Cont: Scorpion's Spiritualism, Part Deux

[Darat]

...snip...

*Didn't the English footballer Glenn Hoddle have some similarly despicable views - I seem to recall specifically about disabled people being born that way for misdeeds in a previous life?

...snip...

Bloody hell that was almost 25 years ago! https://www.theguardian.com/football/1999/jan/30/newsstory.sport7

It's long been part of many "Christian" beliefs, usually one of the unsaid ones. It arises from - well you can probably guess - Leviticus:

Leviticus 21:16-23 New International Version

16 The Lord said to Moses, 17 “Say to Aaron: ‘For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. 18 No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; 19 no man with a crippled foot or hand, 20 or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. 21 No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the food offerings to the Lord. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God. 22 He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food; 23 yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary. I am the Lord, who makes them holy.’”
​

 

[Scorpion]

See the two hilited parts of your post that contradict each other.

Where is the contradiction. I never spoke to the girl named Maria who mentally tortured me using telepathy.

I did not write to or talk to her, I wrote to the manager demanding information about why she had allowed the staff to try and give me a breakdown.

 

[Scorpion]

But what if you are?

If I am wrong I will be a bag of dust when I die. But I am not wrong.

 

[JayUtah]

...and Russell Targ give examples of some of these in his book, ' The reality of ESP'.

Targ is not an expert in psychology or neuroscience, and his experiments did not control for confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the leading source of reports of past-life memory. Further, there are many cultures that embrace reincarnation, and those children who can convincingly claim to remember past lives bring greater social status to their families. Therefore there is great pressure among families to produce a reincarnation, and therefore vigorous coaching of children to "remember" things about their family's distant past. ESP researchers have been singularly blind to such familial influences, and have largely failed to control for any of it.

 

[Scorpion]

There is no such thing. There's just a bunch of superstitious beliefs, without a shred of objective evidence for any of them. I know that, because unlike you I have actually bothered to look.

You have looked. How long and hard have you looked? I spent years attending trance lectures by mediums at the spiritualist association in London. I attended many church services up and down the country and had evidential messages from mediums I had never seen before. A medium I had never seen, in a church I had never been to before, would typically say " I have your grandmother here, she says she has been through to you many times before"
It took me two years of attending a church before I was even convinced that there are genuine mediums. If you don't put in the time you will not find out anything.

Don't expect evidence to be handed to you on a plate when you are not even looking with an open mind.

 

[JayUtah]

Suffering is a part of mortal life.

Suffering is incidental to life. Your theology requires suffering, and then tries to justify it with a contradictory theology. That's depraved.

People who have suffered generally develop more compassion for other human beings.

Except the ones who go on shooting rampages.

 

[Mashuna]

You have looked. How long and hard have you looked? I spent years attending trance lectures by mediums at the spiritualist association in London. I attended many church services up and down the country and had evidential messages from mediums I had never seen before. A medium I had never seen, in a church I had never been to before, would typically say " I have your grandmother here, she says she has been through to you many times before"
It took me two years of attending a church before I was even convinced that there are genuine mediums. If you don't put in the time you will not find out anything.

Don't expect evidence to be handed to you on a plate when you are not even looking with an open mind.

That's not looking, that's seeking confirmation.

 

[Scorpion]

You very quickly forget what you posted - just a few posts above:

"...Would you then say, if you saw him suffering in a future incarnation, possibly on another planet, that he did not deserve it?..."​

In other words the 3-year-old girl being kidnapped, raped multiple times, and then beheaded deserved to be kidnapped, raped multiple times, and beheaded.

As ever your beliefs are to me the epitome of evil, no three-year-old deserves to be kidnapped, raped, and beheaded.

Your beliefs are sick, cruel, and harmful.

You look at things in the worst possible way. You cannot see the big picture which is that we incarnate hundreds and even thousands of times, on this and other planets. We are progressing through countless experiences in many lives. We progress and spiritually evolve to higher and higher states of being over countless incarnations. Some lives will be cut short by injustices or by accidents. But each soul that suffers such things unjustly will be compensated in future incarnations.

 

[Pixel42]

You have looked. How long and hard have you looked? I spent years attending trance lectures by mediums at the spiritualist association in London. I attended many church services up and down the country and had evidential messages from mediums I had never seen before.

A dozen, or even a hundred, worthless anecdotes are of no more evidentiary value than one worthless anecdote.

Don't expect evidence to be handed to you on a plate when you are not even looking with an open mind.

