The theory of discussion on metaphysical topics
Offline There are certain diffculties we're having, when we discuss things like aura, telepathy, extra sensoric perception, and other similar topics. These topics might seem irrational, and yet we discuss them. This is, because it's natural to be curious about them. But soon, we realize, that such topics are not only out of most of people's everyday experience, but also out of our abilities to discuss them rationally. Why, is demonstrated below. I want to propose a method how to discuss them meaningfully, avoid conflicts, and allow us to come to a conclusions.
For now, it is like...
I make an assertion. I by myself I'm not able to prove that assertion (which is nobody's fault) so I must refer to someone else, who did some more work on this. Soon I realize, that people about whom that reference is, are dead, or ridiculed, persecuted, accused. on the run, or locked up in jail, so this makes them not very trustworthy. Well, how to get out of that dead end? The reason for that original assertion is still true. But the only way how to prove it to someone is actually make other people prove it by themselves to themselves, to do the work. This wouldn't be such a great problem, but somehow, people has a habit to consider an unproven, or unsuccesfully proven assertion as false. A reasonable reaction would be
a) weak agnosticism towards the subject
b) curiosity about the subject
which would help them to make some effort and find their proof, but somehow, a negative reaction is happening instead. I believe this is because there are concepts of "foolishness" and "lunacy", to mask a fear from people who seemingly behaves and thinks differently. So fear might be behind this all, fear from losing your time on bullshit (though people loses it all the time on their bullshit), or fear of alienation from peers, just for not refusing the bullshitters immediately.
I've got to emphasize, it is normal to disagree with someone about something, but it's not normal to let an emotions, like fear, come into this. You can't disagree about something by the words like "lunacy", because it means nothing, it means your own emotional, fearful reaction. Furthermore, many people here are less or more freshly after getting free from religious mental abuse, and they're very antagonistic against anything what distantly resembles any kind of bullshittery. Putting aside that in USA the religion is a real threat, this antagonism is another obstacle from being emotionally detached about such topics.
This is why are rules for discussion, and just as there are rules of etiquette for discussion and examination of evidence, so there should be another.
1) Anyone, who participates in a discussion on such an esoteric and metaphysic topics, should either:
Be obliged to test the claims honestly and thoroughly by him/herself, (at least once) resulting in positive, undecided or negative stance,
OR
Have a stance of weak agnosticism about the subject.
2) It is acceptable to share own experiences, however, it's inacceptable to demand a belief in them, from others.
This must be, because there can't or doesn't yet exist any other reliable authority on these topics than the authority of self. It is the terra incognita, a place where the scientific standards and certainities are as distant, as electrification in Amazon jungle. These standards must be painstakingly built over decades, this is why every serious participant should make an actual, personal contribution to these not yet existing standards. Don't ask for proof unless it's already offered, because it's your problem that you don't have one and only you can give it to yourself, by your effort. Accepting anyone else's judgement here is irrational. It's a jungle, you're on your own. Use your curiosity, your longing for the truth, as your power.
It is inevitable, that there will be a number of people, who will have a negative stance towards the subject, even though they make a honest inquisitive effort. But I believe, that their number will be much less than of those, who has a negative stance now. In this moment, a "skeptic" is a person dependent on an infrastructure of scientific paradigm, and lacks it, when he/she comes to an area, where it's not yet built, and adopts a negative stance just because of that unfortunate, but unjust reason. Unjust, but understandable, because we live all our lives within a scientific realm, which allows a beautifully fast work and progress, and we don't realize, that this is an artificial construct built by human hands, not an omnipresent standard. What I want, is an independent researcher, not a whiny proof demander. There are areas of knowledge and the world, where we must do the scientific work by ourselves. Did you know, that it takes about 200 years in a geographic area, before a heavy industry is developed there? Similar it is with scientific standards, it needs a great preparatory work, until either a metaphysics of today becomes a science of tomorrow, or metaphysicists themselves will see an error of their ways. This is what we can expect with an arrival of scientific standards into this area.
So, laides and gentlemen, guys and girls, this codex needs to have a real guts to accept it out of the blue. I accepted it, because I already do such an effort anyway, but for others, it may take many years, it may cost you your skeptic friends, and it needs you to have a real interest in this area, not just an ocassional talk on this forum. So what do you think, what will you do? Do you understand the thought behind this theory, it's meaning, and so on? Any improvements you've got on your mind?
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
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Herein lies the biggest problem, Luminon. The authority of self and personal experiences are the most unreliable means of testing something there is. It has been explained to you numerous times that this is why scientists insist on something that can be measured physically. There's hundreds of examples showing where and how our body, our senses, our touch, taste, sight, ears etc lie to us and can be tricked in to sensing something that isn't there. All you are doing when you're training yourself to sense these things you have so much faith in, is training yourself to sense things which aren't there.
I, along with thousands of scientists worldwide, along with millions of sceptics worldwide would LOVE it if a homeopath, psychic, telekenetic, spirit talker, ghost hunter, aura see-er could provide actual physical, measurable and repeatable evidence of their claims. It would turn science as we know it on its head and this would be unbelievably exciting. The thing is, nobody has yet been able to even come close to doing such a thing. Any tests that people have been able to dream up are either rediculously flawed or their results back the claims that it's hogwash.
Organised religion is the ultimate form of blasphemy.
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I understand you, but for now, but this is just a preparatory work. Personal experiences are far less reliable than scientific testing, but here and now it's not the point. The point is, that we need some basis, some experiences we can stand behind and a statistical data. If any scientist will examine this group of self-researchers, he will need some statistical results of what did they all discover about themselves. This can help to start the work for a real research, which will (I'm sure) eventually bring a technical means of controlling these phenomena. But a scientist can't do this just out of the blue, when people haven't yet done anything by themselves.
Btw, you would be amazed by what people can sense even if it's "not there". Just that fact is worthy of a scientific research. This is not a hypnosis, faith, or self affirmation, it's a permanent (or controlled) physical perception of non-physical things, and it's fascinating. Well, it would be, if I wouldn't be used to it for all my life.
But of course I have an interpersonal confirmation that what I sense, can be seen or felt by other, preferably clairvoyant people, so I can be personally sure it "is there", it just needs a tool, fine enough to detect it.
By physical evidence, you mean like producing a voltage or switching a transistor or relay, right? Maybe even making James Randi see the ghosts would be enough. The problem is, that these tools are dull, including Randi and a majority of humankind. Including me, because I'm not visually clairvoyant, just tactilly. Well, if we'd meet IRL, I could perhaps summon a really lot of concentrated, metaphysical energy (I'll spare you of the details) and then send it all onto you, which would cause you a greater or lesser vertigo for a moment, but it depends on how you're sensitive, you're not a very skilled in it, neither am I. The human tool is so unreliable, because it takes an effort to tune it correctly, but in this moment, we have to start somehow.
