The following is the extract of the second paragraph under the sub-title of “Negative Pressure” for the main subject of the ‘Nature Of Dark Energy’ as shown in the website address http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy:

According to General Relativity, the pressure within a substance contributes to its gravitational attraction for other things just as its mass density does. This happens because the physical quantity that causes matter to generate gravitational effects is the Stress-energy tensor, which contains both the energy (or matter) density of a substance and its pressure and viscosity.

As the phrase, the physical quantity that causes matter to generate gravitational effects is mentioned in the extracted paragraph, it gives the implication that physical quantity of matter has to exist prior to the generation of gravitational effects. Or in other words, it opposes the principality that gravitational effects could occur at the absence of matter. As it is described pertaining to Dark Energy, it implies that Dark Energy could only be derived from the existence of the physical quantity of matter. This certainly rejects Stephen Hawking’s theory in which dark energy could exist prior to the formation of the universe as if that dark energy could exist the support or influence from the physical quantity of matter.

The following is the extract of the third paragraph under the sub-title of ‘Cosmological Constant’ for the main subject of the ‘Nature of Dark Energy’ that has been extracted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy:

The simplest explanation for dark energy is that it is simply the “cost of having space”: that is, a volume of space has some intrinsic, fundamental energy. This is the cosmological constant, sometimes called Lambda (hence Lambda-CDM model) after the Greek letter Λ, the symbol used to mathematically represent this quantity. Since energy and mass are related by E = mc2, Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts that it will have a gravitational effect..

E = mc2 has been used to be related to Dark Energy. As energy and mass are related in according to General Relativity and if m = 0, no matter how big the number that c could be, E (the dark energy) would turn up to be 0 since no matter how big the number c is E is always equal to 0 when 0 (that is the mass) is multiplied by c2. Or in other words, E (the dark energy) should be equal to 0 at the absence of substance (the mass). Stephen Hawking’s theory certainly contradicts Eistein’s theory in the sense that he supports that dark energy ( E > 0) could exist even though there could not be any matter (that is m = 0) existed prior to the formation of the universe.

Refer to the website address pertaining to Isaac Newton’s theory pertaining to The Unversal Law of Gravitation: ttp://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/history/newtongrav.html

Every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force directed along the time of centers for the two objects that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely separation between the two objects. Fg = G(m1 m2)/r2. (Fg is the gravitational force; m1 & m2 are the masses of the two objects; r is the separation between the objects and G is the universal gravitational constant. From the formula, we note that Fg (the gravitational force or in replacement of dark energy) has a direct influence from two masses (m1 & m2). If either of the m is equal to 0, Fg would turn up to be 0. Isaac Newton’s theory certainly opposes Stephen Hawking in which gravity or the so-called, dark energy, could exist at the absence of matter prior to the formation of this universe in this energy or gravity could create something out of nothing.

Stephen Hawking might comment that Eistein’s and Isaac Newton’s principles are wrong. However, Stephen Hawking was not born at the time prior to the formation of this universe to visualize how the universe could be formed initially. To jump into the conclusion that the gravity could be created from something out of nothing is simply out of his own imagination. Not only that, his theory contradicts both Eistein’s and Isaac Newton’s principles pertaining to gravity.

First up, Prof. Jim Tucker of the University of Virginia.
Took over when Prof. Ian Stevenson died a short while back. Calm, clear, very focused.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZTtU7akrfQ

Professor Robert Almeder, Georgia State Uni.
On why reincarnation is “difficult” for some but actually many parents don’t have a problem hearing this. Mmm…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZhMDU9GcVg

Professor Ian Stevenson (the Man).
Pick up this video for him at 05.55 – Stevenson’s strongest statement on his research? – “the evidence is suggestive of reincarnation”. Cautious and measured.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPNcwXVOQFM

Professor Carl Jung.
Fascinating comments from one many would regard as a great “intuiter” of the human condition. He’s been in there deeper than most. I love his comments on older folks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOxlZm2AU4o&feature=related

Professor David Fontana – Scole Group scientist.
Psychologist par excellence and witness to the Scole phenomena in the UK and abroad. Clarity, scholarship, focus.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGV8aQxCsCI

Montague Keen – Scole Group classics scholar.
Here is a skeptical scholar of depth, doubting and focused, yet totally clear about what was seen by all in those investigations. Conclusion? LOD is real.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mti3oWINgY0&feature=relmfu

