How can you make the claim that there were no tricks involved? How would you know? I’m sure they said there were no tricks involved but what is that worth?
Lekatt
That’s odd. I used to have an Indian girlfriend that mocked me whenever she heard of fools in the US handing over money and giving uncritical acceptance to these people. She said they are a dime-a-dozen in India and are generally considered to be con men. Of course, she didn’t have a doctorate so maybe that is the difference.
No, I have to disagree on this one. Uncritical acceptance of someone peddling unverifiable ideas and disciplines is more appropriate to a medieval peasant than someone living in the 21st century. Fools that act like sheep can do a lot of damage these days.
I think this explains it. As for mental health, there have been studies that show people who go to church and believe in something greater than themselves live longer, happier lives than those who don’t. I don’t know where to find this study.
It stands to critical thought, and the placebo effect, that people who believe in a life beyond this one will be more patient, peaceful, and happier.
I can understand that, the US is full of psychics, telephone psychics, and such that are nothing but cons also, but that does not mean there aren’t real psychics around. People who have worked very hard for years to develop their skills and intuition are always me-tooed.
Well, where are they? Psychics, people claiming religious miracles, etc. have all been around forever. I’ve never heard of one proving it though. It seems they all fail miserably when put to the test.
Real psychics don’t take tests, they just practice their skills. You won’t find them in the phone book. Your belief system is skeptical.
Carl Sagan once said: “to be skeptical of everything is insanity.”
The line from skeptical to insanity passes through paranoia. If you really believe that nothing spiritual exists in a world where over five billion people practice spirituality I can’t help you.
But for me, I can find a good psychic anytime I wish.
And I can’t help it that 5 billion people are deluded. That doesn’t mean that I have to join them. In any event, I wasn’t really looking for help. To the contrary, I was trying to help you. You squander time and money and a certain amount of effort on maintaining and spreading your delusions. In the end, you may have converted a few people to your own point of view but aside from that, it is a pointless waste of time.
Actually I owe my recovery to a psychic, she is a good friend. No one has asked you to join anything. I don’t convert anyone. But I do help people if I can. My site has ten pages of “thank you” letters from those helped, not by me, but by the spiritual principles they found there. We now have good evidence of man’s spirituality, and according to science this evidence should be seriously considered.
Science as we know it is perhaps 400 years old, while this idea that all religion, spirituality, and such being nonsense, only about 50 years old. Hardly time enough to be that certain of it. The belief in God and the after life goes back thousands of years to all societies and groups of people. Again there is real evidence that consciousness is separate from brain and body.
Going back to skepticism, it is a negative emotion, like doubt, uncertainly. Not good to build your life on negative principles especially when they mean so little to day by day living. Spiritual principles address everyday life situations, and how to handle them. It is really not so important who or how the universe was created when one is struggling with daily life.
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You are right I cannot verify that no tricks were involved, like a magic trick. I just watched the picture of the Moniter and what it was registering. If there was some way to fake the machine results then of course it could be a trick. I am here to learn, not teach.
And I think you’ve completely misunderstood that quote about skepticism from Wikipedia you quoted. Here it is again:
You seem to have taken the bolded part (my bolding) as meaning that critical thinking amongst other things, includes “bias, propaganda, self-deception, distortion, misinformation, etc”. What it is actually saying is that critical thinking includes the identification of “prejudice, bias, propaganda, self-deception, distortion, misinformation, etc”.
As is often the case in debates with you here, I’m beginning to have feelings of ‘discussed’.
No, I understood it just like you summed it up the first time. So, now the question is who is qualified to identify which beliefs are self-deception and which are not. Is that your job or the job of just any scientist. Maybe there would have to be some hard evidence before some belief was judged self-deception. To me the quote is self-deception. Is there any proof God doesn’t exist or there is no such thing as spirituality. Perhaps you could show me this proof. We have hundreds of scientist types running around labeling religion as nonsense. Just where is the proof? I hope this explains what I was talking about, there is a lot of negative thinking people who are that way due to the teaching they received and nothing else. No evidence, no proof, just opinion. It is not fair to neither them nor religion to be spreading this misinformation. Jesus said one should remove the beam from their own eye before trying to remove the mote from their brothers. In other words judge not.
Lekatt
Your first statement has it exactly backwards. There has to be hard evidence before something is not considered self deception. Think about what happens otherwise. With your outlook, any fool can come up with a crackpot idea that is then accepted as true.
Aside from that, no one has the time or interest to start disproving the wishful thinking that you and those like you believe. Also, why this sudden retreat into philosophy? It seems like the refrain of “Well, you can’t disprove it therefore it’s true” is the last refuge of people with no evidence to back them up. Straight-up, guy. I’m looking for hard evidence supporting your beliefs. Not anecdotes and not endless quibbling over picayune details. If you’ve got good, repeatable evidence, trot it out. Otherwise you just come across as deluded by wishful thinking.
This talk of proof is besides the point. I was just reacting to your defamation of the practice of scepticism, suggesting it is an unhealthy state. Having utter unquestioning certainty in quite extraordinary beliefs is philosophically unjustifiable.
You can hide, snugly and smugly behind your security blanket of blind faith if you will. But critical thinking and scepticism will serve you better in conceiving of the ‘most likely scenario’ when it comes to a fundamentally uncertain world. Do you have the moral fibre to cast off your blanket?
Beliefs by the very nature do not require hard evidence, that would be an infringement of people’s rights to freedom of religion. So think that through again.
Yes, just look in the mirror, and all around you, God everywhere.