Medium finds missing woman in UK river

[LondonJohn]

Einstein once said that genius is 1% talent and 99% perspiration. As with any gift, musical, literary, mathematical, artistic, scientistic, you'll find that the 'gifted' have put in many many hours of practice, study or work into their great talent, which to others seems to come out of the blue and with the greatest of ease.

Likewise, Mr. Rothwell has likely been heavily immersed in his occultist arts to the point of obsession. This obsession gave him the skills and impetus to travel to the area with a view of 'helping the search' by using what he terms his skills as a spiritualist medium. Thus, he likely had his eyes peeled at every millimetre of the river along that particular path in his zeal. With the fortitude of the high tide causing he body to rise up freed from the dead tree trunk that had held it down, his perspicacity meant he happened to be in the right spot at the right time.

It is no great mystery.

Oh. Good. Grief.

You're actually suggesting (in this forum of all places) that it was a combination of his innate psychic abilities plus his dedication to practising/exploiting his innate psychic abilities.... which enabled him to find the body?

 

[Vixen]

This guy didn't discover the body because he has any sort of supernatural powers. And that's because... he doesn't have any sort of supernatural powers. End of.

He discovered the body because he was searching for it, and happened upon it. I wouldn't be surprised if at least several other fraudulent (or mentally ill) "psychics" hadn't also travelled up to that area trusting their "powers" to guide them to her body.

Why the hate? Spiritualists are not necessarily any more knowingly fraudulent than the local vicar or rabbi.

 

[Nessie]

Why the hate? Spiritualists are not necessarily any more knowingly fraudulent than the local vicar or rabbi.

Good point, they all expound pish in return for money.

 

[Vixen]

Oh. Good. Grief.

You're actually suggesting (in this forum of all places) that it was a combination of his innate psychic abilities plus his dedication to practising/exploiting his innate psychic abilities.... which enabled him to find the body?

For humans minds, time is linear. We know the past and we experience the present. What hides its face is the future. We can only predict the future and thus arises probability theory based on the historical past or the observable present. Thus, people desperate to know what the future holds will be drawn to diviners who claim to have the art: astrologers, tarot readers, crystal ball gazers, etcetera. A lot of this is a simple form of psychotherapy. The person wanting to know what the future holds stares at the tarot card and projects his or her own reflections onto it, identifying what's on the tarot card, with his or her own mental state or current situation.

The other thing human minds desire is to keep in contact with departed loved ones: enter the mediums.

Because the Christian Church based on Abrahamic origins believes all occult and divinity is the work of the devil and evil, it has become very much underground but people have been doing it since time immemorial, shamans, astrologers, mediums, etcetera. You would be shocked to know how many world leaders, kings and generals have secretly consulted astrologer to discover the optimal time for putting key plans (such as battles) into practice.

You do know the Reformation of the 1550's came about because of the Catholic priests practice of selling penances and graces to gullible parishioners promising them a speedy passage through purgatory only if they paid up.

So Rothwell being a medium is nothing new, out of the ordinary or even remarkable. He probably, so to speak, put his skills of probability theory into practice, albeit an unconventional form of it.

 

[LondonJohn]

Why the hate? Spiritualists are not necessarily any more knowingly fraudulent than......<snip>

That's why I stated that they are either fraudulent or mentally ill.


(There's no third possibility, by the way)

 

[LondonJohn]

For humans minds, time is linear. We know the past and we experience the present. What hides its face is the future. We can only predict the future and thus arises probability theory based on the historical past or the observable present. Thus, people desperate to know what the future holds will be drawn to diviners who claim to have the art: astrologers, tarot readers, crystal ball gazers, etcetera. A lot of this is a simple form of psychotherapy. The person wanting to know what the future holds stares at the tarot card and projects his or her own reflections onto it, identifying what's on the tarot card, with his or her own mental state or current situation.

The other thing human minds desire is to keep in contact with departed loved ones: enter the mediums.

