Merged The razor of Hitchens and the Spirits!

Calderaro said:
the burden of proof should actually be on those who refute spiritual experiences, not on those who affirm them.
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No. The burden of proof is always properly borne by the person affirming a proposition. Otherwise we would be compelled to act upon anyone's say-so for any (or no) reason. Further otherwise, existential propositions would entail proving a negative proposition, which is impossible. The presumption that spirits as described in spiritism do not exist is the correct null hypothesis, not a jumped-to conclusion. It may be overcome with testable evidence. Disbelieving a facially improbable claim for lack of evidence does not constitute a refutation or create an obligation to refute. Skeptics do not generally dispute the experiential portion of spirit claims, merely the speculative attribution of the observed effect to a cause for whose existence no testable evidence is presented.

Calderaro said:
Logical deduction can reveal truths beyond mere sensory observation
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Logical deduction relies on facts that have already been proven with evidence, and as such forms the backbone of the scientific method. Speculatively attributing some observation to a cause for whose existence you can provide no testable evidence is not any sort of logical deduction.

For example, we have shown by copious reliable evidence that a change in ambient temperature produces a change in the electrical properties of some materials. A logical deduction then is that if the ambient temperature changes, the material's electrical properties will change. This is defensible categorical reasoning. Properly controlled, we may consider the electrical properties to be a proxy for ambient temperature, and measure and reason accordingly. We may do this only because we have previously, by other means, established the existence and reliability of the proposed causation. You have not done that in the case of spirits, so you may not correctly deduce in your case.
 
Calderaro said:
the burden of proof should actually be on those who refute spiritual experiences, not on those who affirm them.
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Okay, let's think about this. I say that I have a green cat at home. How would you go about proving that I do not?

Scorpion said:
If the skeptics on this forum went to a spiritualist church for as many years as I have they might too be given cause for realizing some mediums are for real.
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Some of us have, as you well know.
 
Calderaro said:
evidence evolves over time as understanding deepens.
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That goes both ways. In 30+ years of ghost hunting and paranormal investigation I've learned about Infrasound, and its effects on people. I've learned about high EMFs and how it can effect people. I've learned about CO and CO2, and its effects on people. I've learned about Matrixing. I've learned about the effects of out-gassing of common compounds. I've learned a lot about how sound works. I've learned about the light spectrum. I've learned about Placebos and the power of suggestion (self-inflicted and otherwise).

Keeping an open mind means being willing to learn things that contradict your world view. If those things stand up to science, and review then they are added to my toolbox so I can cross things off the "Unexplained" list.

My latest "discovery" is dimethyltryptamine (DMT) : https://www.michiganmedicine.org/health-lab/mystical-psychedelic-compound-found-normal-brains

I have a lot of reading to do on DMT, but it sure looks promising as yet another obscure explanation to the mechanism contributing to people seeing/experiencing ghosts, and sprits. It's my time to waste, but worth it.
 
turingtest said:
Another question I would add is when exactly this happened. I believe Scorpion is now in his 70's; if this happened anytime within, say, the last thirty years or so, it wouldn't take any familiarity with Scorpion personally to guess that someone in their 40's or older probably had a dead grandmother, and then to tell him something that wasn't informative at all and also required no personal knowledge of Scorpion ("she says she's been through to you many times" doesn't even really require his belief). And if they guessed wrong, then it's "oh, sorry, it was someone else's grandmother, sometimes they get confused" or maybe "sorry, not your grandmother, your great grandmother." There's always an out to make a miss into a hit.
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TBH most of this has been covered in Scorpion's own threads.
 
Calderaro said:
extraordinary evidence is subjective
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evidence begins with an e, and ends with an e

there's a v somewhere in there


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Nah, that parody didn't work well. Random, yes. Weird, yes. But not nonsensical enough.

Take 2:

evidence begins with a z, ends with theta, and there's an alif somewhere in there
evidence is an animal with blue stripes and a grizzly pink trail
evidence is the capital of Uzbekistan


...Hmm, not quite as good as the original, but will do for a second-grade parody, maybe?
 
P.J. Denyer said:
Calderaro, people on this forum have given you a lot of time & attention and had very little engagement back. How about you reassure us that you're not just another seagull poster by answering a really basic question?

Since you introduce introduced this hypothesis (it certainly isn't a theory), what do YOU understand the terms "Microtubules" and "Quantum Information" to mean and how do they relate to each other and/or interact?
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Calderaro, would you be so kind as to answer this basic question about the hypothesis you introduced?
 
I've typed in several responses through Google translate to Portuguese and back, with mixed results, but some of the simply structured translations go through and back clearly. I do believe this is not a language barrier problem.
 
No, a bridge is the obstacle he has to come out under from.
Shemp's goats aren't safe on that bridge.
 
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I Am The Scum said:
I like woo people because one of them can say "A spirit cured my tummy ache" and another can go "My grandma had conversations with dead people" and then both of them will say "We are definitely describing the same underlying phenomenon."
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Yes, it's like when you have an 'Alternative Medicine' centre offering homeopathy, chiropractic, reiki and acupuncture, they're mutually exclusive models of reality but they're happy to put that aside if the money's good and people will treat them as if they were actual medical professionals with a clue what they're talking about.
 
And over again and again, rinse, repeat, and back to the beginning again. I'd say we close to this thread as we're either talking to bot or some juvenile who's not listening at all.

Either way, it's boring and waste of time and resources.
 
Same sickness of the hypocritical religious. Sport the bible like it's a club to conquer the world with, live a life in contrary to most of what is written in it.

It's all good as long as you never think about it or self examine your life.
 
Calderaro said:
Is the scientific method the only way to validate the existence of non-physical realities?
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Science itself has proved everything we see and can touch is an illusion. It is all atomic particles, and atomic particles can all be converted back into pure energy.
 
Calderaro said:
Is the scientific method the only way to validate the existence of non-physical realities?
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Give me an example of a "non-physical reality."

Claims of existence necessarily bear the burden of proof, for the reasons already given.

The scientific method is the most provably successful way to establish a proposition by means of testable evidence.
 
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