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Your Paracast Newsletter — June 7, 2020


Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
The Paracast Newsletter
June 7, 2020
www.theparacast.com

Take a Fascinating and Fun-filled Trip Through the World of Pop Culture and UFOs with Curt Collins on The Paracast!

The Paracast is heard Sundays from 3:00 AM until 6:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, the Boost Radio Network, the IRN Internet Radio Network, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.

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This Week's Episode: Gene and Randall present UFO researcher Curt Collins, in an extended trip through the UFO field and how it influences and is influenced by pop culture. Curt Collins is the author behind Blue Blurry Lines, a website focused on the UFO mysteries, as well as its legends and hoaxes. In 2015 Curt was on the investigative team, the Roswell Slides Research Group, which exposed the BeWitness alien photo fiasco. More recently, he launched The Saucers That Time Forgot with Claude Falkstrom, focused on unearthing “tales that UFO history has overlooked or would rather forget.” A recent example is an article about mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, creator of Sam Spade, and how the flying saucer mystery influenced stories based on his characters.

J. Randall Murphy's Ufology Society International: Ufology Society International (USI) - Explore the UFO Phenomenon

Curt Collins' Blue Blurry Lines: Blue Blurry Lines

After The Paracast -- Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers on June 7: This is definitely not a politically correct episode as Gene and Randall have an extended discussion with paranormal podcaster Katina Kyle, a.k.a. K-Town, on the black experience, the paranormal, and the worldwide turmoil that has erupted over race issues. Katina is a military veteran and the host and creator of Mysterious Radio and The X Podcast. K-Town has had a long interest in all things strange and unusual since witnessing “fire” suddenly start to blaze out of a hill at night when she was 14 years old. Always knowing that there was more going on in the unseen world, she started Mysterious Radio in 2016, and has conducted interviews on everything from UFO and alien phenomena, true crime, strange disappearances, true hauntings and more.

Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums. Check out our new YouTube channel at: The Official Paracast Channel

The Metaphysics of Consciousness
By J. Randall Murphy

In my all too common metaphysical reflections, it has occurred to me, and likely others along the way, that if the totality of our being is some sort of generated construct, then perhaps what we call consciousness is not necessarily dependent on what we perceive to be our material selves. This is not so much a contradiction to the situation outlined in my previous post, Why Afterlives Are Impossible, as it is a sort of loophole.

The reason for this is that in Why Afterlives are Impossible, the initial premises are such that any afterlife person would of logical necessity be at best only a copy of their original, and therefore continuity of personhood is not preserved. However, if it is the case that the totality of our universe is generated by something external to it, then everything we think of as real is nothing more than a rendering.

By extension, if it is the case that everything we think of as real is only a rendering generated by some vastly powerful system that lies outside this realm, it would follow that each moment in time is analogous to a single frame in a filmstrip; in which case the issue of our afterlife selves being copies becomes moot, because we and everything else in our realm are already only copies.

The sticky part of this model is that it still doesn't offer any explanation for consciousness. We may identify or empathize with the characters we see on a screen in a movie theatre, but we also know that they are only illusions created by a machine. They are nothing more than reflections from a surface. They have no personal experience of what it's like to be the characters they represent.

Why then, if we too are nothing more than a complex rendering, do we have the experience of being such a thing? This is an example of what philosopher David Chalmers calls The Hard Problem of Consciousness (HPC). To date, nobody has been able to come up with a satisfactory answer for this question, and it is the opinion of those who favor a philosophical position called New Mysterianism, that humans will never find the answer.

Personally, I share the sentiments of the New Mysterians, but at the same time point out that the situation allows us to make certain inferences. For example, although we may never be able to explain consciousness, we can still accept that it exists, and therefore has a relationship to other things which exist, including other conscious beings. This leads to what psychologists and philosophers call intersubjectivity.

In theory, intersubjectivity crosses all boundaries. Together with the our natural instinct for social behavior, this might explain why people seek to commune with something beyond this realm, or if there is no such realm, create one in their own minds to fill the void. Whatever the actual situation may be, this common denominator has the potential to unite conscious beings wherever they may be.

Something to ponder is that if our particular universe is a generated construct, why create the illusion of time, planets, stars, galaxies, intelligence, emotions, and sensory perceptions? Why make it appear that our existence is dependent on biological processes? Why not simply manifest pure unadulterated consciousness?

Could it be the case that taking the scenic route produces better results? Or are we avatars in some sort of grand control system? One thing is for certain: If some vastly powerful system has created more than one universe, we are not at the top of the pyramid. After all, if we were the master universe makers, then logically we'd be aware that we have created other universes below ours.

However our technology for simulating universes is only in its infancy. The logic of this situation means there are only two possibilities Either we're in the only universe that exists, or at the bottom of the pyramid. Whatever the case may be, we cannot be at any mid-point, where other universes exist both above and below ours.

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