Hi Otto Tellick, thought I'd throw in my two cents. I'd describe myself as probably 60/40 agnostic, in favour of the existence of the divine; the way I would define that is not really relevant here I think.
quote:
Within the span of a single night, let's say that 200 people (men and women), who are literate and native speakers of, say, 10 different languages, all wake up with a compulsion to write down some statements that have come into their heads, and send this piece of writing to the New York Times. On receiving these 200 letters, folks at the Times immediately notice the diversity of sources but a consistency of content.
As a skeptic, I'd say that this would have to be carefully investigated in order to rule out the possibility of ordinary means, which is always how an investigation of the paranormal should be approached. It has to be said that while I find it difficult to envision what these could be, given the circumstances you describe, I think it's more likely that this would never be a news story in the first place. I imagine what would happen to our impoverished person living in a hut on the edge of the desert somewhere would be that her family would tell her to stop talking nonsense and that would be the end of that. Who are these 200 speakers of different 10 languages
all sending their note to the New York Times? That in itself seems odd to me.
You're making me think about the visions of Devil's Tower in "Close Encounters," LOL.
Anyway . . . let's say that the story does come to light, it's been investigated as thoroughly as possible, and we're still left with the possibility that the message could have a paranormal or supernatural origin. There's the problem of establishing that the message is actually from God. This could be a form of telepathy, where the message itself isn't necessarily true, but these people have picked up on it somehow through telepathic means. Or the message could conceivably have come from some entity impersonating God. You'd have to establish that this was the real deal, though how you'd do that is beyond me.
Let's say we've overcome those particular hurdles. I'd look at what the message is saying. It's not contradicting anything we already know about how reality works. Its logic seems pretty compelling. I'd probably file it away in my brain as an interesting possibility that might provide me with some good guidance in life, but I wouldn't experience any kind of Pauline conversion because I'd want more evidence. I wouldn't make major decisions based on it. That's how I felt after I read
Conversations With God.
Interesting that we've already had an atheist here who has said,
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My reaction to either scenario would be to consider it was fixed in some kind of way, however much an investigation would fail to find any link between the 200 individuals.
Many self-styled skeptics who investigate paranormal claims say similar things. If there's no evidence that a particular study which got positive results was bogus, badly designed, flawed, etc, then they will still go off believing that something was wrong somewhere but it's just been missed, and maybe it will come to light at some point.
There's a thread about this that you might like to have a look at:
Pseudoskepticism and logic. The premise there is that negative claims require evidence just as positive claims do. You might try taking that tack with people who say to your example, "I would think it extremely unlikely to be true" without giving logical reasons why.
(added in edit)
Yeah, aliens . . . Why is it that my favourite films as a child were the Star Wars ones and I keep forgetting about aliens-?
Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.
Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.
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