rayoflight wrote:It really just sounds like the explanations that were given fifty years ago by the same non-believers who have never meditated nor been spiritual.
I think you could even say 100 or more years ago, Ray. It is the same skeptic, materialist argument that was raised up against the spiritualist church movement around the turn of last century ... it is hell of boring and hardly progressed one inch. I have not read the book. I suspect it is just the usual "Skeptic Debunking".
Wiseman: One is that they have paranormal experiences. In fact, that's the thrust of the book, to try to understand why people have those weird experiences given that spirits don't exist.
He states the position he wishes to expound clearly "given that spirits don't exist" and then goes on find the simplest disproofs that are just as easy to rebuff - if anyone cared - rather than to take a more rational or genuinely scientific approach. How can anyone possibly prove or disprove such a proposal?
I find "Debunkers" far more boring and uninteresting that the worst psychic charlatans because at the least the "psychic charlatans" hold people's hands, make a few old ladies happy, and put on a good show. The skeptics come across as a kind of airless "old boys clubs" for entirely unimportant individuals who happen to have a minor science degree of some kind or another. As hard as they try to put it down, weird and wonderful psychic stuff really does just keeps popping up to disprove them.
It would be interesting to read a genuine study of how many people are satisfied by the psychic services they have received (even if they are entirely spurious) versus how many feel genuinely hurt or abused. Yes, without any doubt there are charlatans, but, unfortunately for the debunkers, there are too many inexplicable anomalies to be ignored.