Google search results for Sathya Sai Baba miracles
Google search for the term, sathya sai baba miracles, gives the first page of results having 9 positive (view of Sathya Sai Baba's miracles) or neutral result links and 1 skeptic link (media report and not an anti-sai site). The second page of results has 7 positive or neutral result links and 3 negative links including anti-Sai sites. [BTW I did the search from my PC in Puttaparthi using anonymous (incognito) Chrome browser window to avoid any personalization of search results.]
So for general Google search users for Swami's miracles, the rankings seem fair to me given the widespread belief in Swami's miracles - the positive and neutral sites being given prominence but the critical sites also being provided.
Google search for the term, sathya sai baba miracles scientific investigation, sadly has the first three results from anti-Sai sites with articles critical of Prof. Haraldsson's, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlendur_Haraldsson, investigations on Swami's miracles.
However, the seventh result is Haraldsson's book link and the eighth result is the wiki page on Haraldsson. The other eight links including the above three seem to be of the negative kind.
The fourth and fifth result links in the next page (i.e. the 14th and 15th ranked results) are goodreads.com and amazon.com review links of Haraldsson's book (Modern Miracles:The Story of Sathya Sai Baba: A Modern Day Prophet, http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Miracles-Story-Sathya-Prophet/dp/190873325X), both of which have my review. So, somebody who is keen to get both views of the matter would probably come across my review which, of course, backs Haraldsson's view that most of the miracles he investigated have to be accepted as genuine from a quantity of human testimony and consensus of (reliable) witnesses point of view, even if direct scientific experiments were not conducted and so cannot be proven/accepted as genuine from a science perspective. [Here's the review on my blog: https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2013/09/review-of-modern-miracles-story-of.html]
Google search for the term, sathya sai baba miracles parapsychology investigation, gives the first two results from anti-sai sites critical of Haraldsson's work, and then has Haraldsson book link, Haraldsson's wiki and amazon.com customer review. So it is somewhat better for this search term.
Why is it that Haraldsson's book link does not appear as the first result link for these two terms? That is what would be appropriate. After all Haraldsson is the leading scientific researcher into Swami's miracles, and so Google search users for these terms should ideally be presented with his book link first.
The critics/anti-Sai sites are nowhere close to Haraldsson in terms of academic/scientific reputation.
I think there is a bias among scientifically-inclined Google search users to choose the skeptic result links. The majority of these users may want to read that Swami's miracles are not genuine! Google search may be recording that users who use these queries, prefer these links as against the book link and perhaps its algorithm then pushes up these popular result links upwards in the result ranking.
Now I am not saying that Google search users for these terms should not see the skeptic links at all. It is a free world and especially on the Internet everyone has a right to express his/her view and have that seen. But surely, the researcher who has spent years investigating these miracles and interviewing devotees should be given top priority in the results, before that of his casual critics.
Can one say that this indicates that most general (common) Internet users who are interested in such matters, seem to have a positive view of Swami's miracles but that most Internet user scientists and scientifically-oriented persons have a negative view? As I do not know how exactly Google search ranking is done, I don't think I can draw such indications/conclusions. However I would not be surprised if that is how it really is. It is the scientific community and the scientifically-oriented community at large where a majority, especially in the Western world, refuses to accept the possibility that Swami's miracles could be genuine! Sure, they cannot accept that it is scientifically proven as genuine as they have not been performed under scientifically controlled conditions but that does not lead to the conclusion that they are not genuine/cannot be genuine.
Thankfully, in the larger picture of humanity as a whole, such closed-mind-to-miracles scientists and scientifically-oriented people constitute a minority. The majority of humanity is willing to go by faith in God (as viewed by various religions & sects) and His power to perform miracles that transcend normal laws of nature, and the larger 'miracle' of showering His Grace on believers by filling them with love, joy & peace.
In this context, I would like to mention a detailed mail conversation I had a couple or so years ago (after Swami's Mahasamadhi) with a leading US computer science academic & industry figure who was in the skeptic camp, on Swami's miracles. He was simply unwilling to even read Haraldsson's book. He was more interested in trying to show me that I was on the wrong track!!! He was trying to get me to read Dawkins' "The God Delusion" book instead. I stoutly refused to do so as I felt that the title of the book itself was outrageous. [Readers may want to see my blog post, “The God Delusion”. What Does it Really Mean?]. After seeing that I was capable of keeping up my end in the argument and was not going to cave in, he gave up on that matter, quite politely, I must say. He still responds to some mails of mine on education and we have a decent "email relationship".
His stand, which I think is what many leading skeptical scientists have, was that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As Swami did not permit testing under controlled conditions there was no evidence acceptable to science. [I don't understand why so many videos I have seen of Swami materializations are not accepted as evidence! Haraldsson does mention some issues with video evidence but even with some issues I think the video evidence is very worthy of examination.] So no claims about Swami's powers could be accepted. He also mentioned James Randi's 1 million dollar prize to anybody to perform paranormal acts. Since he was a very senior person I did not ridicule him mentioning this 1 million dollars stuff - really evolved spiritual people, let alone Purna Avatars like Swami, cannot be bought by money - not 1 million dollars, not 1 billion dollars and not even 1 trillion dollars! What is money to them!
In my considered view, such an approach that completely rejects miracles due to lack of extraordinary evidence is a very blinkered approach. Haraldsson's approach where he looks at how legal systems view such matters is a much more realistic approach. I mean, sure one can say that unless extraordinary evidence is available under controlled conditions, science cannot accept the claims as proven. But neither should one discount that such claims could still be true! Science is not the final word on all of life.
I thought I should also cover Google search results for the term, Sathya Sai Baba.
