"Natural" (plant-based) Health Solutions

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He also makes a lot of unsubstantiated assertions in a very dismissive tone

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And that is an unsubstantiated assertion, in a very dismissive tone.The films would take a lot of time to watch - even if they are available for free (I don’t know that they are) - and don’t sound very promising either. If you can’t produce anything really worthwhile from them - and so far you haven’t - I don’t see the point in spending that time.

Why reading studies is useful: Ars Technica explains why they didn’t report on a published study.

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My method is no different than anybody's method,

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That is obviously not true. You complain that other people don’t use your methods and you complain that their methods are too difficult for you.

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and you are way out of line to smear me based on your own lack of belief in the Bible,

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I didn’t think that leprechauns were Biblical. Do you have a reference ?

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My methods of judging character, such as Dr. Nicolson's are no different than anybody else's.

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That is an attempt to change the subject - and it isn’t even true.

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It is demons that are in the Bible, that I said may be behind the phenomena discussed by Jacques Vallee, including leprechauns.

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Vallee is hardly a reliable source, and it is a fact that NoNukes never mentioned the Bible or ridiculed your belief in it.

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It happens to be exactly how the conversation went. He dismissed my judgment of Nicolson's character based on my supposed belief in leprechauns, which is false in more than one way.

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Not true. NoNukes objected to using character judgements in place of looking at the studies. Someone who routinely complains about ad hominem remarks ought to understand that looking at the studies is a more reliable method.

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We are talking about how the conversation went and how I brought in Vallee to answer the charge that I believe in leprechauns is how it went

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NoNukes admitted that you only said that you considered leprechauns as something that might plausibly exist. But you must understand that bringing in Vallee really didn’t help you.

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His credibility in your eyes is utterly irrelevant.

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That’s funny. Have you considered that your judgement of Vallee’s credibility might support NoNuke’s point ?

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I said I believe in demons who could manifest as leprechauns and he said that's about the same as believing in leprechauns, so I conclude he doesn't believe in demons, which means he doesn't believe in the Bible.

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That’s pretty convoluted. Maybe he doesn't believe that demons manifest as leprechauns.

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I went back through the posts, starting at Message 465, and NN was saying that he was objecting to my methods, that is, to my agreeing with Phat that there's nothing wrong with trusting in Nicolson rather than sifting through a lot of studies and that it makes sense for consumers to do that with a trustworthy spokesman like Nicolson.

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Given the fact that there are sound reasons for suspecting that this might be another useless supplement - I think it is certainly better to look at the evidence rather than rely on an advertisement.

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That's when he said that believing in leprechauns makes my judgment wrong. That was a classic ad hominem, and it's not true anyway since I don't believe in leprechauns.

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There are plenty of valid examples he could have chosen. I mean you believe that Lincoln was assassinated by the Jesuits because a narcissistic fantasist claimed it was all about him. You don’t think that if a narcissistic fantasist writes something that looks an awful lot like a narcissistic fantasy that it could well be a narcissistic fantasy?

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It's a reasonable view of it if you believe the Bible in which Jesus is shown casting out demons. Nothing direct is said about demons having the ability to change form except the story of Saul's seeking out the witch of Endor to bring up the recently dead prophet Samuel for him. She was shocked when the real Samuel did appear and talked with Saul, which can be interpreted as her being used to demonic impersonations of the people she asks to talk to

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In other words it would be quite reasonable to reject the idea of demons impersonating leprechauns. Thanks for admitting it.(People interested in the origin of the story may find this interesting.)Of course, the woman is not shocked that the real Samuel appeared. She was shocked that it was Saul asking her, since Saul had set himself against the mediums.

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So anyway I thought Vallee's observations of the UFO accounts very interesting though better explained by demons.

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Or better still explained without invoking the supernatural - at least once any distortions or inaccuracies Vallee might have introduced are removed.

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The evidence that the Jesuits were behind the assassination of Lincoln is excellent, tracked down in many news reports of the time. Paul Serup did very thorough research over many years.

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It’s funny that he couldn’t produce anything of significance when he was here, then.

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Note she had "a familiar spirit" which is a demon.

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That seems to be a questionable interpretation made by the translator. Most seem to simply say that she is a medium.

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Yes she was shocked to realize she was talking to King Saul, but how did she know it was Saul? Because the real Samuel had appeared, which she obviously was not expecting, because real people don't come back from the dead. The real Samuel would only have appeared at God's command because it was Saul who was committing this sin of seeking him through a witch.

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And here we see your methods in action, clutching at any excuse to justify a conclusion decided in advance. There is nothing there to justify your claim that she usually saw demonic imitations - since only she could see the spirits why would a demon bother with an imitation, except to fool her? And if she was fooled why would she be surprised at seeing a real person? Not to mention that it seems contradictory to claim that real people don’t come back and to assert that the real Samuel did.

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He observed that the way folklore beings behaved was similar to the way UFOs behave. Appearing and disappearing instantaneously for instance, suddenly moving from one place to another in a flash and so on.

