James Randi Backs Out Of An Challenge With Homeopath George Vithoulkas

It looks like according to two sources, James Randi yes the amazing Randi has back out of an challenge with an homeopath. This doesn't surprise me, i don't think it would surprise James Randi's fans either they will just say it isn't James Randi duty to take up all challenges. Well ok, he chooses the ones he wants to take up, isn't that bias?.

Here are the sources

http://www.naturalnews.com/025627.html

For an indepth look at this issue. Go here.

http://www.vithoulkas.com/content/view/1973/lang,en/

The Major Downturn In The Economy

It's crazy isn't it?, food prices are rising among other things. Of course poor people are hit the most by this major downturn in the economy. I know first hand how hard it is now, but we as a species are resilent. I believe we will get through this economic meltdown, time will surely decide if we do. Will the economy be as bad as "the Great Depression"?.

Let's hope not, that was an horrible time in history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression

More about the global financial crisis, that we and the US is facing can be found here,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_financial_crisis_of_2008

According to Wikipedia it becames very visible in September 2008 in several large United States based financial firms.

Will the new president of the United States Oback Obama live up to his promise. That is to pull America out of this economic meltdown.

Here are just some of the ways, he believes we get the economy back up to par.

Jumpstart the Economy

* Enact a Windfall Profits Tax to Provide a $1,000 Emergency Energy Rebate to American Families:Barack Obama and Joe Biden will enact a windfall profits tax on excessive oil company profits to give American families an immediate $1,000 emergency energy rebate to help families pay rising bills. This relief would be a down payment on the Obama-Biden long-term plan to provide middle-class families with at least $1,000 per year in permanent tax relief.
* Provide $50 billion to Jumpstart the Economy and Prevent 1 Million Americans from Losing Their Jobs: This relief would include a $25 billion State Growth Fund to prevent state and local cuts in health, education, housing, and heating assistance or counterproductive increases in property taxes, tolls or fees. The Obama-Biden relief plan will also include $25 billion in a Jobs and Growth Fund to prevent cutbacks in road and bridge maintenance and fund school re­pair - all to save more than 1 million jobs in danger of being cut.

Provide Middle Class Americans Tax Relief

Obama and Biden will cut income taxes by $1,000 for working families to offset the payroll tax they pay.

* Provide a Tax Cut for Working Families: Obama and Biden will restore fairness to the tax code and provide 150 million workers the tax relief they need. Obama and Biden will create a new "Making Work Pay" tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family. The "Making Work Pay" tax credit will completely eliminate income taxes for 10 million Americans.
* Eliminate Income Taxes for Seniors Making Less than $50,000: Barack Obama will eliminate all income taxation of seniors making less than $50,000 per year. This proposal will eliminate income taxes for 7 million seniors and provide these seniors with an average savings of $1,400 each year. Under the Obama-Biden plan, 27 million American seniors will also not need to file an income tax return.
* Simplify Tax Filings for Middle Class Americans: Obama and Biden will dramatically simplify tax filings so that millions of Americans will be able to do their taxes in less than five minutes. Obama and Biden will ensure that the IRS uses the information it already gets from banks and employers to give taxpayers the option of pre-filled tax forms to verify, sign and return. Experts estimate that the Obama-Biden proposal will save Americans up to 200 million total hours of work and aggravation and up to $2 billion in tax preparer fees.

New Skeptiko Podcast

Psychic Medium John Holland

Guest: John Holland, renown psychic medium and author of Power of the Soul.


You can check it out here

http://www.skeptiko.com/index.php?id=76

Pz Myers Supporters Hijack Afterlife Poll

An poll going on at dailygrail.com was recently forwarded by Pz Myers to his fellow commenters on his science blog. I made an response on Pz Myers blog.



http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/maybe_wed_get_better_answers_i.php

I said,

I voted all of the above evidence. Hijacking a poll about rather their is evidence for an afterlife or not is typical of materialists.

One of the best evidences for evp an experiment that shows evp's are not stray radio signals.

http://victorzammit.com/book/chapter04.html

As far as induced gi loc out of body experiences this has been refuted.

