Debunk My Spiritual Bullshit!

[Grandpa Harley]

"They get emotional when people try to apply logic or reason."

 

And is 'I don't need to read it' 'logic' or 'reason'?

 

Ummmm, who said that?

That would be the other bitching session on this thread... you think your snit is the only snit don't ya... it's all about YOU!

 

LOL! You got me! LOL!

ZZZZINNNNGGGG!!!!

 

[Vigile]

I really don't need his permission to do so being as this is a public form and that is a public yahoo group.

 

Nope, you don't. I see your sense of tact and scruples are well honed.

[Grandpa Harley]

Same charm school that the majority here (including me) Graduated from. Herr Boorman must be so proud of us all...

 

Edit: A pox on all laptop keyboards!

[.god]

So is this thread permanently derailed or can we still get it back on what I find an interesting topic? Perhaps I'm too late to the game and since everyone is ignoring everyone else, my reply will just be ignored as well...

 

 

I tend to doubt the supposed "Truth" of Atheism.

 

I never understand when religious people use the word "Truth" with a capital T. And so I completely understand it even less in this case. It implies as if something has some sort of monopoly on a binary black and white state. 1/0. On/Off. Yes/No. True/False. I don't get it...

there is the old adage.. The only truth is that there is no truth.

 

Brother Jeff, do you realize that there is one thread running through out your "ghost" stories? And that is the emotion of fear. At one point you describe your room as a "scary place at night".

Fear is a powerful emotion and one in which your nervous system automatically goes into fight or flight mode, your senses are heightened and your adrenaline is rushing thru your body. While fear was probably one of the most important emotional responses for survival in our ancestors as they evolved over time, I don't believe it serves us as well in today's society.

The basic problem with our evolutionary heritage is that evolution takes place at a dying snail's pace compared to the speed with which our society is changing. Basically evolution can not keep up, and fear responses that may have been useful living as bushmen in the wilds at night is substantially different than surviving in your room at night.

 

I'm sure you realize that your experiences are of course subjectively experienced via your body and your brain. However your fear in each case seems to have kept you from investigating the noises you heard, the disturbances that bothered you or the visions you thought you saw. Thus it's hard for those of us who are skeptical of your claims to put any stock in it because in each story you mention, it is only experienced once and there was never any further investigation on your part. Without any corroboration of data, even on your own investigation, then you will of course only have that once slice of an imperfect experience to try to come up with a rational explanation.

 

The other issue is that many people fail to realize how really terrible our sensory organs are, and how fallible our mind can be. As I've mentioned elsewhere, our vision sucks (we don't have eyes on the back of our head, our eyes cannot see almost 180 degrees like fish and insects, nor do we have the night vision of cats, the uv vision of butterflies, nor infared vision, nor the sharp vision of hawks). Our sense of smell is crap as well - we wouldn't be able to detect carbon monoxide before it kills us, nor track a trail of scents like a bloodhound. Our sense of touch is not that great either, and our hearing... lets not talk about that after the age of 30...

And our mind, our mind is plagued with all sorts of issues, from hallucinations to ocd to schizoprenia and paranoia. It is constantly processing incoming data. But regardless most people will still assume their minds and senses are infallible and what they see/hear/taste/remember is exactly what happened.

 

Anyway, I can understand that it is hard to investigate unknown noises when you are 7 years old, but as one gets older I would hope you can investigate these seemingly supernatural occurences to verify for yourself that you have indeed ruled out all other explanations.

[Grandpa Harley]

[Grandpa Harley]

Damn fine post btw... the isolation of the fear leitmotif pretty well aces it for me... the human mind has to contexturalise itsimpressions. Thus Rorschach inkblots are more than just ink on folded paper...

 

Having said that, stray high frequency magnetic fields can cause both panic and, on an objective level, physical, auditory and visual halucinations. They are very real to the subject, but far from 'supernatural'.

 

As an anecdotal observation, people susceptible to classic migraines and sensitive to approaching thunderstoms, tend to be sensitive to the electro-magnetic anomalies.

