Shameless Joe Nickel

[jakesteele]

This thread is about Shameless Joe Nickel, one of the more prominent public faces of the skeptics’ movement. Shameless Joe also holds the dubious honor of being the first ever inductee into the Skeptibunkers Hall of Shame. He earned his spot with this ludicrous explanation for the following Implausible Plausibile™ in this documentary about Human Levitation:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1gmys3

Go to the 14 min. mark and watch for yourselves how Shameless Joe bumbles his way through his debunking of the Flying Friar and ends up with the most asinine conclusion I’ve ever heard.

I’m surprised no one has called him out on this kind of drivel before. After all, he’s out there representing you guys as one of the more prominent faces of the Skeptics’ movement. So what say you?

 

[Darat]

This thread is about Shameless Joe Nickel, one of the more prominent public faces of the skeptics’ movement. Shameless Joe also holds the dubious honor of being the first ever inductee into the Skeptibunkers Hall of Shame. He earned his spot with this ludicrous explanation for the following Implausible Plausibile™ in this documentary about Human Levitation:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1gmys3

Go to the 14 min. mark and watch for yourselves how Shameless Joe bumbles his way through his debunking of the Flying Friar and ends up with the most asinine conclusion I’ve ever heard.

I’m surprised no one has called him out on this kind of drivel before. After all, he’s out there representing you guys as one of the more prominent faces of the Skeptics’ movement. So what say you?

What do you say about him representing you?

 

[Dave Rogers]

Shameless Joe also holds the dubious honor of being the first ever inductee into the Skeptibunkers Hall of Shame.

Would you like to publish a few of the details on how this honour was allocated? I note that a Google search on "Skeptibunkers Hall of Shame" yields no hits right at the moment, so I suspect it's not exactly a well-known award.

So what say you?

I say I can't be bothered to watch your video, or respond seriously to a post that comprises nothing but content-free sneering; how about you actually post some comment about the "asinine conclusion" that you're choosing this roundabout and borderline abusive way to introduce into debate?

Dave

 

[fagin]

Who?

 

[zooterkin]

Who?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Nickell

One of the old-school skeptics from Randi’s generation. I met him at TAM in 2010; nice guy, I think I still have the wooden nickel he gave me.

The video doesn’t play for me, but I’d need to see something other than a video edited by a third party to be convinced that what I saw with my own eyes wasn’t the real person.

 

[zooterkin]

Don’t know what’s in the video, but here’s Joe Nickell writing about the levitation of St Joseph:
https://www.csicop.org/si/show/secr...r_did_st._joseph_of_copertino_really_levitate

 

[baron]

He said that the alleged levitation of this monk was achieved through an unusual level of athleticism that so over-awed the witnesses that they believed him to be indulging in supernatural flight. Quite amusing, really. It just shows that you need no more critical thinking skills to be a skeptic than you do to be a peddler of woo.

 

[zooterkin]

He said that the alleged levitation of this monk was achieved through an unusual level of athleticism that so over-awed the witnesses that they believed him to be indulging in supernatural flight. Quite amusing, really. It just shows that you need no more critical thinking skills to be a skeptic than you do to be a peddler of woo.

You think he was actually flying?

 

[Dave Rogers]

He said that the alleged levitation of this monk was achieved through an unusual level of athleticism that so over-awed the witnesses that they believed him to be indulging in supernatural flight.

Aside from simple scoffing, what counter-arguments would you advance to this suggestion?

Dave

 

[Pacal]

He said that the alleged levitation of this monk was achieved through an unusual level of athleticism that so over-awed the witnesses that they believed him to be indulging in supernatural flight. Quite amusing, really. It just shows that you need no more critical thinking skills to be a skeptic than you do to be a peddler of woo.

Actually what is amusing is thinking that the flying Friar did in fact levitate. Frankly Nickel's rather "lame" explanation is more plausible than the Friar actually levitating. Faced between a choice between a "miracle" and the prosaic the prosaic wins unless the evidence is overwhelmingly makes that unlikely.

I think Nickel's explanation is simply not needed, a combination of delusion, exaggeration and out and out lying is better. Certainly better than actually believing that this "miracle" really happened.

