Proof of Life After Death!!

[truethat]

Well that's true but I'm more of the mind that actually using the details from the actual story we can take it apart as well.

For example people have argued that they did research on her name. What is this based upon? Did she give out her name? If she didn't give out her name then that's a BS argument.

In skepticism we need to be accurate and deal with the facts presented to us. We can deconstruct the information to get at the truth of what happened.

Several people have responded to her with stories of cold reading scams where John Edward threw out information to the audience. But she's already stated several times that this isn't the way it went down.

She also stated that she didn't talk in the room because she was cynical overall. So the idea that someone listened on the microphone is out. She wasn't pickpocketed and she didn't have her new refrigerator warranty in her purse.

Her brother didn't purchase the Valerie Harper tickets himself, a friend got the tickets.

Just blowing her off with answers that do not fit her specific scenario is poor debating across the board.

Since we know that John Edward is a scam artist there must be a logical explanation for what happened.

I'm curious to discover how he did it.

 

[dafydd]

Let's see if I can do a psychic reading for you.

You are seeking some answer you didn't get from your father when he was alive. You seem to have had a very close relationship with your father. His illness was unexpected and shocking and you weren't able to find some sort of closure with some issues because you couldn't discuss anything with him.

You are worried for your mother and feeling responsible. He died a grusome illness that tore apart his brain and shut down his body. You watched over him as he suffered and always wondered if he could hear you speaking to him.

Your children ask you about him and you want to give a strong answer. This is based on some conversation or discussion you had as a child. I'm picking up on a "life shock" at a young age associated with death. One that you had difficulty understanding.

How am I doing so far?

That's me!

 

[GeeMack]

We're all adults here. Reading her blog is simple. Click read and come back and post. If you are not willing to read the blog then you shouldn't bother commenting in the thread.

Nonsense. If the OP isn't able to articulate his/her position in a reasonably understandable way here on this forum, there's no reason to believe he/she is able to articulate their thoughts in a reasonable, understandable way on a blog.

If the OP has proof of life after death, the claim made in the title and opening post, lay it on us. It is highly disingenuous to tell people there is such proof, then ask them to go read a blog post and its accompanying comments and find it for themselves.

And anytime you need more help understanding skepticism, critical thinking, and forum etiquette, you just ask, okay? You're welcome.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Reading the blog is actually interesting, Robin explains more detail.

Here's the thing about the Valerie Harper connection. He said "there's a Valerie Harper connection" not "You just bought tickets to Valerie Harper's show"

Now even if he didn't look up tourists coming in to buy tickets, which I don't think he could have done so quickly, he didn't say tickets.

Valerie Harper was an actress on the Mary Tyler Moore show, she's not a super famous actress but she was on a popular show. The tickets were a coincidence.

Years ago I worked in my ex husband's thrift store and I had an incident like this happen where a couple walked in and were looking around the store. I had never met them before and went up to the man who was looking through shirts. I had just recently moved the "pink men's shirts" to another section. He was looking and not actually looking at the shirts but scanning the rack, so I went up and asked him if he was looking for the pink man's shirts. He did a double take and called his wife up and said it was a sign. He was looking at the shirts but the mother had just died and requested that she be buried in a pink shirt. He took it as a psychic connection.

A sign from mom.

One of our Seattle Skeptics members died suddenly earlier this month and a lot of us went to the memorial service. He was an active member in the atheist group the skeptics overlap with. So everyone at the service including the preacher-turned-atheist who led the event, were atheists.

His brother and sister-in-law were the only relatives there and they were from out of town. They kept finding coincidences that to them, were signs our friend was around in an afterlife. People at the service were torn between saying, he didn't believe or letting the relatives go on with their beliefs. They even found the fact someone referred them to an estate attorney and they found one of those mass mailings on the deceased's table from the same attorney as a sign they were being directed from the other side on what to do.

In the end we glanced among ourselves when they told us of the coincidences but refrained from raining on their parade.

 

[Garrette]

There's nothing at all to be done with it. It's an anecdote. It will be forever unfalsifiable. Just as we were to read all of the comments on her blog, no matter what is asked or suggested, there will be additional details which will explain away whatever the doubt is about.

If she has another session with him and records it, we can at least have something to work with.

All you can say about an anecdote is, "Cool story, bro (or sis)."

Pretty much this, though I don't think it is entirely without value to explore anecdotes. For one thing, they can be used to demonstrate issues with flawed memory even if only to introduce the idea to someone who is adamant that her memory is entirely and completely accurate.