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There might be another reason why UFOs are like fairy tale creatures.

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Note this article: How Critical Thinkers Lose Their Faith in God where the argument is made that Religious belief drops when analytical thinking rises. You have been taught to critically examine everything and to throw away concepts that clash with logic, reason, and reality. Some of us are more intuitive, however.

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Let’s note that that is a criticism of religion, not of critical thinking.

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It is my opinion that Dr.Nicolsons videos are not an advertisement.

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I’ve watched the one you embedded and it sure sounds like one. The fact that they repeatedly drop the brand name and only mention rival producers to disparage them rather points that way, for a start.

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What are your sound reasons PaulK? I would like to hear your analytical thinking on this.

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It’s sold as a supplement - which means it may be unnecessary for anyone with a decent diet - with the usual disclaimer denying any medical claims. Or in other words their evidence is certainly not good enough for the FDA.And the advertisement makes me want to check the studies even more. The claimed results sound like things that could be placebo effects - only the study could rule that out. The claim that the specific brand was used in the study is another thing I would want to check (and the reasons why!). The assertion that all the ingredients can be found in ordinary food make it sound of questionable value, too. Were all the people in the study not getting enough of the necessary substances through their diet?

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I don't think the kind of evidence Serup collected would be easily reproducible at EvC. He has pages of photographs of newspaper clippings for instance

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Which can be scanned and posted as images, or even transcribed.

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Or perhaps he was so badly treated here he didn't think it worth it. He admonished me to leave this benighted place.

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In other words he ran away because he didn’t have any decent evidence.The thread is still here. Paul Serup Answers Theodoric: Credibility of Authors and Book

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I don't have such ideas in advance, I learn them from such passages as this one and from such studies as Vallee's.

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Often you have decided on the conclusion when you look for excuses.

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Witches and mediums know they are dealing with demons and with their deceptions, she wasn't fooled. There's no contradiction. God suspends His own rules for His own purposes, and catching out King Saul was clearly His purpose.

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And there is an example. None of that is in the story. And it is pretty silly to think that demons were trying to fool anyone with their appearance if nobody could actually see them.

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it's plain to anyone reading that passage that the witch of Endor was shocked upon seeing Samuel and that's how she knew the disguised man was Saul. It was the moment she saw Samuel that she knew.

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But it is NOT plain that it was about Samuel being real or that other spirits she saw were not. That’s not in the text at all - even in the translations.

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Oh I'm sure, the usual far-fetched "scientific" delusion that there is such a thing as shared hallucinations or something like that. That is far more unlikely than that the phenomena are real though misinterpreted, from the fairy tales to the UFOs.

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More likely mistakes, compounded by confabulation, inaccurate reporting and imagined details. The canals on Mars might be a case in point. Schiaparelli thought he saw channels - canali in Italian. The word got mistranslated as canals, and a vast and largely imaginary network was drawn by some observers.

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I've always been a critical thinker and that did not change when I became a Christian.

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I can believe that there was no change. However we have plenty of evidence that you are not a critical thinker.

I have reason to believe that Vallee is less than trustworthy, and finding patterns in folklore is hardly unknown. Even with the supposed canals there were a number of people who though that they saw them - and others who disagreed.But, even ignoring that, patterns in fairy tales need not be explained by fairy tales being true.

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You have plenty of evidence that I don't agree with most of you here, which is not the same thing

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We have plenty of evidence that you aren’t much of a critical thinker. And in fact we have examples of you objecting to critical thinking.

And I’ve already given reasons why that might be.

If there is some reason why we should agree with whatever ridiculous falsehoods you spout I’ve yet to hear it.If you want examples of your complete failure as a critical thinker I can post them.Given the topic drift here, there’s an oldie-but-goodie right here Message 152. It makes it look as if your idea of critical thinking is just agreeing with your opinions without any critical analysis whatsoever.

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How that is an example of anything related to critical thinking is beyond me.

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You claim that your assessment is the properly critical one. And yet you never go beyond assertion. Of course there was no actual critical thinking on your part. That’s the point.

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However, I keep wondering why you seem to have a problem with criticism of the Jesuits, like it isn't anything about the evidence, it's just that you simply personally object to criticizing the Jesuits

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I do ? I think you mean that I don’t trust conspiracy theories. And that I’m not an extreme anti-Catholic bigot. Another failure of critical thinking on your part.

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Are you unaware that they were known for assassinations and attempted assassinations in Europe and even successfully assassinated a Pope?

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I’m aware that there are accusations against them. Some of them may even be saner than Chiniquy’s. However the word of someone with a love of extreme anti-Catholic propaganda is hardly convincing. If you have good evidence of any - and not just conspiracy theories - start a thread.

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Why is it so hard to consider that maybe they had something to do with Lincoln's assassination?

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It is very hard to believe that they were motivated by the failures of the defamation case against Chiniquy. That makes no sense at all. Aside from that we need actual evidence. Which you have failed to produce.