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Storm
SFN Regular

USA
708 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  06:44:25  Show Profile  Visit Storm's Homepage Send Storm a Private Message
Are no claims of the paranormal true? Are all hoaxes?
[Moved to the General Skepticism folder - Dave W.]

Storm

Starman
SFN Regular

Sweden
1613 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  06:52:49   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Starman a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Storm

Are no claims of the paranormal true? Are all hoaxes?

No and no.


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Storm
SFN Regular

USA
708 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  06:54:33   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Storm's Homepage Send Storm a Private Message
Tell me more. I know what my answer is? but what brings you to that conclusion.

Storm
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filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  06:58:59   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message
Can't say. None have ever been proven in spite of the hype they all seem to get.

This is not to say that none will ever be proven. But as there have been so many over the millina, I tend to doubt it.

But Harry Potter is a lot of fun!


"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres


"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,

and Crypto-Communist!

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Storm
SFN Regular

USA
708 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  07:13:17   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Storm's Homepage Send Storm a Private Message
So what is the Paranormal then? Check this definiton out from Merriam Webster about the Paranormal:

not scientifically explainable : SUPERNATURAL

Interesting definition

So is the Paranormal Supernatural
Wait I think we had this conversation before?
So is it?

Let us take a look at the prefix Para

: beside : alongside of : beyond : aside from <parathyroid>

So is it possible that the Paranormal is alongside the normal or beside or beyond?



Storm
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Starman
SFN Regular

Sweden
1613 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  07:26:31   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Starman a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Storm

Tell me more. I know what my answer is? but what brings you to that conclusion.


Not all claims are hoaxes, that is an easy one.

The first question is very general, but it find it unreasonable to say that all paranormal claims are false.

I have not seen a paranormal claim that have enough evidence for me to accept it yet.

Edited by - Starman on 11/30/2004 07:28:32
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Storm
SFN Regular

USA
708 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  07:59:42   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Storm's Homepage Send Storm a Private Message
You must do some research. Start with some books like
Pseudoscience and the Paranormal by Terence Hines
The Occult a History by Colon Wilson
The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits by Rosemary Guiley
Paranormal Beliefs by Erich Goode
Summoning Spirits Konstantinos

Be open minded
Be prepared to do All the research
Then let me know what you think

Storm
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard

USA
4907 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  08:28:16   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Ricky an AOL message Send Ricky a Private Message
I have never seen any evidence which would support any paranormal claim. So yes, all paranormal claims to me are not true. This does not make the claims false. Just unsupported. Just as unsupported as a globlin living under your bed (watch out, I hear he is getting hungry..)

Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.
- Isaac Asimov
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Paulos23
Skeptic Friend

USA
446 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  08:42:39   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Paulos23's Homepage Send Paulos23 a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Storm

Are no claims of the paranormal true? Are all hoaxes?



I am sure back in history there where what where believed to be paranormal we now know to be true, so no. As to hoaxes, it does seam to be that way, but if the first question is a no, then the second must be a no.

You can go wrong by being too skeptical as readily as by being too trusting. -- Robert A. Heinlein

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -- Aldous Huxley
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filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  08:45:25   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message
Paranormal:

quote:
paranormal
An event or perception is said to be paranormal if it involves forces or agencies that are beyond scientific explanation. Many paranormal events are said to be experienced only by those with psychic powers, such as extrasensory perception or psychokinesis.

Some events are perceived as paranormal due to ignorance. For example, parapsychologist Charles Tart explains how he first got interested in the paranormal:

There was a time, years ago, when I was highly skeptical of any paranormal claims of any kind. One of the things that convinced me that there must be something to this is a strange experience that I personally went through. It was wartime. I was at Berkeley, California, and everybody was working overtime....the young lady who was my assistant at the time worked with me until very late this one night. She finally went home; I went home. Then the very next day she came in, all excited....She reported that during this night she had suddenly sat bolt upright in her bed, convinced that something terrible had happened. "I had a terrible sense of foreboding," she said, but she did not know what had happened. "I immediately swung out of bed and went over to the window and looked outside to see if I could see anything that might have happened like an accident. I was just turning away from the window and suddenly the window shook violently. I couldn't understand that. I went back to bed, woke up the next morning and listened to the radio." A munitions ship at Port Chicago had exploded. It literally took Port Chicago off the map. It leveled the entire town and over 300 people were killed....She said she had sensed the moment when all these people were snuffed out in this mighty explosion. How would she have suddenly become terrified, jumped out of bed, gone to the window, and then - from 35 miles away, the shock wave had reached Berkeley and shook the window? (Randi 1992)*

There is no need to perceive this event as paranormal, according to James Randi, who recorded this story. A shock wave travels at different speeds through the ground and through the air. The difference over 35 miles would be 8 seconds. Most likely the shaking earth woke up the young lady in a fright and 8 seconds later the window shook. She and Tart assumed that the explosion took place when the window shook, making her experience inexplicable by the known laws of physics. This explanation only makes sense, however, if one is ignorant of the known laws of physics.

http://skepdic.com/paranormal.html

The article goes on much farther. Interesting read.

