question for skeptics

[GANAMOHA]

the same thing occurs if you point at a person and you always look directly at the finger its a primitive instinct

[Logic]

If god has infinite love for all of his children, why does he make billions suffer every day, only to one day die and spend eternity in hell?

[Veccolo]

Most people here have the wrong idea of skeptics. They aren't the evil persons who want to disprove OBE no matter what, like this randi idiot does. It's imo a shame that he is the person all the skeptics are compared with.

Skeptics are not up to disprove anything metaphysical or paranormal. Look, if somebody makes a claim like "I can LEAVE my body at will.", then the skeptic will say "Fine, then come to me through obe and tell me what my apartment looks like."

That's a simple, open minded request for proof. So, what if the person above fails? A normal thinking skeptic won't say "You couldn't do it, so OBEs are nonsense." No, he will probably say "You couldn't do it, so either you were lying/incapable of doing it, or OBEs can't be 'used' this way." Then the skeptic also might start to argue that OBEs _could_ be lucid dream like experience, as current evidence suggests it.

Remember, the person who CLAIMED something has to prove it - not the other way round.

Just my $0.02.

[Phong]

Well, 19, they would probably point you to the exhaustive record of detailed experiments (like this one) that explore this phenomena with nonconclusive results.

They may also suggest that your interpretations are the result of the natural human tendency to bias. For instance, if you just bought a new Volkswagon Beetle, you might start to notice more people driving Volkswagon Beetles on the road. Are there really more people driving Beetles? Probably not, but your perception is definitely influenced because you own one. Do you want to believe in paranormal abilities, like noticing when someone is staring at you? If so, you're likely to remember the instances that confirm this belief and forget the ones that don't. This is called confirmation bias, and you'd be surprised at some of the silly and illogical decisions we make because of our tendency to do this.

The beliefs that the Earth is flat, that small fetuses exist in sperm, and that the planets circle around the Earth were the result of bias a long time go, in the face of a lack of objective evidence. Intuition alone is deceptive. It's sad, but we can be real dumbasses at times. Even Einstein believed for years that galaxies didn't move in relation to one another. People were showing him evidence to the contrary yet he persisted. Only after a long while did he eventually reconcile his belief as a "blunder." That's okay - he was human. And so are you. Did you know that within you and within everything around you is mostly empty space? Who would've thought of that two hundred years ago?

We understand so little. A good skeptic knows this and won't tell you you're fool of crap - he'll just say that you might be.

[beavis]

I'll put myself into the state of mind I was in 1.7 years ago when I was a skeptic...

If their is nothing more to our reality than what we physically see, then why is it that when someone is looking at you from any angle, whether you know the person or not, your head automatically turns to the exact spot that the person is even if he/she is hiding? This kind of situation has happened to me so many times and almost always I turn my head without even knowing why I turned it. you can actually feel the persons eyes burning on your face,

[skeptic] I've never seen that or heard of any evidence supporting it. You're a crazy religious person.

[me now] Obviously you notice their energy on you.

[Grigori]

How do you know that you "always" turn to see when someone is looking at you? Maybe you miss 99% of them and are just jumping to conclusions based on the 1% you know noticed.

[gravy]

Grigory if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to witness it, did it really fall?

[Phong]

Gravy, are you asking, "if someone stares at you and you don't notice, are they really staring at you?" Thoughtful question. However, it's different from the tree/woods scenario because the person doing the staring will observe that they are staring.

It's possible they could be mentally disabled, though. If neither you nor the mentally disabled person staring at you notice there's staring going on, along with no one else in the vicinity noticing it, we act as though it never happened, don't we? Was there a transfer of "energy," or was there no energy because no one noticed it? When we talk about energy then aren't we really just talking about awareness? And if so, would it be possible that we're just making it up? It's undoubtedly possible. So consider that we're constantly "making the world up" inside our mind with the use of electricity and chemicals - and that these are manifestations of a quantum soup influenced by awareness through the observer effect. Then, when we consider the subjective experience of the skeptic and the person who believes they have the power to notice when someone is staring at them, they're both the same and not particularly unique at all. [Edit: Both are just sides of a manifestation of dissenting opinion.]

It's hard to say that a physicist knows more about what's real than someone suffering from schizophrenia. The physicist's electro-chemical composition allows him to discern what is objective, but what is objective may not be real (a la "The Matrix"). A schizophrenic might see the universe as a cloudy entropic indecipherable mess. Maybe that's what it really is?

[19]

Veccolo

If you are going to call people names, do not reply to their posts, and I didn't say skeptics are evil people, I just wanted to share something interesting I experienced.

[Veccolo]

@19,

quote:If you are going to call people names, do not reply to their posts, and I didn't say skeptics are evil people, I just wanted to share something interesting I experienced.

Dude, stfu and learn your own language. I didn't call you any names, plus my post wasn't even directed at you. If it were, I'd quote you or make a @19 or something like that.

Why I wrote what I wrote? Your post made the following impression to me: "So skeptics, I have a super duper mega incredible paranormal experience, let's see how you'll explain that!". Or in other words: "Try to disprove that!" This means you probably think the skeptics are only here to try to disprove such things no matter what.

What, that wasn't your intention? Then why did you direct your posting specifically at the skeptics, huh?

[clandestino]

19, Please don't insult other members, thanks !

[19]

This is a question for skeptics of obe's metaphysical stuff etc,


If their is nothing more to our reality than what we physically see,

then why is it that when someone is looking at you from any angle, whether you know the person or not, your head automatically turns to the exact spot that the person is even if he/she is hiding? This kind of situation has happened to me so many times and almost always I turn my head without even knowing why I turned it. you can actually feel the persons eyes burning on your face, I believe its a survival mechanism, I also believe its a paranormal ability because it is often accompanied by a gut feeling that is hard to explain when the intention of the person looking at you is evil.