Communicating with the dead

[EvanS]

@glee

I don’t understand the reasoning in your first paragraph. If the evidence is always debunked, and is therefore not valid, why do you think anything is ‘going on’?

Because anything can be “debunked.” They 'debunked" the moon landings, as I recall. All that debunking does is shows that something can be faked, not that it is, or was. “Debunked” does not equal “invalid.”

There are enough phenomenon that occur that have yet to be adequately explained (i.e., demonstrably proven/disproven), that we can come to the conclusion that we don’t know everything there is to know. Therefore, when phenomenon present themselves they are worthy of investigation until we discover those causes, whatever they are.

@glee

There is a long history of ‘dowsing’ claims. No dowser has ever passed a test. What conclusion do you draw from this?!

That people are deluding themselves. Dowsing is something that can easily be tested, and has been found to be fallicious. But we’re not talking about dowsing here.

Communicating with the dead, however, has produced mixed results. Some obvious frauds have been exposed, and in other cases results have been produced which seem to indicate that obtaining information likely known only to a deceased person has occurred. (Note careful wording.) Just because there are dishonest mediums doesn’t invalidate all claims.

Hey, there’s crooked bankers, too. Does that mean that banking is fraudulant?

It’s also a difficult field of study; we don’t yet know enough to control the parameters or results. If we just ignore it, we’ll never know. Remember, all sciences began with observation first!

Maybe the premise is wrong, too. Maybe it’s not communicating with the dead, but accessing some preserved memories somehow. If we don’t ask questions we don’t get answers, and we remain ignorant. Some of our greatest discoveries have come about by people thinking “out of the box,” having an open mind and critical thinking skills.

[Yllaria]

[nitpick on]

We accept lots of things (or at least give them consideration) without scientific evidence as long as they meet certain criteria (modern physics string theory, wave theory, etc.),

If I’m up to date, string theory has not been verified. In fact there are competing string theories, all of which work mathematically and none of which can be tested. No test: no verification. [nitpick off]

Regarding the information from the dead. The less rigorous the situation, the more likely information comes from the dead. The more rigorous the situation, the less information comes. In the most rigorous situations, tests for specific information fail and general tests produce no more information than could be expected randomly. This leads many of us to believe that the information, in the case of the less closely watched and analyzed situations, probably came from other sources.

[ralph124c]

OK, consider this: you die, your eyes close, and your brain shuts down. Once neural activty ceases, you are “dead”. Your eyes no longer send images to your brain, your ears no longer hear sounds. Your senses of touch, smell, temperature all are gone.
Where does that lead you? What can you communicate with the living?
Sadly, nothing we know now admits to communication (of any sort) from a dead person. There si nothing to communicate. Of course, we could postulate that the dead person somehow manages to see without eyes, hear without ears, etc. But that is most unlikely.
My feeling is that when you die, you experience a slowing of time…an instant of time is perceived as millions of years.

[Czarcasm]

Moving this from IMHO to Great Debates.

[EvanS]

@ralph124c

OK, consider this: you die, your eyes close, and your brain shuts down. Once neural activty ceases, you are “dead”. Your eyes no longer send images to your brain, your ears no longer hear sounds. Your senses of touch, smell, temperature all are gone.
Where does that lead you? What can you communicate with the living?
Sadly, nothing we know now admits to communication (of any sort) from a dead person. There si nothing to communicate. Of course, we could postulate that the dead person somehow manages to see without eyes, hear without ears, etc. But that is most unlikely.
My feeling is that when you die, you experience a slowing of time…an instant of time is perceived as millions of years.

Yeah Ralph, but that’s just a guess! Nice image, though.

Fact is, we just don’t know what happens to “us” after death, we only know what happens to our bodies (they rot, after a bit, if not preserved).

What happens to the mind? We don’t even know what the mind is! How can we speculate?

Is there an immortal soul? Lots more people think there is than those who think there isn’t. Fact: we don’t know.

We don’t know if some part of a person continues to exist after death, either in a mind, a soul or even as some sort of ‘electromagnetic echo.’

Why is it unlikely to concive of perception without eyes and ears? You dream, don’t you? Do you use your eyes and ears when you dream? No, you use your mind, whatever that is… What reason do we have to assume the mind dies with the body? People who are clinically dead and who are later revived, come back with memories, not only of before death, but during death. And there are cases where neural activity has “ceased” in your words, and they report things that were said, are able to describe charts that were viewed, describe who was in the room…

Aye, there be much more in Heaven and Earth, Ralphie, then are dremt of in our philosophies. (apologies to the Bard, but as true today as ever.)

[EvanS]

@Yllaria

Regarding the information from the dead. The less rigorous the situation, the more likely information comes from the dead. The more rigorous the situation, the less information comes. In the most rigorous situations, tests for specific information fail and general tests produce no more information than could be expected randomly. This leads many of us to believe that the information, in the case of the less closely watched and analyzed situations, probably came from other sources.

Cite?

