What Does Critical Thinking Mean To You?

I guess we could tit for tat each other forever -- no you're the one projecting, no you are -- but what would be the point?. I believe the criteria for differentiating the demonic from the mental illness is quite clear in the descriptions themselves, and your inability to see it doesn't bode well for any effort I might put into trying to demonstrate it beyond that.(I might suggest, however, that the demonic could very easily be involved in any kind of delusion, such as that one is Jesus Christ.)Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Amazing. You've been given plenty on this thread. There's plenty in many books, including the Bible. You just write them off because of prejudice, no NOT because of the evidence, plenty of which has been given already. That is the opposite of critical thinking.I have no control over the appearance of spirits so how could I promise Randi I could produce one?

You will never get anything but personal stories about such phenomena. There is no way to test it, spirits have minds and wills, they don't behave like chemicals. So you dismiss stories and you confirm your bias. Enjoy.

If there IS no evidence but stories, it's stupid to dismiss the stories, it's all you've got. Now if a spirit should happen to decide to give you a fright sometime, all you'll have is YOUR story and nobody will listen to YOU either.

Meanwhile the spirits are laughing their heads off at your stubborn refusal to consider at all the only evidence there is. They've got you in their grip but you won't know it until it's too late.

I didn't say stories prove something is real. They may or may not be evidence of something real.If all you've got is people's accounts then you have to apply your Critical Thinking to those accounts to decide whether you find them credible or not. That could involve extensive interviews, comparisons with other accounts and so on.What's interesting about the reactions here to accounts of phenomena they haven't themselves witnessed is that they discount them out of hand on the basis of what they're ABOUT, not any actual evidence. Pure prejudice. Yet they seem to think this amounts to Critical Thinking. Seems to me it's a perfect case of NOT thinking.Where do you draw the line? It's different in every case I suppose, depending on the credibility of the person who had the experience, others who had the same or similar experience, the details given, etc. etc. etc. Not just what was described that you would dismiss because you never experienced it. That way you'll never learn anything about things you know nothing about from your own experience. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

See above.

When I was making the transition from atheist to Christian I read many Hindu stories in particular, which described a lot of phenomena of the kind often called Paranormal. Projecting the mind to a great distance and knowing things going on at that distance, even appearing to others at that distance as if physically there. It's been years and I don't remember a lot but I think it was a book by Paramahansa Yogananda that reported most of this kind of phenomena. These things could presumably be tested if you could find someone who claimed to do them and was willing to be tested.These were experiences that occurred in the context of Hindu spiritual practices and disciplines, meditation and so on. I don't remember the details but I think food and sleep deprivation may have been a part of it, at least at times. I know from someone who practiced Zen that at a certain point in the training there may be a period in which they sit as a group on their meditation cushions in meditation posture ("lotus position") for days on end without food or sleep or even bathroom breaks. The Roshi (Master, Guide) keeps them from nodding off by prodding or even hitting them with a stick of some sort.Because of these deprivations it would seem reasonable to conclude or at least consider seriously that whatever strange phenomena occurred was due to mental breakdown of some sort. And I consider that to be a reasonable hypothesis. But if you get a lot of people insisting on the reality of experiences that are independent but very similar, it might be reasonable to consider they aren't merely hallucinating.Edited by Faith, : syntax

I reported my experience earlier in the thread, as well as the experiences of others who told me about them. They all happened in the context of religious practices (Zen for one, Rajneesh meditation for another) or in my case intense seeking through reading about such things. Mine was a threatening apparition, however, angry, wanting to kill me. These aren't "ghosts," in fact I don't believe in ghosts if you mean spirits of human beings. There may be demon impersonations of people, however. That's what I believe the "hauntings" are, and most such apparitions for that matter. I think the appearances of the "Virgin Mary" to millions of Catholics are real, but that they are demon impersonations. I also happen to believe that because of all the people getting involved in Eastern type religious practices in America, that increased enormously in the 70s, that there are probably a lot more demons around since then than there used to be.If there are real spirits then they have minds and wills and aren't going to just show up when you want them to, but when it suits them.ABE: Other phenomena, such as "psychic" phenomena, is different and can be tested. But Randi should test the Yogis, not the average psychics.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No I've had that kind of "hallucination" where I seem to see something in the twilight and that sort of thing. It may startle me but I can prove to myself it's not real. The apparition in my room was right there a few feet in front of me, real as real.I should have said I don't believe in ghosts because of various indications in the Bible that human beings don't come back, and I think they are demonic also because of the Bible.