RE: What of mediums who somehow know family secrets?
March 3, 2012 at 9:01 pm
(This post was last modified: March 3, 2012 at 9:02 pm by Cyberman.)
An excellent website called BadPsychics (sadly no longer available) used to feature videos showing such mediums (media?) at work. If memory serves, they were often actual televised productions overlaid with a sceptical analysis indicating every attempt at fishing for information, every wrong assertion, every leading question that lead nowhere, even every camera edit (suggestive of material filmed that did not fit the image of the medium being anything other than truly psychic). In every case the episode ended with the client expressing amazement at the amount of personal information the medium apparently knew, information which, as the analysis revealed, the client supplied themselves. In short, the medium digs for and presents such information, adding perhaps a dash of common human experiences; the client supplies the context.
Incidentally, BadPsychics attracted a lot of attention from the psychic camp when it emerged they had a mole in their midst channelling information to the website about their activities and working practises. The rumours turned out to be true and the mole was revealed to be none other than Ciarán O'Keeffe, at the time still the resident parapsychologist of the show Most Haunted and originator of the infamous "Kreed Kafer" incident which brought down Derek Acorah.
As for those who might believe their abilities to be genuine, my favourite quotable atheist Colonel Robert Ingersoll put it best in 1884, admittedly in a different context:
Incidentally, BadPsychics attracted a lot of attention from the psychic camp when it emerged they had a mole in their midst channelling information to the website about their activities and working practises. The rumours turned out to be true and the mole was revealed to be none other than Ciarán O'Keeffe, at the time still the resident parapsychologist of the show Most Haunted and originator of the infamous "Kreed Kafer" incident which brought down Derek Acorah.
As for those who might believe their abilities to be genuine, my favourite quotable atheist Colonel Robert Ingersoll put it best in 1884, admittedly in a different context:
Quote:It may be that ministers really think that their prayers do good and it may be that frogs imagine that their croaking brings spring.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
