Gene did his usual solid job, particularly in the face of two guests who were quite determined to have their cake and eat it too: They wanted their New Age beliefs to have scientific credibility. Batchelor’s epistemology seemed to boil down to ‘I have special gifts that give me specialized access to knowledge. Trust me.’ I got the distinct impression Gene wasn’t convinced that this was a valid way to establish the reality of alleged non-human intelligences. I’m in agreement.
I felt like banging my head against a wall after repeatedly hearing about “frequencies,” “energies,” and “higher dimensions.” Batchelor’s use of these terms mirrors their standard usage in New Age discourse, which function both a figure of speech or rough metaphor, while also supposedly referring to fundamental natural forces. The problem for the former usage is that frequency/etc. doesn’t reveal, it obscures; it offers pseudo-description in place of more precise observation. For example, most everyone knows what you mean when you say you ‘have common interests’ with someone else. This phrase certainly gives you more specific information than ‘We’re on the same frequency’, which could mean several things and not necessarily a shared interest.
In the second category of usage, frequency and energy depart from scientific meaning and seem to become universal causal terms that extend well beyond their scientific meaning. Frequency and energy (and vibration) explain or describe almost anything, which therefore means they explain or describe essentially nothing.
During Gene’s session with Batchelor she said “The earth can actually send frequencies up through your feet.” What could she possibly be talking about here? I can well appreciate this phrase as non-literal and poetic language, the kind of thing you’d say to induce greater bodily awareness and induce mental states as in a guided meditation. However, she appears to believe that there actually exists some literal physical force, which the New Age gives the name of frequency, that was moving from the earth to Gene’s feet and body. What could this be other than New Age word magic?
This frequency is also connected, so we’re told, to these non-human intelligences in their interactions with us. And then there’s a third sense of frequency that appears to be a metaphor for various unspecified psychological and/or physical qualities.
Such obscurantist New Age verbiage lies right there on the table and apparently goes unnoticed, or at least certainly not commented on, by Batchelor or Davis. Their verbal gestures toward skepticism and science don’t assuage the suspicion that they don’t see these terms and their lack of scientific definition as any kind of problem. Thus their talk of science and skepticism is mostly or in part mere rhetoric.
Davis didn’t strike me as being sufficiently aware of a couple of key things.
1. Davis didn’t seem to be aware of the fallacy that the truth of an objective hypothesis, in this case that some non-human intelligence is interacting with experiencers, is not given validity based on how one feels about it. Several times he noted that people had life changing experiences, adopted a more spiritual view of life or spiritual practices, felt “unconditional love” or “united with the universe”—so what? If these experiences benefitted people, I’m happy for them.
But truth doesn’t depend on how we feel about it. If it makes me feel good to believe I’m a billionaire, well then I am one. Given how many times Davis repeated the claim that many experiencers had a positive response, I got the impression that perhaps he was compensating for the lack of any empirical support for the hypothesis of what inspires these experiencer claims in the first place.
2. Davis seems much too easily impressed with Batchelor’s alleged channeling ability. He himself spoke of experiencing ‘jerking movements’ and other things. It was very odd though that he failed to emphasize, which you would do if you were committed to presenting your information with a scientific approach, that somewhat unusual physical and psychological effects are commonplace in therapeutic, religious and other settings. Why these commonplace bodily and psychological effects he mentioned should be upgraded as a unique class of evidence for Batchelor’s alleged channeling power of non-human intelligences is a question left unanswered.
In his eagerness in trying to convince us that Batchelor is “the real deal,” Davis used the example of love, stating that we can’t prove it but that we know that it exists. Yes, but this is not a valid analogy with what is presented as true in these channeling sessions—that some intelligent entity or force outside the mind is involved. In other words, this is an objective claim. We can either prove it or not. Inner experience alone can’t be used as proof because inner experience can come from other sources, namely psychological.
Having said all this I don’t mean to declare any dogmatic rejection of the possibility of non-human intelligences contacting people. Nor do I want to be seen as discouraging FREE’s investigations. But, if we’re to ever get to the bottom of this phenomenon we need actual science. We don’t need New Age belief masquerading as science, or distorting scientific inquiry to prove a pre-existing belief. Too often, paranormal researchers are their own worst enemy.