"Why?"

(This section updated September 25^th 1999)

The purpose of this site is twofold - firstly, to collect together as much "Forteana" in a single place as possible, inviting the reader to submit their favourite anecdotes for inclusion in the site. Nothing will be represented as "factual" unless I can verify it from at least two separate sources, one of which is not the Internet!

The second reason for the existence of this site is to explore the psychology behind "Belief Systems" - why we feel the need to believe in things which cannot be proven or demonstrated. There are many sites on the web which collect the unusual, but I have yet to find another site which asks why we want to believe...

The "Updates" situation will improve soon! Honest! I have some articles in progress, and am tidying up the site structure in general... Stay tuned...

If you've read everything on the site already, why not visit some of the other interesting sites on my Jump Page?

Belief Systems

"He believes in things all the more thoroughly the less he comprehends them, and does not believe in the correctness of those ideas which he comprehends most easily." (Wilhelm Reich) - Why do we feel the need to believe in things which are untestable and unprovable?

The "God Spot" - a brain structure dedicated to religious experience?

The human species seems to have an innate need to have something outside its own personal experience to believe in, whether it is religion, alien ships filling the skies, governmental conspiracies or psychic connections with an unseen spirit world. We all seem to believe in something, and, perversely, hold those beliefs more strongly the more people who challenge them.

Neuroscientists from the University of California in San Diego have localised an area in the brain which they have called the "God-spot" because the activity detected there seems to be directly related to thoughts of God and spiritual experiences. This area is positioned to the front and centre of the brain, in exactly the same area where some Eastern religions describe the location of the "third eye", or area of "cosmic consciousness". It is also the place where some ancient religions performed the operation of "trepanning", or cutting of a small hole in the skull, a practice said to enhance the spiritual awareness of the individual. A spokesman for the University of California team said at a conference: "This (brain structure) may have evolved to impose order and stability on society".

One case study, reported in "Sightings" magazine, vol.2 issue 8, p.44-47, is that of Georgio Bondiovanni, an epeleptic whose seisures are centred in and around the "God spot". During such seisures, he has been observed to develop stigmata (it is alleged that videotape exists of this), and on recovering he produced a series of prophecies and "holy revelations", which he now recounts at lectures and conferences around the world. Perhaps tellingly, at the time he was first observed to develop his stigmata whilst visiting the town of Fatima, (famous for "the Miracle of Fatima", where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to three children and given them three prophesies) there were reports of UFO activity over the town…

"Doctor Persinger's God Machine" - a machine to induce mystical experiences.

Experiments by Doctor Michael Persinger of Laurentian University, Canada, described in "NewSpeak KataZzzine" vol.2 issue 2, p.34-35, led to the production of a computer-controlled "helmet", the wearing of which could induce mystical experiences by stimulating the temporal lobe, amygdala and hippocampus with magnetic forces and low doses of electricity. Persinger suggests that people who are "temporal lobe sensitives" are most likely to have mystical experiences, as well as epileptic seizures. Use of "Dr. Persinger’s God Machine"(sic) appears to engender a temporary state where "waking" consciousness is supplemented by "dream" consciousness, both active at the same time! This state is characterised by Charismatic religious experiences, "other-worldly" visions and memories exhibiting "extraordinary recall of long-lost detail".

Dr. Persinger does not discount the possibility of genuine, spontaneous religious experience, explaining, "The fact that we can actually insert a God experience does not change the fact that the process is there for some functional or evolutionary reason. If one accepts that God created the universe, then why not have a brain mechanism whereby these experiences take place?" The doctor’s experiments apparently worked so well that an Evangelist group demonstrated outside his office believing that he and his equipment were demonic…

Peet, 13^th May 1998

A Quantum Mechanical view of reality

By "Ammonite"

Quantum Mechanics is the basis of reality and Quantum Mechanics says that nothing is really real!

Things only exist when they are being observed and indeed nothing can be known about them while they are not being observed. From observations we can only say how something behaved in the past and nothing at all about what will happen until the next observation. The original interpretation of the theories led to some strange paradoxes. "Schrodinger’s Cat" is the most famous example:

A cat is placed in a box with a radioactive source which has a 50% chance of emitting a particle in a pre-allotted time. A detector will smash a vial of cyanide and kill the cat if such a particle is detected. According to the rules, while the cat is unobserved it is in a state of ‘superposition’ where it is neither dead nor alive. It is only when the box is opened and the ‘waveform collapses’ that we find the cat alive or dead.

The many strange features of the theory can be resolved by the ‘Many Worlds’ scenario. It goes like this: When ever a choice is made (live or dead cat) the Universe splits into two copies of itself, one with each outcome. So when ‘you’ open the box in this Universe to find a living cat there is another ‘you’ in another Universe opening the box to find a dead cat.

Although the ‘Many Worlds’ theory resolves some of the paradoxes of the original interpretation, I am still unsatisfied that this gives a true picture of reality.

This is all very well, but what of the origin of the universe?

According to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, something can be created out of nothing as long as it obeys the rule:-

where ‘DE’ is the amount of energy in the system, ‘DT’ is the time that it lasts and ‘h’ is Planck's constant. ‘h’ is very, very tiny but there is a growing belief that the total energy of the Universe is very close to zero. Therefore the entire Universe could just be a Quantum Fluctuation.

There is also another possibility that is even stranger. Photons act as both particles and waves but both properties can never be measured at the same time. Also, when an observation is made of the particle properties it forces the photon to have acted as a particle in the past. The argument is the same for wave properties. Thus an observation made now can affect how something behaved in the past.

So, as observations of more and more distant galaxies are made, the nature of the observations could be affecting the galaxies themselves. Indeed, measurement of the cosmic background radiation, the echo of the Big Bang, might be ‘creating’ the Big Bang and the Universe.

Of course the ‘Many Worlds’ theory would say that the observations we make are simply choosing which one of the infinite number of possible Universes we inhabit.

Ammonite, 8^th June 1998