Real psychics wouldn't take the challenge...

[really?]

[Craig Browning]

[Eternally Learning]

Here’s what is bugging me about your responses to, I assume, me; You appear to view everyone who doubts, disbelieves, or questions as one entity with whom you are familiar, and with whom you’ve argued extensively. I don’t think I’ve been antagonistic in any way, shape, or form and have in fact gone out of my way (IMO at any rate) to show you that I’m not trying to beat anyone down or ridicule anyone’s beliefs, religious or otherwise. I’m simply a person who likes to step out of his comfort zone to discuss concepts I’m not intimately familiar with, with those who are. If in doing so, I state what my feelings and beliefs are on the matter, and those statements offend you to your core… well I don’t know how I could possibly have a reasonable discussion with you. Furthermore, I don’t know why you’d even bother engaging me if that’s what you really feel.

As for some of the specific points you made, I don’t think any self-respecting scientist would say that to prove the existence of an effect we have to be able to explain how it is caused in detail. All I want, and I think this goes for a large portion of the skeptical community as well, is to verify that there is an effect. So far, I’ve not seen that. In my posts, I’ve explained methods in which this could be shown to me outside of a scientific study which I would find reliable. Show me a reliably verified report of someone predicting the future before something happened, or point me in the direction of a psychic whom you deem reliable, and I’d like to see what they can do. No one has even addressed these points other than to appeal to “the data is out there for you to find.” The problem is, as you yourself have even pointed out, that there’s a veritable crapstorm of psychics out there whom most people on both sides of the fence would agree are fakes. In fact, it seems that it’s the consensus that the vast majority of these people are fakes (You even said 95% yes?). So with all that noise out there is it really so odd for me, as a truth-searcher, to come to a place where people believe in this stuff and ask them what convinced them?

[Craig Browning]

Eternally, I wasn't directing my response to you specifically and I'll admit, it was more of a knee jerk based on what Really had insinuated in the quote I applied. I get quite tired of the constant "Prove it to me" B.S. waged by the cynical who, when anything remotely smacking of proof, is almost instantly torn apart and/or the researchers involved are discredited in some manner so as to allow them to perpetuate their own dogma. Unfortunately there are those so stuck on the general idea of "rationality" that they stop being rational, refusing to see anything that does not fit a very narrow window of definition that seems to flux with every turn.

People who actually do investigate and research Psi, who disprove the questionable while likewise sustaining those things that seem to fall within scientific plausibility -- Parapsychologist -- are pooped on regularly by people that don't do such investigative work, who have no first hand experience with the paranormal that's not part of some lab experiment, and in general, they have a vested interest to disprove anything that is remotely spiritual or paranormal, primarily due to the fact that the existence of such things not only lends reason to question their atheist views but it keeps "man" on a wrung slightly lower than that of something that's unknown and decidedly elevated when compared to us. The ego of these "scholars" simply can't deal with being second banana which makes them every bit the same as those who desperately cling to the idea of being Psychic -- it's a delusion of being special and above the typical sentient being vs. the more honest and balanced aspects of reality.

When I can turn on the television to networks like the Learning or Science Channel, and see articles that support Psi/Psychic Detective Work as well as research & technology that taps into the very core of what Psychics have said for thousands of years, well, it's beyond me when someone insinuates that I'm talking out the top of my head given how readily accessible such programs are let alone their audacity to demand specifics rather than their getting off their own butts and looking through the program guides of said networks themselves. I point in the right direction but again, I don't play fetch and I'm no one's bitch. If you want something and you are as superior and mature as you claim, them be a grown-up and do the footwork yourself; the information isn't just accessible, it is abundant. But here's the problem. . .
. . . once such material is aired the naysayers will dissect it and do whatever they can to discredit it and the people involved with this or that study (you can find such patterns in the archives of this forum in fact, let alone the bigoted world of the JREF & friends).

How many times has the skeptic's community been found guilty of deception when it comes to their practices?