Here's the problem, that those of such people who dares to step out, finds themselves quickly in trouble. They're afraid, because they've had already met the academic block-mindedness. My father knows personally a man, who presented a mathemathically valid analysis of the WOW signal to the most competent academics of this country, but they didn't even bother to look at it, they said things I wouldn't believe an educated people can think of.
That man lost everything he had, and it's not the only tragic story from around here.
Normal skeptics are perhaps honestly curious, but the important people on high places aren't.
We're in a situation like before Ohm's laws, like when people were playing with amber and a fox tail to produce electricity. What we need, is a lot of people with their own experiences, who will together demand from the academics to look at these data seriously. They can ridicule and destroy a people dangerous for them one by one, but not a mass of people together.
The idea of self-correcting science is a nice thing, but the real life is not free from power and financial interests, peer pressure and ridiculing, and a good old human stupidity. I'll probably have to translate the mr. Tucek's article on how he was throwing a pearls to swines.
Btw, next week I go to an alternative science healer who uses a nadis, ohmmeter and spring pendulum for diagnosis. Yes, the one who overcame a blood test, as for a precision and speed of the diagnosis. I'll try to ask her personally why didn't she make a revolution in medicine by that.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Here's the crux of the problem, Luminon: when people were playing with amber and a fox tail to produce electricity, they were actually producing electricity. The laws are just a description of what's happening. Psychics and homeopaths have yet to produce anything but a placebo effect. At all. Ever. Every single blind study done on alternative therapies has resulted in the same behaviour as would be elicited from a placebo.
That's where the skepticism comes from: a ridiculous failure rate. If it really were like electricity, we'd be discovering things by now. We're not. There's no phenomenon to observe that wouldn't happen as a result of the placebo effect. The placebo effect is very powerful.
I know you're dying to advance the paranormal, but you're not going to find a lot of help here. It's not "suppression", it's a weariness with the subject. If you want to work at getting evidence that you're not just producing the placebo effect, then go ahead. But there's so much work to be done in actual science that you're not going to hook a lot of people into working on something that looks exactly like it's a confirmation of the power of the placebo effect.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
I fixed those options for you. I pick option 'c.' I do not hold 'weak agnosticism' towards woo-woo, I reject it until evidence is shown demonstrating that it is true. This is a very reasonable stance to take. Just like I am not a weak agnostic towards leperchauns, souls or deities. I outright reject them until someone provides convincing evidence to me. No one has yet, so I remain a disbeliever.
You know that juvenile internet meme of "tits, or get the fuck out?" I personally use something a little like that in real life, but it is more along the lines of "evidence, or GTFO."
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
Wrong, personal experiences are not just "far less reliable", they are unreliable. Your senses lie to you. As I've been saying all along, all you've been doing in this training of the senses is training them to lie to you and feel something that isn't there.
No, it just needs you to stop deluding yourself, do some reading on biology and psychology and realise what is actually going on is just as I have stated - you're fooling yourself in to sensing something that isn't there.
Or a chemical change, wavelength change etc, yes.
Nope, that would just prove that whatever method was used to fool you in to seeing them also fooled him.
That's not the problem at all. The problem is that the tools measure nothing either because a) You're using the wrong tools and measuring for the wrong things or b) there's nothing there to measure.
Is this anything like the being overcome by the holy spirit that I've been promised so often by theists? The sense of grandeur and overwhelmed with happiness which is much simpler explained psychologically? This is a case of a) from the above where the wrong things were being measured and what actually should be measured had absolutely bugger all to do with the explanation being offered.
The only reason they get in trouble is because they come forward with no evidence or repeatable experiments. Their claims are unscientific. They know what they need to do to get anywhere, that is, find an experiment that can be repeated with results that can be measured and verified by others. Simple. If you go out with talk of something that nobody can reproduce following your instructions to the letter, of course they're not going to agree with you. Don't then go and cry fowl and look for sympathy and validation. Look for your own failings and fix them.
That's a complete and utter lie.
I'd love to hear her reason for why her e-meter didn't take off despite successful repeatable and externally repeated double-blind studies using large study groups, despite explanation that make sense biologically, and thorough analysis of everything that is going on (plus a copy of all this information and their results so we can pass it on to doctors who can validify it for us seeing as I wouldn't personally be able to make heads or tails of it). Get THIS information and I'll stop calling her a quack. If she doesn't have this level of information and cannot obtain it for you, then that would be your reason as to why she's a quack.
Organised religion is the ultimate form of blasphemy.
Censored and blacked out for internet access in ANZ!
AU: http://nocleanfeed.com/ | NZ: http://nzblackout.org/
(actually, I want to advance the area of normal) Well, what I mean, is sometimes far deeper than a placebo effect can be. (for example, a placebo effect doesn't make telekinesis) I saw some unbelievable things, and I want more people to see them as well, because it is beyond belief. It's diffcult to get used to people who never saw anything strange enough. I think everyone should at least once see some event they can't explain. Then they would remember forever, that there is more to reality than meets the eye, and they would never be allowed to proverbially sleep on laurel.
Fortunately, it doesn't all depend on me. I'm not nearly the most able guy around, there are people in the world, who are like Nietzsche's übermensch, and their work really matters. My work is so far relatively small, and so is my responsibility.
You're right, I'm not gonna gather much help, except of those, who already saw what I saw or something similar.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Wow, if you could knock someone on their ass with your mind then you have proof of your powers. Why don't you go to James Randi and give him dizzy spells and vertigo with your mind, he'll give you 1 Million US dollars if you can manage it.
Oh, wait, never mind. If you failed you would blame it on sensitivity rather than your abilities being imaginary. What a convenient cop out that prevents putting that kind of nonsense to the test. I still think you should contact James Randi, that would be a fun experience for everyone involved.
But seriously, come on Luminon. We live in reality, not a fantasy novel. You can not use mind energy to give others vertigo. I love sci fi and I used to love fantasy novels, but I knew they were imaginary. The imaginary things presented in sci fi/fantasy novels are often more reasonable than the things you make up. When I can accept Frank Herbert's imaginary ideas as being more reasonable than your claims, there is a problem.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
But unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. If it would be a lie of the senses, it could be any kind of lie, but a real perception would stay the same. This is the case, and was for as long as I remember, like last 16 years or more.
Did you ever go to a church to try the holy spirit? Did you ever feel anything? Just asking. If I can be curious enough to try it, so can be you.
Possibly, but the example I mentioned is actually an irrefutable mathemathic proof. The problem was, that the famous open-minded scientists refused to do anything with this topic itself. (WOW signal)
I'll have to translate the article, for you to evaluate if their words are good enough for a rational person.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I don't think you've understood me. When, for hundreds of years, people were just playing with the funny effect of amber, that "funny effect" was still happening. Whether they knew it or not, they were making electricity, and it took a while to give it a good explanation and a name, but electricity was actually happening. They could make it happen any time they wanted. Nobody had to be sensitive, the wind conditions didn't have to be just right, and there were no magic incantations required. The "funny effect" was available at any hour of the day or night: just rub the amber and the fox tail together. For best effect, make sure the fox is dead. Fewer injuries that way.
