How can someone who has heard the voices be persuaded to be more critical and to examine more mundane possibilities?
A rational, deliberative discussion is rarely helpful because clear evidence or logic is not involved. Believers are reporting an experience that was highly meaningful and perhaps highly emotional to them — not something that is easily challenged by logic. Moreover, there is a self-selection of people predisposed to believe — the voices are compatible with their belief system.
Remember — we process information in two different ways through two more or less separate parts of our brain and nervous system. On the one hand, part of our brain works on a very intuitive / emotional / automatic level, and on the other hand, another part of our brain works according to the logic and rationality that we develop over our lifetimes. These two systems often produce contrary results, and this is especially so where paranormal phenomena are involved. The “believer” removes the contradiction by bringing the intellect into line with the intuitive interpretation, that is, by coming to accept the paranormal — in this case, the voices — as reality, and thereby reshaping the intellectual understanding of the world so that belief in such phenomena appears to be rational. Over time, an impregnable belief system develops which is supported by a very substantial base of personal experience (interpreted in such a way as to support the paranormal belief), as well as anecdotal evidence provided by others.
It is very difficult to change such deeply held beliefs, especially if they include a significant emotional component. Consider this example: In my work as a clinical psychologist, a father wanted me to “cure” his gay son. I asked the father how easy would it be for me to turn him (the father) into a gay person? “No way !!!,” he said. I told him that it would likely be as difficult to turn his son into a straight person as it would be to make him, the father, turn gay. Fortunately, he saw the point and came to accept his son as he was. My point is this: When we ask how to turn believers into skeptics, let us ask instead: “How easy would it be for me to persuade you that voices on a tape really are spirits of the dead?” Well, that is probably just how easy it would be to persuade devoted believers that their beliefs about the voices are wrong.
What the Raudive voices teach us is that intelligent people — for Raudive was no doubt an intelligent man - can come to believe fervently in phenomena which in all likelihood do not exist. There is a lesson in this for all of us, for we just as surely may be mistaken in some of our own deeply held convictions. This is why we must rely on science as the avenue to truth rather than personal experience or other people’s anecdotal reports. Science, with its reliance on data and its insistence on looking for sources of error and for alternative explanations, provides the best method that humans have produced for protecting against error and self-delusion. Electronic Voice Phenomena are the products of hope and expectation; the claims wither away under the light of scientific scrutiny.
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