J Neil Schulman

Thank you PDS for your assessment. I have not researched the OJ Simpson case in as much detail as I have other criminal cases via the net (where there exist some very good true crime forums), but it looks like ALL evidence points in one direction only: to OJ Simpson as the perpetrator of the crimes. Also, the prosection failed to introduce some very incriminating evidence against the defendant, with their explanation for deciding not to present this evidence being downright absurd. The sad irony is that who finally profited from the prosecution's wrong tactic was the one they wanted to bring to justice for the murders: OJ Simpson. Since it is the defense's job trying to poke holes into the prosecution's case, and since some blunders happen in all criminal cases, one virtually always finds complaints by the defense about police blunders, botched crime scenes, possible lab errors, and so on. But what the defense team of an obviously guilty client does not want to be seen is the complete picture the totality of the incriminating evidence against their client. They were not too small to conclude the blood was Simpson's, were they. Isn't everyone's DNA (identical twins excepted) unique? Any effort in constructing possible ways of transfer is unnecessary. For we have Simpson's own words where he admitted having bled at the crime scene. Haven't you read the police interview where he was questioned by Vannatter and Lange? Simpson own words also shoot down any speculations according to which his blood had been "planted" by others to incriminate him. Again, look at the whole picture and weigh probability against improbability. What "control wounds"? As for the rest of your scenario - let's use the rationality you stress so often. A murderer forces the victim to call her husband, thus running the immense risk of being identified by the husband as a witness and possibly killed himself by the husband as he is trying to save his wife's life. And then Simpson "altruistically" cut himself, letting his blood drop down right next to the murder victims. Give me a break! Bill Dear's absurd allegation that Simpson "could not have committed the murders" says all about his obvious lack of rationality. Not only did Simpson have a history of domestic violence and a motive, he also had the opportunity to commit the murders in the time frame during which they happened. He was even seen at the crime scene, and his blood and shoeprint have been found in very incriminating locations; in addition, he had bought a disguise kit some weeks before the murders and that disguise kit he took with him in the car during the slow speed chase. And Bill Dear says Simpson could not have done it. Yeah, right. It is fascinating to observe what totally absurd theories some of those veteran detectives seeking the limelight can come up with. But I'm afraid that closing their eyes to the obvious does not magically establish its opposite, the absurd, as the real. The cult of O.J. Simpson's guilt never ceases to amaze me, and it's particularly odd in a forum that supposedly rejects dogmatic faith. I have. Exhaustively. Knife pressure wound to Nicole's neck -- not the throat slash but a separate wound indicating someone was trying to force her to do something. Obviously you haven't, since Simpson was explaining how he'd bled on his own driveway, blocks away from where the murders took place on Bundy Drive. The only reason Simpson's home was considered a related crime scene was because of the second glove -- which, as I explained, would have matched any of the pairs of Aris gloves O.J. and Nicole gave out as Christmas presents. It's the contamination of the tailing blood drops at Bundy that Scheck proved contained preservative -- in other words, contamination after the police arrived. The DNA of a father and son would match on many points. You'd have to have samples of both and be actively looking for differences. Wrong on all counts. First, O.J. Simpson was no longer romantically involved with Nicole at the time of the murders. Cell phone records show him phoning his own girlfriend, Paula Barbieri, at the time of the murders. Second, a history of domestic violence is not evidence of murder. The author of the study on "batterer's syndrome" was on a defense witness list ready to be called to testify that based on her interviews, O.J. did not fit the pattern of batterers who later murder. She was not called because the case was running too long and the defense wanted to rest. Third, O.J. had no motive. He was not paying Nicole alimony. Their marital dissolution agreement was a complete buy out -- including the condo Nicole was living in, which she wanted O.J. to still claim as his own commercial property so she could avoid an IRS tax. O.J. refused, so if anything she had a motive to murder him. O.J. had no further financial obligations to Nicole at the time of the murders. He was no longer romantically involved with her at the time of the murders. And he was video'd laughing and smiling with her parents just hours before the murders. Fourth, O.J. was not seen at the Bundy crime scene, period. The closest anyone claimed was that a man matching his description was in his Bronco at an intersection nearby, driving away. As I've said, I believe O.J. could have been called to the crime scene by Nicole, herself, arriving right after the murderer left. Or, there are two other suspects who easily could have picked up the Bronco keys from O.J.'s kitchen counter and driven it to the Bundy crime scene -- one of them Jason Simpson. At night the identification of the driver would not have been definitive -- and someone recognizing the vehicle might have assumed the driver was O.J. Fifth, as I said, anyone with access to O.J.'s closet (like Jason) could have been wearing the Bruno Maglis. But, as I said, I've never eliminated that O.J., himself, was at the Bundy crime scene -- Bill Dear and I both think he was there after the murders took place, and my book explores the scenario that it was a deliberate set up. Bill Dear's investigation leads to a different conclusion -- that Simpson was part of a cover up for Jason, and that the Bundy crime scene was -- as forensic expert Dr. Henry Lee testified -- "played with." Sixth, a "disguise" is irrelevant, since no witness testified to anyone looking like a disguised O.J. Simpson anywhere on that night. So what relevance does this have to the case? Zip. It's simply part of the dogmatic cult of O.J. Simpson's guilt -- the worship of a "Mountain of Evidence" in a prosecution that has no Moses coming down from that mountain.