[.god]

So let me tell some "ghost" stories from my childhood. First off, I've never been religious, nor superstitious nor believed in aliens. As a child however I was quite afraid of the dark. And rationally who wouldn't be? I mean I don't have eyes behind my head, anything could be there, monsters, ghosts, someone out to get me or just scare the shit out of me. My fear of the dark plagued me until at least my early college years and it annoyed me greatly until I completely debunked the possibility of ghosts and ghouls for myself. And since I've come to realize my fear of the dark was unreasonable and unfounded, I've been fairly comfortable with my back turned to the darkness.

 

One of my earliest memories of a "supernatural" experience was when I was about 8 or 9. I was awake, lying on my back but I could not move. I lay in a shallow grave of 4-5 feet in a swamp/moor of several other open graves in which my family lay as well. The entire area was covered by at least 2 feet of clear water above the graves. I being surprised that I could still breath without drowning in the water. I lay there as the thundering hooves of a dozen huge skeletal and demon-like riders rode across the open graves. Although it was a bit unnerving I forget if I was scared or not. I couldn't move, and the entire vision was somewhat transparent as I could see my darkened room behind the entire dream. So there I was in my bed, lying also in a grave, underwater but not drowning as ghostly horses and their riders thundered over me. There was also the steady beating of a war drum in the background.

While I knew it was a dream inspired by a fantasy novel I had recently read with a cover featuring skeletal riders riding undead horses, the part of seeing my room thru the dream mystified me. That was about the time I decided to look into "lucid dreaming". Anyway, it wasn't until I took a psych course in college that I learned about sleep paralysis, which of course was what I had experienced. Dreams still greatly interest me of course and anyone interested in daytime hallucinations should look into REM, sleep deprivation, microsleep, sleep apnea, sleep paralysis, and other sleeping disorders.

 

There's an especially occurrence in sleep which I've read about recently in which the sleeper is suddenly pulled out of a deep phase non-REM sleep, either by a disturbance or by as seems often the case for me, sleeping face down and suffocating in my pillow lol.

This abrupt method of waking causes you to experience an immense feeling of being crushed before waking up with an increased heartbeat. In some cases I will experience the strong feeling of a presence behind me. Note that it's ALWAYS behind me, never in front or even within my field of vision. In any case I can trick my body/mind into experiencing this feeling of a presence behind me, on a lesser scale when I'm awake, so I know that it's purely a phsiological effect on my body. I think one of the common names for the sudden awakening from deep non-REM is "night terrors"

 

Another occurence in Jr high or high school I had was once waking up suddenly staring at the wall next to my bed and seeing the face of a ugly old hag in my wall. The vision was made up of bright green spots of light, similar to the after image of looking at the sun/something blindingly bright, or squeezing your eyes shut really hard so you see stars. That was a pretty scary occurence back then, but eventually I wrote it off to my mind attempting to generate a pattern based on a random flash of an after image in my eyes, which was viewed all the more clearly because I was facing a blank white wall when I awoke. In reality I've would been hard pressed to describe the exact face because the pattern was really just a bunch of color dots, but at the time my mind resolved it into a face.

 

But that is no different than the other times when in my darkened room my mind has initially resolved a pile of clothing on a chair into an intruder, a pile of pillows/clothing on the bed into a sleeping form, or any other shapeless mass in the dark into some type of humanoid. To me the reason my mind will always resolve a form into a human or humanoid creature is due strongly to our evolutionary heritage, but I won't go into that for now. But that's what my mind does, I get used to it, I understand it, and I factor that in when I evaluate what my senses tell me about the world around me. I don't know if other people's minds resolve a human figure out of shapeless masses in the dark, but I've always assumed that they have so i've never asked to verify. I could just be me =)

 

 

While I find dreams of great interest. I won't go into detail about the many times I've felt in life in specific situations.. "wait, I've dreamed this before. Just like this!"

Once it was with my dad and a lawn mower. Other times it's been in situations that hadn't even happened yet. And sometimes it's more minor deja vu, as in the situation is the same, even the dialogue seems the same but the location is different. However, I've never put full stock in my memory, I know how bad it can be.. I've proven to myself how bad it can be lol. And I experience these situations so many times in so many variations to differening degrees of "familiarness" that I know it is purely my imperfect brain playing tricks on me. Because I'm aware of how imperfect my memory is, and due to my interest in psych I've taken many courses regarding the problems and issues as well as strengths in our memory and how our brain associates memories, I know I'm not prescient or psychic. I'm just an imperfect, fallible human brain.

