Cont: Scorpion's Spiritualism, Part Deux

Scorpion said:
There are scientific studies that confirm psychic energy

www.huffpost.com

As A Scientist, I Didn’t Believe In Psychic Powers. Then I Experienced Something That Changed My Life.

I wasn’t open to experiences and possibilities outside the realm of what was considered “normal,” but that was all about to change.
www.huffpost.com www.huffpost.com

Study showing that humans have some psychic powers caps Daryl Bem's career | Cornell Chronicle

In nine experiments, Daryl Bem, professor of psychology emeritus, has found evidence of 'psi' - unexplained processes of information or energy transfer - also known as ESP. (Dec. 6, 2010)
news.cornell.edu news.cornell.edu

Ask Molly: Did CIA Really Study Psychic Powers? - CIA

www.cia.gov www.cia.gov

'Psychic Spying' Research Produces Credible Evidence

Secret government experiments on "psychic spying" have produced the most credible evidence to date that humans have paranormal abilities, according to two academic experts who recently reviewed previously classified U.S. government research. The U.S.
www.ucdavis.edu www.ucdavis.edu
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None of those are proof of anything. The CIA looked into psychic powers because the Soviets had a psychic program. Turns out the Soviet program was a waste of time too.
 
Keep in mind the CIA is staffed by human beings, human beings who are by the nature of their jobs extremely curious about all sorts of things. Langley has a Bohemian atmosphere, or at least it did pre-911. Here's their in-house quarterly news letter from June, 1984 titled, Human Paranormal Capabilities, wherein they report on research done in China on psychic, and paranormal phenomenon.


This should not be construed to mean the CIA was actively researching psychic powers in 1984, but that there were enough employees at Langley who were interested in this subject to warrant a quarterly newsletter. It was as much an exercise in translating Chinese research papers as anything. Kept everyone sharp, and provided interesting reading. The CIA has or had many in-house newsletters about a variety of topics.

Here's a collection of ghost stories for the CIA's Halloween fun:

https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/spooky-stories-for-halloween/

Does this mean the CIA does research into ghosts, and has proved their existence? Hell no. It's just good spooky fun, pun intended, at Langley.

...However...

When you search the CIA's FOIA records for Sun Streak things become interesting, even for skeptics:


Sun Streak was the remote viewing program, and this document from 1984 is about the feasibility of using RV to locate hostage, Terry Waite (remember him?). The document has the minutes of the session, and the automatic writing samples.


This one is mostly vague, also dealing with the hostages in Lebanon in 1984.

Here's where the wheels fell off with Sun Streak:


The remote viewer insists that Lt. Colonel Willian Higgins is healthy, and will be released first. Higgins was already dead by this time:

kentuckymarines.org

William R. Higgins - Marine Corps Coordinating Council of Kentucky

William R. Higgins William Richard “Rich” Higgins (January 15, 1945 – July 6, 1990) was a United States Marine Corps colonel who was captured in 1988 while serving on a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. He was held hostage, tortured and eventually brutally murdered by his...
kentuckymarines.org kentuckymarines.org

Here we are, a legitimate government psychic research program that existed for a few years in the 1980s that failed to deliver on a reliable level, and usually never delivered. And it's all there in black and white.

[edited to add Sun Streak was based out of an old WWII barracks at Fort Meade, MD, which should tell you who was spending money on remote viewing]
 
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Scorpion said:
I have said, on my thread, that I could feel psychic energy in the streets of London and it was disturbing because of all the negative things like the war. But if I went into an old church I felt that I was surrounded by a protective psychic warmth that protected me from the course vibrations in the streets. Then there was the time I walked into a Franciscan monastery in Italy and the atmosphere nearly blew my socks off as I walked in the door.
I did not imagine these things and because my etheric body was loose and my aura tainted with negative psychic energy I could feel these forces.
Healing by spiritualist healers often felt like heat and would often make me feel ok for several days after the healing. Eventually I learned how to channel the energy myself and stopped needing healers.

I did not imagine these things, they are the sum of my experience. Psychic energy is real and I could feel it.
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No they were symptoms of your mental illness.
 
