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Split Thread Scorpion's Spiritualism

George said:
Then clearly some mediums are not genuine. If I were to take an interest in spiritualism how would I ascertain which mediums/spirit guides are genuine and which are fraudulent? With all your experience you must encounter this issue on a regular basis. So how do you handle it?...
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ISTR Randi's exposures of fraud to the gullible just has them say "Oh, he/she was cheating during the test, but when channeling Aunt Ida, it's like she was there!"
 
George said:
Then clearly some mediums are not genuine. If I were to take an interest in spiritualism how would I ascertain which mediums/spirit guides are genuine and which are fraudulent? With all your experience you must encounter this issue on a regular basis. So how do you handle it?
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The spiritualist association tend to police themselves, as the founders are genuinely psychic and they do not let fake mediums operate on their premises. Also many people in the spiritualist movement and the organizers of spiritualist churches are genuinely psychic, so they would not tolerate a fake medium at their church for very long. Besides as I have said there is virtually no money in it for the mediums who rotate around the spiritualist churches. They do it for love of the work, and as a service to others.

Fake mediums tend to be the ones who set themselves up independently of spiritualist churches, and they charge substantial fees for a private sitting.

Having said that you do not go to a spiritualist church and swallow everything a medium says to you hook line and sinker. You apply reasoning to what you are told, and if it does not make sense to you, reject it.

In spiritualist church services the medium does not give everyone a message and you might have to attend several services before getting a personal message. For one thing if you just go to a church expecting a message there may not be any of your relatives in the spirit world that even know you are there. But regular attendance will bear fruit, as spirits of the departed will start to come and try to get the medium to speak to you for them.
 
tsig said:
They might have never seen you but I bet they saw each other.

Did any of the messages ever give you any info worth having like "the lotto numbers for tomorrow are xxxxxxxxx?"
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I was given a five number lottery win by telepathy from the spirit world in 1998. They gave me the numbers a few days before the draw. I won just enough money to buy a good computer, and to pay off my credit card. But no more than I needed. Nor have the spirit world ever given me another win since then. Because it would be bad karma to cheat the lottery just to get rich. But I know they did it on that occasion because they wanted me to have a computer to write this kind of thing. Among other things it also shows that some spirits can see into the future.
 
Customers of those fake mediums report subjective experiences just as convincing as yours. So do customers of astrologers, tarot card readers etc. The fake psychics, the astrologers and the tarot card readers are often as sincerely convinced of their own genuineness as the mediums of your church.

The only way to distinguish a genuine medium/psychic/astrologer/tarot card reader from someone who is inadvertently fooling themselves is to see if they can produce results significantly better than chance when all the ways in which they can fool themselves are being carefully excluded.
 
Scorpion said:
.......... you do not go to a spiritualist church and swallow everything a medium says to you hook line and sinker. You apply reasoning to what you are told.........
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You should have started and finished with this, the only comment on the subject which comes close to making sense.
 
Scorpion said:
The spiritualist association tend to police themselves, as the founders are genuinely psychic and they do not let fake mediums operate on their premises. Also many people in the spiritualist movement and the organizers of spiritualist churches are genuinely psychic, so they would not tolerate a fake medium at their church for very long. Besides as I have said there is virtually no money in it for the mediums who rotate around the spiritualist churches. They do it for love of the work, and as a service to others.

Fake mediums tend to be the ones who set themselves up independently of spiritualist churches, and they charge substantial fees for a private sitting.

Having said that you do not go to a spiritualist church and swallow everything a medium says to you hook line and sinker. You apply reasoning to what you are told, and if it does not make sense to you, reject it.

In spiritualist church services the medium does not give everyone a message and you might have to attend several services before getting a personal message. For one thing if you just go to a church expecting a message there may not be any of your relatives in the spirit world that even know you are there. But regular attendance will bear fruit, as spirits of the departed will start to come and try to get the medium to speak to you for them.
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I am trying to take you at your word. If there are genuine mediums actually channeling the dead then is this not proof of the afterlife/spirit world that you said we were not allowed to know about because it would prevent us (don't understand how) continuing our path of spiritual improvement through our reincarnations?
 
