You were done before you started.
Go ahead, take your toys and go home, and make a real good excuse, too:
“I’m leaving, cuz, cuz, (snif) Snakey’s gonna SPIT on me!”
When the jar is empty, of course. Or have you declared youself the supreme authority for when that determination is made? Only your opinion matters?
Then change the channel. Or take your toys and go home with Early Out (what an appropriate name!). careful, I might SPIT on you!
This is not about me.
Sorry, bub, psuedoscience, ‘paranormal’ scams, and promoting ignorance and their ilk can hurt us all. I don’t make a habit of ignoring what can hurt people. If left unchallenged, they can hurt even more.
Really? How revealing that you should think so.
I’m going to add some more fuel to the fire, not that any is needed.
Vikings navigated with a “magic stone”. Later it was understood that this was a lodestone (magnet).
There are invisible forces. A few are gravity, radio waves, magnetism (see above).
Even something as pervasive as light has scientists divided into two armed camps – wave or particle?
We use electricity all the time, but its true nature is still Theory.
To this day, nobody can say for sure what these energies are, and that is why in physics the explanations are still called Theory.
I don’t believe in ghosts, UFO’s or nucular ninja death sponges, but there are things that can not be explained (yet).
Maybe the “proof” is, can the effects be consistently observed, measured and then predicted.
I never thought I’d say “I like the board the way it used to be”, but here I am saying it. I think just about everyone has their own ghost or heebie-jeebie story, but I am stunned that anyone who actually believes that shit hangs out on a board dedicated to fighting ignorance. “I believe it so it must be so” in no way resembles anything like proof or truth, people, and that’s all there is to it.
It really is taking longer than we thought. 
Ah, the spewing of the spiritual-so inspiring, isn’t it?
Name calling, making fun of how people look, general nastiness, and lets not forget the ever-childish,“No I’m not-YOU are!” style of debate. Let’s just face facts, folks. When people study the paranormal, they eventually look everywhere for evidence, or they accept anything as evidence. You can find the latter on the woo-woo boards and at psychic fairs-there can be fifty different and conflicting “realities” but these people are so desperate for support they don’t dare question any of these realities out of fear that their “reality” will likewise be questioned. The former, called “skeptics”, actually do the hard, time consuming and thankless job of looking and testing for the paranormal. Skeptics expose the frauds, inform the misinformed, and enlighten the self-deluded. We fight ignorance, because there is no greater enemy of knowedge than ignorance. Ingnorance is a sin against the whole of Mankind, and willful and deliberate ignorance is the greatest sin of all. I don’t care if you spend the rest of your days believing fairy tales and making up juvenile names for people who dare question your oh-so-fragile beliefs. Skepticism is at the root of astronomy, medicine, and numerous other disiplines that have driven and guided us, and that is something to be damn proud of.
No, our spluttering is efficient: we require only a few lines, not volumes to dismiss your particular brand of bigotry.
Why? Sounds like the best ass that you’ve had in a while.
That you think so speaks volumes. 
Oh, for the crying out loud.
Honestly people, for such scientific and down to earth thinkers, some of the logical leaps you’re taking are pretty damn impressive.
No one here is arguing that new age religions are “correct” or “the right way.” The people who are speaking up here are doing so to defend a person’s right to believe how they want to believe without assholes like the OP (and others, Early Out I’m looking at you) calling them names and launching other personal attacks, some going so far as to try to claim anyone who believes such things shouldn’t be posting here. Why has no one yet argued that no Christians should be posting here? After all, they’ve got some pretty whacked out beliefs. The only one who has responded to this particular argument has been hajario, all the others are perfectly content busting out “witty”, malicious one-liners, resembling a bunch of fourth graders screaming “oh yeah? And you’re ugly!”.
Now that’s something to make the " " face about.
And Snakespirit, you may want to try reading through the whole thread and making one long response post rather than 20 one-liners.
Czarcasm, very well put. Skepticism is a good thing. Either a thing or its effects can be proved, or it can’t. The burden of proof that something Is, rests on the person claiming that something to be true. If it can be proved/verified or measured repeatedly and consistently, (by someone who has no interest in the outcome) then it can be accepted. My example of a “magic stone” was something that could be observed by anyone. Even though nobody knew anything about magnetism yet, it was obvious that something was happening. It always acted the same way every time, and did not depend on some wizard or total “faith” to make it work. How it works is electromagnetic theory (the explanation works until a better one is developed); that it works is Proven Fact.
Snake Spirit:
2 things…
- Attempting to make fun of me through my user name e.g. calling me Scum is weak, futile, and unoriginal. Just like when your fellow sufferer of creduloidism, Aeschines, had his go at it earlier in the thread. Hint: I chose this name years ago to mock those who give themselves over the top usernames.
- Posting 19 times in close succession is no substitute for haveing somthing substantive or entertaining to say. You did nothing in this thread but pad your post count. You’re worse than just a creduloid. You’re a boring creduloid.
Nightey-night.
Any scams hurt people. What about the stuff that’s not scams? Like investigation of the so-called paranormal?
- Attempting to make fun of me through my user name by calling me Snake Spirit instead of SnakeSpirit is weak, futile and original. Most people shorten usernames for convenience. Lots of people call me Snake. You don’t like it? Change your username.
