You would need to give me a good reason to do so. Unremarkable events and insignificant coincidences are not a good reason. Especially when everything I see around me, not to mention a couple of centuries of scientific investigation by minds far superior to mine, argues against the view of the world that you advocate.
Except that there is not a smidgen of evidence that any of this is true. And there would be, if it was.
Because the human brain is hard wired to look for patterns and attach significance to those patterns. Because false positives are not as potentially fatal as false negatives. Our brains evolved to be more likely to mistake noise for signal than signal for noise for very good reasons.
It's not paranoid or despairing to recognise that we have built in cognitive biases which we need to allow for when determining whether patterns we think we see are really there. It's why the scientific method had to be invented, and the bounty from that is still being reaped.
He takes it as far as necessary to expose the frauds, the mistaken and the deluded. The fact that there is nothing left is hardly his fault.
Illnesses sometimes go into spontaneous remission, especially under circumstances when powerful suggestion is at work. The reasons why are not fully understood, but good progress is being made. Such cases are not evidence for your worldview, no matter how compelling individuals may find particular instances.
No it does not. It argues against superstition, sloppy thinking and fundamentalism.
I think your shell was far thinner than it should have been, given what the law of large numbers tells us about coincidences and how often they can reasonably be expected to occur.
Yes, when I say blue triangle's example doesn't convince me that synchronicity is real I don't mean that the feeling that the coincidence is meaningful isn't real, I just mean I don't think it's warranted.
Stating that there is no evidence means nothing if the evidence is only ever given when nobody else is looking! Science operates under certain reasonable assumptions, one of them being that effects should be repeatable. Synchronicities are not repeatable.
No, it does not say that. It just hasn't detected them, although even that is arguable. Much high quality psi research has been done, but it generally cannot find a mainstream outlet. The reason for that is because we are not simply dealing with some scientific research, we are dealing with our deepest beliefs about reality. And so the stakes are very, very high.
There is much to argue with here. For one thing, patterns are not the same as meaning. Yes, it can be fatal to ignore the footsteps of the approaching lion, but people become good at determining what is real and what is not, including spiritual people. And spiritual experiences such as synchronicities often occur many times before people become convinced they are real phenomena. Another thing: evolution has selected for survival, not truth, and if our brains are a reflection of that process then we may very well be hard-wired to hold to certain views and incapable of breaking out of it without some assistance, in which case we really do need the grace of God.
Science and spirituality are not at war here, despite surface appearances. Science and superstition are, science and fundamentalism are, science and charlatanism are, and in each case I support science. I don't support science because of what I've found in scientific textbooks, or what scientists or others have said to me, although all these were taken into account. I support science on the evidence of my own life, because the processes I use myself (and others do too) to test the assertions of others and the nature of physical are the methods science uses. In fact scientific instruments are really just extentions of our senses and the processes of induction and deduction are formalistions of our thought processes. But it's those very processes that also led me to abandon the scientific naturalism of my youth and embrace a spiritual worldview.
He's also admitted now to less-than honest dealings with some of his pponents. See 'Debunking the King of Debunkers'.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...andi-debunking-the-king-of-the-debunkers.html
David Copperfield made the statue of liberty disappear, and it was witnessed by hundreds in person and thousands on television. I'd rather see a leg grow an inch while in front of one xray machine than a thousand believers. But charlatans have all kinds of excuses to avoid that, not because spiritual healings are real, but because they need to protect the illusion.
I wasn't, not consciously at least. I was an atheist for 27 years and very skeptical about any and all unusual phenomena. I changed because of the evidence presented to me in my life and internally. I can't prove any of it to you. But we should have some confidence in the evidence of our senses, especially when similar events are repeated (there's your replicability, although only for the person concerned) and form a meaningful pattern in our lives. The idea of meaning is crucial here. Meaning is very personal of course, but not completely and can be confirmed by others. It is also claimed to be entirely abstract but at a fundamental level meaning is information and information takes energy to impart. In fact, Japanese scientists have converted information directly into energy. So implying meaning is entirely subjective or unreal is wrong on two counts.
It was thin only because it was ready to crack!
Eh? What did they do? Burn a newspaper?
Eh? What did they do? Burn a newspaper?
