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StopSylvia email: "oh no"

Here is the email I sent to the correspondent, posted here now with Ex-Minister;'s kind permission:

[Name]:

You are quite welcome.

By the way, I shared your first email with a friend of mine who then said that she saw a whole lot of herself in you.

She and I first met when she emailed me very early on in my site's development.

She was FAR MORE than a simple fan of Sylvia Browne. She was a minister in Browne's "Church of Novus Spiritus", and had been for many years!

She had day-to-day, face-to-face contact with Browne all that time, working at Browne's headquarters, and it had become more and more difficult for her to ignore all of the inconsistencies, contradictions and failed predictions as they piled up.

however, she says that it took seeing it all laid out on my web site, along with the friendly correspondence which grew between us, before she came to the firm, inescapable conclusion that Browne was not what she claimed to be.

With that one leak in the dam of her belief system, she started to question her many other beliefs in psychics, the afterlife, and other such "paranormal" topics, and often asked for my opinion on them.

She began to realize that many, perhaps all of those beliefs had been based NOT on the evidence, but on what she WANTED so desperately to be true.

And she began to see the value in this "critical thinking" I so often mentioned, and asked if I could recommend any books on the subect to help her to better understand it.

I mentioned two or three, but the one I recommended most strongly was Carl Sagan's "The Demon-haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark".

She read it - no, she DEVOURED it, and was hooked! It helped her to see the value in an evidence-based approach to examining claims. She ended up shedding most all of her earlier beliefs, and is now a big promoter of critical thinking!

It was definitely not an easy path for her to choose. Not only did she lose some cherished beliefs, and decide she had wasted twenty-some years in Browne's church, she also ended up losing/alienating many friends and relatives who were still believers in many of the things she now recognized to be nonsense.

So, [Name], she wanted me to pass on to you a recommendation to read Sagan's book which, she says, changed her life. She recognized in your email a yearning for truth much like her own back when she and I met, and hoped that the book might help you as well.

The book is not everyone's "cup of tea" though. My wife Susan tried to read it, but had trouble getting into it a all.

Best regards,

-Robert
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...and here is the corespondent;'s reply:

awwwwwww, thanx yall---ive ALWAYS loved carl sagan.....and ive actually been led to study him a lot more recently thru several websites....his name just keeps coming up.....i was going to order another of his books 'the dragons of eden', so now i think ill order them both. again thanks to you both, im a voracious reader and still a seeker.....
Click to expand...

And yes, Ex-M, I figured I was simplifyng your story a bit, but felt that further details were, as you say, outside the scope of that email.
 
Not sure if this is exactly the right place for this, but I recently noticed some billboards in the Milwaukee area about an appearance by Sylvia at the local casino there. Grrr.
 
Its my opinion that you have a site for which to publish and respond to emails. I find your constant posting of them here inappropiate. It's my opinion that you post them here for the sole purpose of getting traffic to your site.

As i feel this place is not for advertising, id ask that you stop doing it.

Thanks.
 
mushy, thanks for expressing your opinion.

When I post new articles to the site, which I have not been able to do for some time now, I create threads here linking to them and requesting feedback on the new article. I could see how someone could interpret those threads as advertisements, but not these email threads, which rarely link to the site.

I post them here because many here have - and contiue to - express interest in the emails I receive at SSB. You feel otherwse, I get that.

If you feel strongly enough about it, please register a complaint about it to the forum moderators. If they feel your complaint has sufficient merit, i will be told to change what I am doing.

Until such time, I will continue to post any emails I receive there which I feel worth sharing.
 
I like to read the e-mails. Never felt the need to say it before, but as long as we're posting personal opinions...

Ward
 
I then sent this:

Please let me know what you think of the book when you read it.

Another author whose books you might enjoy is James Randi (sometimes known by his stage name James "the Amazing" Randi.

Randi has been something of an idol of mine since the early 1980, and I am proud to say that he has, in recent years, become a personal friend of mine.

