I tend to believe there are real psychics out there amongst many, many more fake ones.

With that said, why hasn't one of the real ones taken a stab at James Randi's offer of $1,000,000 to someone who can demonstrate their ability in a lab?

I have some thoughts of my own, but I want to hear from you first.

Proof will never make it true for Randi because his belief system cannot allow for the possibility. Most people in the field know this and ignore him. It would be like trying to prove there is no God to a preacher. The preacher will always punch holes in the logic. Randi's belief system consists of the idea that there is nothing beyond C1 and anyone who tries to show otherwise is deluded. His science will always come up with  a means of explanation because it focuses on a limited decision space of here and now. The same rules do not apply outside of C1, but if you deny the existence of it how can you not disprove it all?

<<Proof will never make it true for Randi because his belief system cannot allow for the possibility.>>

Hi Beau-

But on the other hand, isn't it equally possible that your belief system cannot allow for the possibility that the afterlife might not exist?

Isn't it highly likely that anyone who challenges our particular belief system will not be welcome?  For example, here is a post on the thread that I find disturbing:  <<I wish someone would shut that man up already.>>

For me, skeptics are valuable, whether it involves the afterlife or any other aspect of human endeavor.

For instance, skeptics gave impetus for the Wright Bros to prove once and for all that an airplane was possible.  Skeptics provided the push that Edison needed to continue to persevere until he proved that electricity could be harnessed to provide light.

A parent tells a child he or she will never amount to anything, and the child becomes determined to show that they can succeed in spite of skepticism.

I would much rather have skeptics than to have mindless cheerleaders who accept without question whatever they are told or taught. 

Too bad there weren't more skeptics when Jim Jones urged his followers to drink the kool aid.  Too bad his followers didn't have  independent thinkers with courage enough to leave the Peoples Temple in Guyana before over 900 people died.

The point really is not Randi.  The point is that we all should recognize the value that skeptics bring to the table.  They sharpen our thinking, force us to re-think our assumptions, and hopefully will make us even better in finding ways of verifying our own claims regarding the afterlife.

R

Skeptics often shoot themselves in their own foots, because without intending to they show how biased they are.  They would be taken more seriously when they do speak the truth, if they were willing to take a look on the other side of the fence once in a while.

Cricket,

Thank you for sharing that!

I love reading/hearing stories like that.

Hi Beau-

This thread has motivated me to re-read Gary Schwartz's book The Afterlife Experiments, subtitled Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death.

Schwartz approached this book from the point of view of a skeptic, and that was good because his experiments were highly controlled and designed to eliminate, as much as he could, the possibility of fraud or deception or coincidence.

It makes the outcome of his experiments all that much more compelling.

Bruce knows Gary and respects his methodology.

Book was published in 2002.  John Edward and other well known mediums participated in the experiments.  If you get a chance you might want to pick it up, fascinating reading.

R

An excellent book Rondele. I read it about a year ago and it is one of the main reasons I posted on this thread. Gary has a whole chapter devoted to Randi's inability to take him up on the bet. When I finish My Big TOE I may go back and check it out again. It has some very interesting things in it. I can't say how I feel about John Edward as I haven't been in the room with him, but Gary seems pretty convinced and that goes a long wayh with me.

rondele wrote on Jun 30^th, 2009 at 9:45am:


I'm glad you brought this up because I've been meaning to ask you all about it.

I read this book during the winter and enjoyed it.

I made the mistake (IMO because my faith is fragile and I was beaten down at the time in that regard) of reading some skeptic's website that attacks Schwartz and this book.

They claim that it's all bogus because of those studies back in the day where they gave a bunch of people personality tests and asked them to rate their results from 1 to 5, 5 being best.

The average result was over 4 out of 5.  Turns out, the experiments merely made up a single, generic report based on horoscopes (or something like that).

That was the skeptic's response to what Schwartz was doing.

This bugged the crap out of me (from my admitted weakness of faith and my worry in that regard), but I want to know if what I eventually thought about makes sense to you guys:

Isn't this an apples to oranges comparison? 

I mean I think cold readers could compare to that study in the sense of being generic and people seeing what they want to see and saying the reader is legit, but in Schwartz's book, they clearly had these mediums giving out SPECIFIC information that, generically speaking, WOULD NOT apply to the vast majority of people.

I recall things like "Did you ever consider raising cattle?" be asked by a medium to someone.  And they were right.  Now now many lay persons would score that as an accurate hit?

Or another that involved goats on a mountain?  There were several times where, IMO, it couldn't have been a cold read without a VERY VERY LUCKY coincidence being the answer.

So to me, the skeptic's claims are misleading garbage.  Especially once I read for myself what the "personality result" that those experimenters provided.  It's ridiculously generic and covers all sorts of things that generally apply to nearly everyone.

The fact is, a lot of times mediums spit stuff out that, if they're faking, would be career suicide in terms of how risky it is.  Unless it's real.

Thoughts?