That's different from psychic powers, because static electricity works every time, without fail.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Actually Luminon, you are simply dead wrong about this. The Senses do lie, and lie often. So do Memories. Frankly, all of your memories of the past 16 years, even in 50 more years of memories all agreeing with your first, they are all suspect. Your mind will naturally conform your memories and reconstruct unobserved details as it makes them. These are well documented Scientific effects as well.
As for perceptions with no outside stimuli, we have those, they are called 'Hallucinations.' In fact 'a Perception with no causal stimuli' is the bloody definition of a Hallucination.
You know when I gave you that link to the Captain Disillusion Video? That was a reference to this. No, it does not require a hive mind, all it requires is for the people to talk to one another, have a 'need to believe' and then their memories will be automatically edited to conform to the group consensus.
Seriously, before you start to talk about how much science needs to 'learn' about your magic powers I suggest you learn about science.
References to Sensory Deception;
Hallucinations
Self-deception
Perceptual Set
Thermal grill illusion
Cutaneous rabbit illusion
References to Memory Reconstruction;
Misinformation Effect
Misinformation and Memory
Memory and the Misinformation Effect
The Social Reconstruction of Memories
When you say it like that you make it sound so Sinister...
Luminon, I don't remember:
Do you live in Canada?
If you do, do you live in Calgary, AB?
If you did, we could go ghost-hunting. I'd love for you to go out and face down the JuJu with a skeptical mind handy; having someone break the spell rght in front of you tends to be a good way of correcting your perspective.
EDIT: By the way, what the Hell is the 'WOW effect'? For some reason, listening to you say that and seeing that website's spinning logo has had me in fits of laughter.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
According to the esoteric theory, human species are still not fully perfect species (our potential is far from being fully used), still developing, and still faster. There are a certain specific changes, a plan of human evolution, and we know that in advance, because some humans evolves faster than others. According to this theory, our brain and more is not working properly yet, and there must be some specific technical details be set into order, before it becomes reliably receptive to a greater spectrum of reality. What we have achieved till now is, that we can perceive two things, materiality and emotionality at once. But what expects us, or what already met some of us is, that we will be able to perceive three, or four things at once, and why not? Some kinds of psychism are actually a sign of imperfection, an inability of a brain to isolate itself from outer influences. Such a psychism is unreliable and deceitful by it's nature. But there is an increasing amount of reliable psychism, originating from an own ability and a proper control of brain, contrary to the former case. Of course, an occurence of psychism is not a sign of any superiority, it rather depends on how you use what you have.
Anyway, I'd need another clairvoyant person and some tests. I'm not clairvoyant, I don't see anything, so I can't know, how well the real clairvoyant people sees and how precisely, if a signals can be sent this way, and so on.
There are courses where this my natural ability is taught to people, and then used for purposes like healing. What I mean is, that it would require you to learn something first, then you can really try to understand me. Your authoritative position is in the area of skepticism is superior, but you're the one around who perceives less. For a succesful communication you'd have to show some effort also on your side. This is why the mutual trust and understanding is important, it's diffcult to trust a condescending, rationallier-than-thou person as for such a highly personal affairs, right, Jormungander?
For example, Mr. Tucek explains there how the authors of the signal expressed there their notions of adding, reducing, multiplication, division, and zero. It is also fascinating that certain numbers there has also a symbollic value. For example, the zero is not understood as a number, but as a symbol dividing a positive numbers from negative, not being a part of the numeric axis, or as a graphical symbol for a void. As a symbol of dividing the numeric axis, it has there another meaning as an operator of division itself. There's several more meanings as for a situation, always logically tenable.
The acceptance of this message may be controversial, but it's deciphering, exactly documented step by step, is not a subject of discussion, because it's simply mathemathically valid. The scientists in this country failed in recognizing that by the most shameful way.
This is why there is no known translation of it in english, so the foreign interested people must only browse the pages blindly and look at pictures of numeric axes, geometric schemes, binary number maps, and so on.
The problem with misinformaition effect is, that I remember both remembering and often recalling and pondering the controversial memories in past, and I also remember that I acted at this time according to them. I remember having these supportive memories as long as the original, and much earlier than I ever talked about it to anyone. Strange, huh?
Hallucinations - ruled out by a few cases of unexpected, sudden inter-personal detection, either by a trained or a clairvoyant person. Hallucinations aren't objective.
Self-deception - unappliable, because originally as a child I didn't know what it is and I thought it's something common, I didn't do any effort to deceive myself.
Perceptual Set - again, the initial young age rules out any social context, past experiences, or frequency of occurence.
Thermal grill illusion - it's primarily a tactile, shape-related perception, usually not heat. A heat requires a lot of mental concentration.
Cutaneous rabbit illusion - interesting, but this tactile illusion is rather vague and surfacial on skin. I perceive even the smallest details in shape, structure and density, and also seemingly above and below the skin surface. The quality of perception however differs by a local density of sensitive nerve endings.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Are you calling me out on something? Am I the condescending skeptic who won't trust you? I really do see your beliefs as being on the same level of absurdity as people who believe in reptilian overlords or people who think that aliens abduct them or science fiction stories in which people are melded with alien sand worms. I'll try not to be condescending, but it is hard. As for trust, I trust that you really experience these things in the same way that I trust some people 'feel' the holy spirit. The feelings are there, but they are hallucinations. I don't think you are a liar, you are just delusional. You are like those friends I had a few years ago who could see ghosts, unless I was with them, in which case no ghosts were to be found.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
. It contained mainly a claims. Very, very profound claims, said by people from universities, with doctorates, with real equations on a blackboard behind their back, and so on. They described very definite experiments, for example, how a focused power of mind can affect random number generators, or if there's such a will, that it can change PH of water + or - 1 and note this result into an electronic device, which is shielded by Faraday cage, if I understood it right.
There were more claims, extremely wild, my jaw dropped, and I don't know if they're true, I watched it like two hours ago. But if at least some of these experiments are as they said in the film, done, verified, repeatable and repeated, then you definitely have that measurable physical evidence.
I find it uncomfortable that the film didn't contain a subtitles with names, doctorates and locations of those people in there, etc, but since I guess they're known, then you really can go to some of their class among students and ask them if they really meant what they said in the film, if there really are electronic devices affectible by mind. There is no way there could be any ambiguity in interpretation.
It's funny you mentioned the wavelength change, because the collapse of wavelength, caused by an observer, is in the film very eloquently described as a physical act, one kind of experiment directly showed, that the presence of a conscious, watching and expecting mind changes a behavior of electrons by a very fundamental way. Electrons are physical enough, in CRT screen they hit the shader and produce a points of light on it, and we can even work with electrons one by one.
So if even a small part of that film is true, then you've got your evidence and I'm actually ashamed by being defeated in craziness of claims.I'm pretty much holding down to the earth, compared to those guys. Aren't they exaggerating it a little?
