Comment and Opinion

Victor Zammit

Victor Zammit is an Australian lawyer who believes in an afterlife. It is of course his right to believe anything he wants to, but he seems mightily irked by the fact that some skeptics have suggested that there is no evidence of such a thing existing. He has written a book detailing his beliefs and has challenged skeptics to prove him wrong, upon which proof he will give them $1,000,000. As it is impossible to prove that something does not exist, his money is safe (and he knows it). Here is his challenge:

The applicant has to rebut the substantive objective evidence presented in Victor Zammit's A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife (see chapters 3 to 24) which includes: Materialisation, Electronic Voice Phenomena, Instrumental Transcommunication, the Scole Experiments, Professor Gary Schwartz' Experiments, Mediumship - Mental, Physical and Direct Voice, Xenoglossy, the Cross-Correspondences, Proxy Sittings, Automatic Etheric Writing, Laboratory Experiments, Poltergeists, Apparitions together with the evidence provided by Near Death Experiences and Out of Body Experiences which psychics claim are supportive of and are directly linked with the afterlife.

Further, the applicant has to rebut the afterlife evidence presented by the following: Arthur Findlay's On the Edge of the Etheric, Sir William Crookes' On Human Personality and Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism; Sir Oliver Lodge's Raymond and Geraldine Cummins' Swan on a Black Sea and the evidence provided by the Inner Peace Movement.

Here is the challenge for those skeptics who have been continuously campaigning in the media that there is no afterlife: those closed-minded skeptics who have been crusading around the world denigrating, destroying and demeaning the credibility of gifted psychics, trying to dismiss the positive evidence being produced for the afterlife; those skeptics who have been cruelly twisting and manipulating psychic truth to reduce its effect; those who unconscionably have tried to destroy the reputations of some of the greatest and most brilliant 'classical' scientists and psychic writers who ever walked this planet earth like Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Barrett, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Arthur Findlay and so many others!

It should be quite obvious to anyone reading the words above that Zammit has no intention of ever paying any money to anyone, but he is positioning himself to be able to claim that the skeptics either will not or can not meet his challenge. As further evidence of his hypocrisy, consider the following conditions that any challenger must agree to before even starting any attempt to rebut the nonsense in Zammit's book.

The offeror and the applicant will agree that the applicant has demonstrated the technical skills to rebut the evidence. This is a fundamental and most important condition.

Straight away, Zammit is allowing himself the sole right to choose who will apply. Anyone who exhibits the slightest vestige of knowledge of either science or logic will recognise the futility of trying to prove a negative or of rebutting the diverse collection of crackpottery that Zammit includes in his list. This makes it highly unlikely that anyone with the critical skills necessary to rebut the nonsense would even bother to apply, but if they did I am sure that Zammit could find some fault with them.

If by some remote chance a qualified person actually felt like applying and thought that they might pass the initial competency screening, they then have to consider this:

The applicant agrees that the level of proof required to rebut the evidence will be the Cartesian test, "beyond any doubt". This means that there has to be absolutely no doubt at all in the minds of the Committee that the 'evidence' has been rebutted.

This is real evidence of either Zammit's hypocrisy or his lack of reasoning ability. It also contradicts the condition mentioned above, because anyone qualified to rebut the nonsense will also have the sense to know that it is not possible to prove such a rebuttal "beyond any doubt". And who is this "committee"?

'The Committee' refers to a group of people expert in afterlife evidence.

And you don't need to know anything more than that. Any applicant must be approved by Zammit and must convince an an unnamed group of crackpots that their delusions are 100% false.

Victor Zammit's "challenge" is a farce. There is no such challenge, and for him to keep saying so can only make reasonable people suspect his honesty. Skeptics do not run from his challenge because it threatens them, they ignore it because it is ridiculous.

Here is a comment on Victor Zammit by journalist Andrew A. Skolnik. I wonder if Andrew will get sued.