JayUtah said:
Testimonial in a popular fluff publication. Not science.


Popular media coverage of a study purporting to be in publication. The article was published in 2010 and alludes to work that will be published a year later, i.e., 2011. Was it actually published? Did you read it? Was there any critical comment?


Repeats the undisputed claim that the CIA tried to research psychic phenomena. The results of that study are declassified and widely known. The study did not show evidence of psychic phenomena. Further, the meta analysis portion of the study had some pretty harsh words regarding the work of others in academia trying to prove psychic phenomena.


Purports to reevaluate the CIA data, but admits the results are inconclusive and calls for more and better research.

None of this is actual science. It's all references in popular media that range from personal testimonials to glossing over promises and wishes.
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The first link is worse than testimony. Google the author and you find a man who has a business selling psychic nonsense.
 
Mojo said:
But he's a postgraduate psychologist!
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Indeed he seems to have one foot in a reasonably rigorous pursuit (neurofeedback) and another in the "psi powers" industry.

We find this a lot. People start careers in a respected field and then let their popular-writing and -speaking side hustle take over. We see lots of books from, say, physicists who think that their ability to do vector calculus means they have some profound philosophical insight that needs to be heard. And often that philosophy ends up mixing non-rigorous concepts with elements of science and conveying the wrong impression that science endorses any of that.
 
JayUtah said:
Yes, by the accumulation of evidence that showed them to be wrong, and not until then.
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It's probably also worth noting that "Wrong" was often "Right within the limits of what could be detected at the time but not the whole answer once we had a degree of accuracy that was impossible at the time the previous theory was formulated".

Newton, Einstein & quantum physics aren't contradictory because they work to different levels of accuracy any more than a globe, a road atlas and a street map are contradictory because one shows your house, one shows the motorway network & the last one shows your house.
JayUtah said:
Popular media coverage of a study purporting to be in publication. The article was published in 2010 and alludes to work that will be published a year later, i.e., 2011. Was it actually published? Did you read it? Was there any critical comment?
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I'm not going to give it away since obviously the idea is for Scorpion to look it up, but yeah, that was an interesting read.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
It's probably also worth noting that "Wrong" was often "Right within the limits of what could be detected at the time but not the whole answer once we had a degree of accuracy that was impossible at the time the previous theory was formulated".
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Indeed. There is the case where a refinement becomes possible because of our additional ability to observe the universe. This is the case that we are cautioned to consider when Scorpion and others assure us these are actual physical phenomena, but we just can't see it yet. There is the much smaller case where errors in prior methods are finally identified and corrected. This is the case that most often happens when someone claims to have proven psychic phenomena with scientific rigor.

P.J. Denyer said:
Newton, Einstein & quantum physics aren't contradictory because they work to different levels of accuracy any more than a globe, a road atlas and a street map are contradictory because one shows your house, one shows the motorway network & the last one shows your house.
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I think you mean that one shows the planet, another shows the network, and the last shows your house. Scorpion tries to tell us that we're missing the evidence because we're stuck with using the globe and the evidence is in his backyard. No, when it comes to what goes on in the brain, we have the equivalent of street view.

P.J. Denyer said:
I'm not going to give it away since obviously the idea is for Scorpion to look it up, but yeah, that was an interesting read.
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:censored:
 
JayUtah said:
.


I think you mean that one shows the planet, another shows the network, and the last shows your house. Scorpion tries to tell us that we're missing the evidence because we're stuck with using the globe and the evidence is in his backyard. No, when it comes to what goes on in the brain, we have the equivalent of street view.
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Yep, typing with distractions. And Irish whiskey.
 
Since this thread has been resurrected with the influx of posts I figured I'd bump it to the front page.
 
That doesn't actually answer anything, argue against his point, or support your own.

It's a nice quote. Very pithy, but functionally useless.
 
Scorpion said:
Thanks

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.
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No. The nucleus is small but the electron motion, to ignore the quantum aspects, fills what might be considered 'empty space'.
The nuclear force operates only a miniscule distances, i.e. the nucleus. It's not inter-atomic, those interactions are electromagnetic.
 
