Psychics

[Kovacs]

Ah but that's my point- yeah they will believe it, but I think with psychic you can actually make them see its bollocks. Unlike reWligion, something as allegedly tangible as psychic activity should be provable. Take the James Randi foundation- they still offer 1 million dollars to ANYONE who can prove supernatural ability of any kind. Of ANY kind. And I don't think they even have to pass 100%, I think they just have to doI substantially better than what is statistically achieved through 'luck'.

You can show a theist that their belief is bollocks, the same as you can a psychic but if they have enough faith in that belief it really doesn't matter what you show them. That's the beauty of faith, facts are irrelevant.

[Chili Pepper]

You can show a theist that their belief is bollocks, the same as you can a psychic but if they have enough faith in that belief it really doesn't matter what you show them. That's the beauty of faith, facts are irrelevant.

And showing them (psychics or the religious) often will just make them more entrenched in their beliefs.

On the other hand, when I explained to my kids (probably aged 10 and 11 at the time) what homeopathy was about, they were astounded that any adult would believe such stuff worked.

[Petter]

Now I understand the 'debate' is similar to religion and God, but there's one key difference- it's actually provable, (whilst no one can truly prove/ disprove the existence of a god).

Of course psychics are bullshit, but your distinction is false. We can disprove many particular instances of psychics, but so can we disprove many instances of gods: Scientists have figured out how lightning works without appealing to Thor or Zeus, just as we now know how the planets orbit without appeal to angels prodding them into position.

But we cannot definitely prove that there are no real psychics and more than we can prove that there are no real gods. Religious people always find gaps in knowledge, however pathetic, and say: Ah, but my god is actually there. Life evolved rather than being created? Ah, but my god directed evolution. Similarly, a believer in psychics can always claim that ah, the psychics you have tested failed under your test conditions, but under different conditions, or perhaps with that genuine psychic… Cf. Carl Sagan’s invisible dragon, or its predecessor, Russell’s teapot, &c.

The reason we should laugh at both psychics and religions is that both lack positive evidence, and both fail on every instance where testable claims have been made and checked. Neither form of belief is held for good reasons, and belief that is not held for good reasons is not knowledge.

[battlefields]

"I don't know what is out there and some of my experiences have lead me to be open to the idea that there *could* be another plane of existence, whatever it is."
Your experiences are purely anecdotal, and do not reflect accurate measurement of paranormal activity of any kind. Even if you genuinely saw a ghost, you would have been hallucinating.

"I am also a skeptic when it comes to psychics and other things, because charlatans abound."
Thats a good start, but how about NONE of them are real. Seriously, none of them could beat a simple test.

"I will not, however, close my mind to the idea of a plane of existence that we are just not aware of and the more I learn the more I think it could tie in with science more than religion, the energies of the universe that are constantly being discovered under research."
But such a plane of existence has no backing in any science at all- it cannot 'tie in' because it has never even had a shred of evidence. Not even a small bit. Until something has a shred, it can't be said to tie in any way with science. Any concept of this stuff was made up by human beings, not 'seen' or witnessed by anyone. Thats kind of like saying you believe a random man will give you a car for free, because you believe he might do- you are basing that 'open mindedness' on a HUMAN idea.

"I'm certain that human conscious is not the highest form of conscious in the universe and I do believe in a power greater than myself, whatever it is it is not for me to define. Define it as God or the fucking God particle, we're all just energy clashing and flowing."
No, you are not certain, it is impossible to be certain. And yes, before you come back with the all too used argument, I can never be certain you are wrong. However, as the far more intelligent than us Richard Dawkins said, I CAN be 99.9% certain.

"I'll marvel at marvels in the meantime."
Why can't we just accept that the world is not full of mystical energy of any kind? Ive never understood this. It is totally possible to marvel at the world, and universe without seeing something which isn't there.

Oh and whilst I'm at it, I don't have $1mill but if anyone here can prove under test conditions that they have any paranormal ability, I will give them $500.

Fucking hell, idiot, re read what I wrote. You assume I am talking about paranormal activity because you WANT me to be wrong so you can point and go, pfft, this guy believes in the woo woo. TO REITERATE I DON'T BELIEVE IN THE FUCKING WOO WOO. Of course my experiences are anecdotal, they're my fucking experiences. And yes, they could be massively coincidental. But you assume I am referring to having seen ghosts, which I never said I had, in fact, I stated that I deduced the spirits "identity" from reason. I know now that it is just attuning to my own senses, my own [biological] intuition and reading the signs around me.

I actively stated that I am talking about energies that tie in with science, not the paranormal. I believe in science, because it is providing proof all the time that we do not know everything there is to know in this existence. And while there have been smarter people than you or I say things like, "I don't want to believe, I want to know", which is a great sentiment if we were close to unlocking ALL life's mysteries, but we're not, and having faith in a universe's energy, whatever it is, may seem stupid to someone who is 99.9% certain of their beliefs that there is nothing to believe in, but if Richard Dawkins holds 0.1% uncertainty, well, my 0.1% of doubt that my faith is wrong is fine by me. PS, his showing in the debate against Cardinal Pell the other night was **** house, how fucking hard is it to smash a Creationist in a debate in this day and age? And the fucking questions from the viewing audience, Dear God, please provide some innovative and intelligence into a debate, not, "if there is a God why do bad things happen?" It's fucking retarded high school level questioning attempting to cheap shot the priest.