 

 

And then of course there are the noises. Noises generally don't scare me because I don't believe in the supernatural, and I wouldn't fear the supernatural even if it existed, I just grab a nice powerful flash light and go investigate.

 

It's funny one poster mentions a scratching on in the walls, that moves from one location to another. Funny because it's pretty obvious to me what the explanation is. We have the exact same problem.. those damn rodents in the walls! We used to have a mouse problem, which we weren't sure of for a while until we caught them w/ some mouse traps. I used to be annoyed by this scratching in the ceiling right above my bed and my desk in the bedroom. Sometimes it would travel from one side to another, or down between the walls. Pounding the ceiling never helped, they just ignored me and continued their scratching. In any event we got rid of our mouse problem now, and viola! no more scratching noises at night!

 

Sometimes we have noises on our roof, generally scratching or thumping, etc. My guess is that either racoons or cats are busy crossing the rooftops at night, and after a while you get pretty good at guessing what they're up to there. I've never gone out to actually verify the beast in question, but when you hear the same noises followed by a loud cat fight it becomes pretty self evident.

 

Other noises I've heard -

It's amazing what my mind will try to assemble out of pure noise, attemping to pick a signal out of that mess of information. Of course this is not under my conscious willpower, but rather just my ever busy subconscious mind processing all the incoming data.

 

I've sworn I've heard the tv playing outside while showering, sometimes I can even identify what they're saying. Which of course if funny since I often know the TV is off, and that my mind is just assembling random data. I've heard strains of music playing while showering as well. Funny how the music will always be classical or something similar to what i listen too, never something else my brain doesn't have enough exposure to and would be unable to recall.

Now how am I sure that the TV isn't supernaturally turning on or that music is supernaturally emanating from the toilet? Well, there is another situation in which I can reproduce this effect. When driving down the freeway in my car, if my radio volume is turned down too low in order for my hearing to separate the "signal" (music) from the "noise" (sounds of the freeway/driving), my mind fills in the gaps and I think I'm hearing a different song that the one that's actually playing. Turn if up a little bit louder and while I may recognize the song, it will sound wrong because I can't judge if it's major or minor, nor the tone. I can pretty much only hear the beats. Crank it up to where the signal is distinct enough from the noise and what do you know, it becomes quite obvious that my mind was way off in what it was filling in.

 

If you want to play around with your mind a bit next time, just turn on some different appliances. An air conditioner or fan, some low volume music or radio, or even better earphones so you will feel your senses even more impaired. Add a room in which you are alone, night time conditions. A dash of heightened unease and presto chango! The Master Illusionist, "Your Mind" will soon make it's grand entrance.

 

 

Let's see, there's a few other "ghosts" I experience these days. Cloth hangers, clothing I didn't hang quite correctly love to fall at the most startling times. Things which I've had nailed somewhere for years that have worked themselves lose. Stacks of papers that have inevitably become unstable but gone unnoticed never-the-less love to startle me at night when they fall over.

Then there's my hair which sometimes I'll catch a view of in my peripheral vision, convincing me that a form or figure just passed by. Until I turn my head again next time and there's the figure again. (Did I mention how poor our peripheral vision is? It serves a specific purpose for us that does not involve resolving detail).

 

Then there are the flashes of bright light, even in the middle of the night. I've located the general muscle movement in my eye that will cause the effect when I'm really tired, which seems to be quite often these days. It's almost as bright as the sun, and the first time it occured I was quite baffled but curious. So now when I experience bright flashes of light while trying to fall asleep I know that I'm really, really tired and that I shouldn't move my eyes in that direction so I can rest without aliens attempting to make an abduction =)

 

 

I'm sure I've gone on more than long enough.. if anyone is still reading.

