The thing is, Robin, good intuition comes from common sense, experience and past knowledge. There's an old saying, he's "flying by the seat of his pants", which in aviation lingo means you are flying blind, without instruments. When it is dark, or you are in clouds, without instruments, it is very difficult to tell whether you are flying straight and level, or whether you are actually turning, climbing, descending or just going round in circles. A skilled pilot, however, who's had many many hours in the cockpit, can actually sense, from how his/her butt sits in the seat, and which side has pressure and which doesn't, etc, they can actually discern what the attitude of the plane is, and can, in an emergency "fly by the seat of their pants".
Intuition, or a "gut feeling", is always based on your own experience and knowledge. It is the act of "knowing" something without being able to immediately reason out why you know it, or how you came to it. Those people with the most experience in a field will have a much more trustworthy "gut feeling" than novices. Imagine that you've got, say, a minor medical question. You ask three different friends, one is a chef, one is a teacher, and one is a nurse. All have been at their jobs a long time. And every one of them says, "I don't know for sure, but my gut says ______." Which one are you most likely to listen to? My money says you'd pick the one with the medical training.
You claimed when you first came over here, that you had "done your research" on mediums, but it turns out you've really done no research at all. You just went to several, hoping one would "wow" you, and when one finally did, you claimed he was therefore "real". That's kind of like saying you know a lot about magic tricks because you've gone to see several magicians. Or that you know a lot about cooking because you've been to lots of restaurants.
Now you are trying to claim that you yourself have performed some kind of skeptical analysis of these events you claim are examples of ESP, or messages from dead people, or god.. I'm really not sure what paranormal claim you are making, but I can assure you that you are not using the critical thinking skills necessary to call yourself a skeptic.
For instance, let's look at what we know are true facts.
1. People do lie. Almost everyone lies at one time or another. From little bitty white lies to huge stinkers. People often fib a bit when telling stories to make them more interesting, or to make themselves look better. Sometimes they don't even realize that they're fibbing. (see #5)
2. Computer glitches do happen. Whether it is from user error (a librarian clicked on the wrong customer name or transposed some numbers on a library card), or a programming error, these things happen, and they happen often enough that they are not particularly uncommon. As a matter of fact, this month I have received more than 10 emails from Best Buy addressed to a different person in a different state regarding his account, recent receipts, purchases, delivery dates, etc, apparently because he and I have the same phone number, with different area codes.
3. Fast food restaurant employees make errors, and give people the wrong food, or less food, or extra food quite often.
4. Cruise ships give away lots of pina coladas. It is their most popular drink.
5. People really don't remember things very well. It is a well known fact. There is lots and lots of research about it, many good books on the subject. This is why eye witness accounts and anecdotal evidence are not considered to be very good evidence. As I've said before, we don't actually remember things, we recreate the memory and change it a little every time we tell the story.
6. Coincidences happen. All the time. Our brains are pattern seeking machines, and we look for patterns everywhere, which means we sometimes see patterns where no real pattern exists.
Because you are not thinking critically about this yet, (stick around, you'll get the hang of it.) you have chosen to disregard at least 6 possible logical, reasonable and quite plausible fact based explanations for your "experiences", and chosen a supernatural unproven and completely inplausible explanation instead.
Do you really expect any reasonable person to believe your experiences are anything more than coincidence just because you say you had a dream about some dead people? People dream crazy things all the time. I had an amazingly vivid dream not long ago, in which I could speak French fluently and with ease. I'm sorry, but your dream means nothing. Nor does the fact that you had the dream somehow make your coincidental experiences somehow more than coincidences.
You ask us to trust your gut, your intuition, but I say you don't have enough experience or knowledge of the material to have a trustworthy gut feeling. You are truly flying blind here, and you don't have the experience to fly by the seat of your pants.
Since joining the discussion in your other John Edward thread, I decided to do a bit more of my own research. So here's what I've been reading (or rereading, in some cases) the last few weeks:
Psychic Blues by Mark Edward
The Dead Do Not Talk by Julien J Proskauer
Psychic Mafia by M Lamar Keene
Behind the Scenes with Mediums by David P Abott
13 Steps to Mentalism by Corinda
Annemann's Practical Mental Effects, edited by John J Crimmins, Jr
Red Hot Cold Reading by Herb Dewey and Thomas Seville, PhD
After reading these, would you like to know what my gut tells me about John Edward?
That John Edward is a highly skilled mentalist, meaning he uses a good knowledge of human psychology, misdirection, cold reading techniques, impressive memory skills, plants in the audience, a trustworthy staff, and some elaborately designed and orchestrated trickery in order to seemingly magicly pluck things like refrigerators and Valerie Harper tickets right out of his audience's heads with the same skill and flare as Penn and Teller can catch bullets in their teeth or pull coins out of the air. His act is further aided by an audience eager to applaud every hit and immediately forget every miss.
What are the odds that he actually talks to dead people? My gut says about the same odds as me speaking perfect fluent French.
Zéro absolu.
