Mediums real or fakes

[Sylph]

Except for all them who have proven to be outright frauds, or whose methods have been explained by magicians who use the same basic methods of cold reading to do the same thing.

And I'll stop here because many of the posts in this thread make me feel that humanity is doomed.

It was doomed from inception, was that not obvious and clear from history? Although, the future can be altered....just need to call a Precog, hold on gurl .

[ardus]

My friend Johnathan who I love to death keeps trying to get me to go to this so called Psychic he knows.

I am totally non believing in things with no evidence.

I have seen the power of suggestion do amazing things.

Is it possible, that some people really do have that ability. Sure, I must concede that it is possible. To date I have seen no evidence though. Til I see some, I will continue to be a healthy skeptic in the way of Carl Sagan.
Richard

[Wade]

I went to a seance once a few years ago, at the insistence of a friend, which was run by an older woman whom my friend had been given a reading by. My understanding was that it was going to be a big event that anyone was welcome to join. It was not. It was held in a little apartment with about ten people who all knew each other very well. It was not a public gathering, it was a small get together amongst friends which I basically crashed.

In spite of my unexpected arrival, they were very kind to me and allowed me to stay and participate. They called it "The Circle." There was a lot of hand holding, chanting, and bullshit.

The woman who ran it, let's call her Lois, was basically trying to teach the participants how to tap into their medium abilities by making one person enter the middle of the circle while everyone else just said the first thing that popped into their heads.

Someone would say something like "why am I seeing lemon drops?" or some other random thing, until the person in the middle finally said, "well, I guess I had a grandpa who used to watch Hee Haw... so I guess Horses makes sense."

I got into the circle at one point. Lois took my hands into hers, looked me straight in the eyes (she was a very sweet grandmotherly type) and started spewing things to me about my family and I would respond with a yes or no. Eventually she started saying very personal things about my brother and my relationship with him (who's still alive by the way) and I ended crying my eyes out in front of a bunch of strangers.

In all honesty, it was an extremely powerful experience. I can understand why some people believe in mediums. However, once I started thinking about it, it all fell apart in my mind. The correct things she was saying about my brother (who again, is still alive) were all based on my yes and no's to a long list of previous incorrect readings. She could sense I had some strong emotions around the topic of my brother and dove in (that has nothing to do with precog or some type of magic sensitivity or whatever, that's just being a human being).

I wanted to believe that she had magic powers because the things she said made me feel good, and the simple act of allowing yourself to being so vulnerable in front of a group of strangers can do really tricky things to your ability to use logic.

I don't think she's a crook, and I certainly don't think the rest of those folks had bad intentions. She may indeed believe she's communicating with the deceased, but I saw no reason to think that she was a medium, and all she was doing was teaching those people to believe in their own bullshit.

[dfiant]

Mediums are definitely real, what they propose they are capable of doing is not logical to me.

So to me, a mediums abilities are dubious...not going as far to say it is possible or impossible, just that I think it is improbable.

[Kiid]

I can read body language. And have a felling for vibes lol

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Where have you been all my life BA? <3 lol.

Don't Deny your Precog nature...actually, come to think of it... Now I know how you always take the words right from my mouth! :o

I think the taking the words out of your mouth is more or less great minds thinking alike, of course you have the greater mind.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Oh, of course it's just my opinion and nothing else. That's why I said "in my opinion"

However, denying something that's not scientifically proven is not the same as living with a veil over my eyes. I'm not necessarily saying "mediums don't exist and never will" I'm merely saying that as of now there's no reason to believe they do. If you ask someone who does believe in these kinds of things why that is, they're very likely to bring up a personal story. "I knew this guy who knew things about me that would be impossible for him to know"; "My neighbour when I was little showed me how he could bend forks with his mind" or perhaps "My boyfriend says he can feel the presence of my dead mother whenever we're in her house".

Personal experiences don't count in the big run. Science employs REPEATED experiments and numerous observations of a certain behaviour or occurrence to find out the truth behind it. Paranormal abilities are very much possible to investigate using science - the problem is that no psychic or medium has ever been able to prove their powers in an actual scientific experiment. Impressing a few people at a party doesn't count. In other words, it would be irrational to believe in these powers until there's reasonable proof.

Faith, though, is something else entirely and isn't necessarily motivated by evidence.

Very little of paranormal stuff is repeatable, especially in laboratory conditions.

Such as seeing 'spirits' - most people who do see 'entities' of a 'spiritual nature' don't see them all the time, and can't turn on the ability like a light switch. Precognition is rarely on demand.

How does one measure a 'feeling' a 'gut reaction' to 'ghosts' in a house?

9-11-01 is a decent example, a lot of people confess to having a 'bad feeling' in the days, weeks and even months leading up to 9-11 - while they 'knew' something bad was going to happen, none of them were able to say exactly what was coming.

But when 9-11 dawned and the events unfolded most of those people suddenly understood that 'this' was what they were feeling apprehension, fear, upset, anxiety, etc over.

Can we scientifically measure that? No.