Sure if I didn't know better, I could easily have attributed all of these events to ghosts, apparitions, hauntings, psychic abilities or even aliens. But I'm very skeptical and very curious by nature and I love the field psychology. The mind is an amazing organ, but it is also amazingly deficient and weak in so many areas. I believe if a person is aware of how your mind works - where its weaknesses lie as well as what its strengths are, the limitations of your senses and how your mind processes the input of sensory data, they will be much better equipped to understand and evaluate the world around them.

 

We experience events, briefly, suddenly, and seemingly inexplicably. The key, like scientific inquiry, is to not let yourself be subject to your emotions and investigate the occurence from all angles. Reproduce it if if possible, run tests, and verify results. If not reproducible, then by all means if it happens again, don't just write it off with a simple supernatural explanation! Go check it out! Hear a noise? See if you can figure out what's making it. See an apparition? See if you can approach it, touch it, walk around it, communicate with it. Temper your evalutation with your understanding of the limitations of the human mind and how it automatically evaluates and filters the world around you. Hell, if I thought the supernatural existed, I would be all over it everytime something happened to me. Check it out, verify that there is indeed something odd going on that has no alternate explanation. Realize that your mind has certain prejudices in its perception of the world due to our evolutionary heritage. Read up on mental disorders such as paranoid schizoprenia, OCD, split personality disorder, fugue, etc to exclude that possibility from what you are experiencing (although that can be difficult if you are indeed suffering from schizophrenia).

 

If a supernatural world truly exists, and I experienced it on a regular basis, I would be excited in attempting to figure out how it works, how it is reproducible, how it could be recorded, and how I might communicate with it. Thus far though, all my experiences have only verifed the imperfection that is the human mind.

[Legion]

Thus far though, all my experiences have only verifed the imperfection that is the human mind.

Right on God! I agree that the mind is a mysterious thing.

[Jun]

...........all my experiences have only verifed the imperfection that is the human mind.

 

Beautiful.

[.god]

Ok my last post for now, because some stuff mentioned in this thread seriously bugs me that its still around.

Even with the flood of information we have due to the internet, still many are unaware of these phenomena:

 

- Oijua boards - ideamotor effect

There is a Derren Brown episode that illustrates that effect using a crowd of 40-60 people and some wooden round tables. It's pretty interesting to watch.

 

-

Hear, hear.

 

Watch this right to the end - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf8k9__waS4

 

The comments on YouTube are typical of what I get from Non-Asians when I retell some of what I've witnessed in Japan. Close minded?

 

Okay, I finally found it! took forever. I knew I had read about this before.. :

http://www.randi.org/jr/2007-04/042007todd.html

Apparently this little trick has quite a history.

 

And while we're talking about chi, here's an interesting if somewhat sad video:

 

Being asian myself, I've had numerous "chi" related activities done to me when I was a child in an effort to heal whatever the source of my illness was to my mom. What a waste of money.

All I can say about acupuncture was that it hurt like a BITCH, with no effect. They even pulsated electrical charges thru the needles. Sure it may look cool as your muscles involuntarily spasm, but it's not the most pleasant sensation, and the benefits they claimed? ZERO

 

I've had my fingers bled as well, that fucking hurt like hell. No effect. I refused to let my mom take me back to that wacko.

 

Massage w/ metal balls taped on earlobes. no result.

Chi work to extract the congested chi pathways in my body? Crapola

Exercises to get the chi flowing in my body, including involuntary vibration and farting as evidence your chi is flowing? the only thing flowing was my bowels.

 

chi is such a vague concept, even my chiropractor likes to use it.

I used to think they referred to the lymphic system and pathways, but these days I'm not sure what they're talking about. Chi as an internal concept.. depends.. but Chi as a force that you can expel from your body to effect the physical world around you? uh yeah sorry.. maybe in my fantasies as a teenager..

[Grandpa Harley]

Did anyone see the Derren Brown vids where he converts people?