One of the earliest and most persistent of the physiological theories proposed for NDEs is that lowered levels of oxygen (hypoxia or anoxia), perhaps accompanied by increased levels of carbon dioxide (hypercarbia), have produced hallucinations.... One study frequently cited is that of Whinnery (1997), who compared NDEs to what he called the "dreamlets" occurring in brief periods of unconsciousness induced in fighter pilots by rapid acceleration in a centrifuge... He claimed that some features common to NDEs are also found in these hypoxic episodes, including tunnel vision, bright lights, brief fragmented visual images, a sense of floating, pleasurable sensations, and, rarely, a sense of leaving the body. The primary features of acceleration-induced hypoxia, however, are myoclonic convulsions (rhythmic jerking of the limbs), impaired memory for events just prior to the onset of unconsciousness, tingling in the extremities and around the mouth, confusion and disorientation upon awakening, and paralysis, symptoms that do not occur in association with NDEs. Moreover, contrary to NDEs, the visual images Whinnery reported frequently included living people, but never deceased people; and no life review or accurate out-of-body perceptions have been reported in acceleration-induced loss of consciousness.


For those who say their is no evidence for an afterlife you surely haven't done any research of your own. Have you?

User named knockgoats said this

Hijacking a poll about rather their is evidence for an afterlife or not is typical of materialists. - Leo MacDonald

Inability to put together a coherent sentence is typical of wooists.

So an personal attack is obviously this commenters resort to my factual remark.

I know like to rebut Pz Myers post on some of the evidence for an afterlife.

He says

I don't get the popularity of the NDE "evidence". I had a friend once who told me that he had the most awesome experience on 'shrooms — he'd melted into a purple puddle that soaked into the earth, and he had spiritual sex with tree roots. I'm pretty sure that didn't actually happen, and I wouldn't use it to argue that human beings were capable of phase changes into a fluid state or that intimate congress with plants was fun and rewarding, but people use the same logic all the time in arguing that while they were in a brain-damaged state, befuddled by anoxia, their perception of the hallucinatory state afterwards is evidence that there is a heaven.



Because a lot of people who have them are often flat lined with no measureable EEG. How funny come up with an apparent hallunication account then use that as an comparision. Lol has he ever look at these nde accounts? apparently not.


He says

I have no idea what "crisis apparitions" are. I don't care to know either.

By that sentence he clearly shows he ain't interested in this phenomena and doesn't care to look into it. Closed minded skeptic wouldn't you say?.

This is what he says about evp [electronic voice phenomena]

I have heard of EVPs — they're all the rage right now thanks to all those horrible 'ghosthunter' shows on TV. Leave a tape recorder running in an empty room, then play it back with lots of amplification of the background hiss and crackle of noise. If you are gullible and really want to believe, you will hear random splutters that you can imagine are sort of voices. And the really cool thing is that if you tell someone that this scrap of noise says something like, "Paul is dead", then their pattern-forming circuits in their brain will impose your interpretation on the noise for you, and they'll hear the same thing! Very convincing, I'm sure.

Has he ever heard of the Pye record experiments probably not.

He then says

I voted for no evidence. If you vote otherwise, maybe you can come back here and explain your evidence to us. We need a good laugh on a Saturday morning.

Yeah and i got a good laugh out of someone who proclaims to be a scientist with rationality and reason. But insists their is no evidence for an afterlife. Before you make that decision maybe you should research the evidence first, then come to an conclusion.


User named GT says



"Total votes: 666"
LOL, and "There is no evidence" is in the lead with 37% (246 votes).
Greed + Mortality = belief in eternal afterlife.

My response: Greed? if their is evidence for an afterlife which apparently their is lots of it it isn't greed.

Kel says

When one can simulate this phenomenon through mind-altering substances or though physical interaction (such as sleep deprivation), or when one can see these patterns through mental illness - why would anyone jump to the highly speculative and seemingly impossible conclusion that life carries on after death, but the dead are in contact with us?

My response: But mind altering substances don't even come close to that of an near death experience.

Stu says

Me:For those who say their is no evidence for an afterlife you surely haven't don't any research of your own.

Him?You don't know what research means.

