Can the dead talk to us?

[naomi24]

Something a bit different to talk about. Last night's offering from 4thought TV.

The presenter mentions controlled experiments that suggest it is a reality – personally I don’t know of any experiments that are verified - but he also says he seems to have a faculty of mind that takes his awareness beyond his physical five senses to become aware of things that others simply cannot be aware of. Is that possible?

http://www.4thought.t...dy-byng?autoplay=true

[modeller]

If I might digress a bit I could give you dozens of examples of telepathy or call it by any other name because our family lived with it for 40 odd years.
To us it was it was not supernatural it was just accepted.

However my digression concerns my mother's empathy with animals.
People would bring to her animals in severe pain and quite vicious. Not allowing anyone to tend them but as soon as my mother spoke and touched them they would calm down and allow their wounds to be treated.

I don't know whether there is any connection with her telepathic powers but she certainly was communicating in some way.

[jomifl]

Some animals are much more sensitive than humans to some parts of the sound spectrum and the electromagnetic spectrum. Dogs for example have a much more acute sense of smell than humans. With all these areas of communication inaccessible to humans it is not surprising that some things seem to be paranormal, indeed they are to us but there is no need to invoke telepathy as an explanation. I had a neighbour who had a good empathy with cats and would befriend timid strays that would walk up to her BUT only when she spoke to them in her 'cat' voice. It was obvious that it was her voice and demeanour that attracted them. I get on quite well with dogs but only because I had one for many years and got to understand them.

[naomi24]

LG, yes I did see that, and I intended posting it, so thank you for that.

Modeller, I've no doubt some people have a special affinity with animals. When my dog had an operation on his leg, he wouldn't let me touch the dressing - but someone he hardly knows changed it twice with no problem.

[LazyGun]

@Naomi - Can't give you any answer re the haunted house thing. I am curious though - are you still living in the house, and over what time period did these events occur? And if you are not still living there, do you happen to know if subsequent residents/owners have experienced similar events?

[Khandro]

jomifl; //are you saying indirectly that if you exect (sic) to see something then you will or are you using some other meaning of 'a priori'.//
In an attempt to help you from your confusion; 'a priori' means reasoning from what is prior logically or chronologically from one observed fact to another fact. eg. when a human communicates with an animal, or vice versa, the mutual understanding is complete, and does not require the intervention of a 'scientist' to present an explanation.

[plautus]

Jesus! What the hell does that mean?

[jomifl]

Khandro, quite, so if you have deduced erroneously that something will happen then you will expect it to happen (also erroneously) and when it happens for another reason you will explain it with your compromised reasoning. N'est ce pas?

[naomi24]

LG, it didn’t happen when we first lived there, but once it started it got progressively worse and continued until we moved some years later. I’ve no idea whether the new owners experienced similar occurrences. Strangely enough, though, my ‘delusions’ – and those of my family and a variety of friends who stayed with us regularly - were cured when we moved house and they have never resurfaced in either of our two subsequent homes.

Some occurrences were ‘personal’ - names being spoken and that sort of thing (yes, true) - but with others, particularly the banging and crashing, I often considered the possibility of the existence of a parallel universe because I gained the impression that whatever was creating the disturbance was completely unaware of our presence – but that was just the sense I got, so as far as evidence goes, it doesn’t mean a thing.

Incidentally, my husband, an intelligent and almost painfully rational man – his business is law – was highly sceptical of anything like this until the problems started. He isn’t now.

Birdie, I don’t believe I’m being either obtuse or disingenuous. The dictionary defines the word as //(of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.”//

From what I can see, you conclude that it’s impossible for anything to exist that is beyond scientific understanding, which assumes that scientific understanding has reached its apex and there is nothing more to learn. I don’t think that’s what the definition means at all – and actually, I don’t know why you’re banging on about ‘definition’. The word ‘supernatural’ conjures up connotations of an ethereal and unknowable world, which is why people who haven’t experienced it immediately jump to the conclusion that it’s impossible, and refuse to take claims of unexplained phenomena seriously. If we could dispense with the mysticism, and acknowledge that something we don’t understand is happening, we might get somewhere.

Not sure why you’re asking me how long ago it was – unless you suspect my memory isn’t serving me well - but I assure you it is.

