The article was just something I quickly pulled up that gave some information on it, as I had heard of it before. It went on for twenty years or so, so there must have been something worth studying in that amount of time. psychics aren't really something im interested in but i know that some of these things are possible.
most likely a dead end but i bet there was more than a thing or two that was gleamed from it.
as far as waiting for a study to prove it to you that spiritual things are real, don't hold your breath. there is a lot of other evidence around for spiritual things existing if its something you really were interested in. spiritual principles manifest themselves in the physical world, and the things we do in the material world, impact the spiritual realm. the two are related and im sure there is a mechanism behind it that isn't understood as of yet.
i don't really see the value in discussing spiritual things if you are closed off from them. surely there is more to our existence than what we can experience with our senses, no?
Again I believe we have differing ideas of open minded. I don't follow paranormal phenomenon because the trustworthy evidence leads away from it, if that changes in the future I will reevaluate with the new information, that's being open minded.
Only finding out something is real because you specifically tried to find proof of it is closed minded.
I am indeed open minded, because with sufficient evidence I would delightedly change my position to believer. I just need evidence that can't be so effortlessly dismissed but the usual human fallibilities sciences whole purpose is to control for and exclude from the data. That is how you reliably determine most of the time the objective and real, as close as we can get anyways, from the subjective and distorted.
It wouldn't be difficult. Pick which subject you wanna study first. Let's say remote viewing.
You bring in as many remote viewing candidates as you can, plus say for example, a control group of humans who claim not to be believers who will simply use intuition to guess, and a third control of a computer that guesses randomly. Give them all test locations with a finite but very large possible collection of objects known to all groups. And at differing closed sites, place varying items chosen at random at each, not known to the evaluators ahead of time, selected by a computer and placed by humans who's job is specifically to do only that.
Collect the data, soliciting remote viewing from all the test and control groups.
Once all the data's collected, you determine the odds of guessing correctly by random chance as the computer simulated group will have, and compare the others too them. If the remote viewer group has a sucess rate of statistical significant above the margin of error. You may have something. You can then compare it to the intuitive skeptic group, see how they did, how similar they are. Even if both human groups do better at a random setup than a truly random (or close enough pseudorandom) selector. Then you have real, unimpeachable evidence. You publish it for peer review, where others attempt to see if they can find flaws in how you conducted the experiment and conclusions drawn and so on.
Finally, someone else with entirely we people repeat their own version of the same experiment as described by the first, with their own equipment and people.
They get the same result, and we have excellent, indisputable data from which we can conclude that some form of apparent hereto unknown form of perception is giving the humans an above average sucess rate that can't currently be accounted for.
Now we know some kind of remote viewing or perhaps precognition is a likely hypothesis for what's happening in the results, next we start doing tests on the best of the remote viewers to try to find out how it's happening. People can propose better hypothesis, new tests can rule out some and support others. Perhaps ultimately leading to a cohesive theory of the nature of the preciously believed paranormal ability (in a scientific sense, paranormal can't exists either something is a normal behavior in the universe, or it doesn't exist, or our model of normal behavior is wrong, but there is no 'paranormal', that's just a convenient popular word to describe proposed phenomenon in our world yet to be discovered and lacking mainstream acceptance or interest.
All you need is to go to university, learn science, and you could do it for your PhD or masters or something. It would be a major discovery. And since it's real, the neysayers will be quickly shut up when they can repeat it themselves and see how to prove it. That my friend is science. That's how you could go about actually proving some alleged paranormal phenomenon.
Other methods could be decided or other subjects of the paranormal, most are theoretically testable. Except say with psychics who can use the magic 'it doesn't work that way' excuse or believers in the 'only those afraid of science become ghosts when they die' version of ghosts.
That is what I'm looking for. If someone could provide me with something like that, at the very least I would change my position to believing it's plausible, pending further data. If not outright believing it right there.
This way of testing and observing the world has consistently worked for hundreds of years at yielding the knowledge responsible for virtually all the technological and medical marvels of our world. No other method has ever accomplished even close to so much impressively accurate, working useable knowledge.
But nobody is giving me that kind of evidence. I can't find it, noones been able to show me one yet that satisfies the criteria I mentioned. And if that weren't enough reason to simply believe it's probably not real simply because, if it were, being so simple to test, and with so many failed attempts to test such phenomenon in the past. That if it were true we should already have more than enough scientific evidence to confirm it. Then you also have everything we DO know from SUCCESSFUL scientific experiments done in this way, that explain to us all the fallibilities' human minds possess that perfectly explain, and in fact would predict the existence of. Superstitions like the paranormal, conspiracy theories, quack medicine, all these examples of false, self propagating, viral ideas. We have the studies that have shown us already how our minds work and how we as a society wind up with many of us who believe again and again in such things. All the mistakes that lead to it happening, all the flaws that support it, and all the motives that maintain it.