"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres


"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,

and Crypto-Communist!

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Kil
Evil Skeptic

USA
13477 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  10:27:34   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Kil's Homepage  Send Kil an AOL message  Send Kil a Yahoo! Message Send Kil a Private Message
Some paranormal claims fall outside of what can be tested. They are not in the realm of those claims that can be falsifiable. Most, if not all of these claims are supported (only) by anecdotal evidence. Most have possible natural explanations. A paranormal claim can be taken seriously when all natural explanations have failed to describe an occurrence.

So Storm, there you have the rub. The bar for validating a claim is set high when the claim is of an extraordinary nature. And it should be. What at first glance may appear to be closed mindedness on the part of skeptics is really an adherence to a methodology that is designed to remove any bias on the part of the investigator, skeptic or not. Without a sound method for evaluating paranormal claims, all claims are either valid or not valid depending on the investigators bias.

Personally, I would love to see a paranormal claim validated beyond a reasonable doubt. And I support the continued investigation of paranormal claims. But methodology is key to the investigation of said claims. There has to be a standard by which we evaluate the claims that eliminates our bias, and the scientific method and critical thinking, I believe, are the best tools we have for doing that and getting the job done.

Unfortunately, for the believers in psi, the use of those tools when evaluating paranormal claims has not resulted in verification of phenomena that cannot be explained in other more natural ways. That does not mean that a paranormal event did not occur. It means, from our point of view, there is still a very good reason to doubt the paranormal, supernatural, and extraordinary explanation of the claim…

Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.

Why not question something for a change?

Genetic Literacy Project
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Storm
SFN Regular

USA
708 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  10:46:27   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Storm's Homepage Send Storm a Private Message
Let us not confuse Paranormal with Supernatural Who says these claims are extraordinary? Sounds pretty friggin ordinary to me

Storm
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Kil
Evil Skeptic

USA
13477 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  10:54:35   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Kil's Homepage  Send Kil an AOL message  Send Kil a Yahoo! Message Send Kil a Private Message
Glad to see that you used the little winky icon. Otherwise I would have had to conclude that you have missed my point completely...

Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.

Why not question something for a change?

Genetic Literacy Project
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard

USA
4907 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  11:06:57   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Ricky an AOL message Send Ricky a Private Message
quote:
You must do some research. Start with some books like
Pseudoscience and the Paranormal by Terence Hines
The Occult a History by Colon Wilson
The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits by Rosemary Guiley
Paranormal Beliefs by Erich Goode
Summoning Spirits Konstantinos


You seem to think that just because we have not found evidence for paranormal claims just means that we haven't done research. I will say my research is limited. But I have looked at many sites and found no evidence which is sufficent to convince me of the paranormal.

How long would it take me to read all of those books? How long do you think a college student like me has? Why should I look into ghosts and not fairies? Why should not look into Bigfoot? Or Astrology? I could spend my entire life researching astrology.

So why should I give ghosts my special attention? Why should I spend countless hours researching it when my time could be better spent?

Those questions do not have to be answered if you would just give some evidence.

Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.
- Isaac Asimov
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Storm
SFN Regular

USA
708 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  13:46:39   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Storm's Homepage Send Storm a Private Message
These are the questions you must ask yourself? I am not saying you must study ghosts, faries, etc The choice is yours. It took me years to come to my conclusions.
I just got back from taking my son to the doctor and I turned on the t.v and wouldn't you know that a show having to do with ghosts, paranoraml cases was on. but what was sooo interesting was that it was called Extraordinary.. Just this A.M. we were talking about the Extraordinary. Coincidence? Well as I type this the narrator on the T.v. Says Coincidence?

Storm
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard

USA
4907 Posts

Posted - 11/30/2004 :  14:03:06   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Ricky an AOL message Send Ricky a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Storm

These are the questions you must ask yourself? I am not saying you must study ghosts, faries, etc The choice is yours. It took me years to come to my conclusions.
I just got back from taking my son to the doctor and I turned on the t.v and wouldn't you know that a show having to do with ghosts, paranoraml cases was on. but what was sooo interesting was that it was called Extraordinary.. Just this A.M. we were talking about the Extraordinary. Coincidence? Well as I type this the narrator on the T.v. Says Coincidence?



You post about ghosts and extraordinary claims for many days in a row, then are amazed when the word "extraordinary" is used to describe claims which just happen to be "extraordinary." I'm am amazed horrified.

You say you have done research and you say that you have seen evidence. Well share some. I don't mean "its in this book", I mean lets hear a case where you think evidence for ghosts is.

You refuse to share this, and the only reason I can come up with is that you don't have any evidence.

Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.
- Isaac Asimov
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