There's the situation with Banachek (Steven Shaw) back in the late 70s/early 80s'

There's the fudging of data by CSICOPS when research stats were coming back in support of PSI that they got caught red-handed on

I won't even go into the myriad of cover-ups when it comes to some of the less moral antics of their gurus and spokes-persons

Outside the fact that there are a handful of actual criminals in the psychic world (as well as the same basic percentage you find in most all professions) you will not find its proponents attempting to deceive the public in ways the self-proclaimed debunkers have done. You will not find them putting magicians out in front of the world trying to fool and screw with research, nor will you find them trying to stack research data to their favor or for that matter, you will find them cleaning their own house when it comes to ethics & morality issues such as certain sexual proclivities involving minors or worse, using Reading skill for the sake of sexual conquest, one of the biggest taboos in the industry; while it may happen, those guilty of it are soon rutted out and exposed. Then again, when actual crooks are found within the psychic world they too get ousted, at times via legal course; the professional psychics not just having a vested reason to clean their own house, they seem to do a superior job of it when compared to the headline chasing egos of the skeptics & magician's communities who seem happy enough at just talking about "the evil psychics" vs. getting their hands a bit dirty by actually learning about that world rather than embracing the assumptions & opinions of others. . . kind of like the Sunday morning Christian who only understands the bible based on what the preachers tell them to understand and believe rather than learning the material themselves and making a decision.

A bully is a bully no matter what ground it may stand on; when any group seeks to suppress and degrade another it is being a bully regardless the excuses they use to justify what they are doing be it Bush and Iraq or Randi vs. Geller. Last I checked Uri hasn't hurt anyone whereas Randi has physically brutalized youngsters and form what I've heard, even animals on more than a few occasions and that's before we move into the nastier side of things that are being constantly swept under the nearest rug by his followers. This bullying attitude has managed to put the world into a state of general unrest and uncertainty which is the more macrocosmic way of seeing things; on the microsmic side we have scenarios such as this -- the contention between psi & science taken to an extreme "fundamentalist" mode.

I'll not repeat myself any further, I've explained this scenario numerous times and it doesn't seem to sink in; the naysayer wants everything their way (just as the Baptist, Catholics and Islamic Jihadist do) and they refuse to ever consider the middle-ground that does exist. The reality being that they don't want to believe and thus, they never will, not even if the miraculous reached up and bit them in the ass. Such attitudes are not "skeptical' but "cynical" -- dogmatic! It is a kind of desperation that I find to be quite sad and unnecessary, even superfluous in the sense that it's an invented thing conceived by the ego, or at least that is how it comes across to the mind of the observer; the faith-filled frequently seeing such stone-hard individuals as dead, heartless, lost, even demonic. . . most everything but "human". Not exactly the kind of merit badge I'd think anyone would be proud of given how inhumane it reads.

I'll almost always side with the underdog. In psychic circles I tend to side with the views offered by the skeptical, encouraging people to open their eyes a bit wider and step out from la-la land long enough to notice alternate probabilities by pointing out how "the Way of the Wise" isn't a path rife in ignorance and gullibility. My views aren't there to be a constant antagonist but because I believe firmly in the middle-ground and how it is there the contrasting schools of thought can not only meet but find greater truth than they can alone whilst bumping heads.

[Eternally Learning]

Well, I'm glad you know me better than I do. Sorry for being so rude as to inquire. You can go on about your business now.

[ProfWag]

[Arouet]

Well, while we can debate about the significance and the protocols, the ganzfeld stuff has had some success with replication, AFAIK.

[Craig Browning]

I don't know much about Koenig and Callahan though I've had some exchanges with Jim off and on over the years. What I do know is that they AREN'T Magicians and by today's newly reinvented construct, they aren't "Mentalists". . . that is to say they aren't part of the new politically/commercially corrected world of "Mentalism" but rather "Old School", doing things the way Robert Nelson and for that matter William Larsen, Sr. were doing them -- How "true" Mentalism was done when the craft first began in the mid to late 19th century and well into the early decades of the 20th -- Old School Mentalism which, until the mid-1970s was the general course for most and even as things began to change the idea of presenting everything you do as "real" vs. trickery, has remained a constant; even Mr. Dunninger put stock into this point though he poo-pooed the mystical theme. Which is actually what most cynics don't want to see; it's not the extraordinary claims, it's the idea of something mystical being out there.

Got news for you. . . there are more con-games and hustles going on in today's world under the envelope of "Science" than you'll find in the whole of mysticism and it's 5,000+ year history. The honorable and all knowing world of science has managed to create health conditions in people that never were a threat until man started screwing with nature and natural order. The honorable world of science has managed to help devastate a tremendous amount of the environment (and no, I'm not one of the global warming nut jobs on that front, just a conservationist for lack of a better term). Thanks to the political-economic horse-pucky within the world of education, let alone "higher-education" kids are being robbed of learning the basics of mental function in exchange for codependency on technology, lost discipline, let alone any kind of respect for anything outside their personal little world... and it is little, science removing them from anything that resembles actual social interaction at the natural level -- without some kind of electronic layer between us and them.