What Hume said about miracles applies here. There is simply not enough here to conclude that the Friar actually, like the flying Nun, flew rather than some combination of lies, delusion and exaggeration.

As for what really happened. Who knows? But until someone is shown to levitate under controlled conditions, and the Friar's flights were definitely not that, any prosaic explanation is more plausible than the Friar floating.

 

[Belz...]

I’m surprised no one has called him out on this kind of drivel before. After all, he’s out there representing you guys as one of the more prominent faces of the Skeptics’ movement. So what say you?

Sorry, I didn't vote for him as my duly appointed representative.

 

[baron]

You think he was actually flying?

Ah, nope.

Actually what is amusing is thinking that the flying Friar did in fact levitate. Frankly Nickel's rather "lame" explanation is more plausible than the Friar actually levitating. Faced between a choice between a "miracle" and the prosaic the prosaic wins unless the evidence is overwhelmingly makes that unlikely.

Or we could consider reasonable explanations, such as reverence for a specific character in situations where religious ecstasy might be attained leading to spiritual feelings being confused with objective reality and these reports being embellished and exaggerated over time.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Or we could consider reasonable explanations, such as reverence for a specific character in situations where religious ecstasy might be attained leading to spiritual feelings being confused with objective reality and these reports being embellished and exaggerated over time.

Or, indeed, a combination of these; it's quite possible, for example, that the friar did indeed do some things that were unusually athletic for the time and that these were seen through the lens of spiritual beliefs, embellished and exaggerated.

(Which, if you actually read the article rather than diminishing it to a convenient soundbite, is more or less what Nickell is suggesting.)

Dave

 

[Pacal]

This thread is about Shameless Joe Nickel, one of the more prominent public faces of the skeptics’ movement. Shameless Joe also holds the dubious honor of being the first ever inductee into the Skeptibunkers Hall of Shame. He earned his spot with this ludicrous explanation for the following Implausible Plausibile™ in this documentary about Human Levitation:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1gmys3

Go to the 14 min. mark and watch for yourselves how Shameless Joe bumbles his way through his debunking of the Flying Friar and ends up with the most asinine conclusion I’ve ever heard.

I’m surprised no one has called him out on this kind of drivel before. After all, he’s out there representing you guys as one of the more prominent faces of the Skeptics’ movement. So what say you?

Lets talk about your words describing Nickel's explanation. "Ludicrous" - it is of course ludicrous that the Friar actually floated. "Implausible" - it is of course implausible that the Friar floated. But then Nickel's rather lame explanation is of course more plausible than the Friar floating.

"Asinine" - it is of course asinine to think, without overwhelming evidence, that the Friar floated.

"Drivel" - that the Friar actually floated.

But then one of the more repellant and common tropes in Catholicism over the centuries has been the manufacture of miracle tales regarding actual and would be saints. In Montreal there exists a veritable cult around a Brother Andre complete with "miracles". During Brother Andre's life miracle tales circulated in abundance concerning him. Catholic accounts of Saints are filled with "eyewitness" stories of miracles, etc., it just goes with the genre of Saint making. The tales are implausible to the nth degree usually.

I have no idea what actually happened but bluntly I just can't take the miracle tales of the floating Friar seriously. The fact that it also fits into a Catholic trope of floating Saints doesn't help either. There is also a Catholic trope of bearded Nuns who became bearded in order to become or remain Nuns. (Which is actually much more plausible than the floating Friar.)

 

[baron]

Or, indeed, a combination of these; it's quite possible, for example, that the friar did indeed do some things that were unusually athletic for the time and that these were seen through the lens of spiritual beliefs, embellished and exaggerated.

(Which, if you actually read the article rather than diminishing it to a convenient soundbite, is more or less what Nickell is suggesting.)

He's not. Monks don't run and jump around churches except in comedy skits. There's no need for such absurd assumptions, religious ecstasy and the spiritual mindset of observers is all that's necessary, together with the appropriate suggestions.

 

[Dave Rogers]

He's not. Monks don't run and jump around churches except in comedy skits. There's no need for such absurd assumptions, religious ecstasy and the spiritual mindset of observers is all that's necessary, together with the appropriate suggestions.