He has written several books, but two which I would recommend to you at ths stage would be "Flim-Flam!" and "The Faith Healers".

Randi coms across on TV as an irrascible old curmudgeon, but he is actually quite a sweetheart in person.
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...to which he/she replied:

i actually like randi....ive seen him numerous times on cable and hes cool! yes hes a blunt old guy, but he has to be dealing with the subject matter that he does, i guess! i will letcha know about the sagan books....and i really appreciate you and your friend taking a personal interest in my email and self. thats so rare and truly very kind of you both! im in such a hard place in my life...going thru a bad divorce, financially strapped, two teenagers, no car, and i had to leave all my friends behind to sober up and get my life in some kind of order. but, im also in a very good place, because ive changed for the better so much and im feeling very blessed. my life is truly happy and getting better all the time, thanks for being a new friend....it means A LOT to me!:)
[name]
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What Warden said.
I am also one of those that gravitate towards the StopSylvia threads, especially taken in by your polite and careful tone. Thanks RSL. And most other contributors.

Mushy, if you don't like it, don't click it.

[/delurk]
 
Femke said:
What Warden said.
I am also one of those that gravitate towards the StopSylvia threads, especially taken in by your polite and careful tone. Thanks RSL. And most other contributors.

Mushy, if you don't like it, don't click it.

[/delurk]
Click to expand...

Agreed :)
 
It's a very touching letter. Few of us have been fortunate enough to enjoy the opportunity to make such meaningful and positive changes in the lives of others...especially the influence you have had on random strangers. You have a perfect right to post your evidence of such worthy accomplishments here on JREF, in my opinion.

The fact that you make millions of dollars by directing traffic to you website is of no importance to me. :D I'm sure you give most of it to the Obama campaign.
 
I knowyou were kidding olowkow, but for the benefit of others who may be reading this, I will state for the record that I earn zero dollrs from the site. Even the sales of the t-shirts and mugs on the site's Support page have brought in less than $100 in the nearly five years the site has been in existance. The site has cost me more than it has brought in (which is fine by me, as it was never intended as a money-making venture).

I suppose it might be said by some that the money donated to my medical fund after my stroke (some $21,000 - used to purchase our wheelchair-accessible Dodge Caravan minivan) was indirect income from the site, but I would disagree.
 
Femke said:
What Warden said.
I am also one of those that gravitate towards the StopSylvia threads, especially taken in by your polite and careful tone. Thanks RSL. And most other contributors.

Mushy, if you don't like it, don't click it.

[/delurk]
Click to expand...

This ^
 
mushy said:
Its my opinion that you have a site for which to publish and respond to emails. I find your constant posting of them here inappropiate. It's my opinion that you post them here for the sole purpose of getting traffic to your site.

As i feel this place is not for advertising, id ask that you stop doing it.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
You know, it's funny, I enjoy these threads about the e-mails Robert receives and yet I never feel compelled to go back and view the Stop Sylvia site. The posts with the e-mails are pretty much self-contained. But now, after having read your post, I realize that it's been a while since I've looked at Robert's site, so I think I'll go and do just that. Thanks for suggesting it! :)
 
RSLancastr said:
I knowyou were kidding olowkow, but for the benefit of others who may be reading this, I will state for the record that I earn zero dollrs from the site. Even the sales of the t-shirts and mugs on the site's Support page have brought in less than $100 in the nearly five years the site has been in existance. The site has cost me more than it has brought in (which is fine by me, as it was never intended as a money-making venture).

I suppose it might be said by some that the money donated to my medical fund after my stroke (some $21,000 - used to purchase our wheelchair-accessible Dodge Caravan minivan) was indirect income from the site, but I would disagree.
Click to expand...

Yes, of course, smilies all around.....:):):) but I provided you with a chance to state for the record how the site has been run so as to defuse any critics.:):):) All the best to you.
 
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