If you've never heard of Derald Cochran before reading this article about him, don't feel bad. He isn't famous. But if Derald Cochran's story is true, his life was literally saved by an angel. Derald had been racing full speed down the path to his own destruction, abusing both alcohol and drugs after his younger brother Mike was murdered and set on fire in a drug deal gone bad. He was raging out of control. "I had a lot of hate," Derald says. "I reeked in hate. It radiated from me. My eyes were black, from what I've been told by people who knew me." After a five day non-stop binge of partying, Derald found himself "on my hands and knees on the floor puking up blood. Then all of a sudden I felt a warmth, an incredible warmth all over me." From an incredibly bright light, Derald claimed that he saw the figure of an ethereal being emerge. Then he heard a voice say, "You have been chosen to be a light unto others." Derald's reaction was fairly typical for a nonbeliever of the supernatural or spiritual phenomena. "I knew then I'd finally flipped," he said. "I'd lost it. Gone right over the edge. The next thing I remember was this incredible feeling of peace." Once upon a time, Derald Cochran had lost his own biological children to children's services. After his transformative experience, he became a foster parent and even adopted a child. Once an alcoholic and drug addict, Derald Cochran eventually served on the board of directors for BARN, the Bangor Area Recovery Network. Police officer James Owen, who knew Derald before his life changed, said, "He was a … [Read more...]
The conceit of belief
A recent article I wrote titled "Anecdotes versus evidence" tried to explain the difference between an interesting story with an extraordinary claim and real evidence of a phenomena obtained via the scientific method. Quite predictably, there was a critic lurking on social media who wanted to challenge the crux of the article without bothering to evaluate the content. In the article I had listed three specific examples of extraordinary claims that apparently could be evaluated using credible scientific evidence proving beyond reasonable doubt that strict materialism was false, and that the metaphysical mind can learn new information even when temporarily separated from the physical brain. The idea behind writing the article was to provide the information and people who disagreed with me could fairly evaluate the same evidence and argue my interpretation of what the evidence meant. This critic merely assumed the evidence to which I referred was no better than any other alleged evidence he'd ever seen, and refused to look at the evidence I had offered. Instead, he wanted to challenge my methodology so he could downgrade the evidence back to only anecdote. My answer was quick and easy: I had actually looked at the evidence. I didn't just make an assumption. The direction of his line of inquiry soon became clear: my critic wanted me to acknowledge that I was simply taking the word of witnesses as gospel truth without questioning their veracity. That will only work if we apply the same standard in every situation. How do we know anything is true? The reality is … [Read more...]
Vincible Ignorance
Physicist Sean Carroll An article at American Thinker about conspiracy theories and the moon landing caught my attention when the term vincible ignorance was introduced and defined as the "stubborn resistance to the truth and refusal to accept it, no matter how overwhelming the evidence in its favor is." Coined with the intention of being applied to various positions on Catholic dogma, the terminology has useful application in a more secular context. Invincible ignorance has been defined as an unknown that can never be known. A secular example of invincible ignorance might be the conditions that existed prior to the Big Bang singularity--we "know" the universe had an origin because we've been told evidence for the Big Bang exists, called redshift and cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB). The consensus of physicists (although consensus is not science) is that a very small, highly condensed dot of material rapidly expanded to become this universe. We don't know what existed prior to the Big Bang. We can only guess and speculate. It would be an example of vincible ignorance to know about redshift and CMB evidence and still reject the Big Bang evidence in favor of the steady state (eternal, unchanging universe) hypothesis. While similar to the phrase I began using a while ago, the subtle difference between vincible ignorance and willful ignorance is knowing and rejecting the truth as opposed to simply avoiding it. The distinction appears to be useful, to be sure. For example several years ago, while participating on an internet panel to discuss his … [Read more...]
The ghost brother of Twisted Sister
(Image: © Paul Natkin\/WireImage) I must admit that the strongest memory I had of the “heavy metal” rock band Twisted Sister was not actually of the band, but a National Lampoon magazine I once owned. The cover bore the picture of an adorable but pitiful-looking dog with a .38 revolver pressed to its head. The cover threatened, “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog!” It's a well known fact that I'm a sucker for dogs, so I bought a copy. Even years prior to my involvement with animal rescue, I couldn’t resist the idea of saving that poor dog’s life. In retrospect, it may have been the best investment under five bucks I've ever made. That issue wasn't just funny; virtually every word was hilarious. There were spoofs of arcade games like Space Invaders but called “Sperm from Space”, longer articles such as “The Death of Ed McMahon”...even the fake "Letters to the Editor" were priceless. When I read that issue of National Lampoon, I laughed so hard I cried, some of the jokes were so funny. Then my friends passed it around the room and read it in turn, shedding tears of laughter as well. Only our friend Jarvis read the whole magazine from cover to cover and never even cracked a smile, but he was the exception. There was a point to be made here, and it's about Twisted Sister. One of the fake letters to the editor went something along these lines (from memory, so this is not a verbatim quote): Dear Sir: I would like to completely disavow myself from any association with the bands AC/DC, Judas Priest, Twisted Sister, Def Leppard, Motley Crue…after a long … [Read more...]
