How about an explanation of why people keep trying to convince people who refuse to accept that their experiences can be explained by known phenomena, to change their minds? Sounds like the Critic has a lot of debunking to do now.
Maybe he actually believes those words printed at the top of the page, right below THE STRAIGHT DOPE?
You need to read my post again, I did not close the door on everything.
What you don’t seem to realize is that any event in the world, spiritual or material, could have multiple explanations. Therefor the explanation is meaningless, it is a no brainer. The person in attendance wins by default every time.
You have understand what ignorance is, before you can do something about it.
A personal experience is known phenomena.
This isn’t a game you are playing for points-this is reality, where some explanations by their very nature are more plausible than others, and you don’t get to pick the one that most pleases you.
You may think you are winning, but you are only playing with yourself.
It is impossible to debunk a personal experience whether spiritual or material.
Science doctrine is full of contridictions. One is assuming everything is material, without knowing everything. Two is assuming that personal experiences are unreliable, when it is obvious that personal experiences is the only kind of experience there is. Three is assuming theories are more than educated guesses.
Etc., who knows maybe someday even scientists will know about the contradictions.
It does say “fighting ignorance,” but perhaps it could be a bit more explicit on which side posters are expected to fight.
Plausible to who, you, me, the guy on the street. Everyone has different degrees of plausibility. Of course I get to pick the one most plausible to me, just like everyone else does. Do you have a higher power that picks what is plausible for you, like maybe the God of Science. I am not playing a game, I am very serious, don’t care whether I win or lose, just that I remain truthful.
Are there sides?
lekatt is just making it up as he goes along, and sometimes he forgets what he said. From two of his posts in the same thread last year:
He either thinks nobody is watching, or he thinks mutually exclusive events are perfectly consistent. My money is on the former.
If there were a counter for the number of times you have misrepresented the term “theory” as it relates to science, it would have rolled over several times by now. Considering the vast number of times you have been corrected on this point, it is painfully clear that it is willful misrepresentation on your part.
I don’t generally support censorship and think that you actually serve a good purpose on the board, as an example of the depths to which ignorance can sink if left unchallenged— but if this were my board (or I had any sway) you’d have been banned after the first hundred times you decided to repeat this lie.
So you’re of the opinion that it is literally impossible for any human anywhere to be mistaken about the causes or details of anything they personally experience?
Once I heard a car backfiring, but for a split-second thought it was a gunshot. Was it possible for me to have been wrong? If not, did the gun physically change into a backfiring car when I changed my mind?
Or is it just you and those who say things that affirm your opinions of the world that are infallible?
I believe in the cause, but if a war turns into a quagmire, ignorance may win. Sometimes you have declare victory and leave. It’s not like I always follow this advice myself either, I love the fight too.
Exactly. By stating, repeatedly, that ghosts (or precognition or any other such proposed phenomenon) are “impossible”, the OP has made it clear that the conclusion has already been reached and so is not so much debunking as simply refusing to consider contradictory evidence. :dubious:
To categorically state this conclusion as scientifc fact, proven beyond all shadow of a doubt, is, imo, erroneous. It is one thing to state that given what we know, the evidence strongly suggests this conclusion, but to declare it as an absolute is premature.
Even to suggest we fully understand the human brain is absurd. We can’t fully explain how an honor student with virtually NO brain could exist, but he did (cite John Lorber). We know that the brain can compensate for even severe damage, with functioning areas taking over the roles of missing or non-functioning ones. Still, for an individual with little more than a brain stem to have a “mind” capable of higher level functioning is amazing and challenges the assertion that all cognition and consciousness is rooted in the physical tissues of this organ.
I don’t believe in the “supernatural”…I assume that everything which occurs or exists is, by definition, “natural”, even if we do not yet understand it.
I am of the opinion that MOST occurances can be explained by existing knowledge, but I am open to the possibility that some cannot.
I think it is entirely possible (inevitable, in fact) there are things left in the universe we don’t understand and to dismiss such possibilities out of hand as “woo woo” is the height of hubris.
I will share one example of my own:
18 years ago, when I was 8 mths pregnant with my son, I had a very vivid dream one night. I dreamed my husband and I and some other figure I couldn’t make out clearly were standing in our kitchen. Suddenly, my husband collapsed. I knelt beside him and the other figure knelt on his other side. In the dream, I said, “It’s a heart attack/it’s his heart!” and had the passing thought that this other figure was a Dr.
The next morning, a friend stopped by unannounced for coffee. I had put the dream out of my mind, not sharing it with my husband, writing it off to hormones/freefloating anxiety.
My husband stood up to refill his cup and collapsed. I knelt beside him on the left and our friend knelt on his right. Our positions were exactly as they had been in the dream. A few moments later, he came around, but his color was very bad so we drove him to the ER to get checked out.
