That was my original phrasing, but I changed it because "what I think I know" doesn't reflect peoples' state of knowledge. It's more important to ask this question of things you know for absolute sure, rather than the things you're already questioning.
Last night I had a dream about time travel with the Wellsian time traveller.
Obviously you're a nega-psychic.
Am I allowed to ask how you attempted to kill him?
I spent years in a spiritualist church, and after the first two years I came to the conclusion that at least some of the mediums were genuine, and the most likely explanation for what they did was they were doing what they said, and getting messages from the spirits of the departed.
Sceptics know how easy it is to be fooled, and to inadvertently fool yourself. Many of us were believers in some kind of paranormal phenomena, until we acquired critical thinking skills and learned the standard of evidence required to avoid believing things that aren't true. So no, a few subjective experiences that we didn't have the necessary information to fully account for would not convince us.
Steeping oneself credulously in something does not make one a better observer of it. Worse, in fact. The fact that some or many of the self-proclaimed mediums are obvious, proven frauds, and the existence of known means for producing the illusion of mediumship, mean that is a reasonable default conclusion that must be overcome with evidence.
Wouldn't, say, one of these spiritualist church hommies have stood up and proven to science that their beliefs are true, sometime since, oh, humankind existed? For the betterment of us all?
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.
The medium came directly to me with a personal message, and opened it by saying she had my grandmother, who had been through to me many times before.
I had this particular message in a church in north London in the 1970s. But I had many messages from my grandmother in other churches where she gave me comforting advice. I also had a message from my grandfather who said he died in a hospital in a cot with the sides up and he did not like it. This was true and the medium said my grandfather was telling me this to give me evidence that he had survived death.
Then how is it a "personal message?" I can literally say that to anyone who has a dead grandmother.
I can also give you comforting advice in the name of your dead grandmother.
Seems like a pretty on-the-nose claim for someone to make who wants to convince you they're a medium.
Did they use your grandmother's name, or just say 'your grandmother'?
This has all been gone over in other threads. More than once. Suffice to say there are ways in which the information which so impressed Scorpion could have been obtained, but he refuses to consider them. My overall impression was of a well meaning but morally dubious attempt to give some peace to a troubled young man.
The medium just said it was my grandmother without her name. But I had a number of messages from her from different mediums over the years I attended spiritualist churches. She knew what was going on in my life and gave me good advice. In the case of a message from my brother that died as a baby the medium did give me his name which was Lawrence. My mother, who had never told me about him and had never been to the church, confirmed this when I asked her.
Accounts of personal experiences, such as the psychographies attributed to mediums like Chico Xavier, can serve as evidence for those who believe in mediumship. Although these accounts may not be enough to convince radical skeptics, they are valid within the context of human experience.
Ask skeptics whether they apply the same rigorous standards to all areas of knowledge, or whether there is a tendency to dismiss only evidence that challenges their beliefs. This can help expose potential biases in their approach
cei-spiritistcouncil.com
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Allan Kardec Books for Download in English – CEI
Atoms are largely empty space. It is the nuclear forces which bind them that cause the illusion they are solid things. If the nuclear forces were weaker a train might pass through us without touching us, or we could walk through walls.
No one has proved to me there ain't no leprechauns either, ducky.
Yes, by the accumulation of evidence that showed them to be wrong, and not until then.
You know better than to expect to reverse the burden of proof without being laughed at. If you claim God and spirits exist, you must prove it.
I am too long in the tooth to take any notice of people who think I am crazy including every psychiatrist I have ever seen who, like you thought my beliefs were delusions. I know what I have experienced, and I am certain my conclusions are correct.
We're so smart we end up stupid. Nice.
Mark did not say that you are "crazy". He said that you have a mental illness. Stop participating in the stigmatisation of your illness.
I see you are still quoting my signature where I said I am the thinker not my brain. I have fought that war against chemical chaos in my brain and won it. Chemicals do not have the last word in my brain I do. As far as I am concerned that is because thought is caused by the immortal spirit that is only using the brain.
Nevertheless the mental illness you tell us you suffer or suffered from remains the best explanation for the observations you report.
But that certainty is not based on anything that works for anyone else. Therefore you can't claim it as some universal truth of which only you are miraculously aware. No one is challenging your experiences. But your explanations and interpretations of them are indeed testable and have come up short.
I used to say, "I know what I saw." I said it a lot. Now that I'm older and better educated, and have done the serious ghost-hunting stuff I no longer "know what I saw". The things I've seen and experienced keep me interested in the subject, but now I accept real-world answers instead of hiding behind new age dogma.
Your brain is nothing but chemicals.
Like I say, I fought that war for possession of my thoughts against chemical imbalance of my brain, and I won it.
Irrelevant. The universe exists and has the properties we observe. Therefore arguments about how unlikely it is are immediately moot.
There is no evidence that multiple universes actually exist or existed. It's just a fanciful speculation. We don't need a God to explain what we see now and no evidence that there is one anyway. Therefore Occam's Razor trims it from consideration.
You've shown no evidence of any guiding force, and your attempts to do so amount to amateur fiction with lots of plot holes.
Special pleading. You don't like science, so you just write that plot point into your story.
If the experience isn't observably different from the one where there's no God, then there's no reason to suppose there is one. The universe observably doesn't need one. There's no evidence that there is one. Therefore no reason to believe in one except that you consider yourself superior because you do.
Who's to say Lord of the Rings isn't a true story?
Because scientist propose multiverse theories for good and valid reasons, and back them up with higher mathematics and physics, unlike your idea which is too vague and wishy-washy to even call a "theory".
I am. Based on the clear lack of evidence that should be there for all to see, should those ideas be true.
According to you. Schizophrenics are notoriously unable to self-diagnose. It's one of the hardest things about treating the illness. Whatever you feel, schizophrenia is a far better explanation for your reported observations than all the cosmic mumbo jumbo you periodically foist on us.
Sorry, but multiverse cosmology is more than just "fanciful speculation". They are real theories, proposed to explain real scientific phenomena, and are backed up by real science.
I fight off colds, too. It doesn't make "me" seperate from what was imbalanced in my chemical makeup.
