Last week I was reading the book One Mind by Larry Dossey. In it he relates MANY stories that cover a whole range of Psi and what we might call “mystical” phenomena. I was particularly struck by one story in particular that, through an unintended anomaly shed light on some very subtle aspects of savant behaviour.
Everyone is familiar with Kim Peek (Rainman): he had amazing memory skills where he has memorized thousands of books, phone numbers, addresses etc. And also he could tell you the day of the week and even weather and notable events of any date. And we've all heard of the many cases of savants with language and music skills, where the person has acquired the skill in some unexplained manner.
These cases are indisputable, but have been explained away using materialistic models. In Kim Peek's case, for example, one might simply conclude that his physical brain is wired in such a manner as to provide amazingly increased memory capacity. As for the day of the week? Well perhaps his physical brain is also wired in such a way as to provide incredible calculation speed,,, right? No need to consider nonphysical origins here.
Keep in mind that when asked, most savants deny performing any mental calculations or operations,, they simply say something like “ I just know the answer”. Others describe what appears to be a form of synaesthesia where information is presented as forms, shapes and colors: all of which, with a little arm waving, can be materialistically explained away.
How does one materialistically explain those cases of unexplained acquisition of language and music skills? Well,, perhaps you could say that the person was exposed in some fashion, and then developed the advanced skill through coaching and prodding by others. Yes, they may have an exceptional capacity to learn,, but does that necessarily come from a metaphysical source? Perhaps not really.
So the story that struck me from the book One Mind was the story of person who, like Kim Peek, could tell you the day of the week for any date. Apparently they tested dates up to 40,000 years in the past and future. Nothing new here right? Again, perhaps this could be due to a physical brain anomaly which allows rapid calendar calculations.
Here's the unanticipated game changer.... When they asked the day of the week for a year sufficiently old and for certain European locations, they were provided days which didn't match calculations based on the modern calendar. For these earlier years they were provided days which on the pre-Gregorian calendar! This savant didn't have the knowledge of these subtleties or perhaps even the capacity to understand such details.
Apparently these dates even confused the testers (at first) because they hadn't anticipated this aspect of calendar calculations.
So how do we explain this away? This was beyond the knowledge of the subject, so it wasn't a matter of calculation speed. It was unknown to the tester, so it wasn't “mind reading” which can be explained away by some.
To me, this is a great example of behaviour that has no explanation in materialism.
Unfortunately these things are nearly one-offs and as such are hard to reproduce. Once the
subject is aware of the effect, a sceptic can then simply and correctly say that it is still merely a (more advanced) calculation.