through an amateur medium. Her son, too, had died, but, she claimed, he was busily chatting away to her from ‘the other side’, with good news of others who had made the journey there.

The message had come through clearly and unequivocally. ‘I have seen that boy, Sir Oliver’s son; he’s better, and has had a splendid rest, tell his people.’

Lodge seized the opportunity to make amends for having been a neglectful father, and he and his wife were soon listening eagerly to Raymond’s ‘voice’ as he described life in a happy country called ‘Summerland’. There he claimed to have been reunited with his grandfather and a brother and sister who had died before him.

‘Summerland’ seemed to be a pretty nice place. Its residents lacked for nothing. Whisky and soda flowed freely, and many of the most luxurious trappings of life were there for the asking: fine houses, fashionable clothes, glorious landscapes, excellent cigars.

Sir Oliver was soon convinced, but not before he had demanded proof from his son that he was still alive and was actually speaking to him. Raymond duly ‘revealed’ obscure details of his life that only his family could have known, his father believed. But the real clincher came a few days later, when a medium called Alfred Vout Peters told Lady Lodge:

‘You have several portraits of this boy. Before he went away you had got a good portrait of him – two – no, three. Two where he is alone, and one where he is in a group of other men. He is particular that I should tell you of this.’

The Lodges, who still held on to a few vestiges of scepticism, knew nothing of this group photograph, and reluctantly dismissed it as ‘a shot or guess on the part of Peters at something probable.’

But it did exist. The mother of one of Raymond’s fellow officers wrote to ask whether they would like a copy of a regimental photograph taken a month before his death.

While they waited for the picture to arrive, Sir Oliver questioned a medium about it and was told that the group had been photographed ‘with lines at the back of them.’ And Raymond apparently then added a curious detail: ‘someone wanted to lean on him, but he was not sure if he was taken with someone leaning on him.’

This was the picture that came four days later:
Raymond Lodge - Regimental Photograph

Raymond is sitting on the ground, the second from the right in the front row.

NRaymond Lodge - Close Upow look at this close-up of the officer behind him: his right arm does seem to be leaning on Raymond’s shoulder.

Sir Oliver was amazed. What better proof could there be that Raymond was in touch? ‘To my mind,’ he wrote, ‘the whole incident is exceptionally good as a piece of evidence. Our complete ignorance, even of the existence of the photograph, in the first place, and secondly the delayed manner in which knowledge of it normally came to us … seem to me to make it a first-class case. While, as to the amount of coincidence between the description and the actual photograph, that surely is beyond chance or guesswork.’

After his son Kingsley’s death, Conan Doyle also sought refuge in spiritualism, a subject in which he had long been interested. And he stuck to his beliefs, even after his favourite mediums, Eusepia Palladino and Margery Crandon, had been exposed as audacious fraudsters. Doyle befriended Harry Houdini, the escapologist, who, when not escaping from padlocked trunks or sealed milk churns, was desperate to contact his mother through the spirits. But Houdini, unlike Doyle, recognised the conjuring tricks used by the mediums. He became disaffected, and devoted the rest of his life to trying to persuade Doyle and other true believers of the errors of their ways.

Towards the end of his life, it became clear that Doyle’s grief had changed him. His books about Sherlock Holmes, the most rational man in fiction, were joined by others about ‘real life’ fairies, ‘psychic photographs’ and the weird rantings of ‘spirit guides’. His own was called Phineas, a talkative former resident of the ancient city of Ur in Mesopotamia.

Another friend, Harry Price, himself no stranger to making doubtful claims about the paranormal, offered this gently barbed obituary, on Doyle’s death and weird beliefs:

‘Among all the notable persons attracted to Spiritualism, he was perhaps the most uncritical. His extreme credulity, indeed, was the despair of his colleagues, all of whom, however, held him in the highest respect for his complete honesty. Poor, dear, lovable, credulous Doyle! He was a giant in stature with the heart of a child.’

I suppose, that because I grew up witnessing all these odd phenomena, and I 'matured' (though there are those who will disagree) with no doubt in my mind about the eternal nature of the human soul, NOT that I think all is cut and dried. NOT that I think that my loved ones are now angels in heaven, NOT that they're always even loved ones.....sometimes I think they are barely tolerated ones! Still, it does make one examine ones' life and motives to think of oneself, not as a body with a soul attached, but as an infinite soul with a temporary body. I realise that I am widely off-topic. This thread is called 'Who was the first person' - well, in my philosophy, there is no first person, birth is not the beginning of us and death is not the end of us. If naught else......it is a life enhancing way of being.

Posted: **Fri May 17, 2013 3:22 pm**

Penelope wrote:I wanted to thank you for your post geo., but it won't let me, I think because I already thanked Robert, so please consider yourself thanked won't you?

There are no restrictions on thanking people. You can thank any post you like not just one post per thread. I'm not sure why you're not able to thank Geo. Maybe you clicked "thank" already and you don't realize it, or maybe you weren't logged in. Let me know if you have that issue again. Thanks, Penny.