 

They must be on you tube by now... they are painful to watch... especially as I know he's an atheist

[Guest flap]

personally i think you should quit worryin about the ghosts and whether they are real , they are real to you.also i say put em to work for you.i dont see em but if i did id be writing a book about it as a form of makin em pay rent or at least contribute to the kitty, if ya cant beat em sell em. i know i would soooo that said any ghosts with nothin better to do,yall cmon down , we'll figure out some way to enjoy it all, maybe invent ghost beer so yall can party too. my last dream was that i awoke in flames surrounded by darkness, i took off walkin and saw this huge red dude cryin , so i walked up to him and it was every representation of the devil all rolled ino one. he looks up at me and says''pray with me'',puts his hand on my shoulder and starts talkin to god, anyway god says to him ''i forgive you''then they start to walk off together. about 10 steps out they stop, turn to me and god says ''i need someone to run this place, its all yours'' i thot id test it so i think put the flames out and they went out and thats where i woke up- mind you this was big screen 3d with 16 track dolby surround type of real====btw i aint read nothin like this before so i got no idea where it came from

[.god]

hmm, can't edit my posts.

 

Here's Derren Brown doing his version of the Chi Master trick:

 

oh and Jun - about your Ki Master in Japan who split the target, how do you know whether or not the target was "prepped" before the event? As in pre-cut so to split along a seam, and barely held together until the master "broke" it with his chi? You don't mention being allowed to examine the object prior to the demonstration, only afterwards.

 

Also, exactly why does expelling chi require a vocal shout? Surely a master would find that unnecessary. In martial arts we always were taught to shout on a strike, but that rarely had anything to do with chi.

It would be my suspicion that the loud and surprising would serve as a distraction to whatever else said master could be up to. Like a talented illusionist, the would direct your attention elsewhere as the master stomped on the floor with his feet. If the target were rigged, it could explain why the first attempt, the target rolled backwards due to the vibration created by a stomp. If I were him though, I'd actually make sure one continuous and possibly loose floorboard led directly from myself to the target, acting a most like lever, hitting the target with a sharp hammer like blow while distracting my bodily movement with a loud unexpected shout while no one is paying attention to me.

 

Memories can be fuzzy as well as was once demonstrated in a psych class in which an a staged altercation consisting of two students ran thru the room while students were still filtering into the large lecture hall. damn, the mess of recollections that arised from different students were amazing.

 

On a side note, many miniatures used in special fx in movies are prescored and rigged to give the exact style of breaking they want once the explosives go off.

[HadouKen24]

Back when I did chi exercises, I was able to pull my youngest brother off balance with it. It worked the very first time, and he had absolutely no idea what I was about to do. I told him to stand there and close his eyes before I made a single move. I reached my hand behind his back, and I "reached out" to feel his chi. I sort of visualized my hand becoming a magnet for his energy. Seconds after I began the visualization, he almost fell on his back.

 

No doubt there's a great deal of deception, etc., that goes on masquerading as the genuine article. I suspect that this often happens unintentionally when one master just teaches a bunch of his students and never faces anyone else. (A perfect example being the link that .god posted)

 

I've seen more stuff happen, and done other stuff, and had friends who did yet more stuff, that I can't really deny the existence of what some call "the supernatural." (I reject the very concept of the "supernatural," myself. And along with it, the concept of the "natural.") I don't suspect some dude posting his personal experiences is going to change anyone's mind, so I doubt I'll post any more. That said, I have to say that I just don't understand why people try so damn hard to "debunk" some of this stuff.

 

Granted, there's a lot of bullshit out there. I understand the impulse to make sure you aren't being deceived. In my investigations of this kind of thing, I've found it absolutely essential to do what I can to rule out coincidence and self-deception. When possible, I make sure that there are others around to verify my experiences. I've had to learn how to recognize when I'm thinking things through in a legitimate, straightforward way, and when I'm just trying to justify a pre-conceived notion. (This is also necessary in philosophy, I've found.) It seems to me that while debunkers often perform a valuable service by revealing bullshit as bullshit, they also often go through the very same mental twists to justify a conclusion that the gullible tricked by the bullshit do--and the very same mental twists that many intelligent Christians go through to justify their beliefs.

 

All I can say about acupuncture was that it hurt like a BITCH, with no effect.

 

Then you had a really bad acupuncturist. Acupuncture doesn't hurt when done correctly. At most, it should feel like a very small prick, less than a mosquito bite. The majority of people who see legitimate practitioners don't even feel the needles go in.