Scorpion said:
The spiritualist association tend to police themselves, as the founders are genuinely psychic and they do not let fake mediums operate on their premises. Also many people in the spiritualist movement and the organizers of spiritualist churches are genuinely psychic, so they would not tolerate a fake medium at their church for very long. Besides as I have said there is virtually no money in it for the mediums who rotate around the spiritualist churches. They do it for love of the work, and as a service to others.

Fake mediums tend to be the ones who set themselves up independently of spiritualist churches, and they charge substantial fees for a private sitting.

Having said that you do not go to a spiritualist church and swallow everything a medium says to you hook line and sinker. You apply reasoning to what you are told, and if it does not make sense to you, reject it.

In spiritualist church services the medium does not give everyone a message and you might have to attend several services before getting a personal message. For one thing if you just go to a church expecting a message there may not be any of your relatives in the spirit world that even know you are there. But regular attendance will bear fruit, as spirits of the departed will start to come and try to get the medium to speak to you for them.
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There are so many weasel words and escape hatches for "psychics" built into that last paragraph that it's almost not worth responding to- "the medium does not give everyone a message," "you might have to attend several services," "there may not be any of your relatives in the spirit world that even know you are there," "spirits...will try to get the medium to speak." But here's a question- it's easy to say definitively that there are "fake" vs "genuine" psychics without actually naming names for either one; so who are the real ones? Surely if they have messages worth delivering, and they're sincere and not in it for the money, they won't mind you telling folks their names.
 
Scorpion said:
The spiritualist association tend to police themselves, as the founders are genuinely psychic and they do not let fake mediums operate on their premises.
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Sounds like the Bigfoot Field Researcher's Organization, working hard to expose those bigfoot hoaxers all the while promoting the real evidence. Meanwhile, there's no such thing as bigfoot.

Scorpion said:
In spiritualist church services the medium does not give everyone a message and you might have to attend several services before getting a personal message.
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Uh huh, and each time you attend here's what happens: You invest more financially or at least via your time in the drivel, and it becomes harder to admit that you've been taken for a fool. So you double-down on your belief to rationalize your investment. All the while, people there are getting to know you - whether you realize it or not - and that information filters to the so-called psychic who waits for an appropriate time to spring the trap that hooks you for life.

Good heavens, the things someone could learn about me from Facebook! Before social media, imagine someone noticing me and asking questions about me that could lead them to some loose-lipped friend of my parents. A good conversationalist can learn an enormous amount of someone's backstory through casual chats with key people. Then when the information is revealed to the victim it seems remarkably compelling.

You've been had. It's a harsh reality, but it's true.
 
Scorpion said:
I was given a five number lottery win by telepathy from the spirit world in 1998. They gave me the numbers a few days before the draw. I won just enough money to buy a good computer, and to pay off my credit card. But no more than I needed. Nor have the spirit world ever given me another win since then. Because it would be bad karma to cheat the lottery just to get rich. But I know they did it on that occasion because they wanted me to have a computer to write this kind of thing. Among other things it also shows that some spirits can see into the future.
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Waiting to see what tsig might have to say.
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Scorpion - why did you say ''cheat'' the lottery. Where does any cheat part enter the picture, by you playing?
How long did it take you to rationalize the spirit world doesnt want you to get more money from the lottery? Did you one day come to that realization and quit playing the lottery? If not, why not...if you believed they really didnt want you to have more?
Why wouldnt you play and figure that the spirit world would like you to have more money so you can give it to your church or poor people?
 
Scorpion said:
The laws of physics are not incompatible with the possible existence of higher undetectable realms.
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If those realms are undetectable, then you certainly can't get any information from them.

If those realms are detectable, then I'm sorry to tell you that they are indeed excluded by physics.

The spirit world says the higher worlds are vibrating at a far higher rate than physical atoms, and the realms inter-penetrate. So they can exist in the same place without being perceptible by any other means than psychic development. Using the senses of the astral and mental bodies to see into higher dimensions. Using the chakras in the etheric body as channels.
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Either these higher worlds are detectable, in which case we know they don't exist (because they would show up, and they don't), or they're not detectable, in which case you're not in contact with them and they don't exist.

