Fringe-ology Quotes

“How often are you aware of your surroundings, really aware? And how often are you merely reacting in the same automatic way as you do in dreams?”
― Stephen LaBerge, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable-And Couldn't

“We can't tell you the origin of the experience. But we can tell you the brain does appear to be built to have these [mystical] experiences. There are examples of people reaching similar states, spontaneously. But for the most part, it takes work. Meditation and these powerful prayer experiences require dedication and practice. But people have figured out how to do this, and the question is, 'What is the source of that experience?' The answer is, 'We don't know.' Science doesn't really have an answer for you.”
― Andrew B. Newberg, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable-And Couldn't

“Human beings are always fighting about which version of God to worship, or whether any God exists at all. But it seems to me we are only likely to find answers about the nature of the universe, or the possibility of a creator, if we look. And we can’t do that in any meaningful way if our only commitment is to the answers we’ve presupposed.”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable—And Couldn't

“Frank White, who literally wrote the book on the overview effect, is also part of the Overview Institute. And he thinks of space travel largely as Mitchell does—an evolutionary step. "If fish could think at our level of intelligence," White said, "back before humanity existed, and some fish were starting to venture up on land, a lot of them would be saying, just as we do now about space: 'Why would we want to go there? What's the point?' And they'd have literally no idea of what venturing onto land was going to mean".”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable-And Couldn't

“At one conference Hameroff told Dennett, publicly, "You know, Dan, maybe the reason you like this [mechanistic] idea is because you're a zombie. And maybe the reason I see things differently is because, I'm not."

Hameroff told me he was half-joking. But Dennett took offense. "I wound up apologizing," says Hameroff. "I guess he only likes the idea of being a zombie if we're all zombies.”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable-And Couldn't

“The science is clear: if psi exists, the most reliable way to see it is through the lens of statistics. As a result, believers should stop and think before ever consulting a psychic.”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable-And Couldn't

“Paranormal experiences have been with us since the beginning of recorded history. And they don’t seem inclined to go away any time soon.”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable—And Couldn't

“Our sense of self, the sensation of eating an apple, all these things we call consciousness, are just illusions triggered by the mechanistic computations of different collections of neurons.”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable—And Couldn't

“We are, as a species, neurologically uncomfortable with ambiguity. Imaging studies of the human brain in action demonstrate that the fussy little onboard computers in our skulls send out anxiety messages when confronted by conflicting or confusing information. As a consequence, we have a natural, internal impetus to settle on an interpretation that removes any perceived conflict.”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable—And Couldn't

“cognitive scientists studying human perception agree: we don’t experience objective reality; we experience a model of objective reality that our brain creates for us.”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable—And Couldn't

“CLAIMS require extraordinary evidence”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable—And Couldn't

“When someone advances an idea inconsistent with our own worldview, we don’t just disagree—we start painting a mental picture of the person we oppose as somehow deficient, all higgledy-piggledy in the temporal lobes, perhaps, or just an outright villain.”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable—And Couldn't

“It is the finding of neuroscience, in fact, that belief is at least in part a matter of emotion. Whatever we believe to be true lights up areas of our brain responsible for self-identification and the processing of feelings and sentiments. If we believe something, then, the object of our belief becomes an emotionally potent aspect of our own self-image. There is some common sense to this, too: the most passionate of believers and the most strident of New Atheists are palpably, visibly fired up and ready to defend their positions.”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable-And Couldn't

“The Fiddle Creek Steakhouse [in Stephenville, TX] started selling what they called an 'Alien Secretion' shot: ¾ shot of Malibu rum, ¾ shot of melon or Midori liqueur, ½ ounce of sweet and sour mix, ½ ounce of pineapple juice.”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable-And Couldn't

“This country has a UFO problem, after all. You might not have been aware we have one, or thought about it in these terms, but we do have a UFO problem: namely, we don't seem to understand what UFO really means. So here it is: a UFO is an unidentified flying object. So any time we see some object flying in the sky that we can't positively identify, we've seen a UFO. But in the same way the words paranormal and supernatural have been conflated, we now equate UFO with alien spacecraft.

How this came to be is easily understandable. If we've learned one thing in this book already, people don't like the unknown very much. And so, if we believe we're being visited by other civilizations, we read the piles of books and articles on unexplained lights in the sky, then fill in the massive gaps—with wild tales of alien races, interstellar technology, and government conspiracies. If we don't believe, we hear someone saw an unexplained light in the sky and assume, first, that he's claiming to have seen E.T. Then we figure what he really saw was an airplane, Venus, swamp gas, or a helicopter, and he must be a bit foolish—maybe even a UFO nut. Then we laugh.”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable-And Couldn't

“De Bono argues that the West's tradition of settling disagreement by debate or argument is an example of overreliance on logic.”
― Steve Volk, Fringe-ology: How I Tried to Explain Away the Unexplainable-And Couldn't