Drs. Peter Fenwick and Sam Parnia.
Parnia is in charge of the ongoing AWARE study – huge scientific NDE study with some data out next year. Still uncertain, which is good. Fenwick speaks here about deathbed visions and has researched clear evidential cases of “shared death experiences”. Here the carer and experiencer see the same thing. These are difficult to deny – also very clear about life after the big D.
http://www.victorzammit.com/evidence/endoflife.htm

Dr. Jeffrey Long, radiation oncologist.
More of the same with a large database and concludes once again that there is an afterlife. “I’ve become convinced that near-death experiences establish the reality of life after death…” he begins.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mptGAc3XWPs

Dr. Eben Alexander, neurosurgeon.
After a remarkable and prolonged NDE he concluded after ruling out all “physical”, normal possibilities that there is life after death. Had experiences which as he says could NOT have come from “memories laid down in the brain.” Pick this up at 02.45 in the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFvzHEepPQE&feature=related

The common thread among these scientists? They have done the research and concluded, some tentatively, that the mind/awareness can exist without a physical body. Not sure I’m looking forward to it – bit of a leap in the dark. Arghhh…!!!

But needs an explanation and seems to show we are living in a special place.
(And thanks for the edit facility BTW!)

If Interested – A Related Discussion About “Hawking And God” May Be Found On Wikipedia At the Following -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Stephen_Hawking#Stephen_Hawking_-_does_not_believe_in_god

One Comment Posted To The Wikipedia Discussion May Summarize The Current Thinking:

FWIW – Great Discussion – AFAIK – And At The Moment – Stephen Hawking ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking ) Himself Has Not Denied There Is A God – ( See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hawking#Religious_views ) – Hawking May Very Well Believe, Like Einstein ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein ), In An Indifferent (and/or impersonal) God ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Political_and_religious_views ) – As One Defined, For Example, By Spinoza ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinoza ) – ( See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinoza#Panentheist.2C_pantheist.2C_or_atheist.3F ) – In Any Case – Enjoy! Drbogdan (talk) 03:00, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

In Any Case – Enjoy!

Hawking may be the most brilliant scientific mind that rolled down the pike, but a one-sided worldview pretending that science is the end-all, be-all to human existence, is as ludicrous as the notion that any discipline (science included) that has virtually opened it’s eyes 18 seconds ago, is apprised of sufficient sagacity to rule out the need for discovery any further than our limited five senses will take us. What if science later shows us that we have three other human senses yet undiscovered?

Discovery? Tommy-rot.

I didn’t deal with the light phenomena largely due to space considerations, since that would involve bringing in psychological and perceptual issues, which would take forever to elaborate. The fact that some scientists are dedicating their lives to it, etc., is fine by me, but again, it doesn’t make the phenomena any more ‘real’ – it just means that they were really, really impressed by it, i.e.. it was a great fake. Bravo, then. But I can’t be impressed by it on their behalf. There’s lots of ‘impressive’ testimony about Bigfoot, too, but I don’t believe in that either, due to lack of physical evidence. Personal testimony is the worst form of evidence – again, due to the psychological/perceptual issues involved.

Mediumship is all about performance. If these mediums can reproduce this phenomena under actual scientific investigative conditions (and then repeat it several times), that would be more meaningful. But to produce it only under conditions they control invalidates the entire thing – again, that is just a minimum investigative standard, not met at all here. This is my main point. The standards were so bad that it’s not even necessary to try to ‘prove’ it was faked; the entire experiment easily allowed fakery at each and every point. Let’s see these mediums do this with, for example, hidden cameras around. Wouldn’t you rather see that? Aren’t you a little suspicious about the conditions as they were? I think you should be.

As to mediumship being implausible by nature, well, that seems to me a perfectly fair and earned view. First, the history of mediumship is filled with exactly the same story we’re getting here: impressive phenomena that are ‘impossible to fake’, scientists astounded, dedicate their lives, etc. Then somebody has the bright idea to turn on the lights, and the whole thing collapses. And we already have at least some evidence of fraud, with a seal broken and manipulated film.

Second, it IS implausible that people can speak to dead people, or conjure spirits, etc. That should be the default view, in my opinion. It’s not ruling it out, it’s just being critical at the outset. What are the assumptions behind speaking to the dead? The existence of immaterial souls, the existence of an afterlife, the maintenance of consciousness without a physical brain, possession of another’s mind, various violations of the laws of physics, etc. Every one of those things is implausible in itself (not to mention totally unproven) and when you stack them together, well…it seems like a critical view is warranted.

