From: johnm@cajal.uoregon.edu (John Martin)
Subject: Re: what a joke!
Keywords: n
Organization: Institute of Neuroscience, University of Oregon
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 92 19:25:12 GMT

In article <78085@ut-emx.uucp>, giskard@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Daneel Olivaw) writes:

>   There are no such things as ghosts, spirits, flying saucers, OBE's,
>close encounters of the third kind, mind power, psychic healing or any
>other trash that is commonly talked about in this group.  I say this 
>because you are all wasting your time talking about such nonsense.  But,
>now I have some time to waste, so I would like to hear from some of you
>about the following:
>
>1)  How come I can read my horoscope in one paper and it will be totally
>    contradictive (or opposite) in another paper?  Also, they are never
>    true.

Because horoscopes in the paper are BS.  This does NOT reflect in any way
on actual paranormal occurrances.

>2)  OBE's are just a dream and certain people make them out to be more 
>    than that.  IT is all in the head, the idea of actually leaving your
>    body and often looking back at your lifeless lump of skin is so 
>    ludicrous that one who claims this, must have definite mental problems.

I won't even grant you a response to that mental crack.

>3)  There are no such things as ghosts.  I think this was proven several 
>    times when a crew of 'parapsychologists' attempted to film a poltergeist
>    or 'spirit' and of course never didn't.  If they really existed, wouldn't
>    be likely that most people would have some sort of experience and beyond
>    that, some sort of documentation?

Well, there *is* documentation, ghosts *have* been filmed, photographed, etc.,
and most people *have* had dome sort of experience with them.

If you know one iota of what you are talking about, you would also know some
of the "howevers": most "ghosts" are NOT spirits (i.e., are not dead people).
There are differences between ghosts, spirits, and poltergeists that are
very important in terms of trying to understand what we are talking about.

>4)  psychics are idiots, and some of them are lucky

No. Idiots are people like you who make irrational and unfounded blanket
statements.

>5)  As far as life after death--- although I dont believe in 
>    it.  It is fairly obvious that the people who almost died and had some
>    kind of experience, were hallucinating.  There is a common notion that
>    when you die you experience a warm, gentle, solitude feeling and every
>    thing is white.  THis occurs due to last second brain activity that
>    accesses this notion which is stored in memory.

Could be, nobody knows.

>I might not have proof for the things that I just said, but there is no
>proof for any of the stuff mentioned in this group.
>
>feel free to comment


OK, I will.  You are an extreme example of the thing that really bugs me about
so-called skeptics.  Skeptics in general tend to be guilty of the same kind
of close-minded, emotional, and irrational thinking that they accuse others
of.  In your post you have managed to reveal a tremendous amount of idiocy
in yourself that you really should get under control.

The problem is this: you are looking at these topics with an opinion already
formed -- the prospect that any of these things might be true scares you
so much that you have decided they aren't true, even before you look into
them.  Of course, since they aren't true, there's no need to look into
them at all, anyway, so it doesn't matter that you would only distort the
facts you see in ways that support your a priori conclusion.

People like you tend to talk and scream a lot about these things, and about
how stupid anybody who believes in them are, but they have never seriously
studied these phenomena, and so logically cannot make an argument for or
against them and back it up in any way. You say you have no proof, and we
don't either (this is not actually true, but let's grant it for the sake
of argument), but there is TONS of evidence!!  Study, and speak with
knowledge!

-- 
John Martin                                        johnm@cajal.uoregon.edu
Institute of Neuroscience,   University of Oregon,    Eugene, OR,    97402