Posted: **Fri May 17, 2013 8:35 pm**

I would only add that, even if it's creationism that is under consideration, there is nothing in that belief that is necessarily stultifying to full human life, even life highly developed in some respects. Think of it in anthropological context. When we hear of the myth-based beliefs of a foreign culture, of how the world was created and so forth, do we accuse the culture of ignorance or see that as something to oppose? We don't. It's when the variant beliefs exist within our own culture that we put our defenses up and tend to draw battle lines. Now we perceive a threat. Is the threat really there? Well, maybe, as we look at the matter. We see those beliefs as impeding social progress, so they assume an importance they don't have when they occur "out of the family." If I have an actual point to make, it's that sometimes intentional distancing is a good thing to do. It can help us to see how much humanity is shared in common despite issue-related differences.

I saw a film that won a prize in the category of Christian documentaries. This was about a Bible-following family that pulled up stakes in Nashville and moved to the country to live without electricity (although they used gas-powered equipment). They had about eight kids (home-schooled, of course) and they all worked together to raise organic vegetable and sell them in town. The patriarch of the family made this change in order to really be a family, and by all accounts the plan succeeded. We can assume that these people lived by the letter of the Bible as much as is humanly possible. We can assume that the kids had a poor science education. And yet they did achieve something that is hard to denigrate. I say this even though it rings false to me when I hear people talk about what God is calling them to do, as though it's not their own idea. Toward the end of the film, the patriarch uproots the family at God's calling and moves them all to Israel, there to live and farm among the Israelis and show them "their Jesus." It's a very odd slant on life in my view, but in this case don't we need to exercise a little relatavistic understanding by reserving mental space for ways we'd never entertain ourselves?

Posted: **Sat May 18, 2013 3:54 am**

You are far too kind to these fundies DWill. These supposedly self-reliant rural yeomen actually depend on a whole modern infrastructure of law, technology, trade and state security. This romantic fantasy of the Israeli Family Robinson is subsidised by the USA to the tune of five billion dollars a year to keep the Arabs out, and by urban Israelis in the modern economy who pay the tax needed for these creationist dreamers to survive. "Stop the world I want to get off' is imaginative but impractical.

Posted: **Sat May 18, 2013 5:42 am**

I don't see myself as being far too kind but as advocating for pluralism. Our highest consideration at all times should be preserving a civil society, which means that we have to suppress the part of our nature that wants to cast differences in culture, belief, and politics as lesser types of humanity (of which the label 'fundies' is an example). We take a civil society for granted at our peril. Once we lose it we might never get it back. As the old hippie bumper sticker says, "COEXIST."

Posted: **Sat May 18, 2013 7:47 am**

Maybe I am more of a Dawkinsite than you DWill. My view is that fundamentalist religion is an evil that should be eradicated. However, the process of change should be evolutionary - gradual, cumulative and based on precedent.

Creationism contains practices and beliefs that are adaptive, and we cannot easily tell the wheat from the tares. Worship and praise and tradition are socially valuable and useful. Culture is so complicated that we should be tolerant and should respect heritage. However, I support the Christian principle that forgiveness should be conditional on repentance. Insisting on untrue beliefs is unforgivable.

The cultural mutation required is to shift from conventional supernatural belief to recognition that religious myth is allegorical, and to extract from it the part that is compatible with science. The problems of the world are too severe to tolerate egregious error.

Posted: **Sat May 18, 2013 10:54 am**

Robert Tulip wrote:Maybe I am more of a Dawkinsite than you DWill. My view is that fundamentalist religion is an evil that should be eradicated. However, the process of change should be evolutionary - gradual, cumulative and based on precedent.

Creationism contains practices and beliefs that are adaptive, and we cannot easily tell the wheat from the tares. Worship and praise and tradition are socially valuable and useful. Culture is so complicated that we should be tolerant and should respect heritage. However, I support the Christian principle that forgiveness should be conditional on repentance. Insisting on untrue beliefs is unforgivable.

The cultural mutation required is to shift from conventional supernatural belief to recognition that religious myth is allegorical, and to extract from it the part that is compatible with science. The problems of the world are too severe to tolerate egregious error.

Which fundamentalist religion do you want eradicated, Robert? All of them or just selected ones? There is a tension between your eradication and slow and gradual change, of course. I become concerned with talk of eradication of beliefs, for obvious historical reasons.

I'm not sure what a Dawkinsite is exactly, but one feature of a Dawkinsite could be a reaction to beliefs that borders on the hysterical at times. The word 'delusion' doesn't seem to be used only for rhetorical effect. He and others also regard those who profess religious beliefs to be afflicted with psychiatric disorders. They exaggerate the prominence of what they've called beliefs in the thought processes of the general population. When a belief becomes significantly controlling, you know it, as interviews with real psychiatric patients make clear. A belief, whatever that really is in neural terms, may be no big deal at all in terms of thinking and behavior. Give a mental status exam to a creationist, and the topic is unlikely to even come up.

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