Evolution and paranormal things

Random mutation and natural selection.Duh.If you want to get more specific, then you need to explain the exact mechanism for how these abilities function.

dupe post[This message has been edited crashfrog, 05-04-2004]

I'm open to the potential existence of paranormal abilities, just so you know. Though they've hardly been demonstrtated to any degree of certainty, to my view.Nonetheless, if they evolved, then they did so through natural selection and random mutation. It's difficult indeed to believe that you can't imagine some kind of survival benefit to paranormal abilities, so I don't see what the problem is.If you want to argue that they're somehow irreducably complex, though, I don't see how you could even begin to do that without a fully-fledged explanation of the paranormal mechanism.

If the kid saw it on the History Channel or a movie or something, does that count as fraud?

There's no mystery here. The human body - all living bodies - pick up radio signals.That's why your TV reception improves when you touch the antenna. That's why portable TV's have a metallic neck-strap - the contact with your body improves reception.They can suspend frogs in mid-air with sufficiently powerful magnetic fields. Picking up a stray radio signal isn't going to be hard.Interpreting it in a brain would seem to be the major challenge, and I still don't understand why you don't think this kid could have picked up something from TV or a movie. If you've ever seen a kid play Yu-Gi-Oh you should know that they have an incredible capacity for memorizing trivia.

Again I don't see anything here for which the most likely explanation is an undetected, unknwon mechanism for the transmission of memories through time and space.We don't know the situation where these "memories" were reported, and young children are known for being extraordinarily eager to please. Think back to all those cases of "demon possession" and satanic abuse in the 80's - it all turned out to be people telling therapists what the therapists wanted to hear.It would be all too easy for someone to ask "Hey, kid, were you shot in the engine, like that pilot was?" and for the kid to just say "yes." The next person who asks might get that exact story.Without an airtight methodology, this is an anecdote. I don't see that it's all that scientific to construct paradigm-shaking hypotheses from anecdotes.