Just watching Derren Brown prove that Mediums and Psychics are full of it The missus 100% believes in it, her Auntie thinks she is a Medium, personally I see it as a giant scam, people don't have that ability, and if they did, it would not still be a daft sideshow that people charge money for The fact that Derren Brown can acheive the exact same, if not better results than a medium, and he explains that he's faking it while he's saying the names of dead relatives, and messages no-one else could know, to consenting test people just adds to the proof that it's fake Why do people believe in this BS ?
It's all nonsense. That women who has the show Long Island Medium is being investigated by the FBI for fraud.
I personally do not believe myself, but if they bring some kind of peace or closure to other people who do believe in them then who am i to say otherwise. Some old biddy charging a few quid to tell somebody who cannot deal with loss that their loved ones are safe and watching over them, and possibly giving those people some closure is, i suppose, not much of a issue, but some idiot taking vulnerable people for a ride financially, mentally and even to the stage of giving medical advice and getting invooved in people lives is simply not on.
Houdini did a good job exposing that crap way back when, back when there wasn't as much easy access to skeptic stuff compared to now. Today though, you have the dozens of ghost shows, medium shows, etc- and it's all basic entertainment at the end of the day. The thing with television though is that once you understand what actually goes into making a show (the editing, the retakes, the scripted dialog, and so on) you can catch on pretty quick to how they have it all down to a formula. Then you the age old mindgames and vague questions the mediums ask to make their performance seem real. It's interesting though, again, like the ghost shows. I picked up Dan Aykroyd's book a while back http://www.amazon.com/History-Ghosts-Séances-Mediums-Ghostbusters/dp/1605298751 It's a good read just to see how far some of that stuff goes back and what methods they were using. Of course Aykroyd really believes in that stuff, but whatever. Just for the sake of argument, even if these well known "mediums" were for real- wouldn't whoring out such a gift for profit be a bad thing to do to people anyway?
You could say "Hey you, stop making money off of other peoples tragedies by tricking and lying to them." How's that? They are simply a category of con men.
I kinda do... I mean, not the usual con men on tv, who just bs their way through everything, but I do believe there are people with extraordinary powers.
Do I believe in supernatural forces? Yes. Do I believe some people are more attuned to notice them than others? Yes. Do I believe some people can use said forces for any personal gain or future prediction? No. That's bollocks. I used to not believe in any of it at all. Then I had some....experiences. Experiences that I couldn't logically explain.
Unfortunately it is simply not that black and white for everybody, if it were then there would not be millions of people around the world listening and believing, on a daily basis, to the myriad of religious spokespersons, telling them the very same things while holding their hands out for the very same cash.
Every religious person is born of indoctrination at some point during childhood, or maybe as an adult. I'm thinking its more of the former, because otherwise it wouldn't be so prominent. :l *pats reclining chair* You wanna talk about it? :O
No. Mostly because it's irrelevant. Everyone will just try to tell me it was some obscure medical or psychological phenomena. Hate to dodge out of it like that, but yeah. And no, I'm not just being obstinate because I "want" to believe in it. Because I definitely do not.
What is meant by this? Just the connotation alone would mean that no one has a choice. They are brainwashed into it. Free will is non-existent? If that is your premise than you are only speaking of cults.
