Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality
Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality

Author: David Ray Griffin

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1997-01-09

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 1438404859

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In this book, David Ray Griffin, best known for his work on the problem of evil, turns his attention to the even more controversial topic of parapsychology. Griffin examines why scientists, philosophers, and theologians have held parapsychology in disdain and argues that neither a priori philosophical attacks nor wholesale rejection of the evidence can withstand scrutiny. After articulating a constructive postmodern philosophy that allows the parapsychological evidence to be taken seriously, Griffin examines this evidence extensively. He identifies four types of repeatable phenomena that suggest the reality of extrasensory perception and psychokinesis. Then, on the basis of a nondualistic distinction between mind and brain, which makes the idea of life after death conceivable, he examines five types of evidence for the reality of life after death: messages from mediums; apparitions; cases of the possession type; cases of the reincarnation type; and out-of-body experiences. His philosophical and empirical examinations of these phenomena suggest that they provide support for a postmodern spirituality that overcomes the thinness of modern religion without returning to supernaturalism.

Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality
Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality

Author: David Ray Griffin

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1997-01-01

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 9780791433157

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Examines why parapsychology has been held in disdain by scientists, philosophers, and theologians, explores the evidence for ESP, psychokinesis, and life after death, and suggests that these phenomena provide support for a meaningful postmodern spirituality.

Parapsychology and Religion
Parapsychology and Religion

Author: Everton de Oliveira Maraldi

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-06-29

Total Pages: 103

ISBN-13: 9004467831

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Everton Maraldi explores how research on alleged anomalous processes informs the study of religious/spiritual experiences and examines the theoretical and methodological possibilities and challenges of an interdisciplinary dialogue between parapsychology and psychology of religion.

Parapsychology, Philosophy and the Mind
Parapsychology, Philosophy and the Mind

Author: Fiona Steinkamp

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2015-10-02

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1476621802

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John Beloff is one of our foremost authorities in parapsychology. He is credited with an instrumental role in the acceptance of parapsychology into academia. On April 21 and 22, 2000, a two-day international conference was held by the Koestler Parapsychology Unit of the Psychology Department at the University of Edinburgh to celebrate Beloff's eightieth birthday. Most of the essays in this work were presented at this conference honoring John Beloff. All of the contributors have published a number of articles in mainstream philosophy and their essays promote Beloff's greatest interest--a philosophical interaction with parapsychology. The book is divided into three sections and each section has three papers. The papers in the first section, "Parapsychology, Philosophy and the Mind," explore "the mind-brain problem," parapsychology and the principle of closure, and a cross-cultural perspective on dualism and the self. The second section, "Parapsychology, Self and Survival," looks at parapsychological phenomena and the sense of self, chrysalid therapy, and the problem of super psi. The third section, "Parapsychology, Religion and Spirituality," features papers that discuss parapsychology and how it relates to Hume's view of miracles, to religion, and to the origin of the Copernican hypothesis.

The Science of Spirit
The Science of Spirit

Author: Luis Portela

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2020-12-18

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1476641528

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Throughout the 20th century and into the new millennium, humanity has made enormous advancements in science and technology. Spiritual enlightenment, however, has gone relatively neglected, as fascination with material progress tends to keep us focused on the physical world, giving less importance to universal values, to being, to spiritual life. Parapsychological research has produced significant findings over the last few decades, and science has the obligation to continue exploring this area, seeking to contribute to the spiritual enlightenment of humanity. This book examines evidence of traditional psychic phenomena, promoting a more comprehensive understanding of them, and offering new perspective to see ourselves as particles of "universal energy," interconnected with all others.

Religion and Scientific Naturalism
Religion and Scientific Naturalism

Author: David Ray Griffin

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2000-05-18

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 9780791445631

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Articulates a metaphysical position capable of rendering both science and religious experience simultaneously and mutually intelligible.

Spirituality and Society
Spirituality and Society

Author: David Ray Griffin

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1988-01-01

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 9780887068539

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This book takes a genuinely new spiritual stance reflecting the emergence of a post-modern science and differing from the relativistic nihilism that calls itself postmodern but is really modernism extended to its limit. Based on a direct experience of reality as divine, this postmodern spirituality transcends modernity's individualism and patriarchy, its forced choices between dualism and materialism, anthropocentrism and relativism, supernaturalism and atheism, intolerance and nihilism. Bringing moral and ethical values back into rational discourse, this book provides a critique of various aspects of modern society--political, economic, social, agricultural, and technological aspects. This criticism, informed by the postmodern worldview, points toward a more satisfying form of personal existence and a sustainable form of global order.

Whitehead's Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy
Whitehead's Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy

Author: David Ray Griffin

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0791480305

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Postmodern philosophy is often dismissed as unintelligible, self-contradictory, and as a passing fad with no contribution to make to the problems faced by philosophers in our time. While this characterization may be true of the type of philosophy labeled postmodern in the 1980s and 1990s, David Ray Griffin argues that Alfred North Whitehead had formulated a radically different type of postmodern philosophy to which these criticisms do not apply. Griffin shows the power of Whitehead's philosophy in dealing with a range of contemporary issues—the mind-body relation, ecological ethics, truth as correspondence, the relation of time in physics to the (irreversible) time of our lives, and the reality of moral norms. He also defends a distinctive dimension of Whitehead's postmodernism, his theism, against various criticisms, including the charge that it is incompatible with relativity theory.

The Elements of Parapsychology
The Elements of Parapsychology

Author: K. Ramakrishna Rao

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2017-11-29

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1476671222

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Psychic phenomena, recorded throughout human history, remained a mystery or a matter of faith rather than a subject of serious study until scientists began to investigate them roughly a century and a half ago. Systematic experimentation began with the work of J.B. Rhine at Duke University, resulting in the publication of Extra-Sensory Perception (1934) followed by Extra-Sensory Perception After Sixty Years (1940). Rhine and researchers who came after him struggled to present sufficient evidence to gain scientific credibility for the existence of extrasensory abilities. Yet despite tight experimental controls and numerous significant results the subject remains controversial. Parapsychologists argue that the impasse is not due to a lack of evidence but to the challenge their claims pose to the worldview of science in general. This comprehensive overview of the discipline of parapsychology, written by one of its most notable investigators, offers the reader a full understanding of both its concepts, theories and methods, and its controversies, problems and prospects.