Often when someone asserts their non-belief in any religion and belief in rational thinking it is assumed by many that they also cannot (or should not) believe in paranormal phenomena. This is a mistaken conclusion. Belief in any given religion stems from a totally blind faith in all the divine revelations professed in that religion. But the belief in the existence of paranormal can result from even a rational mind who realizes the limitations of human knowledge and the possibility of hitherto unknown physical/natural laws being the raison-de-etre for these phenomena and that has the potential of being explained in principle IF those laws are ever discovered. This is totally in line with scientific thinking (or rather scientific metaphysical thinking) which allows for existence of laws not yet known. It is a mistaken idea of many laypersons that scientists are haughty, overconfident people who pretend to be able to explain everything and that they dismiss as impossible anything that cannot be EXPLAINED by KNOWN scientific laws. Scientists only declare that nothing has as yet been observed that VIOLATES any well established KNOWN natural law. The crucial thing to realize is that VIOLATES is not the same as UNEXPLAINABLE. If something cannot be explained by any known natural law but at the same time does not violate one then scientists are open minded about it and only try to give a plausibility arguments using Occam's Razor as guide to explain it, provided its existence itself is fiorst established beyond doubt, or else it will be wasted effort to explain whjat does not even exist. The important point to realize is that Science does not say Paranormal events DO NOT or CANNOT EXIST, only says it has not been proven conclusively to exist, so to assert its existence or try to explain would not be a scientific pursuit

One need to realize that all the physical laws that are known now (e.g Einstein's theory of relativity, Quantum theory of matter, Newton's Laws, etc) were true and were at work in nature even before their discovery. In the same vein their can be many undiscovered laws at work in nature at present which may explain those phenomena. This is exemplified in the views of Roger Penrose of Oxford that some new principle in Physics must be integrated within existing Quantum Theory and Theory of Gravitation to explain consciousness. Nobody can say if all of the undiscovered laws will even ever be known. Nobody could have guaranteed the discovery of Einstein's theory, it just happened coincidentally. The subtle undiscovered laws of nature, if any, might potentially be a manifestation of the so called Theory of Everything (TOE) that scientists believe exists and are striving to discover. It may be that we may approach incrementally to that nirvana of knowing the ultimate law and thus increase our understanding continually and incrementally but never quite reach there. After all, science is more a process of getting closer to the absolute truth, not necessarily discovering THE truth of nature. But also one should NEVER ignore the fact that within a certain domain of applications the truth may be known in 100% accuracy, for example the fact that computers, TV, microwave, Rockets, Atom bombs etc work certainly proves that the truth of natural laws is known with certainty within some domain of applicability. The whole point is by recognizing the possibility and keeping one's mind open on the possibility of paranormal phenomena one is asserting this view, rather than contradicting their rational thoughts or their non-belief in institutional religion. For example reports of Poltergeist,apparition,spirit etc have been quite common in human history, some even by persons of credible reputation. There may indeed be such phenomenon, which may be manifestations of purely natural laws (Not anything divine as the religious books hypothesize). In fact there are quite a few plausibility (ad hoc) arguments to explain its existence. An example of such is the after shock of an unnatural death which gets recorded in the ambient articles (walls, furniture, etc) of the place of the death and this recorded aftershock replaying itself like a phonograph record playing back to reproduce the song that was recorded from a real human voice. Brain chemistry with a Qunatum coherence in the nerons, or sensitivity to earth's magnetic fields have been putatively invoked to explain Psychic abilities. Underwater streams, High voltage electromagnetic fields etc have been attributed to hauntings in houses and dowsing for example. These are not scientific explanations, but still an attempt to explain through plausibility arguments based on natural laws. Poltergeist events have been attributed to brain's ability to influence matter, or brain's ability to create a perception of movement of objects. On the other hand there has also been recorded incidence of man made Poltergeist activity called "Hutchison Effect" where poltergeist like movements of articles were induced in a non-repeatable way by purely physical means (But without any explanation). Click here and here for discussions of such effects. Click here for a plausible explanation of Hutchison effect. And this is the website for all about Hutchison effect. But interestingly none of the phenomena that are reportedly perceived in a haunted house VIOLATES a known law, only that the haunted events cannot be explained by any law. No one has ever conclusively shown that an object floated still in space without support (Can be a hallucination but to prove it actually happened needs objective demonstration and witnesses), an example of violation of a physical law. Reports of flying object SEEN in a deserted, haunted house sound spooky, unexplainable by any law, but it DOES NOT violate any laws of physics, since SEEING is a subjective perception not susceptible to scientific scrutiny.

