AndyRegs wrote:If I watched the same program in the light of day, I would have a giggle at it (why do 'ghosts' only come out at night?)
I don't want to get too OT, but my answer to that is that it depends upon what you think a ghost is. If it's some kind of psychic residue, rather than a disembodied spirit, then perhaps people are more sensitive to such things when they get less information from their primary sense (sight in most people).
Or maybe they tend to imagine more!
Having said that, these things are not completely black and white. Is there a difference say between claiming to be talking to someones dead husband, and just a random chanelling of a spirit for an effect.
I'd say yes. The former is getting personal, and has shades of con-artistry (although I think a lot of mediums might genuinely believe they have some kind of gift). They both promote the idea of life after death, and that spirits can be contacted, but a random channeling of a spirit can be done with a comic, or light-hearted tone. See Eugene Burger's discussion of tone in 'Spirit Magic'.
In 'Phenomenon', I think Jim Carroll sailed a bit close to the wind by picking a named individual, but he apparently chose someone with no known living relatives, so he was obviously trying to make his performance dramatic, without upsetting anyone.
It seems that there is a bit of a split between the 'I talk to the dead' camp and the 'fusion of magic, psychology...' camp. Isn't there a third possibility...you can read thoughts...telepathy...etc.
Not just three camps, but many more. It's a bit like political affiliation, or religious belief. What about metal-bending? What about other sorts of PK? Remote viewing? Predicting headlines (potentially very iffy morally)?
You're absolutely right, though: just because someone portrays his mind reading as 'psychic' doesn't automatically mean he believes in, or promotes belief in, spiritualism.
VoodooMick wrote:I know the above quote was probably intended to be tongue-in-cheek but why do psychics have to know "everything"?! It seems so unfair!
Why does being psychic have to become synonymous with "absolutely-invincible-and-without-limitation"? What a load of tut!
That was the point I was making earlier. Who said that psychics have to know it all, 100% accurately, all of the time? Of course, it's convenient to psychics that they don't have to show this, but equally convenient to scpetics (of the psychic-bashing variety) to claim that psychic ability must be like a tap, to be turned on and off at will.
As to the weather forecasts, they may be subject to fines for getting it wrong, but the BBC are hopeless. Earlier this week, they were forecasting raing for the next day (I think it was Wednesday's website forecast for Thursday). By Thursday morning, the forecast for the day, and the next couple of days, had changed completely. Obviously they couldn't both be right!
With weather forecasting, the underlying science is known and accepted. The problem is that, in the UK more than many other areas of the world, it's very difficult to put the theory into practice, even with sophisticated computers. There are so many factors at work, that it's often impossible to say what will happen when, even only a day in advance.
As such, I'd say that the distinctions between predicting the future and predicting the weather are that:
The process for the latter is known.
The former involves even more factors, so arguably any attempt to predict the future in general is absurd, even if you had all the relevant information. And you usually don't.
On the other hand, maybe there
are forces at work that are not understood.
