--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jst...@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Hugo" <fintlewoodlewix@> wrote: > <snip> > > That people can talk to the > > dead (and get a reply) is one of my hot buttons, I've seen > > too many obviously fraudulent mediums giving what I see as > > a cynical and false hope to the recently bereaved to give > > them any house room, it's basically *so* desperately uncon- > > vincing that the only mechanism I can see for their continued > > success is that people really need something to hold onto. > > It can't be a healthy way to grieve. > > FWIW, I don't think any of them are talking to dead > people. On the other hand, I don't think all of them > are frauds, either, although some surely are. (Or > crazy, for that matter.) > > I think at least some of them are inadvertently > communicating with nonhuman discarnate entities of > some sort, mischief-makers and/or entities who yearn > to be a part of the material world. > > Somehow I don't think you'll find that an appealing > alternative interpretation...
A most accurate prediction ;-) I think there are both deliberate and unwitting frauds, I've seen both, but it amounts to the same thing in the end. The unwitting frauds seem rather sad to me even though they are happy in their world which, at the end of the day, is the most important thing. I think I did a post about the baby "whisperer" once, weird guy thought he could telepathically communicate with babies. Didn't matter that you could easily explain and demonstrate what he was doing as cold reading the mother, he sincerly believes that he can "talk" with a pre-vocal 3 month old and find out complex things about it's mother. He took the James Randi challenge and failed, of course. Point is he believes it still and plays to packed halls all over England, so others obviously believe it too. Is he a fraud? Or doesn't it matter because everyone's having a good time? I would be pissed off if it turned out I'd constructed a worldview based on an easily disproveable bit of kiddology but was too blind to see it. That's just me, a lot of others get great comfort from it, consider life after death a certainty and refuse to even engage in discussion with me about it. Which is a good time to lay off I find, funny how we can all be so similar and yet so different. I think it all boils down to how rigorous you want to be in the search for truth. Mediums and psychics will tell you they know things about the world that I can't agree with due to the obviously poor evidence. Same with religious leaders. I can't abide certainty, especially when it all depends on someones say-so, and even more if they died thousands of years ago and are thus part of an alien culture or, worse, are selling something. Doesn't mean it *isn't* all true just that what they've got so far depends more on our need for it than, say, ideas like Darwinism that appear to be true no matter what we think about it, the evidence points one way whereas life after death appears to me to be an unnecessary add-on to stave off the horror of non-being. And that's one everyone would love to be wrong about I'm sure. Shame there's only one way to find out....
