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Proof of Life After Death!!

Sherman Bay said:
To anyone who feels we should read woo books to understand the subject, I have only to say my experience has not been rewarding. Sometimes the logic errors are so frequent and glaring, the fantasy so frivolous, and the obvious psychology manipulation so strong that I just can't stomach an entire book. I get the point after a few pages and that's all I can take, since I can't reply to the author in any meaningful way. It's not a dialogue, it's a monologue with no hope of refutation.
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Yeah, right. I have a trail of friends who foist such tomes upon me in the vain hope that I will somehow be converted by the "troof" contained within it's leaves. It is a rare event that I get beyond Chapter 1 without laughing my <Rule 10> off.

Exceptions? Well, I found "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" rather thoughtful, as an engineer. Oftentimes, I also find myself puzzled why folks just cannot understand how engineering works. The shim anecdote comes to mind.

Right now, I have the "Lila" book sitting on my to read queue, donated by a true blue believer. I'm finding it hard to work up the enthusiasm. Go figure.
 
You guys are hilarious. I can't read it easily either. But just for the record, I didn't say Reading Woo was easy. I didn't say it was fun.

I said it could be helpful.
 
PiscesMercury said:
People do sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit...to get attention. About 60 people confessed to killing someone once, although none had evidence. It happens. Think of the Jonbenet Ramsey case...that one guy confessed, but it wasn't him. Can't remember his name.
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People make insane claims they can't support. Yes. We all agree on this point.
 
ExMinister said:
Maybe I'll create a thread summarizing what the psychics and mediums are teaching these days to save everyone the grief of having to read it for themselves. When I get some free time. Anyone who is familiar with it could chip in and contribute since I'm probably a little rusty on some of it.
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Please do. I don't expect "psychics and mediums" are saying any more in their books than they say in other media. Certainly in the few such books I've skim-read they don't. They just say it in a more longwinded fashion. Happy to be proven wrong.

I might start a thread to discuss whether it’s better to debate with paranormal claimers and believers in a complex or simple manner.
 
ExMinister said:
Oh yeah I did.
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You also said it was more than “could be helpful”

Nitpicking aside, I understand the point you were making but I don’t think I agree. As I said, I might start a thread to debate ways of debating with paranormal claimers/believers. Not that I think it’s necessarily off-topic in this thread now that Robin1 has left the building.
 
desertgal said:
What is it that you are trying to say here? YOU said you knew the man was going to murder someone before he actually did. Now you're saying he isn't the murderer after all?

Are you the killer? Is that what you are saying? You're not making any sense.
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Makes sense to me. PiscesMercury is making an unspoken allowance for the possibility of a false confession and/or wrongful conviction, but is saying that their intuition about the man must have been correct, because on top of conviction and confession, he knew where the body was.

Not that this means anything, seeing that the problem with the anecdote is around the intuition, not his guilt, but it's a reasonable argument to make.
 
Recovering Agnostic said:
Makes sense to me. PiscesMercury is making an unspoken allowance for the possibility of a false confession and/or wrongful conviction, but is saying that their intuition about the man must have been correct, because on top of conviction and confession, he knew where the body was.

Not that this means anything, seeing that the problem with the anecdote is around the intuition, not his guilt, but it's a reasonable argument to make.
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Okay. I read it differently, but that makes sense. Thanks.
 
ynot said:
You also said it was more than “could be helpful”

Nitpicking aside, I understand the point you were making but I don’t think I agree. As I said, I might start a thread to debate ways of debating with paranormal claimers/believers. Not that I think it’s necessarily off-topic in this thread now that Robin1 has left the building.
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Recapping everything I'd said on the subject seemed unnecessary, and I felt it could be safely boiled down to "could be helpful" as I had acknowledged it wasn't essential.

As far as "easy," I didn't expand on it because I figured my meaning was clear both times, though who knows. I know you said you understand my point regardless of the seemingly contradictory statements, which I appreciate. So just to clarify, it is of course easy, in one sense of the word, to get a book or two by popular mediums and read about the worldview they teach. Get them used, sit down to read, and if you're like me, it's such fluffy reading you can be done with it in less than 2 hours. It's made even easier by the fact that so many of them say such similar things, so you read a few, you've read them all (except for a few exceptions like Sylvia Browne). In another sense, it's not necessarily so easy to make yourself sit through a book like that. As I said, I've got this Concetta Bertoldi book I'm still trying to get through. So both statements are true.

I'm glad you understand my point, however clumsily I may have said it.



Eta: oops, note that Bertoldi and the Long Island psychic are two different people, so it's Bertoldi's book I'm trying to read. Getting rusty on my woo.
 
