Critical Reflections on the Paranormal

Edited by Michael Stoeber & Hugo A. Meynell

Subjects: Paranormal
Series: SUNY series in Religious Studies
Paperback : 9780791430644, 224 pages, September 1996
Hardcover : 9780791430637, 224 pages, September 1996

Alternative formats available from:

Table of contents

Acknowledgments

1. Critical Reflections on the Paranormal: An Introduction

Michael Stoeber

2. On Investigation of the So-Called Paranormal

Hugo Meynell

3. Parapsychology: Merits and Limits

Donald Evans

4. Why Critical Reflection on the Paranormal Is So Important—And So Difficult

David Ray Griffin

5. Reflections on Incorporeal Agency

Terence Penelhum

6. Souls in Process: A Theoretical Inquiry into Animal Psi

Susan J. Armstrong

7. Medico-Scientific Assumptions Regarding Paradeath Phenomena: Explanation or Obfuscation?

Heather Botting

8. Postmortem Survival: The State of the Debate

Stephen E. Braude

9. Morality and Parapsychology

James R. Horne

List of Contributors

Index

Collection of essays that clarifies and evaluates the various aspects of paranormal phenomena, including telepathy, psychokinesis, trance-mediumship, near-death experiences and past-life memories.

Description

Critical Reflections on the Paranormal discusses various aspects of paranormal phenomena such as telepathy, psychokinesis, trance-mediumship, near-death experiences, and past-life memories. It reflects on what is reasonable to believe about them, and why; and it suggests what changes they might demand in our worldview, if these phenomena are accepted as genuine.

The collection includes essays written by Susan Armstrong, Heather Botting, Stephen Braude, Don Evans, David Ray Griffin, James Horne, Terence Penelhum, and the editors.

Michael Stoeber is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion and Religious Education at The Catholic University of America. He has also written Theo-Monistic Mysticism: A Hindu Christian Comparison and Evil and the Mystics' God. Hugo Meynell is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary. He is the author of The Nature of Aesthetic Value, also published by SUNY Press; and Sense, Nonsense and Christianity; Grace versus Nature; The New Theology and Modern Theologians; God and the World; Freud, Marx, and Morals; The Intelligible Universe: A Cosmological Argument; An Introduction to the Philosophy of Bernard Lonergan; The Theology of Bernard Lonergan; and Is Christianity True?

Reviews

"This book deals with a topic often mistakenly dismissed by scholars as magic or superstition due to our dominant materialistic-rational-empirical worldview. Stoeber and Meynell's book, by contrast, approaches the topic as one deserving of serious scholarly study and carries out its analysis with academic rigor. It engages several of North America's best philosophical minds in the process and produces a very readable result. " -- Harold Coward, University of Victoria