by Waygooder64 53 Replies latest jw friends
If the dead could get in touch with the living why would your mother or father not contact you personally and not have to go through someone like him? He makes lots of money and that is why he does the scam. It makes no sense that he has to ask so many questions and really doesn't give any real infomation about the other side at all.
Ken P.
I dont know if he's real or not. It would be nice to believe that he is. I dont care though.
I think John Edwards is incredibly sexy. I watch him almost everyday. And I must confess, I've had more than one fantasy about him. Something about him makes me all tingley.
Double Edge,
You are wrong. He was exposed on Dateline, I believe, and they actually caught him on tape getting information before reading one of their camera men. You simply watched a different show.
rem
Dark Uncle,
::The skeptics have to bash this to protect their own world view. They do not want to believe that this is a possibility.
Nope, it's just reality. I actually think it would be great and wonderful if the claims were true. I just don't *need* them to be true and I have done the research to find that there is no real evidence of psychic powers. Ironically it seems that the believers are the real closed-minded ones - they will never really do the research and test their worldview because to do so and find out that it needs changing would be too painful.
Sorry about your anti-intellectual anti-science bias. Fortunatelly there are people out there unlike you so that we can enjoy the modern convieniences of science... such as lower infant mortality, cured diseases, and instant communications including this discussion board. I'm not sure what terrible thing science and critical thinking has done to you to deserve such derision.
rem
It surprises me that John Kerry and the other Democratic Presidential hopefulls have not made an issue out of John Edward's show during the debates. I bet he will have to quit the show if he gets the nomination.
***** Rub a Dub
at never happened... you must be thinking of some other show
That wasn't the show I saw. It wasn't Stone Phillips. It might have even been a woman, and they did talk about people planted in line.
That's it. It was Dateline!! Thanks, Rem.
I have watched Sylvia Brown and realize she is probably fake too, but at least she does say she believes we all can communicate with those who have died, and we don't need mediums. We just need someone to show us how to do it. We may be missing signs that our loved ones are leaving for us. Who knows?
I think in the unlikely event that Edwards beats Kerry and then becomes President in November, it would be cool to watch Edwards work the crowds during speeches and press conferences.
***** Rub a Dub
It surprises me that John Kerry and the other Democratic Presidential hopefulls have not made an issue out of John Edward's show during the debates.
You are pretty funny, Rubadub.
Mulan... maybe we did watch two different shows.
The following is from another board on the same subject.... this person looks at both sides, refreshingly, with an open mind:
"Let me get this out straight first: I don?t know if he?s real, I don?t know if he?s fake. I read both sides of the story?actually all but Edward?s. I have not read his books, and have only read articles and scientific testing, such as what Gary Swartz has done. I also read articles from CSICOPS, even though frankly, many members of their organization are about as closed-minded as they come. It?s like going to the republican party for information on the democrates: you are always going to hear from people who have already made up their minds. I read both sides because I want to come to fair conclusions.
Whenever I hear the proof that he is not real, many people go right to the cold reading gig. However I see many flaws in these theories. One, you will notice that many times Johnny-boy has made referances to things that account to barely anyone in the population. Such as a inside joke, certain ?special? meanings to the family member, etc. Time after time I hear the statment of ?how he rattles off names starting with an ?M?. However, I have noticed several times that he goes father than that?in fact almost all the time, he starts adding to it. ?M? becomes ?Macy? or ?Matty? or something along those lines. Some of the things that have happened during these readings just arn?t covered by the cold reading reasoning. Yes we all may know a Charlie. But how many of you have a joke about onions with your relatives?
Another interesting thing to think about: in some of the above papers (found at CSICOPS, ones i have read many times) I love how they will disreguard plenty of people who say that John Edward, when they received a reading say that there was absoultly no way he could have known what he did because they did not talk about it at the studio or with him, or sometimes even with anyone, and yet one guy from Time magazine mentions something ?fishy? is going on, and BOOM they land all over it as their evidence, disreguarding all personal testemonies, or other such evidence. How is that right?