How much time have you spent attempting to find or generate objective evidence for the things you want to believe? How much time have you spent looking with an open mind for evidence against the things you want to believe?

Don't expect real knowledge and understanding to be handed to you on a plate when you are not even looking with an open mind.

 

[JayUtah]

Where is the contradiction. I never spoke to the girl named Maria who mentally tortured me using telepathy.

I did not write to or talk to her, I wrote to the manager demanding information about why she had allowed the staff to try and give me a breakdown.

You literally publicly accused her of giving you a breakdown. You don't have to accuse someone to their face in in order to accuse them.

 

[JayUtah]

You look at things in the worst possible way. You cannot see the big picture which is that we incarnate hundreds and even thousands of times, on this and other planets.

We've gone through your beliefs in depth several times. There is no unity in its "big picture." Your whole convoluted system is a patchwork of cafeteria beliefs you've borrowed from a half dozen or so dissimilar religious claims and which always ends in contradictions you either can't understand or don't wish to face.

No, a religion that requires innocents to suffer merits criticism.

 

[bruto]

<snip>

As far as I am concerned ESP is not something that should be used by people so far down the evolutionary scale as to use it for military purposes, and that is probably why they don't have much success.

Because there is a God, and the veil is drawn over the spirit world to prevent mankind from abusing psychic knowledge for evil purposes.

So once again we see the handy spiritualist-theist backdoor of proof: a thing is proven by its very inability to be proven.

But anyway, if a thing is hidden well enough, and by God at that, then it might as well not be there. One might opine that to keep trying to pry it out of whatever place it's hidden is a defiance of that god's intent. If he's any good at his job, you'll just go crazy trying to find it.

 

[Scorpion]

A dozen, or even a hundred, worthless anecdotes are of no more evidentiary value than one worthless anecdote.


How much time have you spent attempting to find or generate objective evidence for the things you want to believe? How much time have you spent looking with an open mind for evidence against the things you want to believe?

Don't expect real knowledge and understanding to be handed to you on a plate when you are not even looking with an open mind.

My anecdotes may be worthless to you, or anyone else. But for me, to be told facts about my family or my life by mediums I had never seen before is evidence.

 

[JayUtah]

I spent years attending trance lectures by mediums at the spiritualist association in London. I attended many church services up and down the country and had evidential messages from mediums I had never seen before.

These are exercises designed to reinforce faith, not test truth claims.

A medium I had never seen, in a church I had never been to before, would typically say " I have your grandmother here, she says she has been through to you many times before"

Literally anyone can make that claim and you wouldn't be the wiser. Every time we point this out to you, you attempt to distinguish it by saying that it's different because that person was a medium and other people aren't. And you can't seem to see the obvious circularity in your reasoning.

It took me two years of attending a church before I was even convinced that there are genuine mediums. If you don't put in the time you will not find out anything.

It took me well over a decade of education beyond high school to understand what is involved in testing evidence and either confirming or refuting a truth claim. I'm better off for it than you have been for having wallowed in a world filled with obvious fakes and phonies. Your time was spent steeping yourself in a culture that accepted mediumship and spirits as axioms and encouraged that belief in exchange for fellowship and participation. That is not an environment that allows belief-testing.

Don't expect evidence to be handed to you on a plate when you are not even looking with an open mind.

You have no evidence beyond your own claims, and you have no intention of questioning your deeply held beliefs. You don't get to lecture us on evidence and open-mindedness.

 

[JayUtah]

My anecdotes may be worthless to you, or anyone else. But for me, to be told facts about my family or my life by mediums I had never seen before is evidence.

Then as we've stated many times, you don't understand what constitutes evidence.

 

[Pixel42]

My anecdotes may be worthless to you, or anyone else. But for me, to be told facts about my family or my life by mediums I had never seen before is evidence.

Anecdotes are not evidence. At most they are sufficient to form an hypothesis, but that hypothesis must be tested before it can be accepted. You have never made any attempt whatsoever to do that, and you have gone out of your way to avoid looking at the work of those who have done it. You insist your interpretation of your experiences is the correct one, despite there being far more plausible interpretations, only because that's what you want to believe. Your mind is firmly closed to any and all of the (plentiful and objective) evidence that contradicts what you want to believe.

 

[Gamolon]

Where is the contradiction. I never spoke to the girl named Maria who mentally tortured me using telepathy.

I did not write to or talk to her, I wrote to the manager demanding information about why she had allowed the staff to try and give me a breakdown.

