Split Thread Scorpion's Spiritualism

[Daylightstar]

... The sheer weight of evidence gradually convinced me ...

But how about the quality of the evidence?

 

[wombatwal]

mistake

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Would you care to lead by example?

I'll certainly do my best.

I had occasion to listen to a tape a friend made of a session with an "intuitive".

They had me listen to show how accurate it was.

I found it quite the opposite.

Just one example:

The intuitive said something like, "I'm seeing two children?" Since my friend had only one, they said so, which elicited, "But I'm seeing two. Is there another child, maybe one you wish for or are trying to have?"

Clearly turning a miss into a hit. There was nothing in the entire session I found remarkable in the least. But they remain convinced he was tuned in "intuitively" somehow.

As an aside, this intuitive passed away recently, and his memorial service had over a hundred people attend. His alleged skills were accepted by quite a few people.

 

[Innocuous]

For years, I received evidential messages from my grandmother. At different churches, by different mediums, up and down the country. The mediums often told me personal things they could not have known.

You are a terrible judge about these experiences. I don't mean that personally: we all are terrible at judging past, personal or emotional experiences. Our confirmation bias can skew our perceptions. Our memories are really bad at ... well, remembering things. Our minds can build stories about our lives that differ wildly from what actually happened.

Go to a medium, preferably in a town you have never visited. Stay anonymous - don't give them your real name or any real nickname, especially if you are well known in their circle of business. Don't give them your phone number. Walk to the business - don't use your car. Pay with cash. Don't let the medium see the contents of your wallet. Record the entire reading, plus anything said before or after the reading. Use your own recorder. Even if you can legally record without their permission, ask anyways - it is only courteous. After all, you don't want to miss anything they say. If they are real, there is no reason they should refuse. Promise to keep the identify of the medium anonymous, and keep that promise.

Post the transcript here, or in any skeptical forum. Or have a smart, skeptical friend look at it. Change or redact personal information if you want, but specify what you changed. If you really want to find the truth, don't cheat. There is a reason that medium isn't claiming the million dollar reward, and it has nothing to do with some higher authority preventing her from proving her own powers.

Don't do this for me. Do it for yourself.

 

[stanfr]

...I am not as gullible as you may suppose, as in my search for the truth I have visited a number of cults, but I rejected them all for one reason or another...

How can you claim you have a genuine desire to search for the truth, then invoke special pleading every time an easy way to put your beliefs to the test is presented to you? You basically respond by saying (paraphrased): "the spirits will not allow such scientific validation, this would invalidate their purpose..."
That is RUBBISH. If you truly believe that, your search is long over and it has ended in a bad way. There will be no search, your mind is made up. I haven't seen the other referenced thread, so after 6 pages of reading this thread, I haven't the slightest idea of what has brought you to this forum. You can't be convinced, and absent any evidence you will not convince. So, again, why are you here??

 

[SusanB-M1]

Nice post Pixel,...

Ditto.

 

[catsmate]

.
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!"

Indeed. The self-deception runs deep.

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.

You apply reasoning to what you are told, and if it does not make sense to you, reject it.

This is actually good advice. I suggest you now actually apply it; for example "psychic" phenomena and post-mortem communication break several well established principles in physics. Principles which, unlike "psychic" phenomena and post-mortem communication, have been repeatedly demonstrated to be correct.

Using the occult to gain worldy weath is cheating the system big time.

Why?

It is taking away money from the people that would have won it by abusing psychic powers.

Why is using these supposed "psychic powers" different from using intelligence, application or any other ability?

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.

Wow, the arrogance and self-delusion just drips from your every post.

It's interesting how similar your beliefs are to the xian loons who believe in the "prosperity gospel".

I could win the lottery every week.

 

[Donn]

A smiley spanking

 

[Scorpion]

But how about the quality of the evidence?

Like I said in an earlier post, a medium I had never seen before told me I had a brother that died in the war as a baby, and she even told me his name.
I did not know this until I went home and asked my mother about it.
What more quality of evidence does anyone need?

 

[steenkh]

What more quality of evidence does anyone need?

In order to judge the quality it would be necessary to have the full transcript of what happened. Exactly what words were used? Memory can be fickle, and it is very likely that you turned a miss into a hit by asking your mother about it. And we do not know how many other misses and hits there were.

 

[dlorde]

Like I said in an earlier post, a medium I had never seen before told me I had a brother that died in the war as a baby, and she even told me his name.
I did not know this until I went home and asked my mother about it.
What more quality of evidence does anyone need?

That's just one item that appears striking; how many others were anything like that memorable?

And yet even that one is open to many non-psychic interpretations. Here are a some possibilities:

1. The events were not as clear-cut as you remember them, for example, the details given by the reader might have been more vague, but led to your finding out about your brother, and you subsequently remembered them as being more specific - this kind of retrofitting is very common and quite unconscious - it's how memory works.

2. You have unconsciously merged two separate memories and created one that didn't happen, e.g. blending the memories of a surprising reading and hearing about your brother - this too is very common.

3. The reader was fishing, and would say something like this to many people. It sounds unlikely, but they'll often put in that kind of statement, knowing that misses will be quickly forgotten, but hits will make an impact. A lot of baby brothers died during the war!

4. Unknown to you, the reader did know your family.

Others here can probably suggest more possibilities. You will obviously deny all these and other possibilities of being mistaken, because you believe you remember exactly what happened, but it's become clear from memory research that episodic memory is far less reliable and far more likely to be distorted than we ever thought - many of our cherished memories are distorted, embellished, or may not have happened at all. Remembering lots of detail and colour is no guide to reliability either - when memories are distorted or falsely recalled colour and detail is often inserted, making them more vivid than memories known to be authentic.

