Merged The razor of Hitchens and the Spirits!

Can the letters psychographed by Chico Xavier be seen as a form of empirical evidence of the existence of spirits?
 
Calderaro said:
Can the letters psychographed by Chico Xavier be seen as a form of empirical evidence of the existence of spirits?
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No.

"Psychography" is merely yet another claim: the writer claims that he's not consciously moving his hand, further claims that a spirit is causing the motion, and you're just supposed to believe all that. There is no way to test whether the writer's claims are true. Claims that cannot be tested cannot be evidence.

Instead of just asking, "Can ____ be considered evidence?" please do some homework. For longstanding claims such as those regarding Xavier, look into what the skeptics have previously said about it and come prepared to explain why you think those statements are wrong. No one is obliged to entertain the same long-rebutted claims de novo simply because they are once again mentioned. You are responsible for qualifying your evidence. Tell us why you think the reporter of that evidence is credible, and/or why the evidence has probative value. If you did that, you'd be able to anticipate the criticism you are receiving here.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Heh! :sneaky:

Quadruple blind experiments...what does that even mean? Nobody knows anything about anything or if anything is even happening?? Sounds about right.

And "certified mediums"? How does one get such a certification? Is there a college? Thought this was what the research was all about in the first place.

Looks very much like a pseudo-scientific scam for sucking free money out of gullible old billionaire donors to this "research".
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The fact that the only two staff members I saw mentioned were her and her husband completely fails to reassure me that isn't the case...
 
Calderaro said:
Can the letters psychographed by Chico Xavier be seen as a form of empirical evidence of the existence of spirits?
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If spirits existed, and it was possible to communicate with them - by psychography, or in any other way - there is all sorts of information they could provide. The spirits of missing people who'd actually been murdered, for example, could reveal where their body could be found, and who had killed them. It wouldn't be conclusive evidence of spirits, as there might always be some other way in which the information could have been obtained by the person who claimed to have received it from a spirit, but if a medium were to produce lots of examples of such information (and all were later confirmed to be correct) they could reasonably form the basis of an hypothesis, and perhaps an experiment could then be designed to test it.

So: do any of the letters psychographed by Chico Xavier contain such information?
 
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I'd just like to take a moment to remind posters that we are moving into week three of this discussion. Quick straw poll: anyone noticing more ghosts in their doorways or bowels?
 
Pixel42 said:
So: do any of the letters psychographed by Chico Xavier contain such information?
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Yes. Subsequent researchers identified a number of claims made in Xavier's allegedly psychographed letters that could be objectively verified. Predictably, the pseudo-academic study concluded that since they couldn't imagine any other way in which Xavier could have known them, they must have constituted evidence of the supernatural. In other words, the standard reversal of the burden of proof that passes for argument in many of these circles.
 
Calderaro said:
artificial intelligence says:
The Bible contains several passages that mention communication with spirits. A significant example is the story of Saul and the Witch of Endor, where Saul consults the spirit of Samuel (1 Samuel 28:1-25). This account is seen as evidence of the belief in the possibility of communication with the dead within the Jewish tradition.
historical evidence of the existence of spirits
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The Bible isn't historical evidence of anything.

Calderaro said:
Can the letters psychographed by Chico Xavier be seen as a form of empirical evidence of the existence of spirits?
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Anyone can write a letter saying anything they want. It's not evidence.
 
Calderaro said:
artificial intelligence says:
The Bible contains several passages that mention communication with spirits. A significant example is the story of Saul and the Witch of Endor, where Saul consults the spirit of Samuel (1 Samuel 28:1-25). This account is seen as evidence of the belief in the possibility of communication with the dead within the Jewish tradition.
historical evidence of the existence of spirits
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Wow, you should probably read the whole thing. Communing with spirits is forbidden, punishable by death ((Leviticus 20:27; Deuteronomy 18:10–12), and Saul seeking out a witch is a big part of why he was punished by God. Had you read this passage you'd see Samuel is ticked off about being summoned from his sleep, and emphasizes this is the kind of behavior that has put Saul on God's doo-doo list.

In fact the Bible is against everything you claim. You've failed.
 
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