Not here to argue just gonna mention my beliefs.
I do believe in psychics... also spritutal healers, energy work and real mind reading.
Don't believe in mediums though.


Note: Palm/Tarot reading isn't psychic, can be but for the most part isn't.

I have the Down the Rabbit Hole DVD and it is awesome!!!

I've used this example before:

imagine its a hundred years ago from today, right this minute...

a woman is gossiped about by others in a small village..they all say the same thing "its unnatural, she walks into a room and she instantly knows what we are all thinking...we avoid her when we can...she's...she's too quiet and there's something uneasy about being in her company...some go to visit her and she knows what's on their mind right away..."

now, you could create several little possible paths from that, some could define it as some kind of gift, others a curse, some would dismiss it...and because others have defined certain instances of "weirdness", or things that happen naturally but under huge odds as something else (because of their belief system) - that person who does the 'thing' starts getting used to the label others apply, so much so it becomes (eventually) a habit, or an accepted explanation...

so the reality could be that the woman in the little story was actually just naturally very good at picking up on Ekman-like micro-muscle movements, reading faces, just by having (for example) a very tough upbringing - so she can sense a few seconds quicker than most if there's an argument in the air, violence even, when someone is keeping a secret, or if they are lying or afraid...its just a natural ability we all have to varying degrees...yet because of the lack of scientific knowledge in that arena at the time meant that (as we are pattern seeking animals) we joined up the dots despite the massive chasms between those two dots...

so that woman gets reinforcement (wanted or not) that she is labelled as A, when its really B with maybe a bit of C thrown in... or maybe there's an even better answer to how she did what she did...but no one knows about, and they can only deal with the knowledge that they had at the time...

certain people have a tendency to look back on history with current 20-20 goggles on, which is not fair to history...you can only apply current knowledge to the specific time that you happen to live in...

just like there are people who believe that they are psychic because of their experiences and want to genuinely help others, there are also a percentage (of what percentage I do not know, I have no real evidence to use) of people who just pretend that they are psychic and use other techniques...again, not all of them are scam artists, and again I say that because I have zero evidence to back up any of it..so all I can say as a person who attempts to be open minded and a critical thinker, is that for me, and in my own opinion, I have not read or heard about any real scientifically testable proof to support the theory of psychic ability...however, it would be great if we did, I believe we should still fund certain groups to carry out tests and share the papers on it...i say this because we are finding out all kidns of very interesting stuff about how the brain works...

an example is this, mention meditation to most western people 30 years ago, and it would be met with eye rolling, yet right now, there's more and more solid scientific evidence, brain scans, papers, tests all sorts of things that now reveal that meditation does have a genuine affect on the brain...this is a fascinating thing...who knows where it could lead?

on the subject of critical thinking, I think a few that also happen to be anti-theist or sKeptics fail on being critical thinkers...they have already made up their minds, paint in broad brush strokes and do not stick to the evidence based backbone that C.T. needs...and everytime they argue, they actually do critical thinking an injustice...

"the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement."

objective vs subjective... massive difference...

what papers should I look up online please jstreiff? any big ones that might googleable please?

David,

Of course I offer my friends advice but a) they are my friends b) I don't charge them anything.

Therapists or counsellors normally require qualifications. I don't think doing it under the umbrella of "psychic" should be a get-out clause.

My question to you about Santa was absolutely serious. You accused me of being "closed-minded". You would appear to close your own mind when it suits you (Santa, tooth fairy, 72 virgins for acts of terrorism?). Why are you not "open-minded" on these issues which are equally unproven scientifically?

I'd be careful not to lump all scientists together. Just like any other field in any other career, there are geniuses, journeyman and hacks. There are scientists who are atheists, and scientists who are men and women of faith. Look at the life of Jack Parsons, the founder of JPL if you want to see that not all scientist are alike! Scientists are human and have their own set of thoughts, beliefs, politics and agendas. Look no further than the topic of climate change and global warming for proof of that. And as far as Dean Radin? Well that's another topic all together!

I think Tony is one of the most level headed mentalists on the Café. He is correct about this intolerance of readers. I really don't understand it as Nelson and many other mentalists sold numerous "How to" books to mentalists themselves and advocated selling Psychic books to the public also.

I have never seen any evidence to suggest to me that psychic abilities or power exist. Often times what are claimed as psychic experiences are misinterpreted as such. So no I do not believe psychics are real

Not that I am aware of. Can you cite any of these peer reviewed papers? In three decades of being interested in this question I have not come across a single repeatable experiment that hints at paranormal abilities in humans.

To answer the original question, thirty years ago I was very open-minded on this question. But after thirty years I am as open-minded as ever, but completely satisfied there is no such thing as psychic ability.

Heightened intuition, sure. But nothing more.

Not only have there been tests that "hint" at psychic ability in humans, even some of the foremost skeptics have conceded that, by normal scientific standards, a case has been made. The problem is that, since it is an extraordinary claim, there is a higher standard of proof.

See: http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/E......ers.html

The biggest hurdle is one of "labeling" an event.

I will read this carefully. But it always comes back to one thing.

