Post to Shermer's Demon-Haunted Brain

Post to Michael Shermer's Scientific American blog (it wouldn't post due to technical errors -- I will try again later):

One final thought. You wrote: "If the brain mediates all experience, then paranormal phenomena are nothing more than neuronal events."

That doesn't necessarily follow.  That's like saying "If a radio mediates everything you hear from it, then the radio programming coming from a distant studio is nothing but product of radio circuitry."

I find myself thinking of our family dog.  There was a soccer match on the TV.  The dog would follow the players as the ran across the screen.  When the player ran "off" the screen, the dog would look behind the TV, looking for the player, not realizing that the player was not in the TV.

There are numerous well-reasoned models that incorporate the notion of consciousness being apart from the wetware of the brain.  These books are written by quarterbacks of the cutting edge of mainstream science.  Two of these many individuals are university physicist Bruce Rosenblum ("Quantum Enigma"); and the exceptionally well-credentialed astrophysicist Bernard Haisch ("The God Theory" and "The Purpose-Guided Universe").