Because the Christian Church based on Abrahamic origins believes all occult and divinity is the work of the devil and evil, it has become very much underground but people have been doing it since time immemorial, shamans, astrologers, mediums, etcetera. You would be shocked to know how many world leaders, kings and generals have secretly consulted astrologer to discover the optimal time for putting key plans (such as battles) into practice.

You do know the Reformation of the 1550's came about because of the Catholic priests practice of selling penances and graces to gullible parishioners promising them a speedy passage through purgatory only if they paid up.

So Rothwell being a medium is nothing new, out of the ordinary or even remarkable. He probably, so to speak, put his skills of probability theory into practice, albeit an unconventional form of it.

What the heck are you on about now???

How is your ludicrous history lesson in any way relevant to what I was saying, or to the matter at hand? You know kings and popes also (for example) used to believe the Earth was at the centre of the universe, or that you could cure sick people by administering the ground up skulls of people who'd died when young and otherwise in good health, don't you?

Whether kings, popes, or a woman in a muddy hovel ever believed in psychic/supernatural abilities is of precisely zero relevance or use here. What's of use here is our current level of knowledge about the universe, our application of the scientific method, and our current understanding of the human body & mind.

And all of those things tell us, categorically, that 1) it's fundamentally beyond the well-understood constraints of the human body & mind for any human to possess so-called "supernatural powers"; 2) there has never, ever, in all of human history, been any reliable, testable evidence that anyone has ever possessed such powers (and never a single instance where "supernatural powers" is the only reasonable explanation for anything); and therefore 3) to all intents and purposes, we can say with extremely high confidence that no person genuinely does possess "supernatural powers".


To reiterate: if this guy is sincerely claiming that he has "supernatural powers", and that it was these powers which led him to discover the body (plus remember that, by definition, he must also be claiming he's used his "supernatural powers" in at least one previous instance....), then he's either a fraud or he is mentally ill.

 

[Darat]

...snip...


To reiterate: if this guy is sincerely claiming that he has "supernatural powers", and that it was these powers which led him to discover the body (plus remember that, by definition, he must also be claiming he's used his "supernatural powers" in at least one previous instance....), then he's either a fraud or he is mentally ill.

He could genuinely and sincerely believe he has superpowers. I don't think psychics are all frauds.

 

[LondonJohn]

Why the hate? Spiritualists are not necessarily any more knowingly fraudulent than the local vicar or rabbi.

By the way, and since you brought religious groups into this:

What would you think if, say, a Catholic priest had found the body, and he had subsequently claimed that he'd prayed really hard the night before.... and God, in his wisdom omnipotence and omniscience, had guided him (the priest) to the body?

Would you consider that to be a feasible and reasonable set of circumstances? That he had found the body because God had guided him to the body?


(PS: Excitingly, I've just been granted the concession by the UK Government to sell Tower Bridge - if you want to get in on the deal early, I'm sure I can get you a very favourable bargain.)

 

[LondonJohn]

He could genuinely and sincerely believe he has superpowers. I don't think psychics are all frauds.

Me neither. But that's my point: if he does genuinely and sincerely believe he has superpowers, then he's suffering from a delusion (or other related mental health disorder). Because..... nobody actually does have superpowers.

 

[Pixel42]

He could genuinely and sincerely believe he has superpowers. I don't think psychics are all frauds.

In my experience it's usually only believers who insist that 'true', 'deliberate fraud' and 'deluded' are the only possible explanations of supposedly paranormal powers and events, when 'honestly mistaken' is by far the most likely explanation of most of them.

 

[Pixel42]

Me neither. But that's my point: if he does genuinely and sincerely believe he has superpowers, then he's suffering from a delusion (or other related mental health disorder). Because..... nobody actually does have superpowers.

But it's very easy to inadvertently fool yourself into believing that, especially when you have no knowledge or understanding of the cognitive biases that made it necessary to invent the scientific method.

 

[LondonJohn]

In my experience it's usually only believers who insist that 'true', 'deliberate fraud' and 'deluded' are the only possible explanations of supposedly paranormal powers and events, when 'honestly mistaken' is by far the most likely explanation of most of them.

Disagree.