Surely, I welcomed a lot of things they said, as a proud father seeing the new science doing it's first prenatal kicks, but
what I want from them is a mere discovery of etheric matter for the beginning. Do they really have to deny the whole space and time first? Can they defend it all at once?
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
All right, so I'm back with some new info. The device is actually not e-meter, ohmmeter or anything like that, it's EAV device, as they're used for metering a surfacial electrical resistence of the skin. An improved version of this is Oberon, a device which if I remember is used at an orbital station for checking the astronauts' health state.
The company under which my therapist works, is entirely Czech company (thus local), and it operates mainly here, in Slovakia, Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Spain, Russia and Germany. They started their activity in USA only recently, so it's unlikely you've ever heard about them. (energy.cz) But there are many practical doctors who accepts this kind of diagnosis and treatment. It depends on if the doctor wants the patient to be healthy, or paying. A benevolent and responsible doctor tries it for himself, to be sure what the patients are getting, a greedy doctor just discourages them.
The medicaments of Energy Group a.s. are used by people like Karel Loprais, or some multiple national winner in body building, or a trainer of national South Korean team of canoists. Such a sportsmen watches their physical condition very carefully, and must know what they take, otherwise they won't get the gold, unlike they usually do.
These pills also helped my grandma a lot, who's otherwise sinisterly getting old and immobile.
Again, I was amazed by the method of prescribing of these medicines. The therapist checks a resistence of every spot like 5-10 times, so it's pretty obvious that the resistence is definitely what it looks like, let's say 35 kiloohms, and it's very distinct from other areas of the skin, even a 50 kiloohm difference. So, if some spot gets a low value, like 30, then it's really bad. Then, the therapist takes a package of pills which she presumes that might help. I put them on my knee (I'm sitting) and put my hand on them, in which I hold an electrode of the EAV meter. The second electrode is held by the therapist, who measures the same spot on my second hand, where there was a dreadful value nearing 30. Suddenly, when I have these pills near me, the value is higher! It rises on let's say, 50. That's not enough yet. The therapists reaches out for another pills, more optimal, which immediately causes a rise of skin resistence in that tiny spot on let's say 70-80 kiloohms. That's enough. So I put the pack of pills away, and the measured point resistence drops again low. By using these pills as prescribed, however a few months later the value on that spot rises permanently, as promised.
The body measurably reacts on a mere proximity of a medical supplement! No analysis, no chemical contact, and yet it reacts. That's amazing, I recommend that to every skeptic.
The procedure itself costs here 2,5 dollars and takes less than 15 minutes.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I don't understand what that means. Random number generators are a misnomer, they are not random in any way, shape or form. They run a seed value through a complex function to get the first number, and then run that number though a function to get another number and so on until a string of non-random numbers is created. This process is 100% deterministic. I really don't understand what is meant by 'affecting' the number generator. If the number generator was run 20 times, each time with the same seed value, then the 20 'random' sets of numbers produced would be identical. I'll look for this documentary online, perhaps they explain what they mean by 'affect random number generators.'
Now this is a crazy claim. Is this focused mind creating H3O+ or OH- out of nothing? Is it destroying or creating H+? Unless matter is being created or destroyed, I don't see how a sample of water could spontaneously change its pH. When you chemically change the pH, you add an acid or base that reacts with H2O and adds or removes an H+ (there are more complex ways of doing it, but for simplicity lets use this as a good example of an acid-base reaction with water). But if nothing is added or removed to the water, then where did the new H+'s come from, or where did some of the old H+'s go to? For that matter, if H+ is being added or removed, how is charge neutrality being maintained? I don't expect you to answer these questions, but I think that if these are not answered, then this comes off as quackery. I think that these people are claiming to be able to creating matter ex nihilo.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
Just a point about random number generators - there is a class of devices which are based on the thermal noise voltage of a semiconductor junction which will not clearly follow some rigid sequence - but then the problem would be how would you tell it had been affected?
You would have to run some computation of the running average or deviation and see if either of these changed significantly. But any short term stats of a 'true' RNG would not be a steady value, so some detail of exactly what was observed would be needed to make a case. If there was a greater than average dip in the plot of the output voltage every time the will was exerted, that would be evidence. The graph of this output would be the evidence we would need to see, at least.
For the psuedo-random generator that Jormangander referred to, a change would be unmistakable as a deviation from the repeated sequence, but that could only be caused by something which was strong enough to reverse the state of at least one transistor, in which case there really is no point testing it on such a device - changing the state of a single elementary logic circuit should be sufficient.
So we really do need this claim to be clarified to take it seriously.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Only significant if it was done in such a manner that the subject was blindfolded, IOW, had no knowledge of the position of the supplement. Was something like this arranged as a proper test?
Otherwise, the whole thing could be entirely consistent with the Placebo Effect.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
The amazing chemical mind. A real pure LSD trip is so very telling as to understanding our own minds. It makes you realize how our minds can really play tricks on us. On LSD I have gone deeply into the world of the paranormal. I will never forget those experiences 25 years ago, as they happened to me. One heck of a mind lesson.
Ever literally see music coming out of the speakers in vivid colors .... ever been in a cosmic windless hurricane as the trees bend to the ground as silent fireworks light the sky, watch a young man age to old and gray before your eyes, see your dancing friends body parts detach, hear a godly voice reverberating on 10, stretch your arm across the yard, bicycle down the street as in a tunnel where the curds are 15 feet above you , laugh as you realize you are completely retarded and helpless, see yourself from the ceiling, go flying thru space when you close your eyes, hang out in a cloud, spiral in and out of light and darkness ...... ???? WELL I have, and it was all as real as I sit here now calmly sipping a beer. That taught me a whole lot about the human brain.
Atheism Books.
The position of a supplement must remain as it is, because the client must hold the box or a bottle by a hand. By a physical contact, I mean a skin with an active substance, not with the package.
As for the proper tests, and as I said, the Energy company started this year to be active in USA, so now the scientists can show what they're worth of.
The tests might be like doing a two separated sets of diagnoses by a blood test and EAV meter, and then comparing the results.
Another kind of test may be, that we can take a person with a lack of jodine, or any such a specific substance. (which will show, in case of jodine, a low resistivity on a certain point related to a thyroid gland) Then this person will be tested while holding a non-descript testing boxes of medical supplements, with some of them containing a jodine. (in various concentrations and forms, including the homeopathic bioinformational form)
This is basically what I tried, because I didn't know most of the supplements and what exactly they contain. We tried several of them, but only those with some jodine gave a highly positive results.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Skin resistance changes are not under conscious control, but can be effected by subconscious reactions, so you would not necessarily be aware of the process.
To be more confident that it really was the substance itself, and not some sort of placebo effect, the ideal would be a double-blind with identical containers with different actual contents, with neither the subject or anyone else involved in the testing knowing at the time which was which. Sounds like that would be not too difficult to arrange here.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
What is 'jodine', Luminon? Is it some special substance know only to the alternative therapy community?