My response: Well, Please inform me then what research is?

http://dailygrail.com/news/pharyngula-fail

What is Ectoplasm?

According to some psychical researchers it is a biological substance emitted by materialization mediums. If you look at some of the pictures of this ectoplasm coiming out of their mouth it doesn't look like a substance but like cheesecloth. Of course it may only look that way. The problem though if its cheesecloth and their is fraud taking place in many seance rooms. Then their is an accomplish, but how does a piece of cheesecloth form a apparent physical being which is warm blooded, a heart etc. Which many participants of seance room phenomena have experienced. Here is more about ectoplasm here:

http://www.sgha.net/articles/ectoplasm.html

A seemingly lifelike substance, solid or vaporous in nature, which allegedly extrudes from the body of a medium and can be transformed into materialized limbs, faces or even entire bodies of spirits. Ectoplasm often appears milky white in color and smells like ozone.

Coined by French physiologist Charles Richet in 1894 to explain the strange third arm, or PSEUDOPOD, emanating from EUSAPIA PALLADINO, ectoplasm comes from the Greek words ektos and plasma, meaning "exteriorized substance." But ectoplasm-like vapors had been observed surrounding D.D. HOME by SzR WIULAM CROOKW. And medium Madame desperance described being covered with luminous spiderwebs which eventually developed into a living organism. Earlier, a 17th-century philosopher named Vaughn described a substance he called "first matter" or "mercury" which seemed to be like ectoplasm. These extrusions often seemed warm to the touch, had weight, produced carbonic acid and seemed to wax and wane from the medium's body. They could also be cold and rubbery or doughlike. Emanations usually came from a body orifice, such as the mouth, ears and nose, but could also pour from the eyes, navel, nipples or vagina. Their structure varied from amorphous clouds to thin rods to a wide membrane resembling a net.

Also check out this chapter from Victor Zammit's book the case for the afterlife. It talks about ectoplasm.


http://www.victorzammit.com/book/4thedition/chapter10.html

Four Possible Solutions To The Mind Body Problem

Here are four possible solutions to the mind body problem

1. Physicalism- everything is physical
2. Idealism- Everything is consciousness, the physical is an illusion
3. Neutral Monism- The physical and mental are two ways of looking at the same thing
4. Dualism- The physical exists but so does a mental reality


I for one support dualism, the reason for this is by the way the evidence appears to be pointing. Of course neutral monism, idealism and physicalism are all monistic solutions to how reality works. Where dualism isn't.

Non Locality And Psychic Phenomena

Can the theories of Non Locality and Quantum Entanglement explain psychic phenomena such as telepathy?. It could, we know that elementary systems cannot communicate from point a to point b because of the non communication theorem. However psi effects could be pure correlations where signaling is not necessary.

Here is what physicist Dean Radin has to say about Quantum Entanglement and Non Locality.

As the latter. Before entanglement, our best understanding of the fabric of reality did not allow for spooky influences transcending space and time. Such influences are, of course, the hallmarks of psi experiences. So now we know that the physical world does allow for these types of connections. That's a major step in the right direction.

The next big advancement will be detection of entanglement in living systems, and I think it is there that the no-signaling prohibitions may be overcome. I.e., so far we've only seen quantum correlations in elementary systems, but that may be because elementary systems are not smart enough to modulate or use those correlations. Or, perhaps we can reframe psi effects into pure correlations, where signaling is not necessary. (I discuss all this in Entangled Minds.)

Here is also an new article in time called " The science behind psychic phenomena".

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1868287,00.html

Here is the amazon review of the book

The review of miss powell new book at Amazon


"In science it is axiomatic that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Powell, a neuropsychiatrist who has taught at Harvard Medical School, certainly makes extraordinary claims about the four basic psychic abilities: telepathy, psychokinesis, clairvoyance and precognition. But her evidence is consistently below par. She relies on self-reported claims by psychics, hundred-year-old newspaper accounts and the results of studies published by organizations like the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research rather than in reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journals (and sometimes she cites no source at all). Powell is woefully short on mechanisms to explain the phenomena she claims are so common, although she does turn to quantum physics to assert that molecular resonance and the space-time continuum are likely responsible, and she finds evolutionary explanations for the existence of psychic phenomena. She claims, for instance, that psychic events are related to dreaming, which may have evolved so babies, who mostly sleep, can detect threats and communicate them psychically to their parents. Undaunted by the weak evidence, Powell asserts that she is on the forefront of a Copernican revolution of the mind. (Jan.)"