So, to reiterate, the conditions ruin the entire experiment. No amount of ‘rebuttal’ to criticism (which, by the way, seem weak to me, but I won’t get into it) can overcome this problem. There was so much opportunity for fraud that it is unnecessary to try to ‘prove’ fraud. Only reproducing the phenomena under more stringent conditions would be meaningful. I’ll bet that either the mediums would not agree to such conditions, or would fail if they did. And then we would hear all over again how it doesn’t work when skeptics are present, etc….

Thank you for the discussion. I’ll give you the last word.

In fact Professor Fontana answers Tony Cornell’s (and others) criticisms in the link I give above:

http://www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage.cfm?confid=9&pageid=91&pgtype=1

This link is from 2000.

“Criticisms of the investigation are fully detailed in the Report, and come primarily from three distinguished and highly experienced SPR members, namely Dr. Alan Gauld and Professor Donald West (both to whom had a sitting with the Group at which no sign of possible fraud was detected) and Tony Cornell. These criticisms contain no charges of fraud and no direct evidence for it, and focus upon the fact that as the controls were imperfect, fraud could theoretically have taken place. These criticisms can be summarized and answered as follows.

* The vulnerability of the Alan Box which contained some of the films used during the sittings. Experiments by Dr. Gauld revealed that even when padlocked the lid could be opened by swiveling the sockets holding the hasp through which the padlock was threaded. Anticipating this danger we had ensured that paint seals were applied to the screws holding the sockets as a safeguard. When the box was returned to us after Dr. Gauld’s experiments these seals were seen to be broken (although Dr. Gauld informs us that this did not happen on his initial openings).

However, the challenge is to take the box from the table (or from Walter Schnittger’s grasp in the experiment detailed above), to open the box under the conditions operating during the sittings, to abstract the film contained in the box and to substitute it for a prepared fake, to place the arms of the hasp back in their sockets (a difficult maneuver even in daylight), to replace the box in its exact position on the table (which on occasions was carefully marked prior to the sittings), and to effect all this without detection and without breaking the paint seals.

To date, no critic has undertaken to attempt this feat.

* Some of the images on the films have the appearance of being faked on acetate before being transferred to the films. This criticism is less weighty than it appears. It applies only to one particular film, and the similarity of the images concerned to those obtainable by the acetate method does not constitute direct evidence of fraud. The challenge to critics is to reproduce the filmed material, using this method, under the conditions operating during the sittings.”

And then there are ALL the other phenomena to also explain.

One must take comments like Peter Wadhams’ not on their face value, which would be a serious error, but in the context of a 3 year investigation. They are strange in the sense that if one can prove (which nobody has) or even strongly infer fraud, then the whole of the investigation collapses. Clearly this is not true.
An honest reader, even if not a witness to the investigations, will say this is not true.

1.

Peter Wadhams comments are from his reading only of the Scole Report – selective reading which is totally disingenuous. He was not a witness. The authors give a detailed reply to this, in fact a 23 page reply to all commenters to the Report. If one doesn’t read this by getting the Report itself you cannot judge. Make that step. Go to spr.ac.uk

Also these are sealed films, rolled up inside plastic containers, inside locked boxes, which are then developed. Detailed writing and images are found from extremely obscure literary references. I have seen the images and they are reproductions but not copies.
I must say that comments like Wadhams give people “hope” that things will return to normal!

2.

Peter Wadhams ignores the light phenomena – I don’t know why. Why do you? The descriptions I give above are detailed so please read. Wadhams also ignores the fact that the phenomena were seen at multiple locations around the world.

Could I ask you to read this carefully and come back? I honestly ask for mechanisms of reproduction of the lights – remember no equipment ever found in a bare stone cellar, searched by an electrical engineering professor, Arthur Ellison and others or at other locations.

http://www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage.cfm?confid=9&pageid=91&pgtype=1

3.

You say “we have a field, mediumship, that is highly implausible…” You are closing this off from the outset. Why?

4.

Also you have to prove how to reproduce ALL the phenomena seen, high speed blue-green lights hovering in front of investigators, entering their boodies, sheet light forms, golden hovering/moving globes, photographic images, detailed knowlege from the mediums, glowing crystal levitations and materialization/dematerialization of crystals. And there is more.

5.

You also have to account for why some scientists who were witnesses or who know about Scole are spending years of their lives trying to model reality to account for these and related phenomena, e.g. NDEs, remote viewing etc. – converging lines of evidence, as I said above for the existence of non-material intelligences and the possible survival of bodily death.