I keep thinking of iodine, especially when you mention the thyroid gland which is very much involved with iodine in the body.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Yes, I am that mind of all that I can perceive, as I am the "consciousness" of deterministic g-o-d experiencing it self, not yet fully understood in my space and time dimension. Is that a fair answer??? , LOL
AS I said, those LSD experiencing were as real to me as I what I am experiencing now ....
Atheism Books.
All entirely understandable, IAGAY. Its only a problem if you believe the "I" is a unitary entity of some sort rather than the result of processes happening in our brain. I too have had the feeling of observing other streams of thought flowing thru my 'mind'. Our thoughts can function at many levels, we can think about our own though processes, as well as urges that spring from sub-conscious processes.
Anything that actually disrupts our normal thought processes, whether psycho-active substances or physical trauma can lead to even more unusual feelings, strange perceptions, even the feelings of multiple personalities arguing inside your head, or of feelings of communicating with God, or the souls of the departed, etc.
If you train yourself you can conjure up some of these feelings on demand.
All of which means that trying to establish if any such feelings actually indicate a 'real' psychic phenomena is difficult, because our brains most assuredly 'play tricks on us' all the time, even in the process of everyday sensory perception. Filling in the gaps in the scene in front of our eyes as our eyes flit around continually building up an apparently steady picture, masking the blind spot in each eye, etc.
So personal testimony of unusual phenomena simply cannot be taken at face value.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Well said Bob, as always. I realized long ago the unexplained, or paranormal, are simply mind sensory perceptions which are chemically delicate, quite often naturally disrupted from what we call normal, emotionally interpreted, and truly believed by the honest perceiver.
LSD amazingly yet scientifically explainable, re-connects our stored mental memory library in unusual ways. IOW, if I say banana, one might relate monkey, jungle ... where as on LSD one might think robot, guitar ....whatever.
Atheism Books.
If you attempt to discuss metaphysical concepts in terms applicable to physical reality then you are not discussing metaphysics. Doing that simply marks you out as ignorant.
Attempting to propose a theory whereby one should discuss metaphysical concepts in terms applicable to physical reality - given that it then no longer is a discussion of metaphysics - marks you out as arrogantly ignorant.
Not understanding that both of those statements cannot be contradicted without revealing even more arrogant ignorance on your part marks you out as stupid.
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
You seem to prefer a dualism, the spirit-matter opposites, something non-physical, having no interaction with the physical reality. You might notice that I don't think like that. There's no black and white division on the world, no clear opposite, just a many higher qualities of matter and energy. The higher the quality is, the less it interacts with our physical matter, but it does, nevertheless. How and why exactly, this is what I and hopefully also others are searching for.
Of course I am ignorant, compared to the scholars. But how can my arrogance match theirs? They believe, that people like me cannot possibly know, see, understand or teach them anything, and yet their vast knowledge is missing a small, but vital pieces of information I have. This is not arrogance speaking from me, it's experience. I can't deny my experience, I'm obliged to share it and find a cause of it. It's not as much a privilege, as it's a duty. The discovered cause must not be a scientific analogy of Goddidit, it must raise further questions and must leads to new revelations, as a good science does. Thus don't expect from me declaring "I'm just crazy" and sheltering in a nuthouse. That wouldn't bring any answers nor questions.
Btw, if you didn't ever do any personal research of the "metaphysical" topics, if you never tried it on your own skin, then please correct that error or don't attempt to seriously participate on the discussion where the personal experience is necessary. You can read about it whatever you want, but only the practice is, what really matters.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Well if you need to reinvent language in order to lend credibility to your rantings that's fine. But why not be more honest about it and instead of appropriating words which already have set meanings why not invent some new ones? Why not call your take on physics "flartypoop" or "punklewurz"? It would save a lot of well-meaning but seriously misled people a lot of wasted time and effort trying to engage you in conversations about what they thought you meant whereas you only ever intend to discourse on your own flawed and egotistical little theories which have as much relevance to reality and rationality as a vibrator does to a mollusc.
That's the flawed egotistical twaddle I'm talking about. Experience? You invent them.
As I have said many times - you are a liar, and the biggest victim (thankfully) of your lies up to now has been you. But now I and a host of others are extremely tired of your compulsive need to monopolise bandwidth on this site with evidence after evidence of this sad truth about you ("about you" being the very operative term, as usual).
So here's a thought - why not take your punklewurz and try it somewhere where you're less likely to offend the sensibilities of rational people? The internet is full of places like that. Why do you keep coming back here?
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
People seems to maintain some sense of identity, which may be not attached to their body, brain, personality, thinking or memory.
Famed Canadian neuroscientist Wilder Penfield thought that the mind may interface with the brain in a part of the diencephalon. A certain other authority says, that this is correct, but the whole diencephalon is the interface.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
If the host of others (whoever it is) and you are afraid of a lacking bandwith, it would need only to delete one or two topics in Trollville with 200+ posts and there would be a plenty of free space.
As for you thinking that I lie, that's your assumption, as you have never seen anything I describe, you must assume that I lie. As Niels Bohr said, you're not thinking, you're just logical. You can take some big book and search there for a sufficient mental disorder to "explain" me.
As for the other part of the question, here are many wonderful people and a wide array of topics of a great importance for this world. My interests are wider than just a metaphysics. We are getting closer to a time, which will transform all aspects of our lives. Many of these aspects (politics, for example) are discussed here. For me, the definition of 'spiritual' is anything concerned with an improvement of self and the world around, anything constructive, related to many domains of human activity. As for the domains present here, there are some very 'spiritual' people in them.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
There is NOT necessarily a 'me' to watch - there have been patients who seem not to speak in these terms. This can be tricky to infer of course. We have no evidence whatsoever that there is any awareness of self unconnected with the body - 'feelings' of dissociation are no real evidence for thought actually unconnected. We have even tentatively identified the class of neurones that are very important in generating this sense of self - 'mirror' neurones, which seem to have evolved to enable the brain to model the behaviour of other individuals in order to anticipate to some degree their behaviour.
Dunno what your "50GB' comment is about.
There really is not evidentiary justification for the idea of a separate entity of some sort. It doesn't explain anything, IMHO.
I actually agree. That is the only way we can obtain some sort of evidence for these experiences having some connection with an external reality. But the conditions in terms of double-blind testing where practical, and rigorous elimination of possible conventional explanations for any apparent connection, such as having shared some experience or communication in the past which is not consciously remembered, or picking up subconscious cues from each other or the investigators.
You presumably (I hope, as a serious investigator into this subject) have heard James Randi describe his investigations into people who believe they have various 'paranormal' abilities. The unawreness of most of these people of some very simple mundane alternative explanations for their 'abilities' is truly sad, as is their genuine puzzlement at their failure to demonstrate their powers when some very basic controls are set in place - which they have agreed to in advance as being reasonable. These accounts do make it hard for me to take your assertions very seriously without some very solid documentation from well-controlled tests.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
What you just wrote makes very little sense to me, because I'm not familiar with magical powers. Which magical powers do you have?