Wow, Bill, I didn't catch that the first time around. What was I thinking when I accepted you as a Facebook friend? :-)

Santa would need to lose his pot belly to come down most chimneys. Well, if Santa can manange things like putting the law of gravity out of order, with his stout body being transported in a heavy sleigh high up in the skies, then surely he can also come down narrow chimneys with his pot belly. Since Santa can do magic, nothing of course poses a problem for him; for example, he is also ubiquitous, coming down countless chimneys all over the US at the same time. While it is easy to smile at the children's naive belief in a false premise (a false premise which the parents have deliberately instilled in their kids' minds by telling them an outright lie), when it comes to figures like Jesus awakening the dead and rising from the grave, such stuff is till being told to billions of believers (and still believed by many) in our enlightened century. Makes me shake my head. If man is as rational as Rand claims, then how is it possible that far too many people still believe this Jesus tale even today? For epistemologically speaking, the Jesus character is on the same irreal level as any fairy tale figure rising from the dead, only that in Jesus's case, that stuff is claimed to really have happened. I often do tests with my kindergartners, asking them things like: "Does Snow White exist in reality? Can Snow White knock on our classroom door and say hello?" They shake their heads, most laugh and giggle at the thought: "No, no!" I then go on: "But still we all know who Snow White is, don't we? So Snow White must exist in some form. In which form does she exist?" Don't think six-year-olds are unable to grasp such line of reasoning. They can grasp it. It's all an matter of practising it with them regularly. Soon some kid will say that Snow White exists "in a story" or "in a book". Which gives me the cue to speak to them about fantasy and imagination, where one can think out in one's head things which don't happen in reality. Thus we can clearly make the important cognitive separation between the realm of fantasy and the realm of reality. Now compare this to traditional religious education: the children are also told miracle stories there, but of those stories it is brazenly asserted that they really happened. I'm no Objectivist, but Rand would be perfectly right in condemning such proceeding as a monstrous attack on man's reason and cognitive abilities. I really don't want to get into a discussion of the historicity of Jesus. It's a lose-lose. Yeah, I could say, "Which Jesus are we talking about?" -- the one voted on by the Nicene Council? -- or a prior merely human Jesus? Usually what makes rationalists choke on the idea of Jesus is having to accept any particular dogma about him, depending which church you are in rebellion against. My only point would be is that if there's any truth behind the Jesus myth, I'm willing to stand by the statement that no church's dogma has it right. Can one interpret this as you meaning to say: in the realm of the imagination, (or your domain, science fiction), anything is possible? There are more things in heaven and earth, Xray, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. My accepting the question as a binary yes/no was bluntly dumb. I'd have to reword my reply entirely into something like, "I don't have an epistemological objection to the idea that God merged his consciousness into a human being like a man named Jesus for the three years written about in the four Gospels, because that's what I experienced, myself for a few hours. I don't have a theoretical objection to the idea of Jesus -- after crucifixion -- walking out of the tomb after three days because I can easily conceive of half a dozen explanations that would satisfy both the myth and what a more robust understanding of our full nature as conscious animals -- more complete than our current one -- could accomplish."

