How about coming up with a cite for what I asked.
You are confused because you don’t understand spirituality, and I don’t know how I can post all the things needed for you to understand. You are looking at spirituality through the belief system filter of science. Now how much art, poetry, humanities, great literature, religion, politics, and other disciplines about human interaction have you learned. All these will help you understand spirituality. It is about feelings, emotions, personal experience, and thoughts, ideas, patterns, many other things we humans learn as we grow spirituality. It is also about faith, love, compassion, giving and caring. Not much of this being taught in school anymore. So if you want to understand the world and the many dimensions of the world study, observation, and yes, trust is necessary.
Skepticism is a negative emotion, it is doubt, mistrust, and fear. If taken to far it produces mental and emotional problems. The amoral nature of science leaves one with no purpose or meaning to their life, which leads to loss of self-confidence. Can you just look at something and make up your own mind about it without consulting science doctrine or religious doctrine or any other closed belief system? If you can’t, you need to study information about belief systems.
You can’t. But it doesn’t matter because its veracity is irrelevant. People dream, you say you had a dream about some people you used to work with, fine. But when you start saying they said for me to give you all my money that’s when we are going to have problems…
Fine, you don’t see the need. Good thing you are not a Mod.
Too bad. Like I said, I’d never really seen much of him. Just some clips of mind-boggling tricks.
I like Randi quite a bit, and I don’t have any qualms about his challenge. I do agree, however, that his abrasive and condescending approach will win few converts. I read his site every Friday, and he even posted one of my (very long) emails once. But really, the guy is kind of a prick. I agree with about 99% of what he says, but still.
If the goal is to remove the demand for “psychics” and other balderdash by educating people, skeptics will get a lot farther with wit and good humor than with finger-wagging. Look at things like Snopes.com and MythBusters, which don’t try to make you feel like an ass for being taken in by urban legends. I do realize that belief in psychics is a different animal from acceptance of ULs, but I would think that skeptics could take a page out of their book.
In another thread, I posted this link to a This American Life epsiode that showed how a “haunted house” could be easily explained. It’s completely convincing and utterly non-threatening (it’s Ira Glass–how could it be abrasive?). This is an example of what I envision. Some nice guy like Ira Glass, who maybe wants to believe it himself, will make more new skeptics that Randi calling the believers fools.
WTF? That’s not what I was quoting, I guess you edited it between me loading the page and hitting reply. I’m not sure what the etiquette is for responding to the original post …
To each their own.
You originally said that somethings are too stupid to debate, I hope you edited this out because you changed your mind.
Nothing is too stupid to debate, we just don’t all have enough time (or beer) to debate everything.
Oh really? :rolleyes:
Here are the facts:
No psychic detective has ever been praised or given official recognition by the F.B.I. or US national news for solving a crime, preventing a crime, or finding a kidnap victim or corpse.
…
Many police departments around the world have released official statements saying that they do not regard psychics as credible or useful on cases.
…
an unnamed Australian federal police officer was suspended following his seeking the aid of a “clairvoyant” in regards to death threats made against Prime Minister John Howard. A federal police spokesman said they do “not condone the use of psychics in security matters.”
…
The Australian Institute of Criminology, Australia’s official crime research agency, advises parents of missing children not resort to psychics who approach them.
…
New Zealand police have said “spiritual communications were not considered a creditable foundation for investigation”
Brill’s Content has examined ten recent Montel Williams programs that highlighted Browne’s work as a psychic detective (as opposed to her ideas about “the afterlife,” for example), spanning 35 cases. In 21, the details were too vague to be verified. Of the remaining 14, law-enforcement officials or family members involved in the investigations say that Browne had played no useful role.
…
“These guys don’t solve cases, and the media consistently gets it wrong,” says Michael Corn, an investigative producer for “Inside Edition” who produced a story last May debunking psychic detectives. Moreover, the FBI and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children maintain that to their knowledge, psychic detectives have never helped solve a single missing-person case.
“Zero. They go on TV and I see how things go and what they claim but no, zero,” says FBI agent Chris Whitcomb. “They may be remarkable in other ways, but the FBI does not use them”
…
**Lyons and Truzzi tell the story of a cop who considered psychic Noreen Reiner’s drawing of a circle to be a correct clue in a crime because the person arrested drove a cement mixer. **
Another cop considered Dorothy Allison’s clues in a case to be on the money even though she predicted a missing person was dead who was not dead but was living in a religious cult community. The cop admitted he was baffled by Allison’s error about the person being dead but which way was he dead? asked the cop, “Biologically? Clinically? Dead tired?”
