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emsby
Skeptic Friend
76 Posts |
 Posted - 04/09/2008 : 15:02:36
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Hi Skeptics! So I'm wondering if anyone can point me to a good debunking of Edgar Cayce, or perhaps you'd honor me by doing it yourself. I remember reading about him in Why People Believe Weird Things but I don't have the book in front of me at the moment. I recall that much of his stuff was just gleaned from newspaper articles and such and that he was wrong a lot of the time, but I'm looking for more detail. Thanks in advance!
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Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earthbound misfit, I. |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2008 : 15:18:55 [Permalink]
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The Skeptic's Dictionary has a pretty good article on him.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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emsby
Skeptic Friend
76 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2008 : 15:37:05 [Permalink]
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Thanks!
Originally posted by H. Humbert
The Skeptic's Dictionary has a pretty good article on him.
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Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earthbound misfit, I. |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2008 : 16:01:57 [Permalink]
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Edgar Cayce was not a 'psyhic' as we think of them today. He was more of a deluded, religious whacko than anything else, and he worked in an era when when medicine was relativly crude. He made little or no money at his predictions, relying on donations and as far as I can tell, these were pretty nickle & dime. Interesting guy who, until now, was a candidate for my signature.
A good place to start researching him is, natch, Wikipedia. Also The Skeptic's Dictionary has a good article on him. These should start off your researchs nicely.
Cayce remains a phenomina comparable to Nostradamus, albeit with a smaller, but no less woo-woo, following.
Enjoy!
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"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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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2008 : 16:14:33 [Permalink]
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I once started a project examining Cayce's "readings" regarding psoriasis, to detail the mish-mash of symptoms he described and the bazillion different "treatments" he offered. But after looking at the few dozen readings which has the word "psoriasis" in them, I realized that to do a proper study and create a good metric for his lunacy, I was going to have to look at hundreds of readings, so that I could include those in which Cayce clearly describes psoriasis without naming it. And then, after examining some candidates based on some keywords (like "skin" and "inflammation"), I realized that I needed to look at all 15,000+ readings.
Cayce, you see, often claimed that psoriasis was due to toxins leaking out of the gut. So to really get a handle on just how random his medical advice was, I was going to have to come up with a detailed list of all the symptoms he attributed to so-called "leaky gut" and how often he "prescribed" various treatments for that and related problems.
And as soon as I hit a reading in which he went on for paragraph after paragraph about Atlantis with a little bit of medical-type advice somewhere in the middle, I realized I was going to have to look at every frigging word of his that got recorded, and all the enthusiasm I had for the project left me.
I think I've got all the readings in a big .ZIP file around here somewhere, though. I was doing automated Google searches of one of his foundations' websites for keywords in the readings, and downloading those which seemed relevant until I figured it'd take less time and effort to search them all locally on my computer. The Foundation's web guru was probably either hating me or loving me for all the page hits I was providing back then... |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 04/10/2008 : 01:43:23 [Permalink]
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Emsby.....
I suggest you go here for a start.
Far more could, and has been, written about Cayce but this is a pretty good précis of many of the salient points concerning the "Sleeping Prophet"! Cecil usually gets it right! |
| Edited by - bngbuck on 04/10/2008 01:50:02 |
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emsby
Skeptic Friend
76 Posts |
Posted - 04/10/2008 : 14:37:50 [Permalink]
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| Thanks to all of you for your help! I greatly appreciate it. |
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earthbound misfit, I. |
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Edgar Cayce
