Need some help with dealing with apparent "woo"

[darryl]

Darryl,I disagree with you on few points.
First,why you personally attack D.Stokes and S.Braude?Where did you take idea that they are charlatans?I don't get it.
In regard materialism/dualism I prefer to keep an open mind,and Alan Gauld,no matter who his is(dualist or whatever) is one of my most respectful persons.Have you read Stephen Braude's "Immortal remains"?It considered to be one of the best books on the topic,and someone regards it as continuation of Alan Gauld's "Mediumship and survival".
You also seem biased.Just because someone comes with materialistic theory,doesn't mean it is true.And it doesn't tak away that wassermann's theory is full of speculations.It's not invention of Stokes that wassermann talks about self-replication of shadow matter body,or shadow matter copies of earth shrinking.
Regarding shadow matter itself,yes,there is no much talk today ,and nobody knows if anything will come in the future

D. Strokes and S. Braude are not scientists, they both are dogmatic dualists and both seem to have a fascination with religion, if you knew how these guys talk in regular about psi you would not be their fan, they are very dogmatic, these guys are not interested in material observation and study or debate, if you read some of the books of Braude you would be suprised how biased he is, Braude in one of his books says he will automatically dismiss electromagnetic theories of psi, ?? what? in other words this man will close his eyes to any material hypothesis just becuase it is material, and instead invoke metaphysical fairytales... I have sent both these men emails and I have read their works.

shadow matter copies of earth shrinking.

This might be a misunderstanding becuase I can not find this. It would be useful for a page number.

Just because someone comes with materialistic theory,doesn't mean it is true

Science only deals with the physical, so material/physical theories or hypothesis are better than magical things like dualism.

Alan Gauld's "Mediumship and survival"

You may have high respect for him, but he is a bit of a lemon sadly. I emailed him and was really looking forward to his reply, in my email I asked him as an expert who has studied psi/paranormal for over 40 years that can he then list me some material/physical theories for psi/life after death etc etc. I recieved a 2 line response and he told me to look up the work of "william crookes"... ok... everyone knows crookes, crookes was a devout spiritualist not doing any physical theory for survival of consciousness etc.

And it doesn't tak away that wassermann's theory is full of speculations.

I agree there is some speculation involved and his hypothesis is far from complete, but the man deserves serious respect for bringing out this hypothesis, a hypothesis which does not contradict known physical laws like dualism does, as I said before more work needs to be done on shadow matter, but there is something to work on here, if shadow matter is a reality then it would probably explain survival of consciousness etc.