In defense of the JREF Paranormal Challenge

[Arouet]

[craig weiler]

The skeptic argument here comes from the belief that psi should be regarded as a belief. Your argument makes sense from that standpoint. But I don't agree that psi is a belief and why should I? It's something real to me. Because I know what it is, I'm in a position to recognize it in its many forms. From my standpoint, all those people experiencing psi is a demonstration of something real happening, so the whole skeptic argument falls apart.

We are approaching this from fundamentally different angles. There is nothing to be done for it.

[really?]

[Arouet]

[Jayhawker30]

[craig weiler]

Statistically, the likelihood that several billion people are wrong about their psi experiences is infinitesimally small. You would have to show why they are wrong to make a reasonable case here.

[Arouet]

[craig weiler]

Psi has an evidence trail. You think of someone suddenly that you haven't seen in ages and they call you two minutes later. You suddenly know that your close relative has died although they were far away and you won't hear about it for awhile. Or someone sees a ghost or knows that something will happen ahead of time. These are a few of the things that happen over and over again that finally convince people that something psychic is happening. You don't need to know the mechanism to realize that it is happening.

I wouldn't call that opinion or belief.

Just like you don't need to know where you're actually feeling pain to know that your thumb hurts with gawdawful excrutiating, searing, unbelievably torturous pain after it got smashed. (Trust me on that one. Don't try it yourself.)

[Arouet]

[craig weiler]

The odds that billions of people are mistaken about their experiences are, as I said, infinitesimally small. That's just common sense.

[Arouet]

[Jayhawker30]

Gentlemen, do you ever get the feeling that maybe this is a subject that can't possibly be argued?

[Arouet]

[Jayhawker30]

I think proof for or against something like this... really can't be found in the words of others. It's just too subjective to factually argue, I think.

I mean, people try and go out there and run tests to scientifically prove or disprove this stuff, but the results always get muddled in controversy for one reason or another, positive or negative. I see so many different, emotionally driven interpretations of the same thing that, rationally, I couldn't trust anyone's word on what's what, especially if that word is second hand to another person's second hand account of what actually happened.


The only things I can trust is what I've seen for myself, with my own eyes. There is no solid ground to stand in the whirlwind of paranormal debate.

[Arouet]

We're not talking about empirical proof here (or evidence, since we can't ever really prove anything!), we're talking about a particular logical argument.