Why A Professor Says We Should Stop Dismissing Reports Of Alien Abductions

A professor of religion examines how researching the supernatural can advance scientific discovery.

By Laura RiceOctober 11, 2017 5:17 pm,

Have you ever wondered how we know all the things we’ve learned about the universe, physics and even the human body? It isn’t easy to wrap your brain around how long a light-year is or how water is actually made up of gasses fused together. Without the work that people like Jeff Kripal put in, we may not have answers to many difficult questions of science.

The same may be true of things like premonitions, déjà vu and telepathy. So argues Kripal, a professor of religion at Rice University. He recently co-authored a book with Whitley Strieber titled “The Super Natural: Why the Unexplained Is Real.”

Unexplainable events like premonitions and alien abductions tend to be laughed off by the scientific community, but Kripal argues that these experiences are fundamentally spiritual phenomena that deserve attention and respect.

These areas of study all started with sciences and academics, Kripal says, and we have merely lost that memory. He hopes to remind people of the academic potential of studying these often ignored phenomenon.

“The denial that these things happen is equivalent to claiming that we don’t dream every night. Of course we dream, of course people have these experiences,” Kripal says.

“The question is what do they mean and what are they trying to tell us.”

Learn more about the study of the supernatural in the player above.

 

Written by Nahila Bonfiglio.