So not only is there reason not to believe based in the lack of good evidence, there is also virtually complete explanations provided by science as to exactly HOW we in large numbers come to such widely believed yet unsupported at best and most likely incorrect or even dangerous at worst, self propagating beliefs.
And then you have basic logical deduction and reason that pokes holes in some of the paranormal claims based on the known science. Like the extent of the brain we've come to understand, and how illogical it would be that it or it's consciousness would continue any form of meaningful processing post death. Not to mention many more logical issues with ghosts. Every one of which requires a gigantic leap and change to so much that we have so we'll established to make sense of, which in turn would break down much that came before it that yet still consistently worked as a model. Of course none of this matters if you don't have much science education in various fields, since if you know almost nothing about how the world works, in your mind the line between what is plausible and implausible is much harder to define. Because you both know so little and are so unaware of how much others among us actually DO KNOW.
I can't think of any better way to explain it than I have now. I've been waiting for the the right opportunity to demonstraight ways people come to erroneous conclusions, and demonstraigbt what makes good data good, and bad data bad. I can't make you believe anything.
But believing because you want to believe refusing to look at all the counter evidence I've shown with your mind open to the possibility that your deeply held experiences and beliefs could be wrong, whatever the reason. That is not open minded. That is close minded.
Open minded are the students of hard science, because we strive to go where the data takes us. And abandon fruitless paths no matter how much we wish it weren't so. That is being open in your mind to being wrong, and disappointed. Believers who try to find evidence after forming their belief are close minded. Those that selectively gather all the info, good or bad or very bad that supports their prefered or preconceived beliefs, ignore, dismiss, or deprioritize the evidence against their notions. Those are the close minded.
Even if one day you turn out to be somewhat right bout some paranormal phenomenon, you were right for all the wrong reasons. You were wrong to believe at the time something that at a latter time would prove right and right to be right.
And mark my words, should that day happen In our lifetimes, should real evidence emerge to my satisfaction with the rules I've given and reasons to trust in those rules above any others. I will be the one then dismissing the skeptics who don't believe in esp despite the clear evidence. Like anyone, there are many things I wish were true. I have faith in the existence of the soul, even if I don't have scientific evidence it's true. But since it's only faith I don't expect anyone to share my beliefs. I hope to be one day proven right, and if I'm one day proven wrong (the word soul as I'm using it here has specific, much vaguer meaning than any religious usage I should mention). I will be disappointed. But I won't put my head in the sand. Closing my mind as it were.
Because to me, my whole life, I have valued finding the truth more than just about anything else. I want to know the truth, even when it's disappointing.
I wanna believe in a cyclical universe that will continue with life coming and going forever. We may well know for sure if that's true or not one day. Disappointingly however the evidence as it stands isn't being very cooperative to getting that definitive answer.I Want us to find a way to travel faster than the speed of light in one form or another, unfortunately our best evidence so far isn't looking good for that.
So long as the matter is not completely settled, I can continue to have faith that my preference will be one day found to be true. But some matters pretty much are settled. Or so close to it as to be not worth continuing to have faith in with such poor outlooks. And I argue that from everything ive seen most if not all paranormal phenomenon follow this patteen.
Again this isn't directed at anyone in particular. I don't want to hurt peoples feelings or insult well meaning people, I truly honestly don't. But I see so much destruction in the world caused by ignorance, magical thinking, so on. Babies and children dying of preventable diseases. Destruction of our planet and suicidal level denial. Senseless deaths and from false medicine, Steve jobs is such a victim. And then there's all the false hope given to the ignorant by con artists and other equally ignorant people claiming to be clairvoyants. I don't know what's sadder, the ones that know they're frauds or the ones that have taught themselves cold reading over time but don't even realize that's what they're doing. Just thinking that's how their powers work. Ugh. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, I don't wanna hurt any innocent people. But our culture suppresses people from frankly stating the truth as I am doing, and people are hurt and killed because ignorance was allowed to spread, viral ideas propagated, while social pressures silenced those that could have at least tried to do something, anything even. But instead did nothing under the suggestion that what harm is it for people to believe whatever they want? When really they just don't have the spine or will to stand up and potentially be hated by people they like on a personality level (as I've experienced). I'd be better off if I didn't say anything either. But I can't help myself. I wouldn't feel right saying nothing if there's even the slimmist chance someone might be better off for it some day.
Man I thought I'd accidently wiped out the entire post till here till I realized it was AutoSaved in the edit section rather than the reply section, I did not wanna rewrite all that.
Although I suppose it's better to understand that and do it purposely than to do it without realizing.
It's weird, because this has never happened before. The only things I could think of was either the ghost I've seen..... or simply air currents. Part of me thinks it was just air currents, yet I question that as this only happened once. My door is perfectly well lubed, as it didn't happen after this occasion at like 4 in the morning.