A number of interesting experiments have shown how fragile episodic memory is - for example, about a third of the people who were exposed to a fake print advertisement that described a visit to Disneyland and how they met and shook hands with Bugs Bunny later said they remembered or knew the event happened to them. Many of them were adamant it had happened - one even recalled grabbing Bugs Bunny's carrot. But none of them could ever have met Bugs Bunny at Disneyland, he's not a Disney character, he's the Warner Bros. mascot. Gaining a false memory is that easy.

Whether or not you're prepared to question your memory of this episode, the links posted earlier are well worth following to discover what's known about memory and its failings - as they say, forewarned is forearmed!

 

[tsig]

You are a terrible judge about these experiences. I don't mean that personally: we all are terrible at judging past, personal or emotional experiences. Our confirmation bias can skew our perceptions. Our memories are really bad at ... well, remembering things. Our minds can build stories about our lives that differ wildly from what actually happened.

Go to a medium, preferably in a town you have never visited. Stay anonymous - don't give them your real name or any real nickname, especially if you are well known in their circle of business. Don't give them your phone number. Walk to the business - don't use your car. Pay with cash. Don't let the medium see the contents of your wallet. Record the entire reading, plus anything said before or after the reading. Use your own recorder. Even if you can legally record without their permission, ask anyways - it is only courteous. After all, you don't want to miss anything they say. If they are real, there is no reason they should refuse. Promise to keep the identify of the medium anonymous, and keep that promise.

Post the transcript here, or in any skeptical forum. Or have a smart, skeptical friend look at it. Change or redact personal information if you want, but specify what you changed. If you really want to find the truth, don't cheat. There is a reason that medium isn't claiming the million dollar reward, and it has nothing to do with some higher authority preventing her from proving her own powers.

Don't do this for me. Do it for yourself.

Sorry but you have to trust the spiritualists, only someone with a cynical mind would do something like that./woo apologist off

 

[tsig]

Like I said in an earlier post, a medium I had never seen before told me I had a brother that died in the war as a baby, and she even told me his name.
I did not know this until I went home and asked my mother about it.
What more quality of evidence does anyone need?

A recording of the incident would be nice.

 

[Daylightstar]

I'll certainly do my best.

I had occasion to listen to a tape a friend made of a session with an "intuitive".

They had me listen to show how accurate it was.

I found it quite the opposite.

Just one example:

The intuitive said something like, "I'm seeing two children?" Since my friend had only one, they said so, which elicited, "But I'm seeing two. Is there another child, maybe one you wish for or are trying to have?"

Clearly turning a miss into a hit. There was nothing in the entire session I found remarkable in the least. But they remain convinced he was tuned in "intuitively" somehow.

As an aside, this intuitive passed away recently, and his memorial service had over a hundred people attend. His alleged skills were accepted by quite a few people.

Clearly, I meant with reference to statements in your post which I quoted.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Clearly, I meant with reference to statements in your post which I quoted.

Sorry, I'm confused.

By "argument by assertion" I simply mean Scorpion's telling us about prior lives and the like - stating these things as fact with no proposed mechanism or evidence.

Unless you thought I meant something else.

 

[Scorpion]

In order to judge the quality it would be necessary to have the full transcript of what happened. Exactly what words were used? Memory can be fickle, and it is very likely that you turned a miss into a hit by asking your mother about it. And we do not know how many other misses and hits there were.

I am quite clear that I was told my brothers name, and his very existence, and the circumstances of this death, which I did not know about. It is a shame that I did not tape record the message.

I went straight home and asked my mother, immediately after church. I am sure my memory of this is accurate.

 

[Scorpion]

dlorde, with regard to point 4, the medium was from out of town, and I had never seen her before. My mother had never been to the church, and was not a spiritualist.

 

[Pixel42]

3. The reader was fishing, and would say something like this to many people. It sounds unlikely, but they'll often put in that kind of statement, knowing that misses will be quickly forgotten, but hits will make an impact. A lot of baby brothers died during the war!

A former colleague once told me that his most successful chat up line when going round the bars looking for a one night stand was "you're a Pisces, aren't you?". Obviously he'd be wrong 11 times out of 12, in which case he'd move on and try again with another girl. When he did eventually happen across a girl of that sign she would almost always be extremely impressed, and he would then launch into a well practised routine which he assured me had an almost 100% success rate at getting her into bed.

 

[steenkh]

I am quite clear that I was told my brothers name, and his very existence, and the circumstances of this death, which I did not know about. It is a shame that I did not tape record the message.

I went straight home and asked my mother, immediately after church. I am sure my memory of this is accurate.

Yes, people are always sure that their memory is accurate, but it rarely is. This has been documented over and over again. I do not blame you: I have also remembered things that later turned out to be impossible.

And then on the other hand, your memory could be accurate, but it is just not very likely. A transcript would have been nice.

 

[Daylightstar]

Sorry, I'm confused.

By "argument by assertion" I simply mean Scorpion's telling us about prior lives and the like - stating these things as fact with no proposed mechanism or evidence.

Unless you thought I meant something else.

Yes I thought so, as you referred to others, but now it appears you employed a generic plural.

Thanks, I'll acknowledge that you meant Scorpion's assertions sans evidence-support.
There's clearly evidence for that lack of support with evidence in this thread.