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I have vivid dreams and I had one not that long ago where I felt like both my deceased grandmothers were on the phone with me. As you said, their voices were so vivid and distinct, I thought it amazing that my mind could create such an exact replica of how they sounded. In the dream, they sounded so real, I was convinced it was really them, and I was excited at the chance to talk to them as I missed them both. Not only that, but how amazing is it to have a chance to talk to someone who has died?! They told me various things about how they were doing in the afterlife, and then my maternal grandmother asked me to give a message to my mother: She shouldn't feel bad about not being there when my grandmother had been outdoors walking and died. I promised to pass on the message.

On waking, I realized my grandmother had died in the hospital after suffering a stroke during physical therapy. She hadn't been walking outdoors in months. My mother had no guilt.

The mind is capable of incredible things, including replicating voices from memory. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


OK I suppose this is true. If our sleeping minds try to assure us that our departed ones are doing ok isn't that pretty marvelous? If my Mom is in non-existence that would be ok or if she is doing some work that she enjoyed on this plane that's fine too.
 
Fellow Traveler said:
I have vivid dreams and I had one not that long ago where I felt like both my deceased grandmothers were on the phone with me. As you said, their voices were so vivid and distinct, I thought it amazing that my mind could create such an exact replica of how they sounded. In the dream, they sounded so real, I was convinced it was really them, and I was excited at the chance to talk to them as I missed them both. Not only that, but how amazing is it to have a chance to talk to someone who has died?! They told me various things about how they were doing in the afterlife, and then my maternal grandmother asked me to give a message to my mother: She shouldn't feel bad about not being there when my grandmother had been outdoors walking and died. I promised to pass on the message.

On waking, I realized my grandmother had died in the hospital after suffering a stroke during physical therapy. She hadn't been walking outdoors in months. My mother had no guilt.

The mind is capable of incredible things, including replicating voices from memory. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


OK I suppose this is true. If our sleeping minds try to assure us that our departed ones are doing ok isn't that pretty marvelous? If my Mom is in non-existence that would be ok or if she is doing some work that she enjoyed on this plane that's fine too.
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Oh it is, One being the ability to cope with loss in a variety of unusual ways.

The mind can also trick,delude,mislead and outright convince you of things that arn't.
 
desertgal said:
What is it that you are trying to say here? YOU said you knew the man was going to murder someone before he actually did. Now you're saying he isn't the murderer after all?

Are you the killer? Is that what you are saying? You're not making any sense.
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The only killer is Jacob, who stalked the victim via texts and was the last person to see her alive, according to her brother who was Jacob's best friend. There was also a lot of DNA evidence linking him to the murder. Friends of the victim said that she, like most people, described Jacob as "weird", very likely due to his autism. He was a brilliant student, one of the best in the country, so people tended to overlook or to not notice his autism.

So PLEASE don't call me a killer LOL! This guy is behind bars where he belongs.
 
Hokulele said:
"The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'."
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Almost anything can serve as data. Anecdotes (sometimes called case studies in the social sciences) are considered data and often serve as a motivation for full scale studies.

However, as many have explained here, anecdotes by themselves cannot prove causality, which is needed to show that JE can actually communicate with the dead. (That was the point I was making with the pharmaceutical example.) Establishing causality requires data from a true experiment with a reasonable (>=30) sample size in each condition.
 
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Robin1 said:
FluffyPersian, No, I wouldn't spend the $$ on the flu medication as described in your scenario.

More than the possible waste of $$, I'd be worried that it may not be safe and worried about the side effects, even long term ones.

I'd need to know a lot more.

Same reason I didn't give my kids the swine flu shot that was first rushed into production a few years ago. But perhaps, if my kids had other health issues, I might have...dunno.

I believe I see your intentions...but I believe the situations are too dissimilar with too many different variables to be able to compare them in a productive way.
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Thanks for your response. In what way are the two situations different? This was implicit, but we're assuming there are definitely no negative side effects to the to the flu cure; the only issue is the very high cost.
 
FluffyPersian said:
Thanks for your response. In what way are the two situations different? This was implicit, but we're assuming there are definitely no negative side effects to the to the flu cure; the only issue is the very high cost.
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Robin1 has unregistered from the forum, so I'm afraid you won't be getting a response.
 
zooterkin said:
Robin1 has unregistered from the forum, so I'm afraid you won't be getting a response.
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Thanks, I had missed the last few pages of this thread.

I was hoping that we could draw Robin into a discussion of the nitty gritty (proof via anecdotes vs. scientific method) by using a context that's less emotionally fraught than talking to the dead.
 
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