And the tipping point comes when someone declares that they have these abilities. For someone to actually decide "Yes, I am a psychic" or "Yes, I possess supernatural abilities", we're talking about something beyond "honestly mistaken".

Look: suppose when I was 18, I had seen a news story about a missing woman. Suppose I told a friend "I just have this vision in my head of her partner killing her then hiding her body in the woods". And then it transpired that this was exactly what had happened. Now, if I were the credulous type, I might have thought to myself (or said to others) "Wow! Maybe I have supernatural abilities!" But nobody in their right mind would declare themselves to have supernatural powers on the basis of one event - and an event which is clearly also explainable by a combination of a) knowledge of prior events (when women go missing, it's far from uncommon to find out they've been murdered by their partner) and b) sheer luck.

Rather.... in order for me to declare I have supernatural powers, I'd have had to experience some sort of pattern of "supernatural divination". One has to consistently hit the bullseye on the target (rather than just hitting one or two random bullseyes) if one is going to declare oneself to be a marksman, after all. And it's this which makes the difference.

Let's suppose for a moment that this guy had travelled up to the area as a mere common-or-garden "amateur sleuth" or as someone who just felt compelled to try to help out in any way he could. Let's say he found the body, and that he described it in the following terms: "I can't really explain it. Early this morning, I think I got this strange feeling that her body was caught up in some reeds a long way downstream from that bench. It's like I could almost visualise her body. It feels like I got some sort of supernatural guidance."

Now that kind of thing I can absolutely put down to an honest mistake.

But... deciding in advance that one has "supernatural powers", then travelling up to the area of this incident in the belief that one's "supernatural powers" will lead one to the body..... that's a whole different kettle of fish. That, my friend, is either fraud or delusion (or similar).

 

[Carrot Flower King]

Skill at looking or listening is not a psychic power: I could and did regularly get information out of folk that they did not even realise they had given to me; bairns on 2 in-patient units I worked on were convinced I had their rooms bugged, just because they were nowhere near as careful about what they said and where as they thought they'd been.

Most of my colleagues (see also the likes of Nessie) could do the same.

I've been out with other birders more experienced than me, who can spot the presence of certain birds way before I do.

"Psychic" powers not required, just skill and experience and observation.

 

[LondonJohn]

And not to drag this thread too far away from the specific case under discussion, but...

.... the exact same differentiation is applicable to the whole area of mystics and mediums. I'm perfectly willing to accept that someone who, in one or two discrete instances, claims to have communed with dead relatives, might be honestly mistaken.

But someone who declares that they have the power to commune with dead people, and who book theatres to display their supernatural talents (whether for money or not) - well those people are not "honestly mistaken" in their belief about their powers. They are either fraudulent or mentally ill.

 

[LondonJohn]

Skill at looking or listening is not a psychic power: I could and did regularly get information out of folk that they did not even realise they had given to me; bairns on 2 in-patient units I worked on were convinced I had their rooms bugged, just because they were nowhere near as careful about what they said and where as they thought they'd been.

Most of my colleagues (see also the likes of Nessie) could do the same.

I've been out with other birders more experienced than me, who can spot the presence of certain birds way before I do.

"Psychic" powers not required, just skill and experience and observation.

Absolutely. But the sort of intuition and experience you're talking about here is a world away from claiming you have supernatural powers directing you to finding dead bodies (or from claiming you have supernatural powers which enable you to communicate with dead people).

 

[Myriad]

I think honest misconception predominates at the neighborhood level of "Of course I'm a little bit psychic, I think everyone is. Remember that time you said you were worried about your mother and not two hours later you got that phone call that she had a fall?"

 

[Pixel42]

One has to consistently hit the bullseye on the target (rather than just hitting one or two random bullseyes) if one is going to declare oneself to be a marksman, after all.

You'd think. Yet a tendency to vastly underestimate the likelihood that coincidences will occur has been the most common mistake I have encountered in discussions with people who give credence to the paranormal and supernatural.

