Prejudice Blocks Scientific Research

The great majority of scientists  (including Dr. Richard Dawkins, of whom I wrote yesterday)  say they are skeptics.  They are not.   It’s true they are skeptical, and often downright hostile, about anything that smacks of religion, mysticism or spirituality.  But they will readily accept as fact almost any unproven materialistic explanation. 

They won’t even look at evidence that challenges their prejudices.  Like Dr. Dawkins, whose knowledge of Christianity seems to go only fundamentalist deep, it’s easier to ridicule than to research.    

One scientist who is willing to look is Dr. Mario Beauregard, a world-renowned neuroscientist at the University of Montreal.  

In his book “The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul,”
Beauregard writes:  “Humans, it turns out, can communicate with others without contacting them (telepathy) and move matter without touching it (telekinesis), such as influencing the diffraction pattern of a beam of light -- consistently above statistical chance. ... (This) pattern has persisted for decades.”  

He also writes that there is plenty of evidence that shows near-death experiences are exactly what they appear to be. 

So why won’t scientists like Dawkins look at the evidence -- including the evidence that God is real -- before they reject it?

Beauregard’s answer is that most scientists are materialists, not skeptics at all, and so anything that indicates humans might be more than biological automatons (“meat puppets”), or that otherworld explanations of some phenomena might be real, could shatter some of their most cherished dogmas.  

And so, because of their prejudices, some of humanity’s most important questions go unanswered -- even unstudied.  Is there a God? Is there a soul? Are the brain and mind separate or are they one?

Progress will be made only when scientists examine all evidence honestly, even when it points to conclusions they abhor.  

-Skip