6.

Fraud. Fraud is a human phenomenon and is everywhere, in business, science (though hopefully little), mediumship and human life in general. But one must also recognize truth when it appears.

7.

One thought – if there was nothing to all this, nothing would be seen. And yet it was.

You’re full of %^&* and living your life in imaginary time in an imaginary world where your arguments make any sense whatsoever.

“What the heck does that mean? How can something which is nonexistent be subject to anything, let alone “laws of quantum mechanics.” What does “laws” even mean in the absence of anything?”

It means mathematics. t → it at t = 0 + i. Nothing here means the universe at time i; imaginary time.

Liberal theology accepts all the findings of science and simply adds on God. So evolution is just God’s way of creating species. Let’s just say quantum tunneling is how God does it, shall we? Now, shall we all go home?

My understanding of what science such as cosmology does is provide descriptions of the composition and functions of parts or all of the universe which is subject to measurement and analysis by the tools available to us.

Merely being able to describe in increasingly accurate detail a 747 surely does not and cannot exclude a designer / maker (Boeing ).

I doubt that “the God Hypothesis” can be falsified by more accurate descriptions of what exists .
It may be falsified by our being able to accurately detect the presence of nothing i.e no quantum fields … etc , really nothing and demonstrating that something arises from it. We must also demonstrate – not believe – that intelligence can arise spontaneously from the laws of physics and chemistry.

I don’t know if you saw the comment by Peter Wadhams, purported member of SPR, but here it is:

“I am an SPR member, but regretfully must agree with your critical article about Scole. And there is one further item which you didn’t spot, but which is clear evidence of fraud (it is mentioned in the report): the fact that one of the exposed film canisters contained a strip of impressive-looking kabbalistic writings and drawings, which the intrepid investigator Tony Cornell showed as having been traced from a popular book on kabbalism. Cornell showed how the material could have been put onto tracing paper then exposed to produce an image identical to that obtained. He even found the marks where the tracing paper had been fixed against the film and exposed to create the fraud. This was a film which was in the easy-to-open box created by one of the mediums. It is clear proof of fraud and really shows that the SPR people at Scole were taken in. Yet Keen and Fontana would never admit that they may have been fooled. Very sad.”

So let’s look at what we have here. We have a field, mediumship, that is highly implausible in its claims to begin with (talking to the dead, for example), and where there is already a great deal of documented fraud. We have a poor experimental protocol, in which the mediums design their own experiment, in essence (this here is enough to invalidate any experiment, not just this one). We have a typical magician/medium set-up in the mediums’ very own ‘performing space’, in the dark (where concealment is easier), with supposedly locked boxes, glowing wristbands (as the article notes, common tricks of the trade). We have no film documentation and no real attempt to catch the mediums cheating (Did anyone violate the rules and sneak a night vision camera in? Did anyone even jump up and turn on the lights? ¬– many a medium has been caught by this very simple method.). Then we have a group of people, probably already believers in psychic phenomena (and thus susceptible to suggestion and trickery in that regard), wowed, however sincerely, by some lights and some likely bogus photographic effects. And we have, possibly, evidence of fraud right in the SPR’s own report.

You seem to take the reports of the phenomena at face value, and to be impressed by them. Let’s grant that they were impressive. But couldn’t they be impressive, yet fake? Impressive but fake phenomena is the very stock of the mediums’ trade historically. If it weren’t ‘impressive’, even the credulous wouldn’t believe it. So the personal impressiveness of phenomena is no guide to its reality. Even scientists are easy to fool (and this has also been amply documented in the history of paranormal fraud). For someone to assert ‘it couldn’t have been faked’ is simply absurd. Really, it couldn’t have been faked under any circumstances? Or is ‘couldn’t have been faked’ simply equivalent to ‘I personally don’t know how it could have been (or was) faked’?

In the same vein, not finding evidence of fraud doesn’t mean that there was no fraud. It could mean there was no fraud; but it could also mean that the fraud was successful. You can see this, right? If the fraud were successful, obviously no evidence would be found. So Tim Coleman’s assertion that he didn’t find fraud doesn’t mean a thing (and this is leaving aside any questions about his investigative abilities, which might very well be extremely poor, however well-meaning).

So, to my mind, not only is Scoles not good evidence for the paranormal, but it is in fact as dismal an effort as can be imagined. You may find that view unfair – I would’ve agreed wholeheartedly with you a few years ago. But Scoles just looks like fraud and credulity to me now.