My response to that is Powell is trying to find natural explanations for these phenomena. What is wrong with that?. I mean materialists say if psi phenomena is real it must be natural. Also peer reviewed scientific journals only deal with phenomena that is compatible with naturalism. Phenomena outside naturalism is not dealt with by peer reviewed journals, but are dealt with by parapsychological journals.

Very Interesting Recent Skeptiko Podcast

It features an expert in near death experiences who is an neuropsychiatrist. It is an hour long and well worth listening too.

Dr. Peter Fenwick, neuropsychiatrist, world renown expert on end of life phenomena, including near-death experiences and deathbed visions. His most recent book is, The Art of Dying.

You can watch this excellent one hour interview here.

http://skeptiko.com/index.php?id=75

My Response To A User Named Sofos

He says- I think that science presupposes a metaphysical position, namely, physicalism. It does so by virtue of starting with the assumption that nature is a self-organizing system (i.e. nature operates without any outside intervention) and proceeds by postulating mechanisms consistent with that assumption. At no point in this process is a logical proof for physicalism constructed. The circularity arises because the results of the process are taken as evidence in support of the truth of the underlying assumption. If the assumption regulating the process is false, then why is the process so spectacularly successful? If the assumption is false, then why do we never find contradictory evidence in any of our experimental results? If the assumption is false, why does it seem for all the world to be entirely true?

An inherent feature of the above process is that physicalism, as an hypothesis or working assumption, must always be held as tentatively supported by the available evidence. It is always possibile that the process will run into some phenomena for which it cannot account given its prior assumptions. That day has not come (though I know some people think it has).

My response to that

Yes 75 years, materialism is an ancient belief as much as dualism. But even older, may i ask you is their anything that is subjective besides consciousness? of course not. Were missing the boat their is overwhelming evidence that contradicts naturalism. What we have three options.

1] Take this evidence and put it into naturalism
2. Naturalism is falsified so dualism or some other philosophical view is correct.
3. Ignore contradicting evidence and pretend all is well with naturalism.

Number three is often picked by mainstream scientists. By the way up above i said materialism is an ancient belief, here is a part taken from an article by Chris Carter who points this out clearly.

To summarize, a roman poet named Lucretius from 99-55BC, continued an atomist tradition from where Epicurus left off. Epicurus defined the soul as a body of fine particles. He stressed that the soul has a complete dependence on the body. Lucretius described the mind as composed of extremely fine particles. His arguments for believing mind is dependent on the body, came from four arguments.

1]. That the mind matures and ages with the growth and decay of the body
2]. That wine and disease of the body can affect the mind
3]. The mind is disturbed when the body is stunned by a blow
4.] If the soul is immortal why doesn't it have any memories of its previous existence?.

Wwe No Way Out Results

Elimination chamber match- Triple h v.s Edge v.s The Big Show v.s The Undertaker v.s Vladmir Koslof v.s Jeff Hardy

Winner: Triple H and new champion

JBL v.s Shawn Michaels

Winner: Shawn Michaels

No holds barred match Shane Mcmahon v.s Randy Orton

Winner: Randy Orton

Jack Swagger ecw champion v.s Finlay

Winner: still ecw champion Jack Swagger

For the wwe world champion title

Kane v.s Edge v.s John Cena v.s Chris Jericho v.s Rey Mysterio v.s Mike Knox

Winner: Edge and the new wwe champion.