Now you're babbling. There are several ideas in the remaining paragraphs of what you wrote that could never be confirmed. You're going to have to start speaking Earthling before I understand what you're saying.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
No, it makes sense if someone says that they have magical powers, that they're lying. We usually accept magical tricks from the likes of Penn & Teller and David Copperfield as pleasant lies, but we all know we're being tricked. The beauty of that kind of entertainment is that everyone's in on the skill and fun of the trick. In your case, you're still trying to claim magical powers (and thus lying) without being all that entertaining about it.
If you're not lying, I'll gladly apologize, but I don't even know what you're lying about. Your original wacky claim was based on an easily explained reflection pattern, and since then, I haven't understood what you were saying. Is being a "medium" where you talk to the dead or something?
You don't need a big book. If you honestly believe that you have magical powers, then you're delusional. In that case, you would be suffering from a delusion, and that's not mental illness, that's just something that can happen to people sometimes.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Your opinion need not be humble in this case. Trying to come up with an explanation for something that's never been observed has always been a bit of a stretch. Even "luminiferous aether" was based on something actually observed, and it wasn't a bad guess, really. Here, we'd be introducing something similar, except that we're trying to explain something we can't describe as being actually observed. Tricky, that.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
I haven't read the whole thread, but here is a rational stance on all of this stuff that I find very usefull:
Reported personal experience IS evidence. However, the question is, "evidence of what?"
If a person reports an "ESP" type experience, this may be evidence of ESP, or it may be evidence of a mild temporal lobe seizure. It may also be evidence that they are self-deluding, or it may be evidence that they are lying.
Here-in lies the problem. As long as self-delusion, lying and temporal lobe seizures are more likely explanations of these experiences, we must dismiss the ESP explanation, if for no other reason than because we have no theoretical basis for making the claim. One must defer to the most likely conclusion when practicing rationality. ESP is the least likely, so it is the explanation of last resort. That said, the other 3 explanations are EXTREMELY robust phenomena. So if there is an ESP effect, it's likely to be drowned out in the noise of these other explanations.
I have heard of studies that showed empirical evidence of paranormal phenomena, however I don't know how credible these studies were. Unfortunately, it is also true that science is a social phenomena, which means that if it is unfashionable to give credibility to these studies, they may be discredited even if they are good, well controlled studies.
I have not decided that this is an important enough issue in my life to research it deeply, so I'm just going to stick with the whole "probably not true" conclusion for now. Frankly, paying the bills is more important to me than reading the mind of the mail man. Such is life.
However, I had also heard from half-trustworthy sources about a kind of neural anomaly, which increases the stream of data we consciously perceive, and this can give people an extraordinary cognitive power, if they are already intelligent enough.
For example, the fictive main hero of Prison Break (featured as M. Scofield) and also allegedly a certain man who is hiding under a pseudonyme James and is the author (or just a publisher) of some vast, interconnected works of art, philosophy, poetry, half-fiction, society-related articles, interviews and even music.
If this neural anomaly really exists, then it might suggest that these 50 GB unconsciously registered by our brain contains some very important data.
On the other side, all the psychics, mediums, clairvoyant people etc, I know, works less or more in secrecy. The better they are, the more they keep to themselves, the less ambitions they have. It's common for an astral medium to have a wide audience, even to be a leader of a group or a cult, but one person I know, who has a clairvoyant connection of impressive purity and height, is very private. She does only help my family, in exchange for a technical knowledge and cooperation. Her clairvoyance shows her a purpose of her own life and what to do, when and where, for it to be for the greatest good of all. And so she is concerned only by a purpose of her life. Btw, she has a two university degrees, lucrative job, and a lot of money. She doesn't have to do anything for money.
Thus I have a suspicion that there is an inverse proportional relationship between a psychic's openness and ability.
And what I actually want to say, is that I can use a touch sense of my etheric body, to work with a matter and energy on etheric level. This is nothing impressive, a lot of healers does it, it's taught to people on various semminaries. Of course, that's an abstract claim, what is it good for, you surely ask? Well, it's hard to say. For anything in future, but almost nothing specific now
I'm way too young to know, I'm just 20. I sit on my butt in awe of the world, and I have no idea what is happening, I only know it's amazing.
One example is that I can use it as an equivalent of Reiki (I do sometimes, and succesfully) but it's not specialized on healing. I don't know absolutely precisely what it is specialized on. I do have a plan to find it out, but explaining a details to you would make you no more informed. Well, the main part of my plan is a kind of meditation I believe to be the most effective.
I also exercise this ability of mine a little, but don't ask me for what I do, because I don't know. As I said, I'm mostly limited to an equivalent of a touch sense, so I don't see much what it looks like. If there is any earthly discipline similar to that, I'd compare it to a combination of painting, sculpting, molding, handling a live jellyfishes and a machine construction.
And I missed out some procedures for which there is no known term, only a metaphorical, figurative description. You're probably not even the right person to be seriously interested in such a things. You only asked about a magical powers, and you expect some entertaining X-Men analogy. Sorry to disappoint you, the "magical" theory is not more entertaining than an actual scientific theory, written in a secret language. You see, it needs to be the right kind of a nerd.
These are my two cents, which are the most frequent, most proximate. I saw more in my life, but only ocassionally. The perception through etheric body is with me every day, every moment I switch it on, so it's the thing I can stand for the most.
Why are you so sure that I'm an Earthling?
.
.
Just kidding
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Which just about sums up the dishonesty behind everything else you bullshit about.
For all your claims of "perception" you as yet seem to have signally failed to perceive the truth about yourself. You are a liar.
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
I like what you have proposed. I have observed ghostly phenomenon, sometimes in the company as many as 12 other people who simultaneously experienced the same evidence. Although I have been arguing for rationality and scientific evidence for the last 35 years, this seems to be the one subject at which some people will not take me at my word, nor will they go looking for evidence themselves. Most responses seem to fall into 3 categories.
1. I believe there is no god, therefore there is no afterlife, therefore ghosts are impossible.
2. The psychic types I've heard of are frauds, liars or loonies, therefore only frauds, liars and loonies say ghosts exist.
3. I've never seen any credible evidence, so I don't believe ghosts exist.
Number 3 is the the only response for which I have any respect . The other 2 types of responses sound to me as though the respondent is saying that the existence of ghosts doesn't fit their dogma, so they refuse to consider the possibility of ghosts. That sounds remarkably like the kind of closed-mindedness that originally drove me away from xianity. If atheists are as rigid and narrow-minded as fundies then what's the point of a forum?
While I have great respect for people like James Randi, most of them are interested in proving the non-existence of paranormal phenomena and are very biased in their analysis, and tend to address only the most lame-ass "evidence". They also tend to argue against the phenomena by demonstrating that they can reproduce the results with special effects. That's not a valid argument. James Cameron produced the sinking of the Titanic with special effects, but it didn't disprove that the ship sank.