[Khandro]

jomifl; Non mon ami, tu faire une faute, (comme d'habitude). Once upon a time, mariners at sea for long periods fell victims of scurvy, costing the lives of many. By some sort of accident the Royal Navy discovered that if the crew were given lemons they did not contract the illness. The discovery of vitamins was yet a long way off, nobody understood why it was effective, but effective it was, and so all sailors were given lemons, and the British Navy had yet another advantage over other Navys . Not until early in the 20th century did the scientists come along to make the 'discovery' as to why it worked.

[naomi24]

Birdie, meant to say you could be right about the dog.

[jomifl]

Khandro, you are getting confused again, it was limes not lemons hence the name 'limey', for British sailors. I am not disputing the fact that communication occurs between humans and animals (analogous to limes curing scurvy in your argument), what I am disputing is your 'understanding' of it's mechanism. The discovery of vitamin C explained how limes cured scurvy (discovered by scientists, not horse whisperers, or jockies). So far nobody has determined whether telepathy exists let alone how it might work. I (and probably others)would be interested in an explanation of your 'a priori' argument that supports the existence of telepathy.

[LazyGun]

@Khandro - The story of scurvy and its treatment with citrus fruits,lemon etc, is a vindication of the scientific method, and an illustration of the powers of a clinical trial.

Scurvy had been known about for centuries. Over that time, many people had stumbled towarda cures, but none of those worked well at sea. And scurvy was a serious condition resulting in the deaths of huge numbers of sailors.Even in the early 1600s, there was a suspicion that citrus fruits, fresh food etc could be protective against scurvy, but no one was able to prove that or understand the principle.

It remained that way, with anecdotal evidence and word of mouth transmission of likely cures for around 150 years, until James Lind carried out the worlds first recorded clinical trial to show that lemons and limes offered a cure for scurvy.He was even able to demonstrate that extracted stored lemon juice became ineffective in the trial. Its a shame, for the sake of the thousands of sailors who continued to die of scurvy, that his recommendations were not taken up more quickly. T

It was not just some sort of impulse that prompted the trial though, or to focus on lemons and limes - it was built upon the foundations of suspicions and home grown recipes and treatments that had been around for over 100 years.

The story of scurvy and its eventual cure is not a story of impulse, or intuition or serendipity - its a story of how superstitions and anecdote held sway for years, with little benefit, until some rationality and the idea of clinical trials came along. Science Khandro, not superstition.

[jomifl]

It may be significant that the 'telepathic' communications that are mentioned anecdotally seem always to involve the tramission of emotions (information that is non specific and often conveyed by tone of voice, pheromones, body language etc). Nobody seems to get a detailed intellectual message such as 'nip down to Tesco as turkies are on offer' or 'no need to leave home yet as the 156b bus is running 10 minutes late'.

[LazyGun]

@ Naomi thanks for the info re the haunted house. I do not wish to disparage peoples experiences - I just think that when people make claims of the paranormal or supernatural that they ensure to the best of their ability that the events occurred as claimed and that their memory is not playing tricks on them :)

I cannot offer any explanations for your own experiences as you document them - I did not experience these events myself, and you will yourself be aware of the potential confounding factors that may be present. So such reported events remain interesting anomalies.

And it should also be recognised that anomalies do not overthrow the existing current knowledge, although some phenomena may provide pointers to an as yet unexplained element of existing understanding :)

On an unrelated issue, on the other thread, the one about god being great, I asked if you had any knowledge of links to information about Bill Mahers claims about the similarities of Jesus, Horus, Mithras etc - Could you take a look?

[Khandro]

LG;//The story of scurvy and its treatment with citrus fruits,lemon etc, is a vindication of the scientific method, and an illustration of the powers of a clinical trial// This was my point entirely; 'the scientific method' exists not only in the realm of scientists of whom jom. said previously, with the usual hubris; were better equipped to understand communication between species than I (or words to that effect). If it was observed among sailors that the one who didn't contract the disease also consumed limes, and that it had a similar effect when tried by others, just as when a child touches fire, finds it hurts, and learns not to do it again, knowing 'what' happens is arguably often more germane than knowing why.