- You don’t like it? Make a rule. I think every question deserves an individual answer. Or, you can set me to “Ignore”
- It’s morning. Wake up.
Dork.
Are you referring to the “woo-woo” and “creduloid” labels?
I thought we established in the GD thread that “paranormal” is a pretty meaningless catch-all term. I, for one, believe in nothing “paranormal.” The beliefs I have that get me labeled this or that on SDMB are in psi, ghosts, and the afterlife. Not bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, UFOs, etc. You and I are no different, really. I believe only in that for which I feel a sufficient level of evidence exists. For example, I have looked into UFOs, read books on the matter, and now firmly believe that the extraterrestrial hypothesis does not explain the phenomena (whether they are external or merely mental).
It’s funny. You think you are superior to people like me because you employ a better process of thought. You assume you have a better process. But you do not. You and I likely have much the same process. We have reached different conclusions on just a few things, and yet you think yourself better.
On the other hand, you simply don’t want to see the truth of psychology and sociology of self-labeled skeptics. Anyone can read the skeptical websites and decide they like the overall tone and feel of the position–and there decide to buy into all the subpositions lock, stock, and barrel: e.g., there is no God, there is no evidence of the “paranormal,” psi has not been demonstrated in the lab, etc. Don’t you know that that is how dogmatic thinking works? You simply decide to agree.
So, there are those skeptics who, true to the name, have thought through each and every issue for themselves and happened to agree with the overall skeptical position; and there are those who, attracted to the whole, decide to agree with every part without thinking it all through. Two types of skeptic.
But when both types of skeptic participate on these boards (and we cannot know which is which, to be sure), they appear equally virtuous and correct in your eyes, as they deny with equal passion what a true skeptic is supposed to deny. Yet, ironically, a person you label a “believer” may have actually examined each issue more carefully than the dogmatic type of skeptic; still, this person would be treated by you with contempt and derision.
Answer me this: Would you accept as a “real” skeptic someone who labeled him/herself a skeptic but who was a Christian? Believed in ghosts or psi? What if s/he said that s/he had “skeptically” investigated these phenomena and found them to be true? (BTW, there is a media skeptic, Martin Gardner, a founding member of CSICOP, who is a Christian.)
Here’s something you’ll rarely see skeptics do on this board: grant a point. You are correct about this. It’s a deep issue, but I will only say here that there is a good side to this perspective and a bad side. But there is, in fact, a significant bad side to it.
This is mostly untrue. CSICOP, for example, runs no experiments. Contrariwise, most psi experiments are run by people who basically think something is there. Most skeptics just sit in their armchairs and deny, deny, deny. And you know what? It’s a pretty easy position to play. I’ve said this before and it’s gone in one ear and out the other: I could switch sides and quite easily argue skeptical position. It requires no special training and not even much in the way of specific knowledge. On the other hand, I would have a hard time arguing either the Evolutionary or Creationist side of the argument, as lots of specific knowledge and facts are required.
Cue swell of music.
Nitpick: Ignorance is the default state of the mind, not a force in its own right, hence not an “enemy” of knowledge. Both true and untrue ideas require energy to spread them.
Er, you’re, um, using religious rhetoric here. Is that allowed in Skepticland?
Are we talking about “woo-woo” and “creduloid” again?
Oh dear. Copernicus drew up horoscopes and Newton wrote a lot more on occult lore (as a believer in it!) than he did about physics. Wallace was a spiritualist. Many major scientists still believe in God. You’re not on shaky ground with this last statement; you’re neck-deep in quicksand.
We flipped the light switch, and the shadows just disappeared. If this bothers you, just flip that switch again and your precious shodows will reappear. They still will be without substance, but go ahead and stare at them to your heart’s content.
Damn right, CZ – I’m proud to be a sceptic! But I’m so sick of people who just call us “woo-woos” and “loonies” and the like 'cause I don’t buy into their total rejection of investigation of the paranormal.
So what do we do about those who make up names for us cause we question their oh-so-fragile beliefs? And how do we keep them from lumping us in with the gullible, the frauds and the deluded?
Anterograde memory disfunction. I’m open to suggestion, but it’s just so much easier for me this way.
I love this time of year. It’s an excuse to watch more horror movies than is probably considered reasonably normal. And little kids in costumes – when I rule the world I will make it a law that all children should be dressed in animal and Halloween costumes all year until they are five. Besides, why are you in such a hurry for Thanksgiving to get here? What a boring, useless holiday that is.
Explanation: a manifestation of determined incoherence.
That was easy.
Aeschines, stop saying the ‘s’ word so many times. SnakeSpirit can’t breathe! He’s on the floor giggling like a little girl so hard he’s peeing in his pants.
You know, like how George Bush calls Kerry a ‘librul’ and stops for his audience to guffaw spontaneously and with extra loud hilarity as he gives his stroke-like half-shit-eating-grin because he just used a really funny and devastatingly unrecoverable put-down full of the knowing wisdom of the ancients more foul than any profane cuss word could imbue?
Oh, it’s much more a devastating a put-down if you misspell it like you got mad street cred! Or if you mix it up with unusual declension like, skeptyckers, or czynix. Yeah, that’s real devastating.
Right SnakeSpirit?