 

If a supernatural world truly exists, and I experienced it on a regular basis, I would be excited in attempting to figure out how it works, how it is reproducible, how it could be recorded, and how I might communicate with it.

 

Working on that.

[.god]

All I can say about acupuncture was that it hurt like a BITCH, with no effect.

 

Then you had a really bad acupuncturist. Acupuncture doesn't hurt when done correctly. At most, it should feel like a very small prick, less than a mosquito bite. The majority of people who see legitimate practitioners don't even feel the needles go in.

 

ah, quite indeed possible. however this same acupuncturist also practiced on others without much issue. But I did decide acupuncture was not for me, nor did it help me. But while acupuncture may have beneficial effects, that does not necessarily prove the existence of chi as an external manipulatable force.

 

 

If a supernatural world truly exists, and I experienced it on a regular basis, I would be excited in attempting to figure out how it works, how it is reproducible, how it could be recorded, and how I might communicate with it.

 

Working on that.

 

Cool, once you work it out you'll have a shot at winning a million dollars:

http://www.randi.org/research/index.html

[Grandpa Harley]

Old Iron Rod give away the money If you think that he'd do it if one conjoured the spirit of Houdini in front of him while suspended naked in a straight jacket in an isolation tank, then I have some Colorado sea front condo property for sale.

[Grandpa Harley]

Now I've said that I can see that we may get a JREF panzer division coming over... Rather like their founder, they have the charm of a Blitzkrieg, with the zealotry of a Fundy BAC.

[.god]

Did anyone see the Derren Brown vids where he converts people?

 

They must be on you tube by now... they are painful to watch... especially as I know he's an atheist

 

Yeah, Derren Brown has some impressive tricks up his sleeve =)

You can see that entire episode "Messiah" on youtube

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sq-YUdq1OI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DylNVUN_3I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKhN1Jfv_s8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdqrv8sWNG8

[Grandpa Harley]

Scary shit...

[.god]

Scary shit...

 

heh, i find it inspiring and fascinating =)

here's an interesting response video in which someone explains his take on derren's hypnosis techniques

 

for more information on derren's techniques, search for NLP, induction, hypnosis

[Grandpa Harley]

The fact that people are that soft headed is far from inspiring...

[HadouKen24]

ah, quite indeed possible. however this same acupuncturist also practiced on others without much issue. But I did decide acupuncture was not for me, nor did it help me. But while acupuncture may have beneficial effects, that does not necessarily prove the existence of chi as an external manipulatable force.

 

No, certainly not. And I never said it did.

 

Cool, once you work it out you'll have a shot at winning a million dollars:

http://www.randi.org/research/index.html

 

LOL. Yeah, sure. I wouldn't side with those clowns, if I were you. They'll make you look bad. James Randi is the Kent Hovind of skepticism.

 

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/exa...dichallenge.htm

[Jun]

God said - oh and Jun - about your Ki Master in Japan who split the target, how do you know whether or not the target was "prepped" before the event? As in pre-cut so to split along a seam, and barely held together until the master "broke" it with his chi? You don't mention being allowed to examine the object prior to the demonstration, only afterwards.

 

Indeed, that was my thought afterwards, having time to talk about it and review what we had seen. However, regardless of whether the target had been "prepped," he was still able to move it without touching it, and then to cause it to split without touching it.

 

I've seen three other martial experts on several occasions cause things to move without touching them. And I have been on the receiving end of "no-touch" assaults numerous times to tell you there is something there.

[Vigile]

Indeed, that was my thought afterwards, having time to talk about it and review what we had seen. However, regardless of whether the target had been "prepped," he was still able to move it without touching it, and then to cause it to split without touching it.

 

I've seen three other martial experts on several occasions cause things to move without touching them. And I have been on the receiving end of "no-touch" assaults numerous times to tell you there is something there.

 

And I've seen David Blaine do some fairly fantastic illusions as well.

[HadouKen24]

David Blaine trained for a long time in all kinds of sleight of hand and magic tricks. Unless you're willing to make the claim that all the Asian martial artists who do that sort of thing (and there are many) have spent enough time practicing stage magic in secrecy even from their students and family that they can achieve professional level illusions... I wouldn't bother making the comparison.