I don't expect anyone to take my word for what I say, but I've spent a lot of time on battlefields and in old houses due to my love of history so I've had more opportunities to see things. Most of the people who have implied that I'm dilusional or a liar would never agree to go to a reputedly haunted location at night. I'm sorry if I sound bitter about this, but I keep being insulted for telling the truth. I have no reason to lie and i've never been prone to halucinations. I would love to have a real open-minded discussion of what these phenomena might be or get irrefutible evidence that they don't exist, and that I need a rubber room.
Those who do attempt to collect good evidence tend not to share their evidence with unsympathetic skeptics because they have learned that for those who have decided ghosts don't exist no evidence will ever be good enough (just as those who have decided that the world is 9000 years old will never see millions of years of sedimentary layers in the Grand Canyon). Talking to such people is just wasted time. So there needs to be some agnosticism toward these subjects, so posters don't just get called liars, or these posts on the paranormal should just be eliminated all together.
All perfectly reasonable requests, however I have one minor change to your three categories.
I disregard the justification used in category 1, however I follow category 3 and a slightly modified and expanded category 2. Essentially my reasoning is thus;
1: I have seen no compelling evidence for the existence of ghosts or any supernatural phenomena.
2: Everyone who I have seen proclaim to possess supposedly supernatural powers has either proven themselves to be frauds or refused to provide any evidence and outright refused to tolerate skepticism. As such I feel perfectly justified in stating that the type of mysticism that these fellows practice is wrong. Like when a Christian Priest calls for a hurricane to wipe out the Democratic national Convention and it doesn't happen, I find it perfectly reasonable to declare that this priest obviously does not have the ear of God.
Now of course 2 does not prove that magic or what have you does not exist, merely that those proclaiming to understand it (who have thus been exposed as frauds) do not understand it if it does. It also does not prove that everyone proclaiming to have magic will be exposed as a fraud, however when someone states that they have magic of a sort very similar to or identical to those who have been exposed as frauds this lends credibility to the idea that they too are frauds, because if it didn't work for one person, why will it work for another who does the same thing?
This is why I reject the little 'sensitivity' qualification. I find it to be a perfectly convenient rationalization for why 99.9999% of the people on the planet cannot get magic to work for them in any meaningful way beyond a placebo effect. This does not mean it isn’t right, however since no one has ever been able to provide an in depth explanation of why some people are supposedly ‘sensitive’ and others aren’t with the exception that some people are frauds and some aren’t, I find it lacks any meaningful weight.
As for James Randi demonstrating that the magic others propose can be replicated by special effects, what he is trying to do is show that there is a rational explanation grounded in what we currently know that can explain some phenomena. As such it is far more rational to believe in this interpretation than to believe that this magic is real, especially when there is generally no more than circumstantial evidence to back the claim up. Your comparison to the Sinking of the Titanic seems to me to be a poor comparison, no one doubts the sinking of the Titanic because we have rock solid evidence that it sank, namely the fact that we have found it lying on the bottom of the ocean (in addition to massive amounts of other evidence, it was a sure fact it sank long before we found it). No supernatural claim I have ever seen has such powerful evidence. If the only evidence (meaning there was no record of the ship existing or any survivors or people who mysteriously disappeared) we had of the sinking was a blurry home movie with poor compression and low visibility, then the reproduction of a similar video with special effects, combined with the extreme lack of outside proof of the sinking would be compelling evidence that the entire thing was just a fake movie.
Your personal evidence I do find less than compelling, as you yourself expected. I don't doubt that you have no reason to lie, however your personal claim that you aren't prone to delusion is hardly compelling, as if you were delusional you would by definition not realize it, or else your delusion would be broken. Don't take it personally though, its not that I don't trust you, I just don't trust you.
Once again, present the evidence through a respectable medium. Mail Randi with a suggestion, submit something to a paper or scientist and suggest some investigation. I don't doubt that there are close minded Scientists, putting on a lab coat doesn't make one perfect after all.
As for visiting a reputedly haunted site at night, fine, sounds like fun. But I don't have any nearby me and am currently tethered to my local area. Once I have more freedom and some time I fully intend to investigate some such sites, but you'll have to wait a couple of years, probably around 4-5.
Now for some ranting about something that makes me bitter.
Frankly, the excuse that those who have the real evidence don't want to waste their time or are afraid of the repercussions is really starting to piss me off, because if they truly have powerful evidence of something so Earth Shattering and are keeping it to themselves for such trivial reasons then they are either cowards or the laziest bastards in the history of humankind and I thus lose all respect for them. Either stand up and present the evidence through some respectable format or shut up and quit whining about how you are being 'silenced'.
In ages past people had to worry about being executed by immolation for breaking the Status Quo, and yet they still spoke up, your dangers are meaningless in comparison.
And a proverb to finish things off, for all of the people with strong evidence who don’t show it because of ‘unsympathetic skeptics’;
“Those who don’t cast their nets will catch no fish.”
When you say it like that you make it sound so Sinister...
Hear, hear!
I've ran into so many excuses that they fail to sicken me these days. So many " I won't devalue my gift of prediction by predicting the winning lottery numbers " excuses. And yet when you tell them how much good they could do with the money by donating it to a worthy cause, they quickly change the subject.
I've offered to place four playing cards face up on top of my refrigerator, send the card and suit info to a neutral third party, and let psychics and astral projectionists guess the cards only to have them tell me that they can't detect or project to a place based on mere physical data, coordinates, and photographs. One psychic told me that she didn't believe I would give the info to someone that really was neutral. What? She doesn't believe me, but I am supposed to believe her?
I even offered to fly to Germany at my own expense to test one guy's claim of telekinesis. He claimed to be able to levitate and move styrofoam peanuts with his mind. I told him that I would bring with me a styrofoam peanut treated with Static Guard spray and sealed in a blown glass globe ( courtesy of a ren fair glass blower acquaintance of mine ) and let him demonstrate to me his ability. He refused on the grounds that my " negative aura would disrupt his ability. ". After a heated debate and generous ad hominems, he threatened to stop my heart telekinetically. I urged him to, at which time he informed me that he feared that touching my negative aura to affect my heart might taint his own aura so badly that he would lose his ability.
Give me a fucking break! I can doubt electricity without disrupting the power going to a lightbulb, but doubting a telekinetic will cease flow of his energy? And here I thought that reality followed consistant rules. Silly me!
It takes a village to raise an idiot.
Save a tree, eat a vegetarian.
Sometimes " The Majority " only means that all the fools are on the same side.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
So there is compelling evidence of ghosts, it is just that the believers won't share it? I'm calling bullshit on this one. I had friends back in high school try and show me ghosts. It turns out that they were delusional and that nothing would ever show up when I was present. I did it to humor three times going somewhere to see ghosts, but then I stopped going with them to see ghosts since it was clear that their beliefs were fantasies. Worse yet; these friends later claimed that I just am not observant enough to sense ghosts. As though it were my fault that I can't see their imaginary ghosts.
