There are so many documented events of <i>something</i> occuring that one wonders, especially about events that many people claim to have seen. (But, then again, there were the Salem witch trials…)
I don’t think that ESP is completely far-fetched; it could simply be some unknown transmission of brain waves. Ghosts, to me, seem like an outgrowth of man’s desire to affirm an existence after death, even if it is walking the earth endlessly. I have never seen one, and I think that that they probably don’t exist.
But entire groups have claimed to have seen ghosts at the same time. (I remember watching something on the Discovery Channel where 70 people supposedly saw an apparition in Central Park.)
In 99% of the cases, one can probably attribute these occurences to hallucination or mis-seeing, but what do you make of those instances in which folks see a book fly across the room? Hysteria? Profit?
You posted ‘There are so many documented events of something occuring that one wonders, especially about events that many people claim to have seen…’
There are NO events with any physical evidence.
James Randi is offering $1,000,000 for a demonstration of any psychic powers (including dowsing, ESP etc etc). No takers (don’t psychic people want money?).
People have CLAIMED to see Elvis, Aliens, levitation, the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot … :rolleyes:
It’s all bullshit. Period. If we were all connected to some great throbbing web of psychic mucus, there’d be some kind of scientific proof of it by now. All any of the paranormalists can offer for the functional mechanism of telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, precognition, remote viewing, astrology, dermo-optical perception, astral projections and anything else you can think of is that it takes place by something so advanced, it’s totally unknown.
I played an ESP trick on my students this past week. All you really need to convince people that you are psychic is a halfway-decent gag and reasonable acting ability. Even though I lack the latter, over half of them couldn’t figure out how the trick worked. Now, if I can convince people I have ESP, then any properly-motivated weenie can do it.
I reckon having ESP - even just a little - would confer on you such an enormous advantage over others that natural selection would have seen to it by now that we all had it. In buckets.
suppose someone had reasonably reliable telepatic ability.
whould that person not be able to figure out the problems he/she might cause for him/herself by revealing it?
might not that person be able to figure out how to become a millionaire without revealing the posession of said powers?
there is the case of remote viewing used by the CIA to spy on the russians. supposedly a man saw a large sphere being constructed in a building in russia the CIA had no access to. this was confirmed 3 years later via satelite.
In a lot of cases it’s neither; it’s just bad reporting.
Remember that game you used to play in school where you sat around in a circle and the first person whispered a simple sentence like “My cat has a black nose” to the second and it got passed along and by the twentieth kid the sentence was “Richard Nixon has a new pair of shoes?” Reporting on the paranormal’s like that. Any story you hear has been wildly inflated in the telling and is probably lying in at least one of two key areas.
So if you see a story about how 70 people saw an apparition in Central Park, go back and do some research and what you will probably find is that 12 people saw something, two of whom were SURE it was a ghost and ten of whom said it “mighta been something, you know, but I couldn’t tell” and 58 people heard a commotion. Any witnesses who will attest to seeing something perfectly normal will never be mentioned.
Another key thing to remember is that eyewitness acocunts always get better with telling. What started out as “yeah, maybe I saw something, I dunno, might have just been some guy in a Halloween costume” will, with twenty years of time to ferment, become a full-bore knockout ghost story.
Um, what exactly do you mean by “brain waves,” and how exactly would they be transmitted (or received, for that matter) through the air without being detectable by instruments which are otherwise capable of detecting EM transmissions?
Oh, you mean that embarrassing project that the CIA eventually dumped in a very hush-hush manner because it produced no useful results? Yeah, that was amazing.
“Supposedly”? Got a cite?
It was confirmed via satellite that there was a large sphere being constructed? Wow. Staggering.
Some people are better than others at predicting outcomes. I don’t think that “paranormal powers” exist at all; it’s just that some folks are more observant than others. Combined with a little common-sense deduction, almost any intelligent person could “pretend” be a psychic.
Example: A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I were traveling to a craft show just before sunrise. I told him that we had to be extra careful to avoid hitting deer that morning. Hubby said that he had never, EVER seen any deer on that section of the highway before at this time of year. I continued to insist that we would, this time. Sure enough, ten minutes after this conversation, we almost collide with a huge buck. Twenty minutes later, we almost hit two more deer.
Was I a psychic? HELL, NO! All I did was take into account the fact that the summer has been unusually dry here, and that the deer might be more active in their pursuit of food, and so there was a greater PROBABILITY of us smashing our little deathtrap car into a deer. If my hubby were a gullible type, I could probably have convinced him that I had a “VISION OF IMPENDING DANGER”!OOOOOOOOOOOOhh!