And though requiring a nuanced explanation of statements I should not have made so starkly, I didn't mean what you thought I meant. I used the word "belief" sloppily. I'll try to be more precise in any continuation of this discussion.

What is to be considered as evidence? If it's nothing but data fed to the brain by operation of the five senses -- eyesight, aural hearing, smell, taste, and touch -- there is no way rationally to be certain of any ontological conclusion. As we see in the case of George H. Smith, this assumption readily dismisses anything perceived but unexplainable elsewise as hallucination. Only if we negate the assumption that the five senses provide the only sources of data, and proceed to examine perceptions regarded as paranormal, can anyone conclude that there are actions and effects of unseen actors. Negating this assumption does not negate any of the axioms of existence, non-contradiction, and identity, which underlie all scientific hypothesizing, theorizing, and attempts to validate.

One can disregard the witneses who allegedly saw the confrontation between a woman resembling Nicole and two men neither of whom was Simpson. Why? Because it was Simpson's blood that was found at the crime scene. Barry Scheck systematically dismantled the chain of custody leading to that conclusion. The quantities of blood are too small to conclude O.J. committed the murders. Moreover, O.J.'s DNA would be hard to distinguish from his son Jason's if they weren't tested against each other, which they weren't. I also discuss half a dozen different ways O.J.'s blood could have been brought or transferred to the Bundy crime scene, including multiple pairs of gloves identical to the ones found on the crime scenes which O.J. and Nicole had given out as Christmas gifts. I've always said there is a reasonable case to be made that O.J. came to the Bundy crime scene, even though the Bruno Magli shoes are not decisive evidence he was there; anyone with access to his shoe closet (like Jason) could have been wearing them. The evidence of control wounds prior to her murder suggest that Nicole could have been forced at knife-point to call O.J. there by her murderer, and O.J. arrived right after the murderer left. Or, Simpson could have been called there afterward if the murderer were someone he knew intimately and would want to protect ... like his son Jason. Bill Dear makes a better case than the one presented in either the criminal or civil trial of O.J. Simpson that Jason committed the murder, and that beyond not wanting to be sent to prison for the murders, O.J. Simpson has been willing to do almost anything to cover up for Jason, including repeatedly flirting with the press to make himself look guilty every time it looked as if the evidence would point to his son.

I'll accept a justifiable hit on this one, for my being sloppy in my use of language. [ . . . ] As Heinlein taught me, "Beliefs get in the way of fact." You might also like that other Heinlein quote on belief, from Time Enough For Love: "Beliefs get in the way of learning." From The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana by J. Neil Schulman (Pulpless.Com, Trade Paperback, 1999) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1584450150/pulplesscom I conducted this interview for The New York Daily News in July, 1973. Copyright © by J. Neil Schulman 1990, 1996, 1999 All rights reserved.

I accept on faith the Christian dogma that Christ rose on the third day? Thanks for telling me that since it's news to me. I am puzzled here, Neil, by your answer to Xray. She writes that if you accept as true that Christ rose from the grave on the third day, yes, you are logically justified in your belief. So, there you go. If you accept the premise as true -- that Jesus Christ rose on the third day -- then Xray says you are logically justified in your belief in god. Looks to me like you have found support for your belief. But, what do you do with that support? Well, instead of 'I accept as true that Jesus rose on the third day?,' you change the wording and meaning of what she wrote: 'I accept as true on faith the Christian dogma that Jesus rose from the grave on the third day?' And then you deny the import of the redacted phrase --'Thanks for telling me that since it's news to me.' A problem with your 'it's news to me' is that you are on record as accepting as true that Jesus rose on the third day. It's in your book, in Chapter 10, "Heresies": I'll accept a justifiable hit on this one, for my being sloppy in my use of language. I have no factual basis to regard Jesus Christ as historically real or any of the Gospel claims as historically true. I do not accept any claims made about Jesus Christ on faith, and that includes his existence or whether he died and was resurrected. My mindmeld began with a feeling that "I" had done this before -- merged into a physical body. The first few minutes of the mindmeld included senses of having traveled a long distance, feeling taller than I "remembered," and being surprised at how fat and out of shape the body I was in was. From that I contemplated (and discussed with Brad in the interview) that the stories of Jesus might have been of an earlier mindmeld, except instead of being one that lasted for a few hours, one that lasted for a few years. These are thoughts that carry little weight to myself. I contemplate them but do not subscribe to them. However, I used some of these ideas as imaginative launching points for characters in Escape from Heaven. I have discussed elsewhere that the Jewish story of a fall of nature and a fall of man is a first act to a story that requires a more satisfying second act than a real estate deal for a territory less than half as big as Nye County, Nevada. The Christian story of a resurrection and rescuing of man from that fall strikes me, in dramatic terms, as a necessary second act; but that's because I've always preferred classical comedy to classical tragedy. I've also said that, like Heinlein, I try not to have "beliefs" at all. As Heinlein taught me, "Beliefs get in the way of fact." The quotes from me, expressing beliefs in the historical Jesus and a resurrection, are not intellectual statements I'm willing to stand behind and defend. But they have emotional resonance for me as story, and sloppily I answered "yes" to the question of whether I "believed" them.