Philosophers, psychologists, and soft scientists can be won over to the possibility of ESP but there is a shortage of mathematicians and theoretical physicists being won over. Parapsychology has not turned up anything yet that cannot be explained within normal scientific theories. I remain open-minded, but I have not seen anything in thirty years that even hints at it; a single study that can be repeated, and that cannot be faulted.

I always remember the initial remote viewing experiments, which were very impressive. But they were not replicated, and the guys behind them strongly endorsed Uri Geller. No individual piece of research withstands rigorous scrutiny.

Tony- Read the article and follow through on the links to the original sources. I think you'll be surprised by some of them. Even Ray Hyman stated that he could find no flaws in the protocols of experiments that produced results favoring the remote viewing hypothesis.

I concede that "extraordinary" proof has not yet appeared. But it's been conceded that, by normal scientific standards, there has been much more than the "hint" of evidence that you stated doesn't exist.

Bob, I will go through it carefully. And I will be curious and delighted if I am wrong.

I've posted information about the Cornell/Dr. Bem study before, but from another source. Maybe the critics reading this post and accompanying link will move slightly to the 'Hmmmmm' side of things, but honestly, most people, despite their claims of 'open mindedness', believe what they want to believe regardless of contrary evidence.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the......henomena

For what it's worth.

This is great...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-cl=84......21914688

If a man were fighting for his life in a trial and proved he was innocent .... Could someone say ... That's OK .. But you must have EXTRAORDINARY PROOF .... Just sounds like everyone likes to move the goal posts when it's something they don't believe in.....

Slim, you're not making any sense.

Btw, re: your tag line: I'll happily give you a test in exchange for one million dollars. I accept cash only.

All science is highly specialized, this is why specialist peer-reviewed journals exist. In the case of the science of parapsychology, a major journal is the Journal of Parapsychology. But increasingly articles on psi research also appear in other journals such as Physics Review and magazines such as Nature and Science. Daryl Bem's research on presentiment appeared in Science magazine a couple years ago for example. The issue though is that most readers are not likely qualified to really understand the journal articles, which are necessarily technical. One needs a background in research methodology, mathematics, statistics and of course the history of the field to truly appreciate the nuances of the studies reported. That is why I point non-parapsychologists to other sources such as the books I mentioned previously. They are written expressly for the non-specialist audience. You can find a comprehensive online directory of journal articles and online postings at http://noetic.org/research/psi-research/ .

To reiterate a point Bob made, major skeptics like Hyman and Wiseman have now admitted that they cannot offer any alternative explanations for the psi research. We have risen to the challenge, we have provided the evidence to a degree required by science to establish anything as real. We have moved from the proof phase to the process phase of the research. We are now asking questions not about whether it exists, but about how it works. This is a normal progression in scientific research and indicates a maturing field of research in any discipline.

The view of modern physics has changed in the past century. We now recognize that reality is about more than particles of matter and energy and, due principally to investigations into quantum physics, that the materialistic worldview embraced by much of the world, is indeed incomplete - not wrong - but incomplete. Psi behaves in many ways far more akin to quantum reality and far less like the physics of the everyday world in which we live. Furthermore, we are incredibly naive as a species. We have not been around that long cosmologically speaking. It is rather odd that anyone would think we are that knowledgeable about the universe and all reality. Yet many scientists continue to labor under the delusion that they can explain anything materialistically, when informed physicists recognize that materialism has been known to be incomplete for over a century.

The best analogy I can think of to the situation in science would be to take a copy of a large volume, like the Story of Dorian Gray, remove random pages, rebind it and give it to someone who had never read the book, telling them it was the original. They would erroneously think they knew the full story. But if they spoke to someone else who had read the full book, it would quickly become obvious this was not the case. Unless of course the person with the subset book believed other people were not telling them the truth. That is essentially where mainstream science is today. They have ideas that represent a limited subset of what could actually be known. And all indications are that if they knew the other information their responses to things like psi and other anomalies would be very different.

The fundamental premise behind the assertion that psi cannot exist is that we know enough to make that assertion. In fact, it is more the case that We Do Not Know What We Do Not Know and from that, logically and rationally we deduce that Anything Is Possible. And therefore the prudent intelligent response to anomalies like psi is not "Impossible" but instead "Interesting."

It now appears that the best current understandings of reality are likely based in a non-material unified field instead of a material basis. That our material world, whatever it really may be, is as it is because of influences through the quantum reality from non-material information. And the transformational rules in play in that non-material region are only partially known to us. So of course we are able to make the mistake of believing that all we have seen is all there could be, when in fact things like psi tell us this is simply not true. This has been well documented by quantum physicists working in advanced theory like John Hagelin, PhD. and Robert W. Boyer, PhD. Their material is highly available online.

The real irony, as I have consistently observed for the past half-century, is that if you are familiar with psi research you can actually infer the future of science fairly accurately.

All of this should be quite exciting to mentalists if for no other reason than it suggests a plethora of premises.

That is my answer. I'm convinced all is NOT as it seems. But, I, too have been ridiculed. So, I keep it to myself!

Doug