I guess I’m not “Tabithina, THE GREAT PSYCHIC PREDICTOR OF BIG BUCKS”, after all ;).
when folks start talking about Roswell, ghosts, ESP etc, I take it as my cue to find some place else to be.
Example: When in high school, a boyfriend gave me a set of Tarot Cards, I read the whole deal etc. and had fun in college “giving readings”. However, what I had ** MORE ** fun with was devising my OWN set of “tarot” cards that were an entire joke. The “suits” were, for example, instead of clubs, spades, hearts etc, Karo Syrup, paper airplanes, tree stumps…
I also gave “readings” with these, and the readings were JUST as accurate. Why? because, of course, I wasn’t "reading " the cards, I was reading the person and their reaction to what I was saying. So, regardless of what each card “Meant”, I’d start out with a generalized something and start honing it down based on the person’s reactions. If they frowned, I’d back off that tangent and go the other way, if they acted eager, I’d continue down that path. Really quite simple.
No, I never charged anyone. I mostly did it for fun (mine and theirs). If they seemed to take it seriously, I’d back off and not do it again for them. Haven’t done it at all in years. But probably still could.
Now Uncle Beer, I’m not about to defend the existance of a “great throbbing web of psychic mucus” cuz, well, I don’t want to. However, to say it’s all bullshit because there is no scientific proof yet seems rather close-minded and is putting a lot of faith in a science that can be wrong.
By going along with that statement, does that mean that because there’s no scientific proof for something that it doesn’t exist? Blindly believing in science is to me the same as blindly believing in religion. Scientists blindly follow the theory of evolution even though it is a theory, not fact. Evolution could be wrong, but God help you should you say that to a scientist. Many follow evolution as blindly as creationists follow Genesis.
Science has not discovered everything yet. Not questioning your ideas and beliefs leads to a stagnation of ideas and innovation. And there’s always the possibility you (or I) could be wrong (Scientists once thought the retina retained the last image a dead person saw). Right now, I choose to remain skeptical, but keep an open mind. I could be wrong about what I think is right, after all.
“Blindly follow”? Really? So, there are scientists out there just following dead ends and wasting millions of dollars in time and research money for no good reason? Wow. I bet you have a cite to support that assertion. Right?
Gravity is just a theory, too. Want to test it? See if maybe we can prove it doesn’t exist?
Scientists “follow” in the directions that research indicates that answers lie. If all current research continues to lead in the direction that evolution is the best explanation we have for the facts we observe, well . . .
Easy pldennison. You just proved my point. Look at how defensive you got when I hinted at the possibility of science being wrong. I was not saying science is wrong, just that there is that possibility. Having an unwavering belief that you are right is unproductive as it narrows your options.
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The ‘blindly follow’ comment was in reference to one specific theory - evolution, not to science in general. What assertion are you referring to? I never said “there are scientists out there just following dead ends and wasting millions of dollars in time and research money for no good reason;” you said that. Don’t put words into my mouth and then ask me to back up something I never said. My point was that many (I say many, not all scientists) treat evolution as if it were a fact, not allowing for the possiblity of being wrong. This is not me supporting creationism, and I will not get drawn into a debate about that. I was merely trying to say there may be a third option that science hasn’t discovered yet. Science is always learning and changing and discovering new things, so keep an open mind and then the new idea which overrides the old idea isn’t as difficult to deal with.
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This is stupid. Won’t even bother with this, as I’ve already said, I was referring to one theory. But note again, how quick you are to treat me as an idiot because I have an open mind and dared to question the current belief in a totally unrelated subject to gravity?
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Let me say again, I never said it was wrong, I said that is is only a possibility. Of all people, scientists should have an open mind and admit that. It seems to me that an open mind makes one more suseptible to making a discovery as they are then already mentally prepared to find something new.
The point of my post was simply that science does not know everything. Because of this, I will keep an open mind about things. When I said I was skeptical in my earlier post, I did not mean I was skeptical towards science. I am skeptical about the paranormal, but at the same time have an open mind that it could, possibly exist. But I’ll need to see it for myself first.
But to summarily dismiss something because there is no proof of it’s existance is narrow-minded and arrogant. Science finds new species of animal every year. Would you dismiss the existance of any other animal being discovered simply because at this point in time there is no proof of its existance?
Let me reiterate my point, because you missed it so badly in my earlier post - Nothing wrong with science, but even scientists need open minds and the abililty to admit an idea could be wrong.
you posted ‘However, to say it’s all bullshit because there is no scientific proof yet seems rather close-minded and is putting a lot of faith in a science that can be wrong.’