What do you think seems more likely to us: that you are delusional, or there are actually ghosts all around and we have just been missing out on seeing them this whole time? I think you are delusional, and I will only take that back if ghosts are proven to be real. This reminds me of a coworker who once claimed to see supernatural things. He said he knew that they were real and asked me if I though he was crazy, he did this in front of other people thinking that would shut me up. I told him that he is delusional and that all of the spiritual stuff he saw was imaginary. I'm afraid that you are in the same boat as that guy: clearly delusional and acting as though those who don't share your delusion are just small minded like a YEC. I do find it rich that you compared skeptics to young earthers.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
Jormungander, Desdenova and Sinphanius, I'd like to make sure if you understand one thing. You're used to a solid, scientific evidence. But the evidence for phenomena like ghosts, no matter how strong it may be, is irrepeatable, unpredictable and rare. We are not a masters of this evidence, we don't possess it. We may see a ghost, or UFO or whatever, and this may be enough to convince anybody who's not blind, but we can not know when and where.
For example, nobody can tell a ghost, or even better, tell a whole haunted house full of ghosts to appear right in front of you. If I say that I saw a ghost, I mean exactly that, and not that I understand what the ghost is, or that I could repeat the evidence. A scientific evidence already contains the understanding of it, you can repeat the phenomenon any time you want, but an empiric evidence isn't like that. It just is in the moment when and where it happens and claims nothing else than existence of a phenomenon, not how it works. And so it will be until someone understands an inner basis of a phenomenon and makes it repeatable.
So, the point is clear, you expect a scientific evidence, which explains how the phenomenon works, but this is only possible as a result of a succesful scientific research. The empirical evidence only says that something exists, nothing else, regardless if we understand it. We witnesses of weird stuff had seen only the empirical evidence and as such this is valid in it's own cathegory. It requires a lot of work to transform the empirical evidence on the scientific you want so much.
People doesn't refuse to share the evidence, they simply have no control over it.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Thank you all for your comments. I am in full accord with you on your skepticism of most of those who profess to have paranormal powers, especially those goals seem to be fame and fortune, but I'd be happy if they could prove my doubts groundless. I was unclear about the phenomenon witnessed by 12 people; it was auditory not visual. We were camping on a Civil War battlefield and for several minutes between 3 and 4 AM we heard the sounds of marching, horses and wagons. I looked for an explanation; checking for road traffic, nearby railroads and even looking for animal or human tracks in the adjacent empty field. Being a history buff has probably given me more opportunities than most folks to experience phenomena, but my history research tools are inadequate for capturing evidence.
As Luminon pointed out it (thank you) ghosts are frustratingly disinclined to cooperate and appear on request. I don't know how many trips I had made to Gettysburg before the time when an empty Civil War uniform walked up to my car and made a believer of me. I haven't a clue what ghosts are or how they seem to interact, I just add them to the long list of things I don't understand.
I kind of went off on a defensive rant on that last post, I think it was pumpkin pie withdrawal.
Your criteria of 'scientific' evidence is not correct - it would rule out the sciences of astronomy, cosmology, archaeology, paleontology, ie all the many sciences which cannot be conducted in a lab with readily repeatable experiments.
"scientific evidence, which explains how the phenomenon works" is nonsense. Empirical evidence IS 'scientific' evidence. What you are referring to is a scientific theory.
Obviously, studying such phenomema sytematically is difficult, of course, where the basic evidence is mostly or entirely personal observation and testimony. But that doesn't prevent us studying the body of reports to note any common aspects, comparing the accounts with cases where something similar was reported and later connected with some known event, among other approaches. What makes an investigation scientific, among other things, is not jumping to any conclusions about the nature of the phenomena without adequate justification, careful consistent recording of all accounts, which I'm sure you are doing...
Your credibility is not helped by your inaccurate understanding of the nature of science and the way scientific investigation is carried out/
You also seem to consistently downplay the many ways our perceptions can be faulty, especially with unfamiliar or unusual experiences.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Ever entertained the notion that you're thick?
Seriously - it might be worth a spin, luminon. I know that modesty isn't your style and all. But think about it - after 6 months of trying to get intelligent people to accept your misdefinitions, misinterpretations, misunderstandings, misconceptions and terribly inflated egotistical assertations as something other than what they are, while simply encountering intelligent debunking of all that you hold dear, ask yourself. What would an intelligent person do now?
Or then again - continue with the bullshit.
I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Alright; I'll take you on your word that this is what you saw. In many instances I have no doubt that a claimant to witnessing a paranormal event did indeed see something. The questions remains, however:
Did you see what you thought you saw?
Let's examine the facts:
* It was night time, and therefore dark outside (you had poor visibility)
* You were looking through a window, inviting small distortions & glare between your eyes and the apparition in question.
* You did not technically see any unusual object. You saw an ordinary object behaving in what appeared to be an extraordinary manner (much easier to fake).
Questions that you need to answer (these are not intended to be insulting; they need to be cleared-up, and honestly, in order to confirm or deny immediately obvious explanations:
* Were you under the influence of a substance that night?
* Did yo have friends who knew where you were going?
* Did you show-up at Gettysburg in regular intervals that someone might've figured out in order to pull this prank on you?
Finally, we need to look at likely causes for what you saw - not just the cause you prefer or would otherwise be biased towards seeing:
* Someone in an oversized suit, arms retracted into the sleeves and head tucked under the collar
* A dream, hallucination or otherwise a figment of your imagination
* Something perhaps resembling a suit being blown by in a gust.
Now, then - what are the answers to the three questions I posed in the middle above, and what reasons do you have for dismissing the three likely causes I posited here? Moreover, what particularly compelling reason do you have for believing that some sort of transparent entity was what was walking the clothing towards your vehicle?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I have met people who could understand me, and people who couldn't. The second group divides on those who realized it, and on those who didn't. I hold no grudge towards any of these people. I rejoice or learn from their presence and I offer them to rejoice or learn from my presence. I offer, but I don't demand and I don't presume they should. Well, or so I'm honestly trying.
When I did everything I could, as well and sincerily as I could, then according to my creed is a time for emotional detachment, to not take the accusations personally
As for the assertions, I am who I am, and so they are what they are. The anonymity of internet allows me to be much more open than I could be IRL, and the results are interesting and edifying. The reserve of what is remaining to be learned and taught here is not nearly depleted. As for the others among us, I hope their day was a bit more interesting. I certainly need to whirl up the waters for a bit, after a day of a dull work at a car factory. (don't ask for details)
I wonder where my alleged egoism is coming from. I know it will sound very egoistically, but I like to overlook the flaws of others, knowing that I'm not perfect myself. I want a maximal good for a maximal number of people. How the egoism could appear together with such a character traits? Are you sure it's my egoism we're talking about?
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.