Why do Skeptics have to “convince” anyone?
Why is it you have to believe a psychic? Why can’t they prove it? Why can’t anyone tell the difference, besides business practices, between an honest psychic and a fraudulent one?
Y’know, I think we are all pretty much tired of having to prove the impossible to you,lekatt, while you continue to accept dreams, the fantastic tales of people who see things while their brains are deprived of oxygen, and wishful thinking as “proof”. This is the last time I’m going to bother to respond to your “Prove it didn’t happen!” scientifically ignorant posts.
The rest of you are on your own.
Hypothetical situations really mean nothing, neither mine nor yours, rather I would love to do what Randi suggested. Take the reading, word for word, and use it as a reading for 10 more people and see how many hits you get. I would guess none.
You can actually do this yourself to prove whether or not it was a “cold reading”. Let us know the results, hell, we could all do it.
Skeptics are beaten, psychics have proved their ability.
Love
Leroy
Um…you were the one bringing up hypotheticals:
Well, for one thing, they just did prove it, and in front of millions of people.
Now, trying to separate the real from the not real is another story. Russia has a government licensing department for psychics. They must pass some tests to prove their ability, then they are given a license. They work in hospitals right along with the doctors and many other places. Russia has always been ahead of us in this field. England also has an agency to license psychics. There is a beginning try to do this in the US and some psychics are working in hospitals (Boston) on an experimental basis.
No, it is not necessary for anyone to believe in psychic ability. If you don’t want to fine. That is your choice. But if you start accusations about them. Then you would be expected to prove your accusations. Fair and simple.
I don’t believe in the impossible, I know it doesn’t exist in the spiritual world. I do except the fact that the physical world has limitations.
It is very fair and American to expect to prove any accusations and name calling you engage in, very fair.
Nobody ever said psychics had anything to do with science, and if you don’t want to post anymore, ok, I will accept that also.
Love
Leroy
Hell, I’ll give it a shot, with those readings in the transcript. Obviously, I’ll have to change mother/father to female/male relative, since my parents are still alive (But note that she always said she wasn’t sure if it was the mother/father, so it’s not really a change, is it?):
First call: Would apply well to every male relative in recent history that has died in my family. Most recent would be my grandfather on my dad’s side. He didn’t plant a rosebush to my knowledge, though that was a detail added by the caller instead of the reader.
Second call: Would apply perfectly to my grandmother, who died of lung cancer. The moving part could apply to my father, who moved several times durring that period, or several other relatives.
Third call: Applies to my grandfather, again. He wore a uniform at various points in his life (Mostly delivery services), and I believe he had a broken leg at one point; Not related to his death, but she never said it was. Tall and slender applies to just about every male in my family.
Fourth call: There was a girl, a somewhat loose friend, that died in high-school, in an accident. No bike involved in that accident, but it’s still closer than the reader got on the show.
Fifth call: Doesn’t really say anything factual, just “they’re together and okay.” So yeah, that works.
How about that, her five calls fit me a tiny bit better than they fit the callers in the show. Strange that, huh? 
Take the blinders off, already…
This is obvious cold reading. Most people die from heart or lung problems. So when she says, “Chest problem? Trouble breathing?” She covers both areas right there and that’s like 90% of everybody that dies. The rosebush thing was supplied by the caller and guessing a second rosebush is a fairly safe guess. If the guy planted one bush, he might have planted another one sometime in his life. If the caller had said no to that, then Fake psychic lady would just use her little “go ask the family” trick.
Cancer is also pretty safe guess, and most cancer victims have periods of remission, so that means nothing either. If the caller had said her mom had died of something else, the fake psychic would have fished around for an aunt or a grammaw who died of cancer. Most everybody has someone in their family who died of cancer.
The girl on the bike was a total strike-out, but I liked the comment about how she died “unexpectedly” at a young age. Well who the hell dies expectedly at a young age?
Most people can also find a male relative who at some point has worn a uniform. It doesn’t even have to be a military uniform, it can be a cop or a fire fighter or a frickin’ UPS uniform. A hat is a fairly safe guess for a uniform. A beret is one of those wild stabs that sounds impressive if it hits and is easily shifted if it misses. (notice she gave herself the out that it reminded her of her dad’s beret).
“Your parents are fine” whooee :rolleyes: how effing impressive. Do any of these con artists ever say, “your dad is frying in hell like a thick slab of back bacon?”
And let’s not forget that the callers are all easy marks to begin with. They wouldn’t be calling if they didn’t already buy into this crap. They were all very willing to jjump through hoops to make implausible connections. One guy went all the way back to a civil war ancestor. It’s very easy to work with such pliable rubes.
She was scared of Randi though, it was obvious. They both knew she was a fraud.
hmmm
I must have missed something. Why do you believe John Edward is genuine? Or are you kidding around?
