kali1137
Illuminator
You have also said that you play with some regularity. Do you still play? Because why would you continue to play, knowing ahead of time that you won't win?
Split Thread Scorpion's Spiritualism
- Thread starter Scorpion
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You have also said that you play with some regularity. Do you still play? Because why would you continue to play, knowing ahead of time that you won't win?
Scorpion
Illuminator
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I think you'd better say "I remember the voice in my head predicted I would win the lottery on the only occasion I did win."
The trick is, you probably hear these voices every time you buy the lottery - and that's probably why you buy it at the fist place. But if you don't win, you dismiss these voices as insignificant, in other words, you forget about them. If you do win - bingo! The voices were right!
My ex won a lottery once after asking for help her dead parents. It didn't take me long to make her admit, she was doing it every time she was buying a ticket...
I do not think I am an idiot although you obviously do. I know perfectly well in my mind that a female voice I had never heard before predicted I would win on the only occasion I did win, and I have never heard that voice since.
Scorpion
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The spirit world are very unlikely to fix the lottery for me again, but there is always the very unlikely chance I will be lucky. I know there is no real hope but I like to check the lottery every week, and that is the only gambling I do.
curious cat
Critical Thinker
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No, I don't think you are an idiot. I am just trying to explain how human brain (including mine) works. The difference between you and me is, I am able to accept it.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Sh. In my experience it is always some fabled figure. Rasputin crops up repeatedly. In fact, I had two friends who claimed that a psychic told them they were the reincarnation of Rasputin. I pointed out that they could not both be and it turned out to be the same psychic who told them this, separately.
Faced with this unexpected turn of events, I laughed and they retired muttering darkly. Did it change their crank beliefs? Not even slightly dented them. It's all rather depressing to see people you are fond of get suckered this way. But so it goes.
Other favourites? Cleopatra, Ceasar, Mark Anthony, Napolean, Hitler, the list is endless. Yet always famous/notorious people.
This of course became unsustainable after we got to 50 Cleopatras all extant simultaneously, so there was a weird migration to holy anons, a holy monk of a secretive order, for example, or other such august figure. That became the rage for a while because when asked or challenged for evidence well, there was none at all because they were holy, secretive and anonymous therefore there would be no evidence. I have no clue what "guru" came up with that gem.
And then the whole thing seemed to fade away. After all it is difficult to argue that 50 people are all Cleopatra's avatars at the same time.
Nevertheless, it never died a proper crank notion death. Here it is back again, only now there are whole scads of new celebs or otherwise noted dead folk to add to the mix.
It's a big mad fringe reset sandwich and we all have to take a bite.
Sad as it is. We wont nuke ourselves, or starve for lack of the resources we used up already.
We will simply "stupid" ourselves into extinction while patting ourselves on the back for such a fine job.
The Shrike
Philosopher
Critical Thinking 101, a.k.a., what this site is all about:
It is not idiotic to fall victim to motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, etc. Unless we specifically train ourselves to adopt modes of self-reflection designed to guard against such things (none of which are foolproof, btw), we all do this. It would only be idiotic to make zero attempt to understand critical thinking and to continually spew unsupported claims to people attempting to explain it to you.
Crossbow
Seeking Honesty and Sanity
If it means anything to you, I sure do not think that you are an idiot.
I do however, think that you are delusional and that you really do need help.
The Shrike
Philosopher
Welp, I hope he hasn't electrocuted himself trying to jolt the chakra ghosts out of his 3rd eye or something.
Safe-Keeper
My avatar is not a Drumpf hat
Someone has probably already explained this to you, but you're asking the wrong question.
There are seven billion people in the world. Granted, most of them don't play the lottery, but most or all of us have unlikely things happen to us. Meeting an old friend on a vacation trip to some faraway country, for instance, or finding a ridiculously valuable painting or piece of jewelry in some old house they bought.
And some of those billions of people are, inevitably, going to experience some sort of premonition of something before it actually happens, even if it's an extremely unlikely thing.