I agree with you about the people who actually make their living out of this stuff, though. Even if they start out with a genuine belief in their ability, the speed with which they have to resort to cheating must make the scales fall from their eyes pretty quickly.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Einstein once said that genius is 1% talent and 99% perspiration ...

Rightly or wrongly that's usually attributed to Edison, isn't it? 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

And 0% magical powers, obviously.

 

[Vixen]

What the heck are you on about now???

How is your ludicrous history lesson in any way relevant to what I was saying, or to the matter at hand? You know kings and popes also (for example) used to believe the Earth was at the centre of the universe, or that you could cure sick people by administering the ground up skulls of people who'd died when young and otherwise in good health, don't you?

Whether kings, popes, or a woman in a muddy hovel ever believed in psychic/supernatural abilities is of precisely zero relevance or use here. What's of use here is our current level of knowledge about the universe, our application of the scientific method, and our current understanding of the human body & mind.

And all of those things tell us, categorically, that 1) it's fundamentally beyond the well-understood constraints of the human body & mind for any human to possess so-called "supernatural powers"; 2) there has never, ever, in all of human history, been any reliable, testable evidence that anyone has ever possessed such powers (and never a single instance where "supernatural powers" is the only reasonable explanation for anything); and therefore 3) to all intents and purposes, we can say with extremely high confidence that no person genuinely does possess "supernatural powers".


To reiterate: if this guy is sincerely claiming that he has "supernatural powers", and that it was these powers which led him to discover the body (plus remember that, by definition, he must also be claiming he's used his "supernatural powers" in at least one previous instance....), then he's either a fraud or he is mentally ill.

Amongst all of the jiggery-pokery of medieval and Victorian/Edwardian the introduction of the scientific method was a welcome breath of fresh air to clear away all the tired old junk of alchemy, magick, theosophist ethers, angels, ghosts, spirits, fairies, etcetera. The Carl Popper method of the null hypothesis, i.e., assuming something does not exist unless it can be scientifically proven, peer reviewed and the method of said proof replicable. A jolly welcome clearance of a load of nonsense clutter!

However, whilst science can prove a thing or phenomenon does exist or cannot exist, it can't prove that something abstract does not exist nor can never be proven.

Simply to write off that something as 'madness', 'fraud' or 'delusion' isn't scientific in itself. They are just dismissive words.

As for applying he word 'supernatural': are instincts or 'common sense' 'supernatural? What if they are actually quite natural? All animals have instincts and we can explain it by pointing to an area at the back of the skull that all mammals have, or some kind of photosynthesis reflex to light or amoebic reaction to touch. But what about the strange behaviour of birds recently in the Turkey-Syria disaster? They were acting restlessly long before the earthquake was registered on the Richter scale. Would you label that 'supernatural' just because it is inexplicable or rather, unregisterable on any measurable scale, or can we say, actually, the birds had a natural instinct whatever it was; changes in the air, minute vibrations in the trees that unnerved them, etc.?

Your claim to recognise what is and what is not supernatural is a futile and baseless one.


Perhaps Rothwell knows better than you in his subject area?

 

[Vixen]

By the way, and since you brought religious groups into this:

What would you think if, say, a Catholic priest had found the body, and he had subsequently claimed that he'd prayed really hard the night before.... and God, in his wisdom omnipotence and omniscience, had guided him (the priest) to the body?

Would you consider that to be a feasible and reasonable set of circumstances? That he had found the body because God had guided him to the body?


(PS: Excitingly, I've just been granted the concession by the UK Government to sell Tower Bridge - if you want to get in on the deal early, I'm sure I can get you a very favourable bargain.)

I don't bother with hypothetical questions.

Let's stick to reality, which is a guy called Jason Rothwell did find a missing person's body and did claim he was a medium using his gift.

• If the body had been found by the police, we'd be saying, it was thanks to police skill.
• If the body was found by divers, we'd say it was thanks to the skill of the divers.
• If the body was found by Mr. Faulding, we'd be marvelling at what a skilled rescuer he was and his £55K sonar machine bloody marvellous!
• If the body was found by a medium using his skills, let's say, 'Thank you, Jason, your skills were great!'