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Without wanting to raise arguments about Genesis-as-history (just go with the premise!), Tom recently suggested that some of the “unused” parts of our brain operate abilities that we once had, but most of us no longer have. For example, he suggested that, if once all human beings had a single language which all understood, perhaps a form of telepathic ability was part of that.

After all, language divergence is such a universal thing that a family or a Scout troop can develop distinctive usage that results in confusion to outsiders. Having that NOT happen is, in some sense, “un-natural” based on our nature as we now see it. Perhaps the story of the Tower of Babel refers to an episode when God shut off that mental-communication function from our everyday brain activity. This would result in immediate confusion, as people who had previously experienced some mental communion no longer did, and in the fairly short term - a couple of generations - very significant language diversity as people congregated with those most-like-them, most easily understood: their own families.

It’s not “science,” in the sense of being testable, but it’s a scienc-y hypothesis, because it’s based on known facts, such as the fact that our thinking and feeling are measureably electrical and chemical, and so it’s not impossible that what we call “extrasensory” phenomena are simply ways of processing brain-electricity that most people aren’t using or can’t use.

This would explain Pat’s invisibility, too ... he’s electro-directing the light so as to avoid his image’s being recognized by one’s brain.