Neil: I wonder what Starbuckle's point was in inviting me into a discussion. ... If it's just to make fun of me and make yourself feel more secure in your worldview, I think a lot of people including atheists could agree that's just pathetic. The fallacious argument is that Starbuckle's motives are contemptible, so his arguments are worthless. I'm still waiting for Starbuckle to answer questions for himself. As for you, whenever I make a point you can't answer, you change the subject.

To which you replied in Message #774: Doubtful. But, according to you, the only person who expressly invited your appearance at OL was the person who sent you an email. Uh, you're not making any sense. You conclude I'm probably not outing Starbuckle as having personally invited me. Which leaves my question to Starbuckle open for a response. So why are you paralogically accusing me of poisoning the well?

Is Starbuckle David M. Brown?

I'm confused. I think O.J. Simpson was innocent of murdering Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. F. Lee Bailey thinks O.J. Simpson was innocent of murdering Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. What views are Bailey and I not sharing? His theory of innocence seems different that yours. He talks about the defense calling 4 witnesses who could have further helped OJ's case, and none of them (seem to) fit with your theory of innocence. In other words, the source of his reasonable doubts are different than yours. The question was not a quibble or an accusation--I was simply wondering what you thought about his recently published insights, and whether they actually fit with your theory. [sorry for the clumsy question. I am a former prosecutor and have tried murder cases, and predicted OJ's acquittal at the time...I was trying not to be too technical with my language.] I read every published book on the Brown-Goldman murders when I was researching my own book on the murders, The Frame of the Century?, published online in 1997 and an expanded and finalized version published in trade paperback in 1999. I was aware of Bailey's uncalled witnesses from one of those books back then, Schiller and Willwerth's American Tragedy.

Again, I wonder what Starbuckle's point was in inviting me into a discussion of what evidence I could offer to support my assertion of a mind-meld with God, since every documentary account I have affixed my byline to on this subject has repeatedly denied that I have any to offer anyone else. All I have ever said is that I found validations of the experience enough to overcome my own skepticism. These validations carry no weight for anyone else. Therefore I relate my experiences as raw anecdotal data, with no reasonable expectation of convincing anyone else of their truth. But I do suggest that when others of a rational mindset -- including George H. Smith -- relate personal experiences of what have sometimes been tagged "the supernatural," the assumption of hallucination as an explanation of such phenomena is weakened. Starbuckle, you never answered this question when I posed it earlier in this discussion: what was it you hoped to accomplish when you started this discussion? If it's just to make fun of me and make yourself feel more secure in your worldview, I think a lot of people including atheists could agree that's just pathetic.

I accept on faith the Christian dogma that Christ rose on the third day? Thanks for telling me that since it's news to me. Santa would need to lose his pot belly to come down most chimneys. On the other hand, I don't have a theoretical problem with a being not having any neutrons or protons bulking him up making his way through a black hole.

I'm confused. I think O.J. Simpson was innocent of murdering Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. F. Lee Bailey thinks O.J. Simpson was innocent of murdering Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. What views are Bailey and I not sharing?