Liar. I can tell you’re lying.
It was actually a condominium, wasn’t it? 
Somebody ain’t reading the stickies…
Oh, and vaguely regarding the OP, those criticizing Randi’s abrasive, dismissive attitude might want to remember that only a person who is certain that all professional psychics are frauds (and thus scum worthy of ridicule) would be able to bring themselves to put that much money on the bet. It is, and especially was back when he began the challenge, a case of “skeptics, put your money where your mouth is”. Well, he bought himself a million dollars worth of mouth and wasn’t afraid to use it.
I’ll believe in a kind, gentle, fuzzy maker-of-rigorous-and-unambiguous-tests with a significant monetary incentive when I see it.
Oh, and lekatt? Here’s a fair challenge to you. Work out a time with me, and at the specified time cause my computer monitor to levitate in the air, at least five inches above the surface of the table it’s on, for a full minute. Before, during, and after this levitation I am free to examine and touch the monitor and the area around it at will, though if it it levitating and I press downward on it and it then falls, that will not constitute failure of the test. You may get any assistance you require of other psychics, but none of y’all are to approach me, my house, or my computer monitor in any physical way. In fact, I won’t even tell you where it is; presumably you psychics can find it and move it remotely. (This shouldn’t be a problem, right?) I await your proposal of a time for the levitation.
I assume that I don’t need to offer money to entice you, since, as you say, “you set up a fair and equal test and the psychics will come.” If you lot do successfully levitate my monitor, I will be personally very strongly convinced and admit both that fact and that the event occured on this website.
If you’re trying to cause a change in public opinion, then part of that job is impression management. You can have strong beliefs and still be careful about your public statements.
So I think you’ve got a point, but Id still say this is an area where he’s made his message less effective than it might have been. Lord knows hes been more polite to some people than I could have been, but theres still room for improvement.
Otara
Guessing that it was Jon Ronson’s - typically fascinating - recentish article for The Guardian about going on one of her cruises.
Of course, Ronson’s main point is not really that he was unimpressed, it’s observing the disillusionment amongst her fans when they meet her in person.
Is there any way, using any standard you wish, for a third-party to distinguish between a true spiritual experience, and a delusion brought on by mental illness?
Devil’s Avocado: Does it matter?
Skeptics will always say that people that hear god are mental, believers will say that they’re gifted, the reality lies somewhere on that spectrum and frankly we (as a society) are far to fast to dismiss people to the loony bin. IMHO.
In the end it only matters if anything useful can come from any of this. So, lekatt, I’ve never seen anything that convinces my of the existence of psychic or the usefulness of them, but I’m (honestly) willing to be convinced, what could they do for me?
In fact that could be a test, it’d make a good TV show too, get a bunch of people to agree to live their lives according to the whims of psychics, life coaches, the whim of the Internet, or random chance. See who does best over six months …
Edited to add: Fuck me, I started a thread that went for four pages, that’s a record for me. I should hang in GD more often.
Most of the episodes of Bullshit! are available to watch on Youtube - I don’t know if I’ve ever seen them on UK TV.
True, and I honestly think his intentions are pretty fair, it’s just that, as I say, his assertive, emotive style of presentation (which I don’t deny is a big part of the reason for his success) would be effective regardless of whether he is right or wrong - IMO, it just so happens that most of the time he’s not wrong, but really, what he’s doing isn’t all that different from evangelical preaching.
Yes, it does. If I am seeking enlightenment, it matters to me to know that I am getting information about it from someone who has had a bonafide spiritual experience, or just a hallucination due to mental defect. If I cannot find some measure that gives me the confidence to differentiate between the two, nothing I perceive can be trusted to be the path towards spiritual truth.
I have a metric for you: none of the experiences are spiritual in nature. (This is a metric which will do a respectable job of protecting you from scams and errors and which will not harm your chances with any deity that is not, inherently, some sort of arbitrary authoritarian dictator bent on punishing people without cause: win-win.)
Though, I would go easy on the ‘mental illness’ stuff. Selection bias, overzealous pattern recognition, belief in hearsay, and having dreams (even daydreams) are not generally considered mental illness, at least not so far as I know.
Yes, of course there is, you can tell truth by its peace and quite.
Gee, I didn’t know it was that difficult. There are five cards, there are randomized by the computer. If you pick more than 20 out of a hundred you have beat the expected average. My integrity rides on a test? My Oh My, am I fearful. :eek:
If I did, would it change your mind about psychics, I think not.
If you are going to go through the trouble of asking him a question, it seems a bit rude to answer for him as if you could read his mind. Are you claiming to have telepathy?