 

[tsig]

Look, I understand not knowing me makes it hard to believe anything I say is true or accurate. Perhaps you all should nominate one truly open-minded trustworthy skeptic from this thread to go to a small event with John Edward (Small thus increasing your chance of getting read.) and then see what happens...but you do need the reading to be a direct one to you and be open to it and be willing to reflect on it later. With regard to pointing people to my blog and ALL the comments...it has mostly all been said and questioned and answered there already so that saves me the time of having to do it all over again! Hey cut me some slack I have 3 kids! Also I must say some of the comments and back and forth should give a chuckle to anyone interested in the subject. And no I have personally nothing to gain from people reading my blog. But of course if you have a question or point that was not adequately addressed there then we can discuss it here. Now I'm off to go Christmas shopping for those 3 kids. Peace.

You should have thought of the kids before you posted here.

 

[GeeMack]

Just blowing her off with answers that do not fit her specific scenario is poor debating across the board.

Nonsense again. There is no debate. The OP claimed to have proof of life after death. The null hypothesis is that there is no life after death. The OP is responsible for falsifying that null. It's put up or shut up. We don't have to indulge the OP's belief in the supernatural by having a polite discussion about the details of stuff that isn't objective evidence anyway. Rejecting what has been offered so far because it isn't objective evidence is enough. And that has been done.

 

[truethat]

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/john_edward_hustling_the_bereaved/

Interesting article on John Edward

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Nonsense. If the OP isn't able to articulate his/her position in a reasonably understandable way here on this forum, there's no reason to believe he/she is able to articulate their thoughts in a reasonable, understandable way on a blog.

If the OP has proof of life after death, the claim made in the title and opening post, lay it on us. It is highly disingenuous to tell people there is such proof, then ask them to go read a blog post and its accompanying comments and find it for themselves.

And anytime you need more help understanding skepticism, critical thinking, and forum etiquette, you just ask, okay? You're welcome.

While truethat doesn't have a whole lot of room to talk, and probably neither do I, I thought the initial skepticism in the thread was unnecessarily cynical as well.

 

[carlitos]

Pretty much this, though I don't think it is entirely without value to explore anecdotes. For one thing, they can be used to demonstrate issues with flawed memory even if only to introduce the idea to someone who is adamant that her memory is entirely and completely accurate.

The ufo threads are good for this sort of thing. Here's one of mine.

 

[dafydd]

While truethat doesn't have a whole lot of room to talk, and probably neither do I, I thought the initial skepticism in the thread was unnecessarily cynical as well.

Skepticism in a skeptic's forum, whatever next? It was just a case of ''Oh no, not another one''. We've been through this so many times before with people who have been fooled by hot and cold readers. Nothing new here.

 

[Garrette]

Well that's true but I'm more of the mind that actually using the details from the actual story we can take it apart as well.

Except that it almost certainly isn't the actual story, regardless how firmly she believes it is.

For example people have argued that they did research on her name. What is this based upon? Did she give out her name? If she didn't give out her name then that's a BS argument.

Only if knowingly giving out your name is the only way to obtain a sitter's name. It is not, particularly if the sitter has, by her own admission, been to several sitters already, and particularly if there is reason to doubt that no name was provided; there is, even if she does not remember it.

In skepticism we need to be accurate and deal with the facts presented to us.

Ah, but that is the point, or at least one of them. We question what Robin calls facts.

We can deconstruct the information to get at the truth of what happened.

Highly doubtful with such a sketchy anecdote, approaching the impossible.

Several people have responded to her with stories of cold reading scams where John Edward threw out information to the audience. But she's already stated several times that this isn't the way it went down.

Yes, and to the extent it indicates that skeptics aren't paying attention to what she says you have a point, but your implication that what she says must be taken as factual is way off the mark.

She also stated that she didn't talk in the room because she was cynical overall. So the idea that someone listened on the microphone is out.

No, it is not. The number of believers who swear they did not speak or leave information at all available who in fact did both is legion. I speak mainly from personal experience with magic and mentalism and somewhat from my investigations into psychics and mediums.

She wasn't pickpocketed and she didn't have her new refrigerator warranty in her purse.

Likely true.

Her brother didn't purchase the Valerie Harper tickets himself, a friend got the tickets.

I see no reason to doubt that.

Just blowing her off with answers that do not fit her specific scenario is poor debating across the board.

I see your point and agree with your intent, but you miss the important specifics. Some here obviously have not paid attention to what she has said, but most have. Of those, a few have answered in ways that indicate that what she says is as likely inaccurate as it is accurate; your objection seems to take that latter category to task, too, and wrongly so.

Since we know that John Edward is a scam artist there must be a logical explanation for what happened.

I'm curious to discover how he did it.

