I just can’t help it. This is from the warm and fuzzy letter of praise to Leroy, on his site:
So either:[ol][]This is a shill/sock for Leroy, or []He is providing the “solid” evidence to them and withholding it from us, or There are others out there who are as ignorant of “science” as he is.[/ol]
Unfortunately, my experience tells me it’s probably #3.
It’s #4. He’s telling the person what he wants to know.
Lets face it, the idea of near death experiences and the idea of an afterlife are attractive to a lot of people. We want to believe that when we die, it won’t be the end. We want to believe we’ll see the people we loved who died before us. I know I’d give anything to see my uncle and grandfather again. People just want to feel good.
Yep. Kinda like when there’s an accident on the freeway. The tow trucks move all the damaged vehicles over to the side of the freeway, but everyone keeps driving by real slow to take a look at the carnage…
:eek: 
Umm…“Hate” and “anger”? I think it’s more like “Skeptical thinking”. Why is it such harsh attack if someone doesn’t believe you? Is it bad to ask for proof?
If psychic phenomenon was genuine and had mountains of evidence (or any) to validate it, I’d agree that it is useful. Unfortunately it appears to be fraudulent, and therefor I think it’s ultimately destructive.
Also from nde website “The two on TV, John Edward, and James Van Praagh have been around a long time and worked their way up through the ranks to shows. They have proven their ability and have large followings”
{emphasis mine}
What does this mean? I can only guess as he has yet to answer me.
Meatros wondered:
In the “minds” of people like lekatt, yes.
I’ve thought about why people believe in an afterlife. Assuming no other evidence, I think it’s because we’re incapable of imagining an actual end to consciousness, or oblivion.
Imagine yourself on your deathbed, as your senses start to fail you. You drift off and your heart stops. Ultimately your brain stops functioning. If there is no afterlife, you simply…stop. There’s no awareness, no sense of a void or anything. You just stop. Try to imagine that. You can’t. If you try, you really imagine yourself floating in a dark void, but still aware. The reason for that is we can’t conceive of our consciousness coming to an end, because, our consciousness is what we are.
It is easier to imagine ourselves continuing on in some fashion, simply without our bodies. Our imagination is capable of that, so from the standpoint of “I exist, so how can I cease to exist?,” it makes sense to assume we continue. From the standpoint of “life and consciousness are all wrapped up in our physical form and the chemical reactions and energy exchanges in our brains,” once the brain is dead, so too must be consciousness.
I don’t know which it is. I lean toward oblivion, but I have to admit part of me hopes to continue.
Even so, if I do continue on, I damn sure won’t try to communicate with the living through a psychic who can’t even tell what it is I want to say. Assuming I would want to say anything, anyway.
photopat – I do think that is a large part of it. People can accept death as long as they don’t have to accept that death = the end.
I’m afraid you might be right. I think Lekatt doesn’t want to own up to the possibility that psychics are not genuine because it somehow invalidates his NDE experience. The two issues do not have anything to do with each other (ok, the don’t have much to do with each other). They are separate things, and one being invalidated does not mean the other is.
What I find odd (or perhaps its entirely logical) is the refusal of Lekatt to openly acknowledge what even he seems tacitly to be more or less admitting.
In his last few posts (beleaguered by sceptics) he all but tacitly admits that he has no objective evidence left to fire, and so he withdraws to the fortress of righteous love: saying that psychics fulfil a useful purpose by providing reassurance to those who have just lost relatives and friends, that they (the psychics) radiate love and understanding, that their subjects like that, and that we are being cold hearted nasty sods for attacking them
He makes out (wittingly or otherwise) a case for leaving psychics in peace on the basis that they provide a useful placebo effect
Whether that is actually true is open to debate, but I think that the sceptics involved in this debate would at the least acknowledge that he just may have a glimmer of an argument in that respect.
What we dreaded sceptics tend to scorn is the suggestion that there is any objective truth in the assertion that psychics speak to the dead.
But Lekatt cannot or will not step out of character for a moment.