The most scientific attempts in explaining Psi phenomena has been by invoking the concepts of Quantum Physics. Nobel Laureate Brian Jospehson (mentioned in Science Metaphysics-2) has remarked that if Psi events had not been reported, an imaginative theoretician could have predicted from Quantum Theory that they should occur! (p-141, "Explaining the Unexplained: Mysteries of the Paranormal" by Eysenck Sargent). Physicist Olivier Costa de Beauregard of the Louis De Broglie Foundation(formerly of University of Paris) has remarked that the most Fundamental axioms of Quantum Mechanics demand that Psi events must occur as a result of the spatial temporal (Lorentz)invariance elements of EPR paradox. Prof Beauragrd has worked on an aspect of Quantum theory that asserts that the present decisions can influence the past, a phemnomena callled "retrocausation" in Quantum jargon. This was first suggested by Physicist Wheeler, it has also been developed more recently by Physicist Stapp of Berkeley mentioned in Science Metaphysiocs-2" before. This retro-causation has been extrapolated (metaphysically of course) to an extreme by some physicist to theorize that the creation nof the universe itself may be a retro causation by the conscious act of observation by humans. This is the position taken by Physicist Amit Goswami in his book "The self-Conscious Universe". Anyway this spatio-temporal inavariance of Quantum Mechanics has also led to a prediction of what is known as retro-PK in Psi phemomena, which is testable. In retro-PK, a psychic can supposedly alter the past output of a Random Event generator by proper mental concentration at present! Although claims have been made to the actutal observation of retro-PK by researchers like Schmidt, they remain controversial without sufficient scientific scrutiny. Probably the physicist who went the furthest to apply Quantum Physics to Psi phenomena has been Evan Harris Walker whose name was also mentioned in Science Metaphysics-2. In a series of papers and his book he has proposed a model using the notion of Collapse of Wavefunction and the notions of observer, observation process and the observed. His work is summarized in the book cited above. Many paranormalists invoke ideas of Quantum Mechanics to explain Psi phenoena, although such theories are not truly scientific, because thay are not falsifiable, and do not have preditive power. For example Physicist/Paranormalist John Hasted of the dept of Physics at the Birkbeck College of the University of London has speculated that Psi events can be explained by the "Many World" theory of Quantum Mechanics by Evertt and Wheeler. Walker's work however do have testable consequences. A very nice illustration of a purely scientific (i.e natural) way of giving plausibility arguments to explain the alleged psychic phenomenon of mind influencing matter (A random number generator in this case) is to be found on line at: http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRA/v50/i1/p18_1 This is a highly technical paper. The psychic phenomenon is disguised in the technical jargon "Causal Anomaly". The author (Stapp) is a theoretical physicist at Berkeley and the paper was published in the Physical Review, a highly prestigious journal and as a testimony to the genuine scientific nature of this work By Stapp one just needs to take note of the fact that the work was supported by U.S. Department of Energy ! (P.S. Unfortunately access to the details of the paper now requires subscription. I read the article when it was open to all. The fact that mind can influence matter is also reported informally by many. Nobel Laureate Physicist Wolfgang Pauli was notorious for his alleged influence on laboratory equipments, which reportedly used to stop functioning in his mere presence.!

