Thoughts on the Afterlife, ghosts, and spirits.

[Zombie]

Originally Posted by fringed n fab

To me I feel she's proven herself to too many others that she's for real. And I don't say that to many "psychics". I don't think she needs to "prove" herself to anyone or accept someone elses money to take their "test".

How has she proven herself? Sylvia Browne is not only often wrong, but quite often, she's spectacularly wrong.

She told the missing Opal Jennings' parents that Opal had been abducted & sold into sexual slavery, and could be found at a certain town in Japan. Unfortunately, the town name she gave doesn't even exist, and Opal's remains were found about 13 miles from her home in Texas. Medical examiners determined she'd been killed within hours of her abduction. She was never in Japan. See also Shawn Hornbeck, Holly Krewson, Lynda McClelland, and Ryan Katcher.

Even worse than the terrible things she's been known to say to grieving people, I think, are her bad habits of dispensing sketchy medical advice without the benefit of being a doctor.

She told James Randi that he absolutely had something wrong with the left ventricle of his heart when they were on the Larry King Live show together. Subsequent medical testing showed his heart was absolutely fine.

She told another woman that her husband had died of "a clot" in his brain, when it was actually a hemorrhage. A clot is the exact opposite of a hemorrhage.

She told a woman who had been having pain in her stomach since a surgery and who had been to 30-odd doctors who couldn't find anything wrong that during her surgery, an instrument had been left in there and that was what was causing the pain. She told the woman to go to a new doctor, not tell him about the surgery or any previous things, and request an MRI which would show the instrument that had been left in her body. I don't know if the woman ever did follow that advice, but I hope not. If she really did have a surgical instrument left in her body as Sylvia said, and went to get an MRI as Sylvia told her to do, then the MRI would've ripped it right out of her body if the instrument happened to be metal. Bad idea.

I could go on.

Has she been "right" or nearly right some of the time? Sure. But if you say things constantly, you're eventually going to be right about some of those things you've said. That's what's called "shotgunning."

You'll see that when she's "right," her "correct" predictions are vague or just common sense stuff, such as her prediction that in August/September of 2004, "hurricanes will hit the Florida Keys and Mexico."

Did that happen? Yes. But August/September is well into hurricane season, and hurricanes have a habit of smacking into the Keys and Mexico. You don't need psychic powers to make that "prediction."

Does Sylvia Browne have to prove herself to anyone? As long as she's accepting money for trotting out her dog & pony show, absolutely she does.

And if she's so for real, what's wrong with actually going through with the Challenge she has accepted from James Randi? She doesn't have to keep that $1 million - she can donate it to charity, or refuse it entirely, if she's able to pass the test under the protocols that she herself agreed upon. If she can do it, why doesn't she go through with it? If she CAN'T do it, why did she accept the Challenge to begin with?

I'm pretty sure I know the answers to those last two questions.

Originally Posted by fringed n fab

To me, believing in man and science is a BAD thing because man will lead you to believe many things (his way) if you're not careful. That goes for a lot of churches too. I appreciate everyone's viewpoints on this and this issue always leads one way or the other and is to be expected. No one's ever "right" or "wrong" about it. It's our personal beliefs and views and what we feel about this whole thing. And that's ok

Being careful is, of course, important, which is why I said before that it's good to be open-minded, just not so open-minded that your brain falls out.

Are there people in the scientific community that are also intellectually dishonest? Absolutely. Biochemist Michael Behe is an excellent example of that, as is Deepak Chopra.

But science has given you many wonderful things, and to dismiss it out of hand is to do yourself and the world a grave disservice. Science is not "BAD." Without science, you wouldn't even be here right now to talk to us about Sylvia Browne.

Fortunately, though, science does not ask you to believe in it. It doesn't need you - or anyone else, for that matter - to believe in it. Science isn't about belief. You can take any proper current scientific theory (and by "proper," I mean one like gravity or Biological Evolutionary Theory, not Intelligent Design) and we can examine its mechanisms and results any time we choose with verifiable means that can be measured, counted, qualified, quantified, and observed. Belief won't have to come into play, because we can look at what's there, and when we look, we will see the same thing - it's not subjective. The same cannot be said for so-called psychic abilities, which is why I said these people want to play baseball with hockey sticks.

If you decide you don't want to accept what's there, that's your thing, do what you wanna do - but it doesn't mean you're right and it's wrong. It will carry on doing what it does regardless of your feelings about it.

But all of that aside, if man and science can lead you astray, then so can Sylvia Browne. She's not exempt.

Originally Posted by fringed n fab

You walk up to total strangers and just know this stuff about them?

Absolutely, if I was well-trained in the fine art of cold reading, which is what Char Margolis does.

That's also what Sylvia Browne does. Cold reading is rather fascinating, actually, and I give them props for being so good at it, but it doesn't negate the fact that it's still cold reading.