[Scissorjack]

@EvanS

Aye, there be much more in Heaven and Earth, Ralphie, then are dremt of in our philosophies. (apologies to the Bard, but as true today as ever.)

You owe the Bard a double apology. If you’re going to debate in this forum, I suggest you get your quotes right:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet, I.v.166

That quote is also the first resort of a person bereft of arguments, evidence, or proof, but seeking a spurious profundity: Hamlet was a character created by a 17th century playwright, and anything he had to say about the supernatural is both irrelevant and worthless in any genuine debate.

[EvanS]

@Case Sensitive

You owe the Bard a double apology. If you’re going to debate in this forum, I suggest you get your quotes right:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet, I.v.166

That quote is also the first resort of a person bereft of arguments, evidence, or proof, but seeking a spurious profundity: Hamlet was a character created by a 17th century playwright, and anything he had to say about the supernatural is both irrelevant and worthless in any genuine debate.

Please get a clue.
There were no quote marks - it was not a quote.
It was a closing comment to a post with some meat in it.

Don’t you have any comments about “the good parts?”
All you could do was criticize a closing comment???

Surely you can do better. Have a cup of Joe and try again.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

Man, nobody seems to want this thread! Poor orphaned thread–will it turn up in Cafe Society next?

I used to be, but then I got digital cable. Now I can’t get static on any of my channels. I’ll have to try that chicken entrails thing. Thanks for the tip.

Huh. After I got digital cable, I suddenly could only communicate with dead smurfs.

Daniel

[glee]

@EvanS

Because anything can be “debunked.” They 'debunked" the moon landings, as I recall. All that debunking does is shows that something can be faked, not that it is, or was. “Debunked” does not equal “invalid.”

When specifically a medium claims to be able to contact the dead, for a fee, and yet is unable to do anything that a magician can do (e.g. using cold-reading), then it is appropriate to claim that nothing has been shown.
There are indeed some claims that the Moon landings were faked. Astronomers + scientists have refuted these claims.

@EvanS

There are enough phenomenon that occur that have yet to be adequately explained (i.e., demonstrably proven/disproven), that we can come to the conclusion that we don’t know everything there is to know. Therefore, when phenomenon present themselves they are worthy of investigation until we discover those causes, whatever they are.

Fine, provided a phenomenon actually presents itself.
Whenever scientists investigate haunted houses, nothing happens.
As far as I know, no medium has even tried to claim the $1,000,000 available from the James Randi Foundation for any demonstration of paranormal powers.

@EvanS

Dowsing is something that can easily be tested, and has been found to be fallicious. But we’re not talking about dowsing here.

Well I agree with you. However there are dowsing societies who claim they can teach anyone. There’s no evidence to support that.

@EvanS

Communicating with the dead, however, has produced mixed results. Some obvious frauds have been exposed, and in other cases results have been produced which seem to indicate that obtaining information likely known only to a deceased person has occurred. (Note careful wording.) Just because there are dishonest mediums doesn’t invalidate all claims.

Many frauds have been exposed.
I know of no result which was produced under scientific conditions (to rule out fraud).

@EvanS

Hey, there’s crooked bankers, too. Does that mean that banking is fraudulant?

You sound desperate! We have examples of honest bankers. We have no evidence of any communication with the dead.

@EvanS

It’s also a difficult field of study; we don’t yet know enough to control the parameters or results. If we just ignore it, we’ll never know. Remember, all sciences began with observation first!

Mediums regularly advertise their services and appear on TV. I understand one popular medium charges hundreds of dollars per hour. They claim to understand the process. Sadly they all use ‘cold reading’.
And as I repeat, we have no observations to analyse!

@EvanS

Maybe the premise is wrong, too. Maybe it’s not communicating with the dead, but accessing some preserved memories somehow. If we don’t ask questions we don’t get answers, and we remain ignorant. Some of our greatest discoveries have come about by people thinking “out of the box,” having an open mind and critical thinking skills.

Maybe it is something else.
Sadly some of the biggest con-tricks in history have come about because people wanted to believe, despite the total lack of evidence.

[David_Simmons]

My mother just told me, “Clean up your plate. You took it, you eat it.”

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Martin Hyde

What bothers me is when people close their minds. Especially on a forum where many people buy into some of the most hairbrained government conspiracy theories I’ve ever seen, but ridicule “paranormal” theories.

There is no such thing in science as a “paranormal theory.”

I think we should fully disprove people who are engaging in charlatanism(guys like John Edwards.) But this tone of mocking/derision that seems to go with any sort of belief contrary to that which is already known is sad, it’s by thinking outside the box we advance as a people.

What we demand is PROOF.

There has never been a single scientifically verified incidence of any paranormal activity/phenomenon/event in all of human history.

Not one “psychic,” not one ghost, not one angel, not one voice from beyond, not one “psychic healing,” not one example of remote viewing, or “channeling,” or “EVP.” No telekinesis, no pyrokinesis, no telepathy, no clairvoyance, no psychic ability whatsoever.