Parapsychology is a discipline that is contorvesrial in its place in adademia. It is not totally dismissed as outside maintream science, nor intergrated as equal peer with others. One skeptical psycgologist was asked when would he take parapsychology seriously. He answered "When I see it in Hilgard and Atkinson" referring to the respected textbook on Psychology used widely in US and other countries. The 1990 edition of Hilgard Atkinson did include a 7 page section on parapsychology where the authors expressed the opninion that while most of the skepticism towards PSI is well founded, some are not. Parapsychology is increasingly becoming integrated with main stream psychology. That is because many Physicist and Psychologists have joined in this field to try to discover whether Psi phenonmea is real or not. This is unlike Astrology where a very pseudoscientific rationale is provided for the validity of astrological claims, and astrology has also attached to it the stigma of fleecing the public exploiting their weakness and sense of insecurity. It may be that the data of the Gauquelins on the supposed correlation between planets' position and the birtn of many genius, poets, and sports champions is true. But correlation does not indicate any causation. Its like trying to see what a lottery winner did on the day he picked the lucky number and try to relate some of his activities on that day to his winning the lucky number. Coincidences are possible both for individuals and for a collective group. The rules of Probabilty does not rule out any concidences. Theorizing causation based on correlation is a clear logical fallacy. Many of the data that supposedly establishes the validity of Psi phenomena have been produced and collected by scientists from academia. For example Psychiatrist Dr. Ian Stevenson published two papers in the prestigious Journal of Nervous and Mental disease based on his reincarnation studies that point to many unexplained cases of "reincarnation". But many results have been controversial. While many of the work by Physicists and scientitts do indeed show a definite non-random evidence of Psi, the very statistical nature of the evidence and the lack of any scientific usefulness (no model to work with, no predictive value etc) makes them less appealing to mainstream science. Add to that the impossibility of reproducing the exact obseravtion by others. While the existence of "dark matter" can be easily verified by astronomers/physicists anytime with the proper tool and training, these parapsychological data are results of decades of individual painstaking effort, which would be diificult for anyone to duplicate. On the other hand, the REG work by Physicist Helmut Schmitd of Boeing, Robert Jahn of Princeton Engineering Anomaly Research(PEAR) group has shown somewhat convincing (but not truly scientific) experimental statistical evidence of Psi ability of human mind. JB Rhine of Duke University in the late 30's also used ESP cards to show the reality of Psi ability of mind. Another pioneer Charles Honorton, also from academia, introduced the Ganzfeld experiemnts where barins psychic ability were allegedly enhanced by sensory deprivation. But again, all these being not in the line of true scientific method, such works are not considered "proof" of Psi phenomena, nor any proof of any "divine", "spiritual" nature of such, but nevertheless they help to counter a curt dismissal of its non-existence by critics. For a detailed discussion on Psi phenonmena from the parapsychologists' view point the book "The Conscious Universe" by Parapsychologist Dean Radin is a good refernece. Radin does a meta-analysis of many ESP experiments that allegedly shows that while individual psi experiemnets may not be significant, as a whole they do point to a significant bias towards its existence. Not surprisingly many scientists, like Victor Stenger have discounted meta analysis as unreliable. It should be mentioned that even though, science or scientists as a community may not have fully integrated parapsychology in science, but MANY scientists exist who belive in the actual EXISTENCE of paranormal phenomena (e.g the names mentioned above), in view of the statistical results of the PK experiments. But these beliefs are in no way comparable to the belief by some "scientists" in the traditional religious scriptures and God. The latter is not consistent with rationality. Not each and every "scientist" need be rational in their personal beliefs.

Other cases in point are faith healings. Although faith healing is not conclusivley proven by controlled methods, there are anecdotal cases. Even hypothetically assuming some faith healings work, there may be plausible natural explanations. The cases of faith healings cannot however qualify for miracle label. Because no known natural law is violated. Besides the usual placebo effect explanation, we cannot rule out other plausible natural explanations. The point I wish to make is that one need not invoke divine explanation. Even a a vague speculative explanations based on science is a better explanations than ones based on appeal to the unknowen or blind faith. For example one can try to explain it by a strange concept called counterfactuals in Quantum Mechanics where it is known that the mere act of opening up of the possibility of an event "A" can influence an event "B" even if "A" did not actually happen. (cf. "The Shadow of the Mind" by Roger PenRose). In a similar vein it is possible that the act of merely placing firm belief in something (God) through intense meditation (prayer/faith/can open up the possibility of certain unknown event "A" (possibly some neuronal rewiring in the brain), that can counterfactually influence another event "B" to happen ("healing" in this example), even though the target of the faith (a personal God) may be non-existent or false. i.e the fact that faith in prayer to a personal GOD actually helped in a given instance of healing does not guarantee that the object of the faith (personal GOD, divine revelations etc) are true, but that the *act* of placing a faith in such an object had a favourable tangible effect through the workings of natural laws. It might just be a purely quantum mechanical effect. The above was not a scientific explanation, but was just made to illustrate the fact that a plausible, ad hoc (not truly scientifc) explanation can be based on science without using any divine notion or term or any blind irrational belief, like a belief in a contradictictory notion of a personal God heeding to such prayers. Many such ad hoc explanations of paranormal phemomena are offered by parapsychologists. Those explanations are not scientifc (falsifibale, testable), but need not be wrong either. With some exceptions (Like Walker, Josephson, Beauregard etc), most parapsychologist do not have sound technical background in Quantum mechanics. And most professionsl Scientists do not have the time and motivation to review the scientific accuracy of such explanations, since parapsychology by definition, does not deal with phenomena that are observables, which is exclusively what science deals with.