You never will, mainly because we will never know what he actually did. We have a sketchy version of one biased point of view that I would bet the mortgage is highly flawed. There is no way to know if I am right, but there is ample reason to trust that I am. That means anything we come up with will be speculative methods for speculative effects.

 

[Garrette]

While truethat doesn't have a whole lot of room to talk, and probably neither do I, I thought the initial skepticism in the thread was unnecessarily cynical as well.

I don't, but then I stand accused, and I have been guilty more than once of excessive cynicism.

Regardless how it turns out, I am glad I was wrong about it being a drive-by.

 

[truethat]

Well what should we do? Ignore the information we do have?

Here are just two things that are interesting. Once she stated she had just gotten a refrigerator, she then took the statement about fingerprints and further evidence of his psychic abilities rather than a common sense thing that occurs in buying a refrigerator, especially with the popularity of chrome appliances these days.


Her brother on the blog states that there was no way of him knowing about the Valerie Harper connection, but he also states that he saw the ad in the paper.

In addition little details (one I always talk about is how you can tell someone is not from NYC because of the cleanliness of their shoes since city folk tend to walk everywhere) can give the guy a clue.

Salvatore for example is an Italian sounding old school name. Once he got that detail there's stereotypes available as well.

She also mentions the part about someone having a tooth in a pocket and freaks out later when her companion has one. Now most people have batted that away as a plant, but she's become friends with the guy and he's not a plant.

However when she said "tooth" I thought of human tooth. The odds of someone in the room having a tooth on them, when you factor in shark teeth and other totums used by more funky earthy types, is not such an odd statement at all. Not to mention if someone pulled out a set of dentures ?

It's all in the interpretation. Her evidence would give me pause to consider if the only two things he said to her were about the refrigerator and the Valerie Harper tickets.

 

[NobbyNobbs]

You have the knowledge minus the actual personal experience with John Edward which makes me a more qualified judge.

Actually, I think this works against you. You have a vested emotional interest in Edward being able to talk with the dead. If you want a more objective view, arrange to sit in on a reading for someone you don't know, sit out Edward's line of sight, and bring a tape recorder.

Also, at any of these events (and especially private readings) I'll bet that 1 out of 100 participants is actually skeptical; skeptics just don't want to spend money on that kind of thing. The other 99 either believe or want to believe to some extent. The fact that you attend so many suggests to me that you are among the 99.

And then I remember that it really isn't that hard to fool people, not even well-educated laymen.

Amen. I remember at summer camp one year I convinced a coworker I was psychic. It was completely off the cuff and took only a glance at her application and a deck of marked cards. We'd go through the deck, guessing the next card, and making sure I got a better-than-chance average. I'd intersperse the game with comments like "Your mother's name is Sally, isn't it? I just had a feeling." Here's the best part: the entire time, I kept saying there was no such thing as psychics, that they were all frauds, that I had no special abilities, etc. But the more I protested (and the more cards I got right) the more convinced she was that I had some sort of ESP.

Now, if I could convince someone, given five minutes of preparation and absolutely no experience or prior knowledge of hot/cold reading, All the while denying special abilities, imagine what someone with Edward's resources could do.

 

[quarky]

I'm not normally cruel, but I found the o.p. to be a bit harsh.
I confess to not reading her linked data...and also to a certain prejudice, I guess, when she claimed skepticism herself...via having been to fake psychics.

What sort of person goes for multiple readings from psychics, after encountering fakery? It didn't sound like a journalist. It sounded more like a true believer. Still, I hope she returns.

Truethat, I tend to agree with you that new people are often met with unnecessary harshness. I'm just not sure this time qualifies.

 

[xterra]

Actually, I think this works against you. You have a vested emotional interest in Edward being able to talk with the dead. If you want a more objective view, arrange to sit in on a reading for someone you don't know, sit out Edward's line of sight, and bring a tape recorder.

Hide the tape recorder!!! Don't tell the psychic, don't tell the person being read that you have it. Don't.

Only afterward should you let the ... what's the correct word? "subject" will do .... subject know about the recording. The subject should hear the recording as soon as possible if you want her/him to believe that you haven't edited it.

 

[Agatha]

Well that's true but I'm more of the mind that actually using the details from the actual story we can take it apart as well.

For example people have argued that they did research on her name. What is this based upon? Did she give out her name? If she didn't give out her name then that's a BS argument.

She says she purchased the tickets with a credit card, though not the one used to purchase the refrigerator. So yes, her name would have been known. For someone accusing others of not reading what Robin has said, you are doing a good job of missing things she has said here, never mind on her blog.

In skepticism we need to be accurate and deal with the facts presented to us. We can deconstruct the information to get at the truth of what happened.

Except we won't get facts, we'll get Robin's impressions of the readings.