Also, do you think our government ran a remote viewing program for 17 years that was in reality only “victim to statistical success”? And is that essentially another way of saying “lucky guesses”?
If you insist on slandering Doc Cathode, you you have called a fake, the burden of proof is, according to you, on you to explain why. So far, he has given a first hand testimonial that your claims of psychic ability are BS. You then called him a fake. Put up or shut up. Apply your own standards to yourself. We want evidence.
By the way, I thought we were going to drop the court and constitution stuff, you said? But I see you’ve brought it up again. So do I take it that you are free to spout nonsense on that topic, but that we are to cease to question you about that topic?
Sounds fair to me.
**
Do you just flat out deny that Randi and others are capable of causing an audience (who are not familiar with him) to believe he is psychic by doing a cold reading? He and others do it all the time.
And besides which, he says he to be able to fool people using cold reading, and so by your own logic, if you are going to deny that he can fool people using cold reading, it’s up to you to prove that. I have read testimonials that say that Randi can fool people with cold reading. So that is enough (according to you) to prove that he can do it, (in a court of law, right Lekatt?).
Read the transcript. The whole transcript. Larry is not the final arbiter of truth. He was as fooled by the cold reading as most people are. But if you read the transcript, you will find that “100% accurate” is just plain wrong.
If a stage magician did a good stage trick under the same circumstances, the same would result ie only one in a hundred could tell you how the magician pulled the rabbit out of the hat or sawed the woman in half. However, I think you would find that only a small gullible minority would believe that the magician had actually used magical powers.
Your anecdote proves nothing.
**
The reason you can’t see what happened is the complex obfuscation you surround a simple straightforward event with.
We propose a world in which
[ul]1. when you die you are dead
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charlatans and frauds exist (you admit this)
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those charlatans and frauds have found a way to fool some people into believing they can communicate with the dead (you don’t admit this, but even Rosemary Althea does)[/ul]
You propose a world in which:
[ul]1. when you die you still exist, you don’t know quite where or how, but you just do, which creates a whole new area of reality ie a whole new world of complexity
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charlatans and frauds exist (you admit this)
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some but not all psychics are able to communicate with the dead in certain limited ways that are impossible to fully explain to laypeople, but under which names can be identified using single letters, but other facts are able to be described in more detail, some things can be seen but others cannot, and the whole process is (for reasons that you are unable to explain) so touchy that it can only be done under certain circumstances and not others (such as double blind testing procedures) and is sometimes successful but is sometimes dead wrong.[/ul]
And you believe that skeptics are the ones creating complex obfuscation? Riiight.
And now for the application of Rosemary to me.
No one in my family has died for a decade, but let’s assume that (like all the callers) I had called in because I wanted information at a time when someone had just “crossed over”
First caller
Althea:
And then the caller mentions the rose bush, and Althea goes on:
Both my grandfathers were tall and slim. Both died suddenly of heart attacks, so the chest thing is spot on. Of course, when you have a heart attack you can’t breath so that’s also spot on. One had known heart problems, so he was not very well (which fits “sick”) but on the other hand he was not actually expected to die, so his death was still a shock. The other was healthy, so his attack was a surprise.
Both my grandfathers were keen hobbyists and were always into something or other at any given time. So let’s assume that I mentioned something to do with one or other of their hobbies that they were doing the day they died (as the caller mentioned planting a rose). Both my grandfathers had heaps of time on their hands (retired older people do). The chance that they had done only one of whatever it was that they were doing the day they died is very small.
About 90% accuracy there.
Second Caller
Rosemary:
Of course, this caller starts out by asking after her mother who’d died. My mother is still alive, but Rosemary says that she could be picking up anyone, mother, grandmother someone in the studio. So this certainly fits me because I know of several women who have died of cancer.
They were all sick before they died. Duh. All of them were in hospital. Double duh.
Now she’s talking about a house. I just bought a house. I am renovating it. We just had the roof done, and part of the roof was rotten, and certainly in danger of collapsing.
Now the cancer “was quick”. Well one that I can think of was quick. And that same one also featured a remission.
So I’m pretty much 100% on this caller.
Third Caller
One of my deceased grandfathers was tall (a bit over 6 feet) and was in the army during the war. He used to wear a flat cap, which is closer to a beret than a cowboy hat. I can’t recall him having an injury to a leg.
But then the other deceased grandfather wasn’t so tall (about 5’11" which isn’t short), but he belonged to a lodge with a uniform which I think involved a funny hat, and he had burns to his leg.
So pretty close to 100%
Fourth Caller
I’m not going to go right through this one. All are misses, except that certainly I can think of connections to plump older women with heart problems. Oh, and my father in law’s sister’s daughter died in a car crash while very young.
But then this was a strike out for the caller as well.