A plausible ad hoc explanation not invoking irrational notions is that of mass prayer. Again, no conclusive evidence exist for the effectiveness of mass prayer. Assuming there is any authenticity to it, the alleged result of mass praying may also be a purely natural process (a cause-effect scenario) which itself may have its own effect depending on the various boundary conditions that can accompany an instance of praying (individual, mass etc). A prayer is basically an intense wish/ thought (an intense activity in the brain) and hence a natural process that CAN interfere with the environment (and hence the individual who is praying). Like Physicist philosopher Paul Davies writes in his book "The Cosmic Blue print" even an act of thinking involves the motion of electrons in the neurons of the brain and is bound to affect the rest of the universe. In this view, a mass prayer is more intense and more likely to impact the environment than an individual, if at all there is an effect. By the way prayer here is meant in a generic sense of wishing with intense meditation, not necessarily by reciting verses of Bible or Koran etc. A desire to exert an influence on the laws of nature is meant. It is an intense mental desire to manipulate the natural laws (which do contain quantum uncertainties to allow for multiple potentialities of reality) to yield a reality favourable to the prayers. Some current views of paranormalists even posit that mass praying can have effect on physical world in a similar vein as Quantum non-local effects are manifested in physical act of observations, i.e an unexplained yet purely natural cause/effect or interconnectedness/correlation/synchronicity can in principle exist without any divine connections. Again these are plausibility arguments, not scientific, but neverthless does not invoke any transcedental or divine considerations. My point here is to emphasize that paranormal or miracles, even if they are shown to exist does not force one to resort to a divine explanation, there still can be natural explanations, although not scientific in the strict sense. But the important point to keep in mind is that any such explanations cannot be promoted to a scientific status, or cannot be a basis for claiming the actual existence of Psi phenomena, which are yet not conclusively proven to exist. The only reasonable view would be to not permanently rule out the existence of any paranormal events.

It is also possible that the pattern of correlation that is observed between certain phenomena that is traditionally explained as divine intervention can be just built in nature and part of the subtle interplay of natural laws at work (analogous to Newton's law of action/reaction or the law of conservation of energy etc) and not due to the intentional act of intervention by an entity with consciousness. Sometimes they seem to be random and not follow any persistent pattern. That may be due to the inherent complexity of the natural laws which make it impossible to predict, just as the laws of complexity preclude weather prediction, although the weather still strictly follow the laws of Physics and can be often predicted in a statistical sense.

It is the nature of our world that the path to truth is full of impediments. the major impediments are gullibility/naivette, self complacency and cynicism. Gullibility results from an inability to exercise one's critical faculty and accept blindly other's views as authentic without ever bothering to examine the credentials of those proposing the ideas and views. Cynicism leads to an obsessively negative view of everything and hence failing to recognize/acknowledge even the objective truth. Self complacency is due to a false perception of knowing everything and not realizing the the technical nature of some topics that only can be fully understood, proposed or challenged through appropriate expertise only. Sometimes the overzealous laypeople paraphrase the views of scientists in catchy words and propagate misleading interpretations and thus create a domino effect of public myths. Then the scientific community helplessly takes a back seat and decide to go about their own important business and not even bother to stop the domino effect. The entire myth of Teletransportation, UFO, Philadelphia experiment etc bears testimony to this unfortunate reality. Take another example. When quantum mechanics was formulated by the great physicists in the third and fourth decade of this century, they became aware of some strange and profound aspects of the theory(Like non-locality etc). These Physicists when debating among themselves used to refer to the word "mystical" in expressing the wonder at these profound implications, and the pseudoscientists quickly exploited this word to promote their own alternative theories and cults quoting and paraphrasing these words by physicists without really understanding themselves what those really meant and unconscientously touting their ideas/views to be supported by the Quantum Theory of Physics. Nowadays one can hear New Age mystical Quacks using the "quantum" word to plug their own vague ideas of healing and making millions from gullible public. New Age Mystics, healers etc have unabashedly exploited Quantum theory without understanding it. Check the link http://www.csicop.org/sb/9806/reality-check.html for an example of one such attempt to justify "spiritual healing" through modern physics. The fact is, these esoteric aspects of Quantum Theory/Cosmology is too complex to be taught technically at even the usual graduate level Physics curriculum and is only studied in specialized graduate level courses and by Research Physicists at the post graduate level. Nature's mysteries and secrets are unfortunately hidden in complex symbolic codes (mathematical structures) that can only be understood and decoded by the complex symbology of mathematics, and once they are decoded by Scientists they then phrase them in simpler terms for the rest of us laypeople and that's where lies the potential pitfall of mischaracterization, mispresentation by the pseudoscientific self proclaimed "New Age Gurus" who exploit them.