Darwinism Must Die So Evolution Can Live

Here is an interesting link to an article called "Darwinism must die so evolution can live". Of course the article has gotten many supporters of darwinism in utter anger.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/science/10essa.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&em

James Randi Youtube Video It's Not In The Name

James Randi lies when he says

"Two universities Duke and Standford gave up their many years of involvement with Parapsychology because they had no positive results to continue their involvement"

Here's James Randi's youtube video here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awYVKbP93p4

Leo- An open letter from Jahn and Dunne from Pear Lab say this

Despite rumors to the contrary, this move was not imposed upon us but was our own carefully considered decision, based on a constellation of relevant factors. We felt that we had accomplished what we originally set out to do 28 years ago, namely to determine whether anomalous consciousness-related phenomena could be studied under rigorously controlled laboratory conditions and, if so, whether they were real and what were their salient characteristics. The enormous databases produced by PEAR have provided clear evidence that human thought and emotion can produce small but measurable influences on physical reality and have established numerous insights into their major correlates. They have also established the basis for several conceptual models that attempt to accommodate the empirical results within a scientific framework.


PEAR founder Dr Robert Jahn:

For 28 years, we've done what we wanted to do, and there's no reason to stay and generate more of the same data. If people don't believe us after all the results we've produced, then they never will... It's time for a new era; for someone to figure out what the implications of our results are for human culture, for future study, and - if the findings are correct - what they say about our basic scientific attitude.


Also James Randi talks about how Standford University didn't gather any positive results either. WRONG.

Joseph Rhine moved DU's parapsychology lab off-campus, and continues to this day as the Rhine Research Centre. Rhine's research reported positive results. Stanford University's interest in parapsychology was disrupted when the Stanford Research Institute separated from the University and became SRI International. SRI International was the nursery for the Stargate remote viewing project, of which statistician Jessica Utts concluded: "Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well-established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance...there is little benefit to continuing experiments designed to offer proof, since there is little more to be offered to anyone who does not accept the current collection of data." That's a little hard to reconcile with Randi's statement of "no positive results"...

Of course this won't stop James Randi. If he was an open minded skeptic he would realize the error of his ways. He would admit he made false statements. But of course that will never happen.

More Common Arguments Materialists Use

"If their is an afterlife prove it and you will win a nobel prize"

Leo- Really?, the evidence for life after death has been around for a very long time accumulating more and more. Anything incompatiable with naturalism will not win a nobel prize.

For more arguments that materialists use. You can see this article written by Winston Wu called 30 skeptical arguments debunked.

http://www.victorzammit.com/skeptics/winston.html

Transit Bus Promoting Atheism with Poster

It says on the poster "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life". So what do i think of all of this. Well i think the atheist's are just as bad as the fundamentalist's believers in religions. The more this war continues between atheists and believers in religions the more silly it becomes. I for one believe their is what you will a cosmic consciousness that i would describe as god.

By the way the atheists supporting this campaign even has their own facebook group.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=43994941863&ref=mf

I am all for freedom of speech but in my opinion to say their isn't a god or their is a god on a bus is wrong. Why? because a topic like does god exist or not? really is something a lot of people don't think about very much at all. Of course their is no problem to make people rethink what they believe in but to throw it into people's faces is going a little too far. Don't you think?.

I'm On Youtube!!!

Check out my numerous youtube videos here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB9w1PifRUI

My username on there is bigguy200.

Rebuttal To Keith Augustine's Look At The Tests Done By Ian Stevenson

Here is what Keith says

The late Robert Thouless, former President of the Society for Psychical Research, developed a test of survival where a message is encrypted in such a way that it can only be decoded by key words known only to one who has died (Stevenson 114). Thouless set up three encrypted messages for himself, hoping to communicate the key words which would decode his messages to his colleagues after his death through a medium. Though the first cipher he proposed was cracked a few weeks after he published it, neither of the other two ciphers were broken during his lifetime, providing a rare opportunity for parapsychologists to produce truly compelling evidence for survival of bodily death. The key to one of the remaining ciphers (a replacement for the cracked key) was a simple two-word key; the key to the other was a roughly 100-word literary passage. The literary passage key, though long, could be obtained simply by relaying the title of the book, the location of the passage in that book, and a couple of words from the beginning of the passage (Oram 118).