I don't have a "belief' when it comes to the many things I've seen and experienced when it comes to the spiritual and psychic worlds; it is not a matter of some psychological issue or delusion, it's a matter that no one can replicate or explain away such things (other than the popular "coincidence" line when it comes to certain "Reading" type issues. . . that and "false memory". . . just love the lies some folks tell themselves just to justify disbelief). What I do have is knowledge of the fact certain things happened in exactly the way I and others that were there, recall them -- when you KNOW something as factual, it is not a belief it is knowledge; beliefs can be changed but not something you've come to absolutely KNOW beyond a shadow of doubt.

When it comes to the supposed morality skeptics love to invoke, we again have far more incidents in which science and those trained & pedigreed professional counselor types have done far more damage to folks by way of drug dependence (and the related social-zombie, non-functional nor rehabilitated victims of said world. . . just like over-diagnosed kids that are kept medicated and subdued -- can anyone say SOMA? Who knows, we might be screaming for Soilent Green before long. . . ), I'll not even go into the number of people that have had their family situations destroyed, not to mention careers and livelihood because of how these "professionals" mis-diagnose conditions and situations -- the 1980's game of having children believe they were molested is just one example; the actual idea of which was planted into the child's mind by the shrinks in countless cases and yet, many of those so-called Doctors barely got slapped on the hand while any kid caught skinny-dipping now days is treated like some kind of dangerous predator.

Then we have your own little group -- the Elitist of Society known as the Skeptics -- they say nay to doing Readings. . . unless it is a means by which they can sack some bimbo that night or, in the case of certain gurus, this or that unsuspecting man-child (and more than Randi is guilty of this).

Anything can be bastardized or made dangerous. It's exactly like the NRA says about guns. . . guns don't kill, it's the fool that picks it up and misuses it. There's not a single profession known to human history that can't be manipulated in ways that do bad, which is why it is the person one must look at.

Not all black men love chicken and watermelon, nor are all hispanic people lazy illegal invaders here to take advantage of the leftest passed laws in this land. I'll even point out that not all Skeptics are assholes (though it's tough to prove otherwise ) So please wake-up and get honest enough to acknowledge the fact that not all people who call themselves a "Psychic" are being deceptive or predatory. I can't speak for others but I will say that the majority of the guys I know that work from the Old School philosophy or mentalism are hardworking, honest individuals who actually keep an eye out for the charlatans and help when it comes to protecting the consumer. We are in a better position to help because we are there, as part of that community and therefore trusted; we aren't bashing the believer over the head calling them gullible, stupid, ignorant and foolish such as most in the skeptic's world tend to do. . .just look at some of the things folks say here towards me, especially prior to you're getting to know me a bit better.

I do not mislead any of my clients, I believe my web site sustains that fact. I'm not claiming to channel some dead mystic from Avalon or that I see Angels, etc. only that I do Readings using specific oracles and their related systems -- the scientific discipline associated with that particular oracle and nothing other.

"But That's Cold Reading!" Screams the Cynic

Of course it is, I dare you to do any kind of Reading that isn't, including any type of Psychological Profile. You can't because it is all, by it's very design, a form of cold reading just as every single word we use in our vocabulary is... it all has a definition; a set of deliberate meanings based on design, pattern, and mode of interpretation. When you apply such things in conjunction to the other elements (words) found in the presentation (spread/book) you can interpret what's being said (you can "Read" it). But just as most of us can't understand a bloody thing written by a Lawyer in their jargon so too, only those trained and studied are able to discern what the cards or whatever, are saying. Over time one develops a penchant for the work which heightens one's natural intuition -- just as it does for those involved with business, law enforcement, and so forth. But then we aren't alone in this are we, our counterparts in the world, that group within the world of Psychoanalysis . . . a field that came directly from the Gypsy craft, as some call it. Science doing what it does best, rearranging and formalizing what was already known and then slowly evolving it in ways that it controlled vs. tradition. I should remind you however, even in the 1960's the Mental Health filed was still looked upon with high suspicion and in some areas, is still seen as an aspect of Satanism. I know that means little to the critically-minded who've decided they are above gods & devils, but it means a lot when you look at the greater majority of world conscience and consensus in which YOU are the minority that is immoral, manipulative and dangerous. As I've pointed out, there are far more black marks to be tallied in your corner of the issue than you can garner around the world of the Psychic & Spiritual guides; things any honest and rational human being has to weigh when considering the greater good in all things.

[ProfWag]

[Eternally Learning]

[Eternally Learning]

[Craig Browning]

[Ganondork]

[ProfWag]

[Craig Browning]