I read Hyman?s critique of the experiments that Schwartz did, and it just wasn?t very satisfactory. He talked about the probablility and how there may be fault there, but it doesn?t take a genious to figure out some of the examples were just not very likely to happen. The very first case was a good example, it involved 5 tested mediums and they all came up with similar information even though the mediums were NEVER able to talk with eachother and were being wathced! They set up cameras, they did blind readings where the mediums could not see the person, they did only ?yes or no? questioning which provides NO leads. In other words, Swartz tested his ass off on alot of this stuff, though it was not perfect,( but ususally not in ways that would greatly effect the results) in the end the skeptics admitted that ?fraud was not evident? however did not rule out cold reading. In several papers I?ve read, the skeptics pointed out all the nagative findings that they could latch onto and totally disreguarded solid notion that something other than cold reading was going on.
It?s not scientific. If you are going to say he?s a fraud, I want some emphirical evidence. I do not want studies of cold reading, i do not want theory. I want TESTS I want NUMBERS.
Which is why I am more frustrated with people who say ?it?s fake end of story?. Because they ususally don?t do laberatory testing. In fact, I will quote Hymen (Hymen is BTW, a list of the top debunkers at CSICOPS and has written several papers on cold reading and mediumship) says that the ?testing of mediumship has no place for orthodox science?. So apparently they will say it?s not true and a bunch of crap, but they will say that it should not be tested scientifically.
If you want anything near to fair, read ?The Afterlife Experiments?. (ignore that ?proof of an afterlife? on the cover, frankly they just put it on there for book sales-Shwartz himself is still skeptical and says it?s ?quite a leap to suggest ?proof? of an afterlife) Then to be fair, go and read ?How Not to Test a Medium? By Hymen. Then to be fair go to Swartz?s site which you can find via google and you will find a response to that critique.
Schwartz is not a member of parapapsychology (a field which is highly suspect) nor is he a member of CSICOPS. He repetedly talks about the importance of scientific testing, and let the ?results speak?. Of course he is ridiculed for his interest and testing of these subjects, and though it?s still inconclusive, the studies are hinting that there may actually be something to all of this.
The need for proof may come onto the medium, but I feel that for me to totally cast it away, I need more evidence than what is given. We need to stop generalizing mediumship, we need to start testing. The skeptics who state that this is cold reading have made up their mind that there is no such thing as a person being able to talk to the dead, for if they hadn?t made up their mind they would look at mediums case by case instead of generalizing them all, and come up with some numbers instead of untested hypothesises.
Constantly mediums have said that the information comes to them in ?snipits? and feelings, and emotions and flashes of pictures. If the ?afterlife? is another dimension like it has always been hypothesised, why do we expect them to talk as if they were in this dimension? Why do we expect it to be as clear as a radio signal? That is why, if these abilities are real, they would never pass the James Rhandi test. Rhandi expects results that are as good as me walking up to you and talking to you right now. If we are dealing with a paranomal universe of some sort, it?s just not going to work like that."
Double Edge,
The problem with this writeup is that the person doesn't understand the power of cold reading, nor does he understand basic probability.
What many cold readers will do to gain hits is rattle off something that sounds extremely specific and unknown and ask the person if they "understand that". The person will always say yes because they understand what he's saying even though it may not (probably doesn't) relate to anything and is not really a hit.
The problem is that so many misses are ignored and the probability of getting some pretty impressive hits is not extraordinary - especially when you learn the *skill* of cold reading. Yes it is a skill and not many people are good at it. That's why it seems so fantastic to the lay person and they don't understand what is possible with the technique.
When you watch unedited readings, such as Sylvia Browne on Larry King, you can easily see the technique in action. There is absolutely nothing mysterious. The only mysterious thing is that people are still being duped by this age-old trick of mentalism that magicians have known for centuries.
rem
