|
Nominations and Campaigning for the 2024 RationalWiki Moderator Election are now open |
Bruce Siegel
| Putting the psycho in Parapsychology |
|
| Men who stare at goats |
| By the powers of tinfoil |
Bruce Siegel is an American psychic, spiritualist and pseudoscience promoter who claims to have discovered the afterlife.
Siegel is the owner of the website "A Militant Skeptic Discovers the Afterlife". He says he was an atheist and materialist for most of his life but then read some books on near-death experiences (NDEs) and discovered the afterlife and spirituality.[1] According to Siegel:
“”Was I a "closet believer"? Certainly not in the conventional sense, as with a gay person who knows the truth of their sexuality and is unwilling to go public with it.
The only way you could make that argument at all would be to say that at a very deep, unconscious level, I've known all along that I’m essentially a spiritual being. But my guess is, that’s true for all of us.[2]
|
There's no evidence Siegel was ever a skeptic. He is a long-time contributor to spiritualist woo blogs and forums and frequently argues with skeptics on the internet. He says he has experienced precognitive dreams and is writing a book on the subject.[3] Siegel has admitted that NDEs are anecdotes but believes "the plural of anecdote is data". He says he has visited the afterlife by altering his state of consciousness, triggered by meditation, psychedelics and dreams.[4] Siegel has also claimed that fraudulent mediums such as Eusapia Palladino and Leonora Piper were in contact with spirits.[5]
Siegel has promoted his pseudoscience about the afterlife and spirituality on various woo websites such as the Mind-Energy forum and the spiritualist blog of Michael Prescott.[6]
See also[edit]
External links[edit]
- There is Nothing Paranormal About Near-Death Experiences A paper that Siegel should read.