Hell, maybe I shouldn't have used "certain" in the previous post. I should've use "arrogant enough". As in I am not arrogant enough to believe that my conscious is the highest plane of existence. I'll be happy to be humble to whatever it is that is greater than me, if it turns out to be an interlocking system of a flow of fucking energies within atoms, then Hallelujah, praise be to the interlocking system of a flow of fucking energies within atoms.

You also instantly assume that I am talking about some mystical thing when I say marvels. Get off your high horse, I think a hot woman is a marvel to behold, commercial flight is a marvel to behold, a fucking dog is a marvel to behold. All have scientific reasons for existence, doesn't mean they aren't a marvel. **** me, some atheists are so caught up in proving everyone who has a little faith in the universe's unknowns is WRONG WRONG WRONG that you seem to shoot yourself in the face trying to look intelligent.

[nils]

Your experiences are purely anecdotal, and do not reflect accurate measurement of paranormal activity of any kind. Even if you genuinely saw a ghost, you would have been hallucinating.

Anectodal empiry is not used in science because it is never clear if it´s true. That´s because the observer could be hallucinating, misinterpreting or even lying. Also, it´s mostly not repeatable.

Because of that, Battlefield´s observation cannot be used for anyone, but him - since he knows he´s not lying and can - hopefully - be sure of his sanity. So there´s no reason for you (Battlefield) to disregard your experience as rubbish without clarifying it by testing.

You could just try to repeat this situation and use scientific methods.

I did the same with a student of mine a few months ago. He was kind of an occultist and swore that he could read minds and that tarot was useful in forseeing the near future.
So I did the old card-guessing game and - with a bit of mathematics - it was obvious that his mind-reading-powers were just as good as random guessing.
Same with tarot - did that by letting him say which cards would best describe the present moment, picking one, and doing the calculations (much more complex here because of varying number of correct cards) - it´s pending but looks surprisingly good for the tarot-works-theory.

Bottom line: anecdotal evidence is only useless if you were no witness of the phenomenon and if it´s not repeatable. Otherwise, you can put it to the test.

"I'm certain that human conscious is not the highest form of conscious in the universe and I do believe in a power greater than myself, whatever it is it is not for me to define. Define it as God or the fucking God particle, we're all just energy clashing and flowing."
No, you are not certain, it is impossible to be certain. And yes, before you come back with the all too used argument, I can never be certain you are wrong. However, as the far more intelligent than us Richard Dawkins said, I CAN be 99.9% certain.

You are 99.9% certaing that human consciousness is the highest form of consciousness in the universe? You gotta be kidding me. For that, you would first have to define what "high" and "low" states of consciousness are (obvious jokes about being high omitted).

Secondly, most common definitions (phenomenal, computational) would not lead to any results in this issue, since phenomenal consciousness can not be compared to that of other individuals (see Thomas Nagel, "what´s it like to be a bat" for explaining this obvious fact) and computational power of such a complex analogue system is not possible at the moment - and most certainly was not what Battlefield meant.

The truly scientific answer to this question would be "don´t know, don´t care".

Btw.: Dawkins is nice, but should not be regarded as the overlord of science he seems to be seen as in the US. In fact, he´s just trying to bring fanatic nutjobs out of the dark ages.
That´s good, but it can not make him the sole spokesperson of the scientific community.

[CNagy]

Thought I'd try and grow the 'General Skepticism' section a little by starting about psychics. Now, I am under this opinion:

There is no such thing as a psychic.

Now I understand the 'debate' is similar to religion and God, but there's one key difference- it's actually provable, (whilst no one can truly prove/ disprove the existence of a god). There has never been a single reported case of a psychic succeeding under real conditions and yet people are still taken in by it.

Its really annoying that people are still 'open minded' about someone being able to move things with their mind, divination, psychic reading and speaking to the dead, because they are just not real.

Hope this begins a debate :D

Being open minded is annoying? If someone told me they had telekinesis, I think I'd ask them to show me before I accused them of being full of ****, which as far as I know is pretty much what having an open mind means. You're just doing the same **** the priests are in the other direction: claiming to know what is or isn't true with the force of religious certainty.

The evidence for the existence of psychic energies of any sort amount, to my knowledge, to exactly zero. The evidence against consists of numerous debunkings of self-proclaimed psychics attempting to reproduce phenomena under controlled circumstances. The reasonable person would take this to mean that it is unlikely that psychic phenomena exist. That is not the position you are taking. You know what's more annoying than religion? The zeal of a new convert, of which your post reeks.

Edit: I see in further posts you've backtracked on some of your certainty. Oddly enough, that only seems to increase the "zealot" feeling I get from your posts.

[Kovacs]

You know what's more annoying than religion? The zeal of a new convert, of which your post reeks.

This. I get the feeling that he's just put down The God Delusion and came online straight away looking for an argument rather than a discussion.

tmorterlaing, I don't neccessarily disagree with everything you're saying in general but chill out a bit.

[battlefields]

This. I get the feeling that he's just put down The God Delusion and came online straight away looking for an argument rather than a discussion.

tmorterlaing, I don't neccessarily disagree with everything you're saying in general but chill out a bit.

The funny thing is NOBODY disagreed with what he was saying.

[It is Fake]

This thread turned funny real quick. Did someone actually whip out the "Ivory Soap ingredient" defense to prove someone wrong? Yes, some of you will not get this reference.

Good lord April Fool's is one day not the entire month.

[battlefields]

This thread turned funny real quick. Did someone actually whip out the "Ivory Soap ingredient" defense to prove someone wrong? Yes, some of you will not get this reference.

Good lord April Fool's is one day not the entire month.

99.9%?