You want to have it both ways. Reality doesn't allow that.
 
anglolawyer said:
I am trying to take you at your word. If there are genuine mediums actually channeling the dead then is this not proof of the afterlife/spirit world that you said we were not allowed to know about because it would prevent us (don't understand how) continuing our path of spiritual improvement through our reincarnations?
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Its only subjective proof, and not scientific proof. The spirit world do not participate in scientific experiments that would change the entire world. But they are allowed to comfort their relatives on earth and to give them uplifting messages. Mediums that attempt to harness psychic powers to gain worldly recognition are normally dissapointed that the spirit world does not help them.

Never the less there are a lot of psychic people who know the truth for a certainty. I actually sat in a developing circle myself for a time, but I decided being psychic was not for me.
 
Iamme said:
Waiting to see what tsig might have to say.
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Scorpion - why did you say ''cheat'' the lottery. Where does any cheat part enter the picture, by you playing?
How long did it take you to rationalize the spirit world doesnt want you to get more money from the lottery? Did you one day come to that realization and quit playing the lottery? If not, why not...if you believed they really didnt want you to have more?
Why wouldnt you play and figure that the spirit world would like you to have more money so you can give it to your church or poor people?
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Using the occult to gain worldy weath is cheating the system big time. It is taking away money from the people that would have won it by abusing psychic powers. The spirit world does not normally do this, so they must have decided that buying me a computer was justifiable, so they influenced me when I picked the numbers. I felt energy flow through me when I was picking the numbers, and I picked the ones where the energy was strongest. A voice told me I had won the lottery one hour before the draw. Naturally I have wished they would give me a big win ever since but they never have.
I do not need any money now so the only reason they might give me a big win would be to give the money to charities, but they obviously don't want to do that, or where would it end. I could win the lottery every week.
 
The system behind the Spirit world must be arcane and complex. All those rules of what a spirit can and can't do. All the balancing and tallying of Karma, it must take vast etheric computing devices.

Imagine the sheer chaos at the Ports of Life and Death! The passports, the expiry papers. Who fixes the problems, like when two spirits return into a single body? Who catches the spiritual terrorists who go about telling secrets to silly humans, thus fritzing their karma forever?

Open minds want to know!
 
Scorpion said:
Its only subjective proof, and not scientific proof. The spirit world do not participate in scientific experiments that would change the entire world.
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What about a simple scientific experiment which would enable you personally to verify that your perception that the messages you and the other members of your church are being given are more accurate than would be expected by chance is not an artefact of the cognitive biases that all human beings have? Because without such verification that remains the most likely explanation of your "subjective proof".
 
Scorpion said:
Its only subjective proof, and not scientific proof. The spirit world do not participate in scientific experiments that would change the entire world. But they are allowed to comfort their relatives on earth and to give them uplifting messages. Mediums that attempt to harness psychic powers to gain worldly recognition are normally dissapointed that the spirit world does not help them.

Never the less there are a lot of psychic people who know the truth for a certainty. I actually sat in a developing circle myself for a time, but I decided being psychic was not for me.
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OK I get it now. Thank you.
 
Scorpion said:
Using the occult to gain worldy weath is cheating the system big time. It is taking away money from the people that would have won it by abusing psychic powers. The spirit world does not normally do this, so they must have decided that buying me a computer was justifiable, so they influenced me when I picked the numbers. I felt energy flow through me when I was picking the numbers, and I picked the ones where the energy was strongest. A voice told me I had won the lottery one hour before the draw. Naturally I have wished they would give me a big win ever since but they never have.
I do not need any money now so the only reason they might give me a big win would be to give the money to charities, but they obviously don't want to do that, or where would it end. I could win the lottery every week.
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That's a quite spectacular amount of special pleading to explain why something that could not possibly happen, does not, in fact, happen.

It's like a gallon jug of Ockham's Special Hair Tonic.
 
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