I saw a very funny skit on TV a few months ago. A patient is seeing a doctor about something. The doctor simply explains, straight out, that he has no real treatment but that studies show that placebo effects work, so he will write out a prescription for a placebo (a sugar pill) and that should result in the patient being cured. Of course the patient then points out that this isn’t going to work because now that she knows that the treatment is just a placebo, there will be no placebo effect.
Of course if Lekatt, Van Praag or Edward were ever to admit, even for a second, that it was all faked, then…
You have a point Princhester. The placebo effect could be a valid reason for “psychic treatment.” On the other hand, the TV psychics (so far as we’ve ever seen),continue to let people believe they have some sort of power that other people don’t have, and they exploit peoples emotions for their ratings. The ones not on TV may be exploiting people to line their pockets in a more direct way, but at the very least it’s in private, so while the “patients” might be getting screwed, they aren’t having potential public humiliation piled on top of it.
I can understand the usefulness of letting somebody believe a sugar pill is helping them when the ailment is either psychosomatic or a real one such as a cold that will pass with time, and the patient just needs to be kept calm and prevented from taking treatment into their own hands, with potential dangerous results. I can’t see how it would help to let such a patient continue to believe in the placebo once the ailment was past, because that might be ignoring a deeper problem.
Photopat, movies exploit emotions all the time. “Exploitation” is very often just a perjorative term for fulfilling people’s needs.
And I don’t think that those who participate in, say, Edward’s show see themselves as humiliated at all. You are viewing matters through sceptic coloured glasses. They and their friends and families believe this stuff. They don’t feel exploited or humiliated. They are just happy that Grandad loves them and forgives them for that family dispute.
"When I was a high school student, I nearly drowned. After the incident I came to have psychic power. I didn’t mean to cheat them and it is not a fraud," he was quoted as saying.
This sound like a message from someone you know.
Lekatt need not “step out of character” as you put it. I like him just as he is. I have no reason to believe that he is being insincere even if I have not shared experiences he’s had. I listen to what he says and take it into consideration.
However, if you all believe that something cannot exist because science has yet to prove its existance, then you’re equivalent to a fundamentalist Christian with his bible. I find that closed-minded in either case.
Don’t pat yourselves on the back too hard.
I don’t think that paranormal psychic abilities don’t exist because “science” hasn’t proved it, nor because it hasn’t been proven scientifically.
I think that most of the discussion here has been about some relatively specific incidences- mostly JVP and Edwards and, of course Lekatt.
I’ve been curious as to what constitutes proof of paranormal psychic abilities. I understand a bit of the prinicples of scientific method and what it takes for something to be proven scientifically. AFAIK, the gist of it is that you demonstrate both that the hypothetical model can accurately predict results of certain actions under certain conditions and that the model is the best one for the job.
My problems with the whole affair relate to the inability of believers to offer any meaningful way to make distinctions among a faker, an incompetent psychic, and the genuine article. Lekatt offerred little more advice for making the distinction than “it takes one to know one”. This has obvious problems. The moderator @ the von praagh forum has chosen not to post my question about this issue. From what I see, there is no consistent criteria used to make this distinction.
Lekatt needn’t be insincere:" 80% of psychics believe themselves to be genuine."
With not even self-established criteria why say anything about the merit of any of it?
I wonder how many times we’ll have to point out that’s not what we’re saying, before people finally catch on? Apparently, all the times it’s been said in this thread wasn’t enough…
Edlyn said:
Just a question – do you bother to read the stuff skeptics write, or do you just come out of left field?
How many times do we have to say we are not saying “something cannot exist because science has yet to prove its existence” before it gets through to people like you? We are saying that we want to see evidence before we are going to believe it. Those are two completely different things.
Maybe you should have taken some of the brain power you used to come up with such clever sarcasm and instead applied it to actually comprehending what we are saying.
Edlyn,
How do you make distinctions among a faker, an incompetent psychic, and the genuine article?
I see what you mean, although with movies people go in with certain expectations regarding their emotions that they may not have when dealing with a psychic.
Also, I just have to wonder whose needs are being fulfilled on those shows.