All the ten first page results for the above term are positive (Sai organization sites, devotee sites) or neutral (wikipedia).
The second page of results has two anti-Sai site links with the other eight being positive or neutral.
So for general Google search users for Swami the rankings seem fair to me.
So for general Google search users for Swami's miracles, the rankings seem fair to me given the widespread belief in Swami's miracles - the positive and neutral sites being given prominence but the critical sites also being provided.
Google search for the term, sathya sai baba miracles scientific investigation, sadly has the first three results from anti-Sai sites with articles critical of Prof. Haraldsson's, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlendur_Haraldsson, investigations on Swami's miracles.
However, the seventh result is Haraldsson's book link and the eighth result is the wiki page on Haraldsson. The other eight links including the above three seem to be of the negative kind.
The fourth and fifth result links in the next page (i.e. the 14th and 15th ranked results) are goodreads.com and amazon.com review links of Haraldsson's book (Modern Miracles:The Story of Sathya Sai Baba: A Modern Day Prophet, http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Miracles-Story-Sathya-Prophet/dp/190873325X), both of which have my review. So, somebody who is keen to get both views of the matter would probably come across my review which, of course, backs Haraldsson's view that most of the miracles he investigated have to be accepted as genuine from a quantity of human testimony and consensus of (reliable) witnesses point of view, even if direct scientific experiments were not conducted and so cannot be proven/accepted as genuine from a science perspective. [Here's the review on my blog: https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2013/09/review-of-modern-miracles-story-of.html]
Google search for the term, sathya sai baba miracles parapsychology investigation, gives the first two results from anti-sai sites critical of Haraldsson's work, and then has Haraldsson book link, Haraldsson's wiki and amazon.com customer review. So it is somewhat better for this search term.
Why is it that Haraldsson's book link does not appear as the first result link for these two terms? That is what would be appropriate. After all Haraldsson is the leading scientific researcher into Swami's miracles, and so Google search users for these terms should ideally be presented with his book link first.
The critics/anti-Sai sites are nowhere close to Haraldsson in terms of academic/scientific reputation.
I think there is a bias among scientifically-inclined Google search users to choose the skeptic result links. The majority of these users may want to read that Swami's miracles are not genuine! Google search may be recording that users who use these queries, prefer these links as against the book link and perhaps its algorithm then pushes up these popular result links upwards in the result ranking.
Now I am not saying that Google search users for these terms should not see the skeptic links at all. It is a free world and especially on the Internet everyone has a right to express his/her view and have that seen. But surely, the researcher who has spent years investigating these miracles and interviewing devotees should be given top priority in the results, before that of his casual critics.
Can one say that this indicates that most general (common) Internet users who are interested in such matters, seem to have a positive view of Swami's miracles but that most Internet user scientists and scientifically-oriented persons have a negative view? As I do not know how exactly Google search ranking is done, I don't think I can draw such indications/conclusions. However I would not be surprised if that is how it really is. It is the scientific community and the scientifically-oriented community at large where a majority, especially in the Western world, refuses to accept the possibility that Swami's miracles could be genuine! Sure, they cannot accept that it is scientifically proven as genuine as they have not been performed under scientifically controlled conditions but that does not lead to the conclusion that they are not genuine/cannot be genuine.
Thankfully, in the larger picture of humanity as a whole, such closed-mind-to-miracles scientists and scientifically-oriented people constitute a minority. The majority of humanity is willing to go by faith in God (as viewed by various religions & sects) and His power to perform miracles that transcend normal laws of nature, and the larger 'miracle' of showering His Grace on believers by filling them with love, joy & peace.
In this context, I would like to mention a detailed mail conversation I had a couple or so years ago (after Swami's Mahasamadhi) with a leading US computer science academic & industry figure who was in the skeptic camp, on Swami's miracles. He was simply unwilling to even read Haraldsson's book. He was more interested in trying to show me that I was on the wrong track!!! He was trying to get me to read Dawkins' "The God Delusion" book instead. I stoutly refused to do so as I felt that the title of the book itself was outrageous. [Readers may want to see my blog post, “The God Delusion”. What Does it Really Mean?]. After seeing that I was capable of keeping up my end in the argument and was not going to cave in, he gave up on that matter, quite politely, I must say. He still responds to some mails of mine on education and we have a decent "email relationship".
His stand, which I think is what many leading skeptical scientists have, was that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. As Swami did not permit testing under controlled conditions there was no evidence acceptable to science. [I don't understand why so many videos I have seen of Swami materializations are not accepted as evidence! Haraldsson does mention some issues with video evidence but even with some issues I think the video evidence is very worthy of examination.] So no claims about Swami's powers could be accepted. He also mentioned James Randi's 1 million dollar prize to anybody to perform paranormal acts. Since he was a very senior person I did not ridicule him mentioning this 1 million dollars stuff - really evolved spiritual people, let alone Purna Avatars like Swami, cannot be bought by money - not 1 million dollars, not 1 billion dollars and not even 1 trillion dollars! What is money to them!
In my considered view, such an approach that completely rejects miracles due to lack of extraordinary evidence is a very blinkered approach. Haraldsson's approach where he looks at how legal systems view such matters is a much more realistic approach. I mean, sure one can say that unless extraordinary evidence is available under controlled conditions, science cannot accept the claims as proven. But neither should one discount that such claims could still be true! Science is not the final word on all of life.
I thought I should also cover Google search results for the term, Sathya Sai Baba.
All the ten first page results for the above term are positive (Sai organization sites, devotee sites) or neutral (wikipedia).
The second page of results has two anti-Sai site links with the other eight being positive or neutral.
So for general Google search users for Swami the rankings seem fair to me.
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