What is commonly labelled "medical miracle" i.e unexplained healing of a disease that doctors cannot explain is not really a miracle, since no existing laws of EXACT SCIENCE are violated. There is no LAW in medicine, in the sense of Law of Gravitation, that holds unfailingly. Medicine is more or less an empirical science. Even medicine acknowledges the potential of human mind in healing some ailments which otherwise is judged incurable by routine medical methods. That's the very nature of empirical science. But the basis of ALL science is the laws of Physics. Every phenomena is a high level manifestation of Physical Laws working at the lowest level. Since none of the "medical miracles" (Which are the only ones whose existence are attested to by doctors/scientists) which are high level deviations from the norm of empirical science can be reductively traced to a violation of the basic physical laws at the lowest level, they cannot be defined to be true miracles.

The same kind of speculative reasoning can be applied to give a plausibility touch to Jungian phenomenon of "synchronicity". I must emphasize again that the point is to illustrate that miracle like events can possibly happen purely out of a naturalistic cause/effect and not due to a conscious intervention of a divine entity envisaged in traditional religion/metaphysics. It is possible that some alternative spiritual healing might work for someone in a specific instance where traditional medicine failed. This can be due to a stroke of good luck hit upon by the healer by empirical trial and error that might work for certain individual under certain circumstances but which can certainly be not reproducible in a controlled and predictable way. So the healer cannot claim a possession of some supreme spiritual healing power/insight for such isolated instances of success. If the spiritual healing did unfailingly succeed in 100% cases or if they could unfailingly PREDICT the success/failure of their spiritual technique on each subject then that would lend credence worthy of attention and would have become mainstream healing method by now. Most explanations of failures are provided post hoc, i.e after the fact, not predicted in advance. Of course, since there is a certain probability that a certain individual may be the beneficiary of the isolated instances of success of the spiritual trial and error healing method, then he/she can by all means give it a try when all traditional means turned out to be a failure. Medicine, after all is not an exact science with unfailing laws like Physics and can never provide unfailing success in healing on each and every subject in all ailments.

All the hearsay of miracles are personal (individual or group) accounts, anecdotes. They can at best be labelled as "truth" as seen in the eye of the beholder. They have never been demonstrated/repeated or have happened in an open forum or in public or in a controlled environment under careful observations. In this context it may be relevant to mention that the $100,000 award declared by the debunker/magician James Randi or the Rs. 100,000 award declared by B. Premanand, the Founder of Indian CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal), or more recently, the Rs 2 million award by Prabir Ghose of Indian Rationalist Association, that if anyone can conclusively demonstrate the existence of a miracle still remain unclaimed. What is inexplicable now, if any such event can truly be verified to exist, can potentially be explainable by discovery (If we are lucky. Discoveries of Scientific laws are Epiphanic, not all potential laws of nature are guaranteed to be discovered) of new or suitable extensions of existing natural laws in future through increased understanding. In fact some positivist philosophers insist that there can never be anything called supernatural in the true sense. Because anything we observe is a phenomenon, i.e observations WITHIN nature. Anything outside nature, in whatever sense it may be, must be beyond observation, so we can have no knmowledge, even speculative, about it, so it is meaningless to even refer to them. The word "Supernatural" only reflects our ignorance of the ultimate explanation of the observed phenomena of nature beyond a certain level. it does not reflect a breach of nature's rule. Whatever happens in nature, regardless of how it appears to us, must be due to nature's laws, almost like a tautological statement. The fact that some magical tricks can baffle even a very well prepared scientist indicates that it is even more likely that humans can be fooled by the mother of all magicians: "Mother Nature". Humanity is making progress in its effort to decipher more and more tricks of this grand magician in an incremental way.