Poltergeists!

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It's not very pleasant to be ridiculed wherever I talk here though and I'm not enjoying it anymore.

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I am sorry that you thought I was ridiculing you, and please let me assure you that I was not.I was perfectly serious.There are people all over the world in various cultures for whom one or another of those explanations would be the commonly accepted one. I even forgot one; the Tanuki in Japan.Tell me why all of those other potential causes I suggested for the events you describe are less likely that your own, culturally-accepted explanation.Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : effing html

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The basis for their evidence is the faith in mainstream medicine, and clinical studies in peer-reviewed journals.

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No, not faith. Trust.As in, I trust that when studies are done, and make it through the rigors of peer review in prestigious journals, and are replicated successfuly, and eventually are accepted by the greater scientific community becasue nobody in that community can find a fatal weakness in it, that we have gained a little piece of knowledge about a little piece of nature.

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I think there is good evidence that that particular system is flawed, and thus any well-reasoned skeptical arguments based on it are also flawed.

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Please, explain the flaws in the tenets of science.

Buz, If objects can be moved, then it can be captured on video.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

I've never said here that I thought a poltergeist was any kind of supernatural entity. I think it's a form of energy, probably with some acquired consciousness of its own (mechanism not understood), connected to -- and powered by -- a person or people (mechanism not understood). I'd rather not let go of this because I think there's a possibility that it could be true, and discovered and researched scientifically in the future.

I'm going to go back to the Holistic Medicine topic with this one, possibly against my better judgement. But I do want to talk about this.Speaking of skepticism, I've had my first discussion with a creationist since I joined this forum. It's on the forum where I encountered them before and once I got the facts for myself, they disappeared. This person is new I think. Do you know what I'm doing? I'm giving her lessons in skepticism. I'm asking where her evidence is. I'm telling her that anecdotes don't count because people can be mistaken or lying. How two-faced am I, huh? On one level I'm amused, but on another I feel for her, because I know what it's like to be in her position. It's making me think a lot. What I'm thinking, mostly, is that you can use skepticism to win a lot of arguments. And it is good science. But skepticism is always based upon what you have accepted as evidence, and you have to be wary of the truth of it. If a person isn't open-minded enough to question it from time to time, then their skepticism might lead them forever down a blind alley. I'm never going to be a hard-line skeptic myself, it just ain't me.

I'm going to say once again that I don't like the term skeptic. It gives the impression of being resistant to new or novel ideas.The term I prefer is scientific, which means holding all opinions tentatively, always questioning, and improving confidence in both evidence and theory by seeking consensus, especially through replication.Which is pretty much what you just described.--Percy

Isn't that basically what people have been telling you? That poltergeist phenomena are a function of the mind and not some external "force"?That the person moving the objects with her physical body might not know in her (conscious) mind that she is doing it? That people observing the incidents might (unconsciously) make up plausible (to them) explanations to fill the gaps in what they really saw/heard?Do we really need to find an "unknown" mechanism? Or do we just need to understand the known mechanisms better?

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“Faith moves mountains, but only knowledge moves them to the right place”
-- Joseph Goebbels
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