So overall, Rosemary did a pretty good reading on me, three times. She’s pretty talented. Her powers even work on at least three people simultaneously (me, her callers and Phoenix Dragon), and in my case they work trans-pacific.
Oh and my parting shot. Check out this quote from Zammit, from the page you quote from, Lekatt:
Oh really? From the transcript:
That is the first mention of a rosebush. Zammit is either a lier or so blinded by his own zeal that he attributes facts told to Rosemary by the caller to Rosemary.
Nice post, Princhester, but since it’s all anecdotal, I’m afraid I’ll have to dismiss the whole thing. 
I won’t try to bring you up to speed on spiritual things, that would take years. But you, like other skeptics, show no signs of any knowledge of the spiritual world. I can only repeat that you can’t measure spiritual events by using physical measurements.
If you have no desire to learn about the world you so quickly criticize, then nothing can be done, no communication can take place. I can tell you very assuredly that.
You will continue to live after death.
There is a spiritual world and actually most people living here on earth know a lot about it. It is pretty well mapped.
When, and if, you discover your own spiritual awareness, you will understand.
It is sad that our schools teach only one path, science, when the world is filled will them.
Love
Leroy
When someone says “I can communicate with the dead, and I can receive objectively verifiable information from them”, they have crossed from the realm of subjective belief into the realm of physical measurements. This would be a very different debate if all you were saying was that you have faith that we are spiritual beings who survive death in some way, or that you had some subjective experience which was convincing to you of the truth of that belief. But what you are saying is that there is objective evidence for your beliefs in life after death, evidence that can be verified by others:
You have said several times that this isn’t about science, that it’s “spiritual”, but “proven in hundreds of tests at Duke University” sounds like a scientific assertion to me.
You also said:
Courts of law don’t deal in spiritual matters. (“Your honor, we the jury find that the defendant’s immortal soul is saved. Amen!”) Law is much closer to science than to theology; both deal with matters of verifiable fact.
Well, public schools are prevented by the separation of church and state from teaching any “path” when it comes to the existence or non-existence of spiritual things. You should be as happy about this as anyone; it means, for example, that public schools can’t teach that psychic or spiritual phenomenon are evidence of demonic possession.
The psychic on the Larry King show proved she was connected to the spirit world by the very accurate information she gave in the readings. Larry King understood it and so did the audience. Randi even received mail asking why he didn’t do better on the show.
There is no doubt that the spirit world exists, there are mountains of data on it. Thousands of psychics, millions of believers. Skeptics are less than 2 percent of the world population. They have their proof, they just won’t accept it.
If schools would teach spiritual morality, honesty, truth, integrity, why would this world not be a better place?
All, that means everyone, will be held accountable for their actions. They will be accountable to themselves in the true sense of honesty.
Those who never try to understand, won’t.
Love
Leroy
Or even more clearly, from an earlier post:
Versus:
Please make up your mind.
“If schools would teach Secular Humanist morality, honesty, truth, integrity, why would this world not be a better place?”
“If schools would teach Fundamentalist Christian morality, honesty, truth, integrity, why would this world not be a better place?”
“If schools would teach Wahhabite Islamic morality, honesty, truth, integrity, why would this world not be a better place?”
“If schools would teach Orthodox Jewish morality, honesty, truth, integrity, why would this world not be a better place?”
Believers in all of those moral systems would profess to value honesty, truth, and integrity; and all of them would probably (for very different reasons) strongly disagree with your spiritual beliefs.
Teach honesty, truth, and integrity, yes. Beliefs about spirituality are another matter.
The only thing I could find fault with Randi’s performance on the show was he wasn’t more descriptive when he insisted why they were cold readings. He could’ve gone into more detail (but since it’s TV he’s limited by time and a moderator). Also, he could’ve explained his tests and the previous statistics used on them (since it made him look a bit sketchy because he wasn’t being specific, even though he tried to tell them it was really on a case by case basis).
Please, enlighten me. Use small words. Science can be explained in small words.
if you cannot measure it by physical measurements OR information transfer, it does not exist in the objective world.
I concede that at a certain point, it is impossible to differentiate between a subjective experience and a delusion.
For instance, if a person dies and has an NDE that they enter heaven, they may experience it as living forever: I am not saying that that experience is invalid FOR THEM. Objectively, though, we can only conclude that they died and their experience, if they had an NDE, it was a delusion.
But ANY transfer between the subjective and objective world can be measured scientifically. Either by direct causality or information transfer.
For instance, the psychics have not been able to show information transfer of even one bit. If they were able to show this, it would be SCIENTIFICALLY MEASUREABLE, and the PSEUDOSCIENCE of parapsychology would be replaced by the SCIENCE of parapsychology.
I hope Lekatt gets Showtime; last night’s inaugural episode of Penn and Teller’s new show debunked John Edward and the other “I see dead people” carnival performers quite thoroughly.