The chance of it happening to you is pretty small, but there's nothing special about you. Had it happened to, say, ms. Tran in Saigon or mr. Olavsen in Bodø, they would have found it equally supernatural.
I would seriously start to wonder if something supernatural was going on if it happened to me, too, but the odds aren't "astronomical" that it should happen. In fact it would be weirder if such coincidences didn't take place.
Let's hope he just ran out of arguments or that the discussion made him uncomfortable enough about his beliefs that he went away from the forums.
Scorpion
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Yea ! like when the medium tells you the name of a brother who died in the war as a baby, when you did not even know he existed until the medium told you.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
So because you didn't know it, there was no way for the medium to know it?
Scorpion
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My mother was not a spiritualist, and had never been to the church. The medium was a visitor from out of town. This was in the 1970's before the internet. I believe the medium was genuine, and in the end my mother came to believe that too.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
Why does that mean the medium can't have found out by ordinary means?
Why would you think itinerant mediums wouldn't be able to perform hot readings on people in the towns they visit? Why wouldn't that be part of the job?
Was it impossible to obtain information in the 1970s?
Because that's what the medium wanted to happen. You don't seem to realize that that's the show. They tell you things that they either guess or find out about you that you naively believe can't have been obtained by natural means, and hopefully believe must be evidence of a larger mystical world. We know in many cases how they do it -- by which I mean, we know in many cases how mediums fool people. Their whole goal is to create the illusion you just described. You leap so easily to a belief in the supernatural, but you dig your heels in when asked to believe in natural means carefully kept as a trade secret.
P.J. Denyer
Penultimate Amazing
Or that mediums don't share information. A rising tide floats all boats...
Scorpion
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I was just one pasty faced youth in a church congregation. I only put a couple of shillings in the collection plate each week. Why would any strange medium do research on me ? How could a stranger from out of town know my family business when I did not even know it myself ?
In any case over the years I had many other personal messages about what I was doing, and many of them were very accurate. I have told of them before but an example is that a medium told me I had just done a blue and white painting, and I did not think much of it. But she too was a visiting medium and she could not even have know I was an art student, let alone the details of a painting I had done and the fact I was not satisfied with it. She said the spirit world had inspired me to do the painting.
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JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
One of the most common misconceptions that mentalists rely on is the rube's belief that the mentalist won't go to the trouble of accomplishing something by some laborious, but natural means. Why would you think you weren't worth the effort? Here you are, decades later, swearing up and down to whoever will listen that you were attended by a genuine medium. Lifelong believers and evangelists are highly prized.
That's what they do, Scorpion. Your belief that the effect isn't worth the ordinary effort to accomplish it naturally is exactly what fake mediums bank on.
Because what your family chooses to tell you about past family business is not the same thing as what a stranger can find out by asking the right questions. I had a great uncle who died from appendicitis, aged 12. One of the hazards of the American frontier. I knew nothing about it until I was an adult and found his old violin while cleaning out my great-grandparents' attic. Turns out everyone my parents' age and older knew about him, and the community where they lived at the time. Children dying was just not something that made polite family discussion, so it was avoided. Paradoxically it's easier to talk about tragedy with strangers.
Another widely relied upon misconception is the notion that you'll always be able to know more about your family and friends than a "stranger."
No Gish gallop. Stay on target, please.
There is also a good chance that Scorpion is not remembering the event correctly. Our memories are not static. They change over time and stories we tell often get embellished without us realizing it.
Scorpion
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I dismiss the faulty memory theory, because I have been telling the story of getting a message from my dead brother since I joined this forum, and my story has not changed.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
You've been a member since 2013 and you tell us this story happened when you were a youngster in the 1970s. It's not the most recent six years we're wondering about, but the decades prior.
Now you are the one expecting a supernatural miracle!
Why you don't find it interesting that back then we all wore onions in our belts because that was the fashion I don't know....