They kept him for 3 days, doing test after test and finally sending him home with a heart monitor for a week. He was diagnosed with Marfans, a genetic disorder involving the connective tissue, and a “floppy” heart valve. He’d never had any hints of any problem before…was a champion swimmer on the swim team in school, did strenuous physical work, and no known family history. This same condition ended up killing him a few yrs ago.
Sure, could be pure coincidence. A fluke. But I would suggest that the level of coincidence involved makes that explaination as or more implausible than concluding that somehow, I “saw” this event before it physically happened and had knowledge re’ the cause before I possibily could have.
And no, was not a case of edited memory or a deja vu-ish brain fart. It was a dream I recalled exactly upon awakening and which “came true” exactly as I’d “seen” it 12 hrs or so before.
Not the only such dream like it I’ve had; I used to get them all the time as a child, but usually just mundane little snippets of things like a dog running across the street or someone bending over at a water fountain…things would happen exactly as I’d seen them in my dream, usually a day or 2 afterwards. Always seemed like a pretty pointless “talent” 
I don’t know how this happens, but I know it does. I am sure there is some perfectly “natural” process behind it, some fluctuation in the space-time continuum or transfer of information on a subtle level. 
Ultimately, I don’t feel any burning need to convince anyone of anything, though. Just offering my experience for consideration.
Personal experience is worthless. It’s unreliable, it’s biased as hell towards the experiencing persons world view, it has been shown over and over again to be wrong. It’s also very convincing and very persuasive. It’s what makes this discussions so tedious.
I have the distinct memory of flying down the stairs of my parent’s house as a kid. I went to get something to drink in the kitchen. My room was in the second floor, the kitchen was in the first floor. I went to the stairs, and gently glided down to ground level. I didn’t dream this, it’s very real memory.
Of course it’s not true. I probably did dream this, of just imagined it. But my memory of it is very real. I also heared a monster in my room once. Probably a auditory hallucination, I don’t know. I saw aliens, UFOs, all sorts of things. But I realize that my perception of the world is flawed. And unless extraordinary perceptions can be tested and are proven to be real, some bug in my pattern recognition is far more likely that anything supernatural. Without some rigorous testing protocol, anecdotes are just stories.
You have to realize that your understanding of the world might be wrong. Your perception is not perfect, your memory is not perfect, you pattern recognition is not perfect. I strongly think that the vast majority of the experiences in this thread is a strong human pattern recognition combined with some coincidences - and if you consider what 6 billion people do and feel and think every day, some of this coincidences aren’t as unlikely anymore.
What’s your failure rate? Do you ever have dreams that don’t come true?
I won’t lie - I think that most of these instances you are probably suconsciously reverse-editing your memories of your dreams. As in, I doubt that you dreamed the precise size, breed, color, gait, and name-on-collar of the dog you later saw; I think you dreamed a multitude of little random mini-dreams, and then when you saw a dog running later your brain fished out a relevent-seeming dream for you to recall. It may even have edited the memory for you - I know for a fact that my memories adjust themselves to meet my preconceptions, given how often they’re later proven wrong. Some of the things I remember seem on rare occasion to be completely invented!
Of course, I could be wrong. I don’t suppose you kept a diary of your dream-predictions, written in precise detail at the moment of awakening, before they came to pass? That would be pretty good evidence, at least for your own edification.
(I’ll note that I’m more willing to give credence to precognition than things like souls or omnimax benevolent gods, which are inherently impossible. Precognition is incredible, but not that incredible.)
Oh, MOST dreams I have don’t come true, natch. Just now and then. And actually, I DID keep a dream journal for several years, in which I would write first thing in the morning, and recorded a few which later came to pass. But the thing is, that wouldn’t be “proof” to anyone disinclined to accept precognition…hell, I could have written those passages anytime! And I don’t feel any need for “proof” that I dreamed something.
It’s just a weird little glitch I get sometimes, usually interesting but hardly earth-shattering. And in the one I recounted, it’s not as if I can CHANGE anything by having prior knowledge of it…hell, I usually don’t even know which are “regular” dreams and which are not until later (although, there can be a very different quality to “precognitive” dreams that sometimes tips me off.)
I think it’s possible the experience of Deja Vu could be related to precognition, in that the person experiencing it actually dreamed the event and forgot they dreamed it. Then, when they experienced it, it creates that incredibly vivid impression of memory because it IS a memory. The sensation is, for me, VERY similar to those snippets of dreams that would come true. (oh, and btw, they took/take the form of a visual “reel”, so to speak…I dream the events/dog/whatever EXACTLY as they appear later).
I think most of the time, deja vu is just a brain-fart, but man, it’s a pretty amazing one! :eek:
It’s always bugged me that this phenomenon is often spoken of as some vague feeling that you’ve been somewhere before, when ime, it is the very exact sensation that you have previously experienced every single detail of an experience and feel you know exactly what will happen next (and DO, in those moments).
Are you referring to paranormal precognition, or just ‘subconcious’ precognition? I’ve precognized things, but realized I had enough information to make a guess, and may have done so without willful thought.