I am glad you jumped into the pit, Steve. I was surprised to hear of a Facebook discussion where OLers were named and excoriated off premises, but understand why Neil would want a gated alternative to The Spanish Inquisition, where he could expect more support and less dogpile. It can't be easy being billed as the only libertarian writer alloyed with The Prime Mover. "Alloyed" with? Hmmm. Neilium. Rhymes with Helium. A noble gas, by all accounts. Jayneiluminum. (Jayneiluminium in the UK) Used in the construction of astral passenger aircraft.

In which sense do you mean this, Neil? One you're conducting, or one you're enduring? If the former, it's not at all successful, to say the least. If the latter, well, you brought figurative popcorn and soda and settled down willingly into participating. Neither sense is becoming to you. Endured.

Bill Maher on Tuesday's Tonight Show with Jay Leno called the National Rifle Association "the assassin's lobby," and called for a renewed Democratic Party to bring back gun control. On previous occasions he's derided anyone who opposes mandatory government health care. Man, it's at times like this I feel so blessed not to have to call this contemptible atheist totalitarian (except for smoking pot) shithead one of my own.

Sharon, welcome to my Inquisition. Keep in mind that the last time we met I bought your latest book and had you autograph it to my daughter. Just sayin.' :-)

I don't remember whether I wrote it in this thread or in a discussion on Facebook, but I recently wrote that if you want to piss off Christians start referring to the Big Bang as God's orgasm.

I'm 57. The encyclopedia given to me when I was 16, was the Britannica's 1968 edition. Find "strong force" or "weak force" in that. In my lifetime the number of basic forces has doubled. There used to be three dimensions; now there are eleven. I've lost track how many new particles there are. There used to be one universe; now several different theories propose n universes. The only thing that seems to have shrunk is the number of planets in the solar system -- nine when I was born, now with Pluto downgraded to a dwarf, eight. And "orgone" seems to be a restatement of eastern religious notions about living things producing energy fields, most recently tagged "the Force" in Star Wars. But detecting electrical activity in the human brain now seems the frontier of mind-reading. On Christmas I played with a device my daughter was given as a present called Mindflex which reads your mind through sensors while you think where you want a foam ball to go.

Oh, good. I lose my bet, then. What did you think of that book, and has your opinion changed much since your unusual experiences? My favourite chapter covers Wilhelm Reich. I wonder if you have any brief comments on Reich. Was he an inspiration to you, and do you think his orgone theory can fit in your cosmology? You're asking me about a book I haven't looked at for decades. I've read a lot of debunking. Some of it is worthwhile taking out the trash. Other of it is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Given how real scientists change their paradigms as often as their socks, I try not to rule anything out of court. I grew up with the hallmark of science being the uniformity and homogeneity of physical laws throughout the universe. Now even that's not certain anymore as scientists contemplate how unseen factors like the distribution of dark matter might introduce variables in how physical laws operate. But why "orgone" should be more ridiculous than all the extra forces subatomic physicists change their views on every couple of years is puzzling to me. The science of chemistry grew out of alchemy. To me, that means that there were seeds of chemistry already in alchemy, waiting for someone to water them. Unbridled skepticism leads to dust bowls where anything except for "acceptable" inquiries are stifled by the laughter of fools.

Thanks for your bullshit interpretation. You don't seem to have a clue about what was going on. Perhaps this is because you were never a Christian and don't understand the mindset. After my defiant challenge, it quickly became evident to me that God was neither the cause nor the cure of my pain. I was the cause of both. The experience was purely psychosomatic. Ghs I don't know what caused the pain. Maybe it was psychosomatic. Maybe you pulled a muscle. You don't know what caused it. But you're the one who brought up praying followed by the pain going away. Now, logic demands I note that just because one event followed another doesn't mean one caused the other. I don't know that this was a Divine healing or your prayer triggered a placebo effect. But what I do know is that you assign this incident importance in your transfigurative rejection of religious repression. That's rational. That's liberating. But you have as little basis to dismiss it as psychosomatic as to dismiss that you got an answer to your prayer, and couldn't bring yourself to believe it.