Can we prove all of these people actually had a feeling of something 'bad' coming down the pike? No - most kept it to themselves prior to 9-11-01 because they didn't want to be ridiculed for what they were feeling in the days leading up to 9-11.

Real psychic ability is not Movie psychic abilities. It is visceral, it is unplanned, and it rarely happens on demand.

Several years ago I took my truck in to get the brakes replaced. The next day I was driving behind one of those new VW bugs. I was driving pretty darn close to its rear bumper.

Suddenly I had a flash of 'vision' of my truck driving up and over that bug like it was a speed bump. I let my foot off the gas pedal and allowed a good distance to open up. Within a minute later a car pulls out of a driveway without looking causing the diver of the bug to slam on his brakes.

I respond by hitting my brakes - instead of slowing/stopping my truck kept on going.

I managed to stop with the parking/Emergency brake. Had I not opened up that space I wouldn't have had time to stop the truck.

Now do you believe that happened? How can this be measured? Its not repeatable, can't be 'forced' to happen again.

Perhaps while driving I touched the brakes and my brain picked up that the brakes were not responding correctly and just 'knew' they were about to fail?

Perhaps that is all precog really is, the brain picking details out of the trillions of bits of data that it sifts through each day and putting some things together in the deep recesses to produce a leap in logic which the person is unaware of.

Medical Science can't explain the brain. While we have learned a lot about its functions in the past century, the reality is that when it comes to the brain we just don't know how or why it works at all.

With such little understanding of the brain and the mind that goes with it, science can't really measure 'psychic' ability with any real success. Maybe in your lifetime brain mapping and full understanding of what it does and how it does it will prove or disprove psychic abilities.

[Merc]

LOL, talk about some skepticism.
Unfortunately, there are A LOT of fake folks out there that will sell fairy tales and other fictitious stories that engender false hope, but there are also quite a few authentic readers that are good at what they do. For the people that are interested in this work, stay away from the vultures who have "good things to tell you" or always see everything working out perfectly, or claim to have magical spells that will reunite lovers within days. People will get taken advantage of here and it really paints a bad picture of the business overall. It only ever takes a few bad seeds to create a negative perception. It’s no different than the way the media portrays gay events. They paint a picture that we all act in a certain way, but we certainly know that this isn’t the case at all.
If you allow yourself to tune in (which everyone can by the way) it's quite easy to tell the difference between someone who is advocating for you and someone who just wants your money. Refrain from the folks that claim to have degrees and other bullshit documents that they made up themselves to feel more special or to drive their business. It’s all about connecting and trust.
This stuff is obviously not for everyone, and that’s fine, but assuming that everything is false does nothing but limit yourself. I can’t imagine going through life not believing in things that haven’t been ‘proven’ yet. Doing so just makes you part of the flock or another invisible sheep.
Expand your mind and find out what’s really out there.

[Wade]

What I find even more interesting than people who think magic is real (because hey, ya can't prove it's not!) is people who think that magic is not only real, but certain magic people and wish thinkers are phonies, and that they themselves can tell you the difference between the phony magic people and for realsies magic people.

If you believe in the reality of magic beyond the scrutiny of reason and physics, how can you then say, with a straight face, say that you can tell the difference between someone who claims to be magic and someone who really is?

It gives me the same feeling when certain Christians try to justify their religion in the face of fundamentalists by saying that certain Christians aren't "real" Christians. Who gives them the authority to discern such a thing?

It's like watching children argue about whose dad could beat up whose.

[Pix]

^^

That reminds me, plenty of fundies talk about literal evil spirits with major changes...not quite to the point of "Keep a close eye on him, he might change shape," but close. So in short, this shouldn't seem insane to them to believe that this was at least based on a true story:




But I wonder what many would say if I were to show this to fundies and ask, "Is this really the kind of crap you think goes on in this world?" I don't doubt a few would say without the singing, yes. But surely most of them would say, "No, that's just a Disney-like cartoon, I'm far too sensible to believe THAT." (But not this, or popular Chick tracts.)

I wonder, just how do they manage to not come off as insane? For example, I had a friend who lived in a family who endured routine exorcisms by their mother and her church, but most people who casually met her had no idea what a nutcase she was, and given that the ritual abuse screwed up her children (my "favorite" is how her daughter "grew boobs too fast" so she had a deacon or whatever sit on her while she was tied up and grab her boobs while commanding the demons to depart in the name of Jesus), she had to talk to the police enough as they kept running away from home and getting in trouble with the law (which called for more exorcisms...) So at some level they KNOW they're crazy, or at least that others will say so, and hide it...I don't know, I'm half asleep and I'm just wondering how their minds process reality and if they'd think that YT I just shared was close to realistic and just pretend not to, or if they'd think their Chick tracts and email spam about the evil of Harry Potter was correct but the movie was just silly make believe? :confused:

Just to be clear I don't mean to equate all who believe in evil spirits and magic as believing in that Disney-like movie, however a great many fundies should, if they're consistent, say take out the singing and it's perfectly realistic!