Why is it that you can’t swing a cat without hitting some sort of a psychic yet no a single one of them can ever once perform under controlled conditions, even ifd it means there’s a million bucks in it for them?

Look at it this way. We know that there are thousands of illusionists who can make it look like they’re sawing a lady in half. We also know that 100% of the time, it’s a trick. It is not closed minded to say that.

Psychics are no different. They are illusionists. They are performing an act. It’s a trick. 100% of the time, it’s a trick. I’m sorry if that bugs some people but I’m trying to keep you from getting your money stolen.

I find it rather silly to be called “closed minded” because I assume the impossible is impossible. Am I “closed minded” if I refuse to admit the possibilty of hobgoblins or that David Copperfield can make the Statue of Liberty disappear?

Scientific method and rational thought is about starting with observed phenomena and explaining why it occurs within a natural framework. So far, science has never observed a single event which it cannot explain by those phenomena.

Show me a single authentic example of the “paranormal,” and I’ll listen.

[tomndebb]

@EvanS

Please get a clue.

This discussion has, despite its inherently fractious nature on this board, remained fairly civil. Do not spoil that by issuing orders to other posters.

[DocCathode]

@EvanS

People who are clinically dead and who are later revived, come back with memories, not only of before death, but during death. And there are cases where neural activity has “ceased” in your words, and they report things that were said, are able to describe charts that were viewed, describe who was in the room

We’ve done many pages on NDEs. No decent cite or evidence was ever produced.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

NDEs are hallucinations. The same experience can be induced by drugs such as ketamine and DMT.The “ceased” neural activity is a disingenuous factor since it presumes that the subject has some way of knowing exactly when his hallucinations occurred which obviously, he does not.

[Scissorjack]

@EvanS

Please get a clue.
There were no quote marks - it was not a quote.
It was a closing comment to a post with some meat in it.

Don’t you have any comments about “the good parts?”
All you could do was criticize a closing comment???

Surely you can do better. Have a cup of Joe and try again.

Ignoring your rudeness for the time being, if it waddles like a quote and quacks like a quote, it’s a quote. I criticised your closing comment because it seems to be a summary of your position throughout that post: since are many things we don’t know, anything might be true.

This is not a tenable argument, since ignorance is never evidence of anything: anything might be true, but if you want to make a claim for its veracity, the onus is on you to provide the evidence - pretty compelling evidence, in this case, since extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

[EvanS]

@glee

As far as I know, no medium has even tried to claim the $1,000,000 available from the James Randi Foundation for any demonstration of paranormal powers.

That’s because probably all professional mediums are fakes.
Doesn’t mean the phenomenon doesn’t exist.
I couldn’t prove lightning exists under Randi’s conditions.
(But David Copperfield made lightning appear once, so it must be fake anyway.)

Can you not see how weak an argument that is? It doesn’t even meet the criteria of logic.

@glee

Well I agree with you.

There’s probably much on which we agree.

@glee

Many frauds have been exposed.

Good! That’s what should happen.

@glee

Sadly some of the biggest con-tricks in history have come about because people wanted to believe, despite the total lack of evidence.

And all the world’s biggest deceptions have come about because the few convinced the many that they (the few) already had all the answers, and there was no need (for the many) to think for themselves. Or to ask questions.

This system bases a belief system on faith. Believing one already has the answers causes one to shut the eyes, and the mind to further information. Further evidence is dismissed out of hand.

Declaring something does not exist because one has not seen evidence is just the other side of the coin from believing something does exist because one has been tricked. Declaring someone knows anything 100% is a mixture of ignorance and arrogance.

[ralph124c]

Didn’t eh famous American magician (Harry Houdini) spend the last 10 years of his life investigating mediums? As a professional magician, Houdini was well aware of all the tricks that phoney mediums could employ to fake communications from the dead. I believe that his conclusion (after all of his investgations) was that no communications from the dead had ever happened.
Again I ask, suppose you COULD contact and talk to your late Uncle Al? What could he possibly tell you? He might be able to tell you about the vents up until his death…but after that?

[DocCathode]

@ralph124c

Didn’t eh famous American magician (Harry Houdini) spend the last 10 years of his life investigating mediums?

Post # 14

[EvanS]

@ralph124c

Again I ask, suppose you COULD contact and talk to your late Uncle Al? What could he possibly tell you? He might be able to tell you about the vents up until his death…but after that?

Who knows, ralph? It’s shotgun speculation… wide open and all over the place.

Some people believe upon death we merge with God and know everything. Then Uncle Al could be very helpful…
Many reported incidents have dead loved ones warning about imminent danger to loved ones. These are few and far between, but would indicate some foreknowledge. (In fact all spontaneous communications are few and far between, and solicited communications are extremely suspect).
Others report unresolved injustices, I’ve heard. {My lawyer cheated us out of $20K} (not a real example). {I am the ghost of Jacob Marley!} Depends on what the deceased are able to know.

And - of course - if they’re communicating – and even more so, if we’re listening!
(DtC has his fingers in his ears).