list your ablitys, ESP and the like.

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There is not an iota of empirical evidence that support the above supposition.

If it ain't empirical it is bu**sh*t.

ruveyn

I suppose it doesn't like it very much. I once read where a wise old American Indian said a tree could kill you if it wanted to. Then there is the following exchange from an old Garfield cartoon:

Tree: Climb me

Garfield: No way

Tree: If you don't climb me, you'll be sorry

Garfield: Yeah, what are you gonna do about it, bark breath?

The final frame in the cartoon shows the tree having fallen on the cat, and Garfield's limbs sticking out from under the tree.

As for the rest, I've read tons of reports of the types of tests that Sinclair supposedly did on his wife, and most of them are memorized and coordinated. That's not to say that Mrs. Sinclair didn't have some sort of ability, but that everybody else wanted to have it too. I personally think that some people who are skeptical about EVERYTHING and want the world to be logical and orderly simply are unable to perceive what others do.

Most people have some belief in the paranormal or in a God/other realm, but American surveys consistently show about 6% of people in a blind survey consistently respond "no" to questions like "Is there a soul/afterlife/God?" Even when the question is not loaded, say the surveyor will simply say "what happens to a human after it dies", around 6% will say "worm food". In the US reincarnation seems to be believed in by maybe 6%, and two thirds will say "it goes to heaven or hell/an afterlife".

Some religions believe that a person is reincarnated X number of times or enough times that it learns what it needs to learn, then it goes on to another realm permanently. Such hybrid beliefs tend to be hard to measure. Many Buddhists believe in what some call "the pure land", where a person who is finished reincarnating will go permanently.

Maybe hard core atheists suffer from different brain wiring, which may explain why so many aspies are atheists. My own belief tends to be more logical-yeah, the evidence is there, no, I can't explain it-than any deep personal experience. I have never seen a ghost, nor talked to a tree or a dead man. But I can't readily dismiss some of those who claim to have done so.

Again, I cannot resist...You will have to excuse me. It is late and I am feeling a bit silly...


"If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason." ~ Jack Handey [Deep Thoughts]

now im imagining constantly screaming furniture

and laughing

thats a _brand new image_ ive never had in my head ever before, thanx :]

At times I have sensations which in the past I have interpreted as a kind of low-level empathic ability. I even had a very, very intense "empathic" experience (details upon request) which I have not yet been able to explain rationally. However, I no longer hold the belief that I have any sort of supernatural power.

The most likely explanation, the one that makes the least number of assumptions and therefore doesn't take Occam's Razor and defecate on it repeatedly, is that I simply don't have neurotypical empathetic skills. The result of this is that my brain takes the social signals I receive from people and interprets them in a way that results in mimicking those emotions in myself instead of interpreting them as the emotions other people are feeling.

Also, I thought at one point I could direct beams of psychic energy and battled demons... but then I graduated the 6th grade and stopped watching Dragonball Z. Not trying to be demeaning, that's just the facts. I just grew up.

Hello,
In a way I'm sensitive and a psychic.I haven't got certain skills that mediums have for instance but I don't always practice on it.

1. I can interprate people's dreams.
2. I get strong intuition and a sense of a person or an animal for a particular reason (e.g. For months I've been thinking heavily about my family pet dog. As I live miles away from my relatives and haven't seen them or the dog in years, I wondered why she kept appearing in my thoughts. I wondered if she was okay. Then I made a phonecall to them yesterday and was told that the dog died in January). I've had many similar experiences to this. I think strongly about something or someone, and it turns out they've died or doing something. I kept thinking about the movie "Clash of the Titans" and that myth it's based on. Then I discovered they were remaking this film.
3. Telepathy with others.

I'm religious (pagan) and I have a lot of spiritual encounters. I find it helpful when I'm not well or feeling upset, down, confused, ect.

I may humbly drink of the tepid river of consciousness at my leisure. I abide the sojourn truths but carry on the burdens. The cosmic laugh endures as it must.

I have witnessed the power of the shadow gnomes, the lanky claws so swift on my ceiling. What treachery is this?.. to manipulate my dimensionality. But indeed you did teach me the world is flat.

I have yet to communicate without words, the language of emotion is as close as I have found myself able.

