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Many people have experienced spiritual phenomenon, and many have not. Those that have need no convincing.
The difficulty with this is that there are no two ways about it: either the spiritual phenomena you are talking about are real or they are not.
We know that people have sensory experiences that are not based on real, physical events. Some people hear voices and will insist that those voices are coming from a "person" standing right next to them, but there is nobody there; some people will hallucinate about being picked up by aliens (like Michael Shermer's experience of alien abduction Alian Abductions Explained--Michael Shermer); some will swear to you they have had uncanny results with dowsing or naturopathic remedies, while all the evidence demonstrates the falsity of these statements.
This has taught us that the testimony of personal belief or experience is not sufficient evidence to accept a proposition as true, especially in the light of overwhelming countervailing evidence.
Dude , I was 11 yrs old back when I was growing up you had respect for your elders and most esp for the ministers wife . I realize most young people now while growing up have no respect for anything .
OK, so don't laugh in her face. Doesn't mean you have to live your whole adult life believing nonsense. This is my point, the church can scare people as a kid with nonsense and because kids are so impressionable it can be very hard to shake that, even as a rational adult.
I don't doubt that it made an impression on you, a ouija board scared me too once like I have stated here. But I believed a lot of things as a kid that as an adult I can clearly see were utter nonsense.
Folks, there are no ghosts pushing you to select letters on a ouija board. What is happening is called an ideomotor effect; essentially the participants themselves are the ones moving the planchette around using unconsicous body movements.
Here is an experiment which will demonstrate what I mean: tie a key to the end of a rope that is a 3 feet long of so. Hold on to the other end of the rope, and keep the key as still as possible. Once it is still, mentally tell the key to sway from side to side while you continue to hold it as still as possible. Then tell the key to stop moving. Then tell the key to twirl around in a circular pattern. You will note that the key will perform exactly as you tell it, despite the fact that you are trying to keep it still... that's the ideomotor effect at work: unconscious, undetectable body movements.
Folks, there are no ghosts pushing you to select letters on a ouija board. What is happening is called an ideomotor effect; essentially the participants themselves are the ones moving the planchette around using unconsicous body movements.
Here is an experiment which will demonstrate what I mean: tie a key to the end of a rope that is a 3 feet long of so. Hold on to the other end of the rope, and keep the key as still as possible. Once it is still, mentally tell the key to sway from side to side while you continue to hold it as still as possible. Then tell the key to stop moving. Then tell the key to twirl around in a circular pattern. You will note that the key will perform exactly as you tell it, despite the fact that you are trying to keep it still... that's the ideomotor effect at work: unconscious, undetectable body movements.
I tried this experiment and it didn't work at all: the key remained still as long as I tried to keep it still, no matter what sort of mental suggestions I gave it to move.
I believe there is more at work during a Oija Board session than merely the "ideomotor" effect.
Then again, as far as they key thing I tried: I may be an exception to the rule, since, as a drummer, I have exceptional hand-eye coordination.
You are not the exception to the rule DB....I too can keep a key still.
The ideometer was not a factor in my experience that I shared here.
There was no way that either of us who where working the board could have known who was on the phone, let alone the fake name given.
Try again....
I'm not an unmovable rock...I will often discredit many supernatural and paranormal events, finding the logical explanation for them....
I had a friend that swore up and down that her room was haunted and that some ghost radio would be 'on' now and then. One night when I was at her house she had me listen.
I could hear what she was talking about. There was a distant, soft mumbling like someone was listening to a talk radio show in the other room.
I investigated and found it was the water going down the gutter beside her window creating the mumbling..... but every once in a while something cannot be explained.
A comment made earlier today by a co-worker of mine sorta baffled me, and thus prompted me to ask you guys what you think.
It was about Ouija boards. Personally I always considered them to be no more than a mildly entertaining albeit meaningless board game, mostly for kids. And that's the only time I played it: once or twice as a kid.
But this friend of mine at work: he's college-educated and is basically a pragmatic sort of person, he isn't overly religious, and he's not a conspiracy nut. I'm even pretty sure his college degree is an a hard science field.
Anyway, when the person he was talking to mentioned her kids playing with a Oija board, my friend became pretty agitated, and adamantly stated that he'd never, ever let his kids play with one, as he felt that the boards "invited malevolent spirits & demons" into the users' world.
The funny thing here is, that in the past I've known several other seemingly skeptical and rational people make an exception in their stoic thinking when regarding Ouija boards. So what say you? Are you likeminded with me: that it's just a box of cardboard and plastic, or do these things actually serve as some sort of portal for our spirit friends to slip into?
It's just because of the movie "The Exorcist." Beliefs or superstitions derived from pop culture can be pretty impactful on the individual psyche.
Some of the people in this thread have more faith in ancient Hebrew mysticism than the capabilities of the human mind. Probably because they don't use it much.
I tried this experiment and it didn't work at all: the key remained still as long as I tried to keep it still, no matter what sort of mental suggestions I gave it to move.
I believe there is more at work during a Oija Board session than merely the "ideomotor" effect.
Then again, as far as they key thing I tried: I may be an exception to the rule, since, as a drummer, I have exceptional hand-eye coordination.
The experiment works better if you hold the key still (don't look at it) and have someone else suggest things to do with it, othrwise you're concious of what's going on, so it may not work.
There have been experiments done with Ouija boards in regards to the ideomotor effect. James Randi did a series where he blindfolded people, then had them use a ouija board. Not surprisingly, all answers they came up with were gibberish.
The experiment works better if you hold the key still (don't look at it) and have someone else suggest things to do with it, othrwise you're concious of what's going on, so it may not work.
There have been experiments done with Ouija boards in regards to the ideomotor effect. James Randi did a series where he blindfolded people, then had them use a ouija board. Not surprisingly, all answers they came up with were gibberish.
Indeed, I have done this with people before who swore it didn't work for them, and it works everytime. At the end of the day, people really want to believe that the same factory that produces Scrabble and Monopoly boards somehow harness the spirits of the supernatural when the same machines produce Ouija boards. It's nonsense of course, but I think a lot of people get a degree of comfort from it. Fair enough, I suppose.
At the end of the day, people really want to believe that the same factory that produces Scrabble and Monopoly boards somehow harness the spirits of the supernatural when the same machines produce Ouija boards.
Aha...so now I know why I never seem to win at those games! Evidently, spirits are moving my pieces or letters around in ways I didn't intend.
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