Nickell is trying to come up with plausible explanations for actual eyewitness accounts that make very specific claims. Simply saying what you've said above would be rejected out of hand by believers; it's what woo-pedlars like to dismiss as pseudoskepticism, the automatic rejection of anything that doesn't fit with the skeptic's world view. So imagine you're arguing Nickell's side, and a True Believer [tm] comes back to you with the rejoinder that there are specific contemporary accounts that describe in detail the phenomena claimed; what's your next move? Claiming that contemporary accounts were "embellished and and exaggerated over time" won't convince anyone.

Dave

 

[Pacal]

Originally Posted by zooterkin View Post

You think he was actually flying?

Ah, nope.

Originally Posted by Pacal View Post

Actually what is amusing is thinking that the flying Friar did in fact levitate. Frankly Nickel's rather "lame" explanation is more plausible than the Friar actually levitating. Faced between a choice between a "miracle" and the prosaic the prosaic wins unless the evidence is overwhelmingly makes that unlikely.

Or we could consider reasonable explanations, such as reverence for a specific character in situations where religious ecstasy might be attained leading to spiritual feelings being confused with objective reality and these reports being embellished and exaggerated over time.

How that is much more "reasonable" than Nickel's explanation is beyond me. Especially since Nickel was trying to explain why people would explicitly say that they saw the Friar actually floating. I further note that I've read before of the stories of this Friar and supposedly from the accounts many of the scenes of him Floating were by people not in a state of religious ecstasy etc., but just prosaically doing the their regular day to day stuff. I just don't see that we have enough information to decide the issue. Although of course actual levitation is extremely unlikely. Frankly I agree that Nickel's explanation can't be the whole thing. Assuming it has any validity. But then I think Nickel's "mistake" was in taking the accounts of the Friar's floating too seriously and trying to explain them on that basis.

And of course your more "reasonable" explanation - i.e., some sort of delusion will strike some people has highly unreasonable. My point was that faced between the Friar floating and Nickel's explanation; Nickel's explanation wins hands down.

 

[Venom]

I enjoyed his smug commentary on things like "chi" and Lochness monster stuff..

 

[baron]

Nickell is trying to come up with plausible explanations for actual eyewitness accounts that make very specific claims. Simply saying what you've said above would be rejected out of hand by believers; it's what woo-pedlars like to dismiss as pseudoskepticism, the automatic rejection of anything that doesn't fit with the skeptic's world view. So imagine you're arguing Nickell's side, and a True Believer [tm] comes back to you with the rejoinder that there are specific contemporary accounts that describe in detail the phenomena claimed; what's your next move? Claiming that contemporary accounts were "embellished and and exaggerated over time" won't convince anyone.

Dave

I'm not out to convince anybody. The explanation is more complex than what I summarised in a couple of sentences but it really doesn't involve a monk leaping about and pretending to fly. For some reason it's commonly assumed that people living more than a couple of centuries ago were retarded and didn't know what they were looking at, in this case mistaking some old geezer jumping off a pew for a man levitating into the rafters for half an hour at a time. They would no more mistake such an event than you or I would.

I've never come across this particular skeptic (or if I have I dismissed him, which is more than possible) but he seems to be of the 'swamp gas' school of thought, that any narrative that falls without the bounds of physics is preferable to the paranormal explanation and thus must be adopted by default. That's just lazy thinking, if indeed it can be characterised at all by the latter word.

The other factor in this case, which is common in many cases, is that many dozens of witnesses are claimed and as such it's asserted that something physical must have taken place. This is not necessarily so, because witness statements are rarely individually published. More often they are collected and published by a single source, or summarised by a single source, so a failure of authenticity of that source invalidates all statements it purports to represent. I'm not saying that's the case here, and I know several accounts are attested to by the individuals concerned, but it's certainly something worth bearing in mind.

 

[Matthew Ellard]

The video did not work for me.

Here is a magic levitation trick. You simply cut out the sole of one shoe. If you stand in the right way to the audience you can levitate 10 centimeters.