Under the advice of Ian Stevenson, Thouless also transposed the first six letters of his two-word key into numbers using a published table in order to reset a combination lock to those numbers (Stevenson 114). Unlike Thouless' encrypted message tests, the combination lock test requires the entire key to be known to unlock it and gives no hints that one is coming close to hitting the key by making near-misses, thus ruling out the possibility that one could narrow down his options for a key by repeated attempts to unlock the combination lock (115). Stevenson has reported that the odds of hitting the right key for a combination lock test purely by chance are 1 in 125,000 (115).

When Thouless died in 1984 roughly one hundred candidates for a key were submitted to the Society for Psychical Research, some of which came from mediums, but none of them were able to decipher any of Thouless' encrypted messages (Stevenson 114). However, in 1995 James Gillogly successfully decoded one of Thouless' messages using the two key words "black beauty" generated by a computer program he wrote[8] which yielded the message: "This is a cipher which will not be read unless I give the key words". The discovery of Thouless' two-word key was further confirmed when Stevenson used his table to transpose "BLACKB" back into numbers which unlocked Thouless' combination lock (115).

The flaw in Thouless' test which allowed it to be deciphered was his use of common words for a key that could easily be cross-checked by a computer program designed to form two-word combinations from all the entries in a typical dictionary (Oram 116). Incredibly, the parapsychologist Arthur Oram has come to the credulous conclusion that the repeated failures of mediums to come up with a key that will successfully unlock Thouless' encoded messages despite numerous tests is due to the inability of the deceased Thouless to remember the simple keys 'on the other side'! (Although the deceased Thouless could apparently remember who Oram was and other similar facts) (Oram 117). A simpler explanation for these failures is that Thouless could not communicate the key words because he had not in fact 'survived' his death and thus was not in contact with Oram through the mediums. To his credit, Oram does concede this point:

It seems fair to assume that if [the mediums] were in effective touch with Thouless they would either be given the key or an explanation that [and why] he cannot remember or cannot communicate the key ... [A] considerable number of people have felt that they have been in touch with Thouless and some of them have felt that rather deeply, including at least one whose submitted key was of a wrong form [italics mine] (117).

Regarding Thouless' simplest test Oram reports: "There are no instances in our records of anyone getting the two-word key even partially correct" (118). Other similar direct tests of the survival hypothesis have also yielded negative results: attempts to obtain postmortem Thouless' literary passage key to his remaining message, J. Gaither Pratt's mnemonic key to his combination lock, and T. E. Wood's key to his enciphered message have all been unsuccessful (Stevenson, et al, 329-334). Oram succinctly characterizes the state of the experimental evidence for survival from mediumship: "We can only be sure of two facts relating this research; one is that work has been done to try to get the keys through mediums and the other fact is that we have not obtained the keys" (Oram 118).


My response: Apparently, deceased Thouless could remember Oram and other similar facts. Now Keith says even though that is so the simpler explanation would be because he didn't remember the simple keys would be that he didn't survive his death. But their are certainly more explanations then that. One explanation would be that he was not communicating with thouless at all but some other entity and was being deceived by this entity. To me the explanation that another entity who pretended to know Oram is more plausible than the explanation that Thousless didn't survive death. Why? because apparently this entity knew Oram, did Oram ask this entity if he could know anything that thousless would know when he was alive?. According to Oram this entity just knew him. So what we have hear is no confirmation that this was indeed Thousless or some other entity pretending to be Thouless.

Of course Keith doesn't mention in his essay the case against immortality, strong evidence that apparently point to survival. Such as the cross correspondences, another is the r-101 case, the book tests, newspaper tests, along with Ian Stevenson's 21 best cases for reincarnation etc.

The r 101 case for example can be read here

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/R-101.htm

Atheists

I have seen a lot of atheists with their hatred towards religion. Which i don't have a problem with but then they also have a hatred for the paranormal, not all of some do. Know it's probably true that some paranormal phenomena probably is not real such as orbs, the loctus monster, alien implants. What i am interested is, is where their is a massive amount of evidence. This appears to be in survival research and psi. Now a view that i would see as open minded would be a view called agnosticism. This view is the not sure attitude towards questions that surely are the big questions to life.

An atheist on the otherhand is confined to a worldview such as a believer is. So what would i call myself after looking at the evidence for life after death. Well i would say that i am convinced however that doesn't mean that i can't use critical thinking.