I have never made any such assumption, nor do I rule out a priori the possibility of extra-sensory abilities that we sometimes characterize as "intuition." What I object to is someone who makes fantastic claims and, when criticized, appeals to special cognitive powers that others lack or have not developed. This is cognitive elitism, pure and simple -- a somewhat more sophisticated version of claiming that I am smarter than other people. Cognitive elitism (in various forms) has a long history, and it led to disastrous results. This is why John Locke and the Deists (many of whom were libertarians) argued against it with such passion. I have never dismissed my weird experiences as "unreal artifacts of human psychology." Most have been as real as anything I have ever experienced. I am going to tell a true story that I alluded to I while back. This was my most dramatic "supernatural" experience. I have never related this story for public consumption, and I am reluctant to tell it now, because it involves my boyhood sexuality, but here it is. By the seventh grade I had mastered that art of masturbation, but, as a good Christian boy, I felt guilty about it. But there was something far worse, namely, the certainty that I was being watched, not only by God and Jesus but by all my dead relatives. (Readers of ATCAG may recall my reference to God as an "omnipresent voyeurist." Now you know why I cooked up this phrase.) This bugged the hell out of me. Anyway, one day after awakening with the usual EMH (early morning hard-on), I went through my usual routine. Then around a minute after climaxing, I felt an extremely sharp pain in my testicles. And I mean it was unbearable; imagine someone using your balls for a pin cushion, and you will get some idea of what it felt like. It was the worst pain I have ever felt in my life, and it shot all the way up into my chest. I immediately knew what had happened: God finally got fed up with my sinning and decided to send a warning. I headed to the bathroom, but I couldn't stand up, so I crawled. I stayed in a fetal position on the bathroom floor for around five minutes, hoping the pain would subside, but it didn't. If anything it got worse. So I cried out to God, "Please, stop it. Stop it! I'm sorry. I won't ever do it again." (By "it," of course, I meant masturbation.) Immediately the pain began to go away. I could feel it flow from my body, and within ten seconds it was all gone. Here was a "miracle" if ever there was one, a confirmation of my belief in God. I was profoundly grateful and headed back to bed determined to keep my promise to God. I returned to bed with a sense of inner piece. But as I lay in bed blasphemous doubts began to whirl through my mind. My thinking, put in terms that I would use today, was as follows. What's the big deal here? Every boy jacks off, and I'm just a kid. I'm not hurting anyone. Why would God bring me such pain just to teach me a lesson? This is bullshit. Within 30 minutes I was extremely angry at God, so I challenged him in an unusual and risky way. I thre the sheet off of me and started to masturbate again, while thinking (again, in adult language), Here, God, get a really good look. This is what I think of your stupid punishment. You want to punish me? okay, give it your best shot. I climaxed within a minute or two and repeated the performance one more time. The pain didn't return, ever, and I quickly concluded that it was guilt, not God, that had caused it the first time. This experience didn't make me an atheist, but it raised some serious doubts. In addition, it made me keenly aware of the power of the mind and the relationship between sex and guilt. (Again, some of this comes out in ATCAG, and much of my discussion is based on this experience, even though I never mention it.) I later came to terms with the problem of voyeuristic relatives, but that is another interesting story. Looking back, I suppose my "challenge" was pretty gutsy for a pious Christian boy. Deliberately breaking a promise to God, especially when he had just "healed" me in what seemed a miraculous way, and then challenging him to do something about it, was about the worst sin imaginable. If anyone ever had "proof" of God's existence, it was surely I on that bathroom floor begging for God to help me and having my prayer answered. Yet the net result was to raise serious doubts about my religious beliefs. This one event, probably more than any other, put me on the path to atheism. Fair warning, Neil. If you give my experience a bullshit theistic interpretation, e.g., that all this was God's way of teaching me to be independent (or whatever), I'm going to hire a gypsy fortune teller to put a curse on you. Ghs George, in your account you have yourself praying to God to remove pain, followed by pain being removed. This is the only direct communication between you and God in this entire account. Everything else is you arguing against the anti-sexual religious dogma you were raised into. Nowhere in your account do you have God causing your pain. That was your own religious assumptions. Nowhere in your account do you have God punishing you for making then breaking a promise to him that apparently he never asked you for. In your account you do get mad at God and conclude that the net results was to raise serious doubts about your religious beliefs. Here's my bullshit theist interpretation: I can't follow your logic of what you were blaming God for. Me, I don't blame God for religious bullshit. I think people made almost all that shit up. Your story does make me feel sorry for God, if he made your pain go away, then got blamed for causing it.

I just love seeing half-century old fan feuds reignited.