Behold, I show you a mystery!

I would love to believe that every move we made was part of some individual god's big master plan or practical joke. All six billion of us separated and sorted into little boxes depending on where, when and who we were born to; ultimately packed into two boxes - one marked goat, the other sheep, and then prostrating ourselves at the feet of him for eternity pandering to his enormous ego, forever telling him how awesome he is.

It would be great to believe that all the bad decisions and mistakes I've made in my life are not regretable but rather necessary steps on the road to enlightenment. Sometimes I force myself to believe in predestination, destiny and fate to stop myself from wallowing in regret for missed opportunities. It's no wonder people get so confused when faced with the death of a loved one. It just doesn't make sense when it happens; it doesn't compute. We're assured by the religious nutters who gets rolled in to speak at funerals that the death served a purpose that we mere mortals just can't understand. Poppycock! Sometimes we simply make a wrong step and our fragile bodies blow away back into dust.

"Behold, I show you a mystery!" wrote Paul; he was an enigmatic speaker. When it comes to supernatural phenomena, I love a good mystery and sometimes there is simply no explanation. The same can be said whenever I go to see a professional magician. Those guys are professional hoaxers and are experts at making us believe something truly magical is happening... but there's always a trick.. there's always an explanation. They're very good at keeping it quiet though. The same goes for supernatural happenings, in my opinion, there's an explanation somewhere, but it's just not always forthcoming. There have always been hoaxers, both amatuer and professional for as long as we've been around. Some are tongue in cheek but others are confidence tricksters who work very hard to persuade the ignorant to believe a lie. And that's the thing... people lie. They lie all the time and they're good at it. Some lie so well they convince themselves. Heck I used to convincingly lie that I'd seen something strange; it was an attention seeking device. I sometimes even relayed the stories of others, making them my own because I believed them so wholeheartedly.

When dealing with this subject it's important to keep Occam's Razor in mind.. which says that the simplest explanation is usually right; and you shouldn't add unnecessary complications when trying to explain something. The tricky part is deciding which exlanation is the most likely. Also, it's important to keep an open mind, which is hard when facts challenge assumptions. Sometimes we want to believe something so badly that we ignore the evidence altogether. I recommend starting without preconceptions and then listen to some new ideas. I myself am not really a sceptic, I'm open to anything and then I try to disprove it through logic or reality (my reality). This is your journey and will ultimately be your reality.

The trouble with paranormality is that most of the evidence is heresay. It happened to a friend of a friend, who is no fool.. hmmm. If I personally had a ghostly encounter or an alien abduction and was not after a few drinks then I may think differently. However, I've never seen anything that fractures the laws of physics and I have trouble believing the stories of people who tell me they have. Most people don't understand the nature of probability and random chance, therefore they attribute mystic intervention when all it really was was a trick of perception (I just typed was was... was there a better way of putting that?).

If I come across someone who seems to be happily convinced they were abducted and probed by E.T. then who am I to call them a liar? I might back up and feel sorry for them, but I'm not going to call their bluff. It seems many people are absolutely convinced that they've touched the light fantastic. But everyone can't be right... and it seems that reality is easily skewed, what with Psychokinesis, ghosts, unexplained creatrues, Crop Circles (my favourite), UFOs, and Mary sightings.. ra ra ra... the list goes on and on. And poor old me hasn't seen as much as a pesky poltergeist. 5 million people in America alone claim to have been abducted by aliens. Is this mass stupidity or are we really craving attention. Sorry America... I think you are coming across a little needy.