Several people have responded to her with stories of cold reading scams where John Edward threw out information to the audience. But she's already stated several times that this isn't the way it went down.

Well, no. I've asked her several times how the conversation went, but she hasn't responded (not surprising, the thread is moving reasonably fast). FZ posted what I understand is a typical JE reading, I asked her if her reading was similar. No answer that I can see, though admittedly I may have missed it.

She also stated that she didn't talk in the room because she was cynical overall. So the idea that someone listened on the microphone is out. She wasn't pickpocketed and she didn't have her new refrigerator warranty in her purse.

Possibly not, though she hasn't actually ruled those out. She said she was sure they didn't chat in the venue, but didn't mention the queue to get in. There are many other ways of getting information, and if all audience members have to check all their coats, large bags etc in a cloakroom, and nothing is taken from those bags, how would they know that they'd been searched?

Her brother didn't purchase the Valerie Harper tickets himself, a friend got the tickets.

Which is why I asked for more information about the "connection" JE stated. Did he name other stars of that era? Was the ad for his show next to an ad for Valerie Harper's show in the local paper? We're still waiting for more information, as indeed we are still waiting for more information on the "tooth guy" as the story in the blog comments is missing a lot of vital information on this particular subject.

Just blowing her off with answers that do not fit her specific scenario is poor debating across the board.

Since we know that John Edward is a scam artist there must be a logical explanation for what happened.

I'm curious to discover how he did it.

As are the rest of us, which is why we've asked for more information from Robin. So far, we don't have that so can only tell her in generalities some of the ways these frauds use to get information. Without much more information about the events leading up to going to the show, and most importantly a transcript or an unedited video, we only have Robin's (human, therefore plastic and fallible) memory to go on, but I am sure she could share much more information if she chose to.

The main thing I would say is that she has quite a presence on the internet already, plus she tells us she has seen many psychics, mediums etc. Therefore there is a lot of easily obtainable personal information already out there, which JE could get with very little trouble. I would not be in any way surprised, for example, if these frauds shared information between each other.

 

[Garrette]

I wish I were better at articulating what I am thinking in these threads and at organizing my analysis. Unfortunately, I am not. I therefore get frustrated with myself and with others (my fault, not theirs) when I see flaws in our arguments.

The thing is that the rebuttal to anecdotes such as Robin's is a series of Even Ifs.

Even if she believes she is relating it exactly correctly, it doesn't prove life after death.

Even if she really is relating it exactly correctly, it doesn't prove life after death.

Even if she demonstrates irrefutably that John Edward had no knowledge of her, her brother, her family, or anyone or anything related to her and Even if John Edward did not know she was coming to that session and Even if he said exactly these words: "You just bought a chrome refrigerator, and your brother will go see Valerie Harper's show on Broadway tonight with his friend who has not yet bought tickets," it does not by itself prove life after death.

It is this point that I feel is the largest stumbling block to a believer's objective analysis. Without a controlled environment, or at least a controlled series of readings each of which produced a remarkable reading so that all the readings in toto surpass the level of chance-produced remarkable readings, then the miraculous reading is not proof; it is merely a point of interest, perhaps meriting further investigation.

In threads such as this one, the Even If level we deal with not only fluctuates, it gets separated from the others so that believers begin gto think that if this particular Even If is dealth with then the whole case is proven.

Skepticism ain't easy...

 

[tsig]

Well what should we do? Ignore the information we do have? Here are just two things that are interesting. Once she stated she had just gotten a refrigerator, she then took the statement about fingerprints and further evidence of his psychic abilities rather than a common sense thing that occurs in buying a refrigerator, especially with the popularity of chrome appliances these days.


Her brother on the blog states that there was no way of him knowing about the Valerie Harper connection, but he also states that he saw the ad in the paper.

In addition little details (one I always talk about is how you can tell someone is not from NYC because of the cleanliness of their shoes since city folk tend to walk everywhere) can give the guy a clue.

Salvatore for example is an Italian sounding old school name. Once he got that detail there's stereotypes available as well.

She also mentions the part about someone having a tooth in a pocket and freaks out later when her companion has one. Now most people have batted that away as a plant, but she's become friends with the guy and he's not a plant.

However when she said "tooth" I thought of human tooth. The odds of someone in the room having a tooth on them, when you factor in shark teeth and other totums used by more funky earthy types, is not such an odd statement at all. Not to mention if someone pulled out a set of dentures ?

It's all in the interpretation. Her evidence would give me pause to consider if the only two things he said to her were about the refrigerator and the Valerie Harper tickets.

The information that I have is that the dead stay dead and aren't concerned about kitchen appliances.