Woo Denial

[Panthera tigris FC]

I thought I would start a new thread to reinvigorate the recently quiet RR&P forum

Just wanted to get everyone's thoughts on different varieties of woo:

Alternative therapies?

The existence of the soul?

Conversations with the dead?

Psychics?

Unfounded conspiracy theories?

etc. etc.

My thoughts are well covered in a brilliant beat poem that Tim Minchin delivered a week ago.

 

[evo]

"Woo". You've been hanging out at the Dawkins forum,eh. ;D

Great poem.

 

[Panthera tigris FC]

"Woo". You've been hanging out at the Dawkins forum,eh. ;D

Great poem.

Actually I have never really spent any significant time on those forums. There are other forums/blogs that use the term. "Woo" is the generally accepted term for such things .

Yes...a great poem.

 

[evo]

Fair enough.I like the term anyway.

I like to frequent a few eastern 'enlightenment' forums.The amount of 'woo' about these days is rife;even from seemingly otherwise intelligent people.

The 'death of God' was intitially filled by a useful and meaningful(IMO)existentialism from the 1950-80s, but now that has faded somewhat and been replaced by a fairly meaningless post modernist worldview people are left with a 'spiritual' vacuum.

Enter 'woo'.


The Green-meme has also stepped into the void somewhat.

 

[Panthera tigris FC]

Post-modernism [shudders].

Yes, the green meme is an interesting one. Certainly based on solid principles, but permeated by 'spiritual' or 'woo' themes in many areas ie. Gaia and the idea that natural = good/better.

 

[jb03]

Good thread this one. Should rival the Krakouer thread.

 

[TigerForce]

Unfounded conspiracy theories?

The JFK one is always good to look into......wouldn't say it's unfounded though.

 

[Disco08]

The poem's been removed from youtube Pantera, can you give a little synopsis?

It's not quite the existence of the soul or conversations with the dead but I've heard too many stories to deny the existence of ghosts.

 

[Panthera tigris FC]

Good ol' anecdotal evidence. The best friend of woo.

Not discounting it completely, but in the absence of some sort of corroborating evidence I will remain sceptical.

We are too prone to seeing significance in the mundane. Pattern seeking, even where none exist.

 

[Disco08]

The this is Pantera, almost everyone you talk to has a ghost story, or has heard one at least. Only one of those stories has to be true to prove the phenomenon.

I know it could very well be doctored, but would you consider one of the many episodes of Most Haunted to be corroborating evidence?

 

[Panthera tigris FC]

You could replace the word 'ghost story' with 'religious experience' and it would be equally valid. Does that prove the existence of the divine?

I certainly am not going to take a television show as any form of evidence unless they submit themselves to controlled scrutiny. Do you believe the psychic shows are evidence for the existence of psychics?

 

[Disco08]

Can't really say TBH, I've never watched one.

The difference between religious experiences and ghost stories are that generally religious experience occurs in one's mind, whereas most ghost stories are reportedly physical sightings. Not really the same thing at all IMO.

 

[Panthera tigris FC]

Not all religious experience occurs in one's mind (and the experience that does occur in one's mind has nothing to do with me)...most religious individuals will attest to the occurence of miracles which are claimed to occur in the physical world and are generally supported by.....anecdotal evidence.

From your perspective then any claim made has some level of validity...bigfoot/nessie sightings? alien abductions? miracle cures by magnets? How do you distinguish reality from the BS? These are all claimed physical occurences supported by...anecdotal evidence (and occasionally questionable photos!).

Sagan wrote a nice book on the topic The Demon-Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark. If you get the chance you should have a read. Good for the BS detector IMO.