Scorpion said:
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.
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Unfortunately your philosophy is quite probably affected by the mental illness you disclosed, which tends to put things into philosophy that aren't there. Unless you have objective, testable evidence (which you don't), delusion stemming from schizophrenia remains the best explanation for your claims. Calling people closed-minded for pointing this out is childish.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
That doesn't actually answer anything, argue against his point, or support your own.

It's a nice quote. Very pithy, but functionally useless.
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As far as I am concerned neither you or Gulliver Foyle have any idea what kind of world you are in.
 
steenkh said:
A fine claim. Would you care to support it with evidence that can’t be dismissed as examples of fraud and wishful thinking?
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Its a famous quote, I can't remember who said it. It might have been Shakespeare or Nelson.

I know that all the psychiatrists I ever saw wrote in their notes that I was delusional. I got my psychiatric notes under the data protection act. I dispensed with their services many years ago on the grounds I believe in my own judgement not theirs. I wrote to Professor David Canter about it on twitter and he said schizophrenia is very little understood.

Psychiatrists and psychologists do not even know how we are conscious, so there is hardly any point asking them for mental help. I found that spiritualist mediums were a real help to me, and although it took years to get the information eventually I came to understand that feeling I had of fire flowing through my chakras was because extreme emotions in my youth had made my etheric body loose and the chakras were miss aligned. Spiritual healing, which I could often feel flowing into me as heat cured me of this problem. psychiatrists have not got a clue, and I no longer need them or their theories.
 
Scorpion said:
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.
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Please provide evidence for the existence of heaven.

Also: Hamlet is a work of fiction (quite a good one, granted [but then that that would be subjective, personal opinion]), it is not evidence of anything.

If I may: there are are less worlds than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Scorpion. I do not claim to be anywhere near as good a writer as Shakespeare, but my claims about the number of things and worlds/dimensions/planes wherein they may or may not exist has no more or less authority than a play published in 1603.

I wrote that. He wrote what you quoted*. How would you suggest that we measure the truth of these statements?


*which it turns out you were unaware of.
 
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junkshop said:
Please provide evidence for the existence of heaven.

Also: Hamlet is a work of fiction (quite a good one, granted [but then that that would be subjective, personal opinion]), it is not evidence of anything.

If I may: there are are less worlds than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Scorpion. I do not claim to be anywhere near as good a writer as Shakespeare, but my claims about the number of things and worlds/dimensions/planes wherein they may or may not exist has no more or less authority than a play published in 1603. I wrote that. He wrote what you quoted. How would you suggest that we measure the truth of these statements?
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Fewer.
 
JayUtah said:
What is that supposed to mean?
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It means that in my view the people on this forum do not know what kind of world they are in. In my beliefs the earth is the lowest of many realms of experience and it is here for us to learn by trial and error by our own efforts. We are not human beings, we are immortal spirits incarnate in the physical body for experience sake.
 
Scorpion said:
Its a famous quote, I can't remember who said it. It might have been Shakespeare or Nelson.

I know that all the psychiatrists I ever saw wrote in their notes that I was delusional. I got my psychiatric notes under the data protection act. I dispensed with their services many years ago on the grounds I believe in my own judgement not theirs. I wrote to Professor David Canter about it on twitter and he said schizophrenia is very little understood.

Psychiatrists and psychologists do not even know how we are conscious, so there is hardly any point asking them for mental help. I found that spiritualist mediums were a real help to me, and although it took years to get the information eventually I came to understand that feeling I had of fire flowing through my chakras was because extreme emotions in my youth had made my etheric body loose and the chakras were miss aligned. Spiritual healing, which I could often feel flowing into me as heat cured me of this problem. psychiatrists have not got a clue, and I no longer need them or their theories.
Click to expand...

I refer you back to this:
P.J. Denyer said:
When it's "Everyone Else" who's always wrong, sensible people pause to reconsider.
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Scorpion said:
Its a famous quote, I can't remember who said it. It might have been Shakespeare or Nelson.
Click to expand...
It's from Shakespeare. It's commonly quoted as an accusation of closed-mindedness, although a more careful reading of the text doesn't support that.