I like that ‘yet’. Are you saying psychic mucus (or indeed anything psychic) is true? If so, for what reason?
Of course science can be wrong. But only temporarily. Get the facts, adjust the theory if needed - hey, you’ve got science.
Psychic believers have no physical evidence - they just like the ideas!
You posted ‘…does that mean that because there’s no scientific proof for something that it doesn’t exist?’
No, because it’s difficult to prove a negative. There may be a dinosaur in Loch Ness. No-one’s has drained the Loch, (which would prove it). But there is absolutely no evidence of anything large in the Loch, so I don’t think there is a monster. (But if you find one, I’ll believe it ).
You posted ‘Blindly believing in science is to me the same as blindly believing in religion. Scientists blindly follow the theory of evolution even though it is a theory, not fact. Evolution could be wrong, but God help you should you say that to a scientist. Many follow evolution as blindly as creationists follow Genesis.’.
Wow - scientific theory based on masses of evidence in many scientific disciplines is the same as believing in a book with no supporting evidence. :rolleyes:
Scientists don’t believe in evolution because they want to - they look at the evidence. That’s how they got the theory!
Creationists blindly follow Genesis despite the contradiction of the fossil record, light from distant galaxies, dating of rocks etc. Whatever evidence is discovered, they dismiss it (God made it as a test; there’s a conspiracy of atheists…).
Scientists will drop a theory as soon as the evidence contradicts it.
Would you say that scientists blindly follow the theory of gravity? You see no connection between this and evolution. But gravity is invisible, and no-one knows why it works. Still, based on evidence, scientists have a theory of gravitation.
There’s a lot of evidence for evolution, so scientists have a theory for that too.
(No doubt, if gravity was seen as a denial of God, creationists would deny gravity!)
Uh, I don’t think so. Science is wrong all the time; well, scientists are wrong all the time, anyway. (Michaelson/Morley, Velikovsky, cold fusion, etc. Of course, Michaelson/Morley were willing to prove themselves wrong, and did, unlike so-called “paranormalists.”)
OTOH, if scientists are “following” evolution (whatever the hell that means), it’s because that’s the direction that all of their observation and experimentation leads them. If ever the wealth of evidence in the fields of biology and anthropology leads elsewhere, that’s where science will follow. “Following blindly” is about as innacurate a characterization of what goes on as I’ve ever seen.
To extrapolate this to the whole paranormal thing we’re discussing, all available evidence and observation indicates that there are no accurate predictions being made by any theory describing so-called ESP, no mechanism for transmitting or receiving mental information in an indetectable manner, and no evidence that so-called psychics can achieve results better than chance. If evidence to that effect does start to accumulate, you can bet that the bulk of scientific inquiry will tilt in that direction.
Until it does, however, reasonable people may easily say, “Sorry, but despite tons of experimentation, there’s no evidence for that, and until there is, I feel comfortable saying that there is no such thing.”
See above.
I think my words were a reasonable characterization of what you implied–that scientists are spending time studying evolution not because of what the evidence implies, but because of blind devotion to dogma.
I think maybe you don’t know what scientists do or how they do it. That’s the impression you convey, anyway. Here’s a clue: When something like evolution (or gravity, or stellar evolution, or whatever) accumulates as much evidence as there is, it is a fact, as far as science is concerned. It’s the best possible explanation for all the existing evidence, which is as close as science gets to facts. Such facts are referred to as “theories.” If they never get that far, they are “hypotheses.” Universal gravitation is a theory with lots of supporting evidence, described in mathematical form by the law of gravity. (This, of course, does not stop people from continuing to try to disprove it.)
There was a point, but you missed it. I’ll reiterate: Gravity is, as you say, just a theory. Yet I don’t see you taking the closed-minded scientists to task for accepting it as given and rejecting alternate explanations.
Yep. The possibility that best fits all the available facts.
Another possibility that best fits all the available facts is that ESP doesn’t exist.
No, but it’s better at finding things out than slack-jawed gullibility. (Not that I am accusing you of that–I’m not.)
Well, duh. But if experimentation fails again and again and again to find a shred of evidence to support a hypothesis, what does that tell you?
Well, since science hasn’t failed me yet, the current body of knowledge, which does not allow for this kind of bullshit, seems pretty god-damned reliable and convincing to me. If these practitioners of the black arts are so adamantly sure of their “science,” and keep in mind some of their tripe is thousands of years old, why can’t any of them offer a reasonable, logical and testable hypothesis? Because it just ain’t science, and it doesn’t exist, that’s why.
;).
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