You said you never accused her of ANYTHING after you left, but then go on to say that 3 years later you tried to get information about the staff trying to give you a breakdown.

Was Maria part of the staff? Are you accusing Maria of mentally torturing you?

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

You look at things in the worst possible way. You cannot see the big picture which is that we incarnate hundreds and even thousands of times, on this and other planets. We are progressing through countless experiences in many lives. We progress and spiritually evolve to higher and higher states of being over countless incarnations. Some lives will be cut short by injustices or by accidents. But each soul that suffers such things unjustly will be compensated in future incarnations.

Reincarnation is a hoax thought up by the rich and powerful to keep the poor in their place.
Be a good little peasant now and never ask for any rights and *next* life you'll be better off, and by the way you must have been a bad person last life because otherwise your parents would have been rich like mine.
The same fake argument used by kings and nobility in Europe, just different words.

 

[Myriad]

We've gone through your beliefs in depth several times. There is no unity in its "big picture." Your whole convoluted system is a patchwork of cafeteria beliefs you've borrowed from a half dozen or so dissimilar religious claims and which always ends in contradictions you either can't understand or don't wish to face.

No, a religion that requires innocents to suffer merits criticism.

Overall, Scorpion's spiritual beliefs are pretty much the core curriculum of present day occultism. There's a Spiritualist style sheet on it, so that for example Scorpion describes the experience of a willful supernatural assault in terms of a psychic attack instead of e.g. evil spirits or a curse cast by ceremonial magic. The backing narrative of our having multiple intangible bodies across multiple higher planes (etheric, astral, mental, akashic, spiritual, soul, etc.), some of which go on to reincarnate after death (with some form of karmic scorekeeping), is fairly consistent. (Every system, and to a large extent every individual occultist, enumerates and describes the "planes" a little differently, though.) Essentially, take the most significant kinds of physical and mental processes you're aware of (including e.g. energy flows, emotions, memory, and rational thought), and frame them all as intangible immaterial objects instead, and you're 80% of the way there. This goes back at least to Plato, who "figured out" that in order for someone to be able to think about an apple when there's no physical apple present, some kind of ambient metaphysical ("ideal") apple must exist.

Could belief in karma justify indifference to others' suffering, or active mistreatment of others? In principle, sure. But I don't see Western occultists actually doing that. Other foundational mental models of the world, including physicalism, can be used just as readily to justify indifference to others' suffering or active mistreatment of others. So I don't think it's fair to bludgeon Scorpion with the murdered baby, however historically real the event was (unless perhaps there's some evidence that the murderers themselves were motivated by some desire to enact karmic punishments).

 

[Scorpion]

Anecdotes are not evidence. At most they are sufficient to form an hypothesis, but that hypothesis must be tested before it can be accepted. You have never made any attempt whatsoever to do that, and you have gone out of your way to avoid looking at the work of those who have done it. You insist your interpretation of your experiences is the correct one, despite there being far more plausible interpretations, only because that's what you want to believe. Your mind is firmly closed to any and all of the (plentiful and objective) evidence that contradicts what you want to believe.

So, the spirit world did not help me win the money to get my first internet ready computer. It was just chance that I heard a voice tell me "help is coming from an unexpected source" Then the same voice told me I had won one hour before the draw, when later in the week I got a five number win. Just chance my ass. I forget the odds against winning five numbers but it is high. The chance of me hearing a voice telling me I would win on the only occasion I did win must be astronomically higher than getting a six number win. I never heard that female voice before or since.
And according to your philosophy the spirit world could not be inspiring me to paint pictures by flashing visions into my head. But it is happening and the pictures I see are too good to have come from my subconscious mind.

In any case I have always been able to feel a presence, and to feel psychic atmospheres even as a child. Of course you will just assume I am a diagnosed schizophrenic so what else should I expect. Well the days I listened to psychiatrists humouring me when I tried to tell them these things are long gone. I have lived with it too long, and had too many experiences not to believe in myself.

I am certain at least one clinical psychologists advised to police how to give me a breakdown, and the bastard failed, even though they did make me too ill to work. I walked out of my job shouting. I know you have been using suggestion on me and there is nothing I can do but get out. Nobody tried to talk to me, nobody asked how I was. I received a letter the next morning telling me I was not required to go back to work.

Later on one of the managers lied to his lawyers saying I had rung his wife several times leaving abusive messages. But he lied even though he knew I could go to prison for it. That is the kind of thing I was up against during my employment.