Abraham Lincoln predicted own death?

I know Rodney hates hearing this because he wants things to be declared psychic right NOW--but I don't think it's possible to determine that someone had psychic dreams that long after their death. There's no possibility of testing any predictions made by such dreams this long after the fact, little chance of firsthand interviews about Lincoln's history of sleep and dreaming, and so we're left with, at most, an interesting anecdote.

I'm forced to return to my standard position on historical woo--show me a real, live, testable one TODAY, that we can verify and learn about, and we may learn enough about prophets (or psychic healers, or whatever) to re-evaluate the historical data. But since at the moment, no one alive and testable has been proved to be a prophet, it is simply not possible to wring enough data from history to prove any psychic ability.

Extraordinary claims DO require extraordinary evidence--and the past is generally damn hard to get that evidence from. Once the claim is no longer extraordinary, once psychics are known and understood, THEN we no longer would require extraordinary evidence, and we might be able to say "Okay, Bob from (past era of choice) may well have been psychic."

But we really need a live one to prove stuff, first.
 
UrsulaV said:
I know Rodney hates hearing this because he wants things to be declared psychic right NOW--but I don't think it's possible to determine that someone had psychic dreams that long after their death. There's no possibility of testing any predictions made by such dreams this long after the fact, little chance of firsthand interviews about Lincoln's history of sleep and dreaming, and so we're left with, at most, an interesting anecdote.

I'm forced to return to my standard position on historical woo--show me a real, live, testable one TODAY, that we can verify and learn about, and we may learn enough about prophets (or psychic healers, or whatever) to re-evaluate the historical data. But since at the moment, no one alive and testable has been proved to be a prophet, it is simply not possible to wring enough data from history to prove any psychic ability.

Extraordinary claims DO require extraordinary evidence--and the past is generally damn hard to get that evidence from. Once the claim is no longer extraordinary, once psychics are known and understood, THEN we no longer would require extraordinary evidence, and we might be able to say "Okay, Bob from (past era of choice) may well have been psychic."

But we really need a live one to prove stuff, first.
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Okay, here's a current one that bears further examination -- http://www.thedailyworld.com/articles/2006/04/27/local_news/01news.txt
 
I'll agree it's worth examining further, sure. The guy claims to have visions that he can immediately determine are visions, which should make it easier to test. However, the anecdote as it stands is not proof of anything, merely an invitation to actual testing. It's also worth noting that for a prophecy, that was desperately imprecise--"a child trapped in the creek" is a bit of a difference from "older guy in a car accident in a completely different creek."
 
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[Then they passed Milburn Creek. A three-foot section of guard rail was bent back on the opposite side of the road. Muddy tire tracks pointed toward the creek.

They kept driving. Accidents happen and are cleared away in the middle of the night all the time, he reasoned.

“Did you hear an ambulance last night,” Clifford remembers asking his son.

“No,” was the reply.

“We better go back,” the elder Foss decided.]

It seems to me these guys used their heads to figure out they should go back and investigate. On its own, the dream wasn't enough to make them search the creek. Without the dream, they might have noticed the broken guardrail and lack of ambulance and investigated anyway. Of course, the story is written to minimize make it seem like he relied on a vision, not his own deduction and logic. Why ruin a good story?
 
All dreams are a conscious interpretation of some period of awareness. That period of awareness may be past, present, or future. It may be yours or another persons. And that period of awareness may be from objective reality or from imagination, yours or theirs.
 
I'd be willing to bet that most Presidents....especially those who served the office during a galvanized time....have had a dream about assassination. It's a danger of the job, even more so then than now, when there weren't so many security issues resovled.

Kind of like pilots who dreamabout crashing a plane. It probably happens more often to them than other folks. But they generlaly don't make a big deal of it, and inevitably one of them *will* crash a plane. That's just odds, not prophecy.
 
NobbyNobbs said:
I'd be willing to bet that most Presidents....especially those who served the office during a galvanized time....have had a dream about assassination. It's a danger of the job, even more so then than now, when there weren't so many security issues resovled.

Kind of like pilots who dreamabout crashing a plane. It probably happens more often to them than other folks. But they generlaly don't make a big deal of it, and inevitably one of them *will* crash a plane. That's just odds, not prophecy.
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Two problems with your analysis: (1) Lincoln's two dreams occurred very shortly before his assassination; (2) Lincoln mentioned those dreams to several others, and so a number of people knew about them before his assassination. To document your claim, you would have to produce evidence that other Presidents have told people about dreams they had regarding their assassinations, which then never materialized.
 
Rodney said:
Two problems with your analysis: (1) Lincoln's two dreams occurred very shortly before his assassination; (2) Lincoln mentioned those dreams to several others, and so a number of people knew about them before his assassination. To document your claim, you would have to produce evidence that other Presidents have told people about dreams they had regarding their assassinations, which then never materialized.
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No, *you* are the one claiming that Lincoln had precognition, so *you* need to document your claim. I'm just showing falsifiability (I think). You'd have to come up with other dreams Lincoln had that were told to others, documented, and then came true.
 
NobbyNobbs said:
No, *you* are the one claiming that Lincoln had precognition, so *you* need to document your claim. I'm just showing falsifiability (I think). You'd have to come up with other dreams Lincoln had that were told to others, documented, and then came true.
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(1) So you're saying that if Lincoln had only one or two dreams that came true, that doesn't count? (2) You stated: "I'd be willing to bet that most Presidents....especially those who served the office during a galvanized time....have had a dream about assassination." I'm merely asking you to provide evidence to support your speculation.
 
thaiboxerken said:
Lincoln didn't have superpowers, there is no evidence that he did.
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So you're claiming that the "Dexter's Laboratory" episode in which Dexter and his nemesis Mandark create giant robotic versions of Lincoln and Washington, then engage in a titanic struggle for presidential domination, is completely based on fantasy? Hmmm.
 
thaiboxerken said:
Lincoln didn't have superpowers, there is no evidence that he did.
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According to my Webster's New World Dictionary, the term "non sequitur" means: 1) Logic -- a conclusion or inference which does not follow from the premises: abbrev. non seq. 2) a remark having no bearing on what has just been said.
 
“It’s like the Sasquatch. Who believes in that? I don’t,” said Clifford, who is divorced and out of work due to a disability. “But if you’ve seen it, it’s there.”

Maybe the answer for this unbelievable story is in that quote.
 
I wonder what it would be like to live as credulously as a Rodney or MayDay. I'd like to try, but I can't seem to stop this whole "critical thinking" thing.
 
thaiboxerken said:
I wonder what it would be like to live as credulously as a Rodney or MayDay. I'd like to try, but I can't seem to stop this whole "critical thinking" thing.
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Come on! Try it!

I have special powers! They are so special I can't even prove them. Now that's special! It's true! :)

(Now you go: wow...)
 
thaiboxerken said:
Lincoln recieved death threats and several assassination attempts. I think that is why he dreamed of death. There is no need to invoke the supernatural in this case.
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Also depression, the Civil War, and the fact that he was the most hated president at the time.
 
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