Heh, i hardly doubt that qualifies, but i've had some rare moments of déjà vu, as if i knew what was going to happen. <.< Anyways, i can't make any sense of it, nor do i even try to. It just randomly happens. =/

oh and...Nice Thread Necro...

I just found this necro, I must say I really miss Fnord

have not read the thread but the title and some of the more recent posts about creation make me wonder if WP should have a thread entitled "Completely idiotic and unsubstantiated subjective beliefs"

Too many religious people would get involved.

You laugh, but after having some of my classes, i can tell you that religious or spiritualist beliefs are a part of any human society. <.<

I accept the permission. I laugh.

Sand, these beliefs are part of any society. They are just not the best part.

ruveyn

Oh, there are a few sane societies here and there. There was once a popular belief in a supreme being.

I had the power to temporarily make my whole elementary school accept me as a spirit medium. Was a fun couple of weeks.

in honor of the OP's request for comments from WP folk with "at least one psychic experience" - i can say that when i was younger, i witnessed my older sister and her best friend on many occasions, simultaneously pick-up the telephone before it rang, when one would seek to chat with the other telephonically. my older brother learned he could "water-witch" when he was a u.s. marine -he still can, most recently when he helped me find a buried septic pipe underneath my backyard using a Y-shaped fallen tree branch he found. my older brother long claimed that when he was in the army, he would involuntarily astrally project when he was tired - he could be riding his motorcycle when suddenly he would "see" himself from above his own body as thought he were a ghost looking down from above.
when i was in the army, there were multiple occasions where other GIs would ask me about something i had been privately thinking about without ever having mentioned anything aloud to anybody. one bona-fide psychic told me i had "a leaky mind" that even nominally psychic folk could easily read. i can't count the number of times that somebody standing next to me would start humming or whistling a song/earworm [NOT a popular song] i had running in my head at the time, or i would start whistling a song only to have somebody else tell me "i was just thinking of that song!" i was sitting in my room one day listening to music when suddenly a foreign thought overrode the music, "DAMN IT! i forgot my keys!" and for a few seconds i was wondering what THAT was all about when suddenly there was a knocking at the door and it was my roommate wanting to be let in, as he had forgotten his keys.
my mother had no psychic talents but she did tell me that her mother had a psychic connection to her beloved eldest daughter- she would always know ahead of time when her eldest was going to drop by for a visit, and cook a "welcome-home" meal for her in advance of this meeting- mind you all, this was in 1920s backwoods japan with no telephones, and no written correspondence as my grandmother was illiterate. my mother's older sister was also psychic and once cruelly told her eldest sister [whom she hated] she she would die soon, and within one month the oldest sister did indeed die, of unknown causes.
on this note, they say psychic talent skips a generation, and this seems to be my situation. i consider my isolated psychic incidents to be flukishly freakish more than any real talent, in that i never was able to read anybody else's mind or manifest any other kind of psychic function by my own volition- it was always involuntary, i.e. a foreign thought would just pop into my head from time to time. i don't even know if this phenomena should be called psychic, but i don't know what else to call it.
most recently, when my father died, both me and my mother were simultaneously jerked from sleep by his "voice" shouting our names individually [i heard my own name, and my mother heard her name]. when my mother died 2 years later, i was roused from sleep at least once by her "voice" shouting my name. also there were multiple occasions of unexplained "poltergeist" activity in my parent's now empty ['cept for me living as caretaker inside] house, with loud banging and thumping in locations of which i could never find any physical cause. this noise lasted for several minutes on several occasions until i would say aloud, "OK, Mom and Dad! i hear you!" at which point the noises would suddenly stop. one day on the way to the veterans' cemetery carrying my late mother's cremains, i suddenly felt surrounded by a pronounced loving warmth i never felt from mom when she was alive [as she was a typically reserved japanese woman]- this feeling lasted for a good 15 minutes or so, and it greatly comforted me.

PPR is a poor forum for this sort of discussion, as rationality tends to dominate mere belief here. this said, anybody is welcome to call me crazy but i am not bothered by the name-calling because i know what i experienced was not just my imagination. i thank the OP for this particular topic, as i long wished there were somebody i could talk-to about it.

for other WP readers curious about this topic, i would recommend the book, "Hello from Heaven."