 

[Disco08]

Most religious experiences occur in the mind though. I'd say 99.999% of them actually. Religious experience also has in its favour the fact that most people having these experiences want to have them. In the case of ghost sightings I'd say it's rare that people are specifically hoping to see a ghost. I know of all those that I've been told, some by very close friends who are convinced they saw what they saw, none of them were looking for a ghost at the time and none of them are the type of people who take this stuff at all seriously or use their experiences to try and prove anything. They're just relating what they've seen. Again, huge difference to religious experience IMO.

 

[Panthera tigris FC]

Most religious experiences occur in the mind though. I'd say 99.999% of them actually. Religious experience also has in its favour the fact that most people having these experiences want to have them. In the case of ghost sightings I'd say it's rare that people are specifically hoping to see a ghost. I know of all those that I've been told, some by very close friends who are convinced they saw what they saw, none of them were looking for a ghost at the time and none of them are the type of people who take this stuff at all seriously or use their experiences to try and prove anything. They're just relating what they've seen. Again, huge difference to religious experience IMO.

The root of the experience may be the same though....flawed human perception.

What about alien abduction?

Have you ever thought you'd seen/felt something? I certainly have, but I am aware of the vagaries of my own perception and sure enough what I thought I had seen turned out to be something else, or the feeling I had subsided. It is when the individual interprets that perception as a 'ghost' or 'alien' that we get such stories. There are usually alternative explanations for such experiences.

 

[Disco08]

I can assure you that many people who claim to have seen a ghost or something similar are also well aware of the vagaries of their own perception. It's not only crackpots making these claims. Not all ghost sighting are brief glimpses or seen only by one person either. In some cases multiple people claim to have seen the exact same thing and had enough time to be sure it wasn't their mind playing tricks on them. It's hard to point to flawed human perception to wave away such instances.

How many people claim to have been abducted by aliens? Is there another explanation for their experiences?

 

[TigerForce]

I thought I would start a new thread to reinvigorate the recently quiet RR&P forum

Just wanted to get everyone's thoughts on different varieties of woo:

Alternative therapies?

The existence of the soul?

Conversations with the dead?

Psychics?

Unfounded conspiracy theories?

etc. etc.

My thoughts are well covered in a brilliant beat poem that Tim Minchin delivered a week ago.

Missing persons is always an interesting topic.

I still remember what a scared little 10 year old kid I was when the Eloise Worledge case came out in the 70's.

 

[Panthera tigris FC]

I can assure you that many people who claim to have seen a ghost or something similar are also well aware of the vagaries of their own perception. It's not only crackpots making these claims. Not all ghost sighting are brief glimpses or seen only by one person either. In some cases multiple people claim to have seen the exact same thing and had enough time to be sure it wasn't their mind playing tricks on them. It's hard to point to flawed human perception to wave away such instances.

How many people claim to have been abducted by aliens? Is there another explanation for their experiences?

I didn't claim that they were crackpots. There are plenty of stories throughout history of people seeing 'something'. That doesn't make it ghosts - therein lies the problem.

Do you believe in psychics? What about John Edwards? Plenty of people do - it is a booming industry.

The alien abduction phenomenon is more common than you may think. There are lots of potential explanations for the experiences - a quick google will reveal them.

 

[Disco08]

So if say five people who are all fully aware of the limitations of their own perception see the same ghostly looking image for long enough to be convinced within themselves that what they saw wasn't a failure of their perception, what conclusion would you draw?

There might be plenty of stories of people seeing something, but there are also plenty of stories of people explicitly claiming to see a ghostly figure, and IMO that poses a problem to anyone that flat out denies the possibility that ghosts might exist. How can you explain so many people claiming to have physically seen essentially the same thing?

I've never heard of John Edwards and haven't spent any real time looking at psychics. Wouldn't it be fairly easy to ascertain whether this psychic ability was genuine or not with a few simple tests?

 

[Panthera tigris FC]

Wouldn't it be simple to see one documented case of a ghost sighting instead of always anecdotal evidence considering how often they occur?

Just to point out that I am not disputing that the people saw something...but how that leads to the existence of ghosts is another thing altogether.