Scorpion said:
I know that all the psychiatrists I ever saw wrote in their notes that I was delusional.
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Asked and answered. The anecdotes you relate for which you were treated are fully consistent with schizophrenia.

Scorpion said:
Psychiatrists and psychologists do not even know how we are conscious, so there is hardly any point asking them for mental help.
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Non sequitur. There are effective treatment plans for schizophrenia.

Scorpion said:
I found that spiritualist mediums were a real help to me...
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Asked and answered. You found something that made you feel good. That's not evidence that it's true.
 
Scorpion said:
It means that in my view the people on this forum do not know what kind of world they are in. In my beliefs the earth is the lowest of many realms of experience and it is here for us to learn by trial and error by our own efforts. We are not human beings, we are immortal spirits incarnate in the physical body for experience sake.
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Great. Provide evidence for literally any of that.
 
Scorpion said:
In my beliefs the earth is the lowest of many realms of experience and it is here for us to learn by trial and error by our own efforts. We are not human beings, we are immortal spirits incarnate in the physical body for experience sake.
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Asked and answered. Your beliefs are not the yardstick by which you can properly measure others' alleged denial. As has been said, your critics can support their view of the world with objective, testable evidence. You cannot. Your beliefs are not even self-consistent, much less connected to anything objective or testable. You are not somehow more insightful simply because you are more imaginative.
 
junkshop said:
Please provide evidence for the existence of heaven.

Also: Hamlet is a work of fiction (quite a good one, granted [but then that that would be subjective, personal opinion]), it is not evidence of anything.

If I may: there are are less worlds than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Scorpion. I do not claim to be anywhere near as good a writer as Shakespeare, but my claims about the number of things and worlds/dimensions/planes wherein they may or may not exist has no more or less authority than a play published in 1603. I wrote that. He wrote what you quoted. How would you suggest that we measure the truth of these statements?
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You know I cannot provide evidence of higher worlds, But are you telling me you know everything there is to know about the universe?
 
Scorpion said:
You know I cannot provide evidence of higher worlds
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Then you have no basis for accusing others of being benighted or closed-minded because they do not accept your imagination.

Scorpion said:
But are you telling me you know everything there is to know about the universe?
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Straw man. Skeptics are just as capable as anyone else of imagining what might yet be discovered. The difference is that we don't believe any of it without evidence.
 
JayUtah said:
Then you have no basis for accusing others of being benighted or closed-minded because they do not accept your imagination.


Straw man. Skeptics are just as capable as anyone else of imagining what might yet be discovered. The difference is that we don't believe any of it without evidence.
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As far as I am concerned I have had personal evidence from many mediums who gave me evidential messages from my departed relatives. They gave me names and facts and they also knew what I had been doing, and even what I had been thinking. One medium told me I had done a blue and white painting, but I was not satisfied with it. I had not mentioned this to anyone, so as far as I am concerned the most likely explanation is the spirit world read my mind with telepathy and told the medium what I thought about the picture.
 
Scorpion said:
You know I cannot provide evidence of higher worlds, But are you telling me you know everything there is to know about the universe?
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No.

Mostly I was ridiculing your citation of a work of fiction in defence of your imaginings. That it later transpired that you didn't even know where your (incredibly famous) quote came from was the proverbial icing, but also made this whole debate feel kinda wrong.

I am no longer comfortable continuing this conversation.

I wish you well, and I am gone.
 
Scorpion said:
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.
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Certainly in yours there is the fact that it was necessary for a 3 year old child to be kidnapped, raped multiple times by multiple men then beheaded. But hey your philosophy gives you a nice warm feeling when you go into certain buildings so that’s all OK.
 
Scorpion said:
It means that in my view the people on this forum do not know what kind of world they are in. In my beliefs the earth is the lowest of many realms of experience and
it is here for us to learn by trial and error by our own efforts. We are not human beings, we are immortal spirits incarnate in the physical body for experience sake.
Click to expand...
So it was the three year old child’s own efforts that resulted in her being kidnapped, raped and beheaded. What did she do wrong? Wet her bed?
 
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