See “cold reading“.

The other day my wife and I caught spiritualist, ghost whisperer, John Edwards on CNN’s Glen Beck. It’s like watching a train wreck…in which you see someone intentionally causing the wreck.

See the transcript:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0610/27/gb.01.html

People like John Edwards really piss me off. Sorry, but he’s a sorry piece of human trash who feeds off the grief of others and makes money on deceiving people. He’s a con man, pure and simple.

For those who don’t know, he claims to be able to talk to spirits. He claims he does this as a service (a service he charges a premium for) in order to give people closure dealing with a loss. Bulls**t! He uses cold reading (and in his studio shows some amount of “warm reading“), techniques used by carnivale mentalists and magicians for literally centuries, to use guesses and audience response to narrow a shotgun cluster of grasping at straws into an illusion of speaking to someone dead. And people believe it!

Take a look at that transcript and see how he does it. He starts with asking about a name with a common letter, like J, maybe “Jo” and of course the caller might know someone named Joe or John or Jane (that’s close enough for John Edwards.) And will make comments about “something to do with his chest, maybe head” (of course most deaths involve heart ailments or lung cancer or strokes or head injury….) and finally after a lot of misses and a couple of hits, suddenly the spirit (who may be narrowed down to a close relative…or an in-law, or an ancestor depending on what way the hits on the guesses direct the caller or studio guest on his shows) has a message for the person. (Funny that the spirit will have some complex message about the afterlife or whatever, but it can’t just say “I’m Joe Smith, Frank’s cousin, and I died from a dog bite.” John has to spend five minutes making a huge amount of fast-talking guesses to get down to someone the person might know.)

Pseudoscientists and woo-woo practitioners like Edwards there, love trying to defend their “abilities” by quoting disgustingly bad “scientific” examinations of what they do. In this case, Edwards defends his not taking the $1-million James Randi Challenge which will give $1-million to anyone who can prove paranormal abilities, a challenge that’s gone unclaimed for years, by first making an ad hominem attack against Randi by saying he doesn’t take anyone seriously who has an adjective for his first name (a reference to Randi’s stage name “The Amazing Randi” which he only used when he performed magic on stage.) Then he offers as proof of his abilities the findings of the Afterlife Experiments conducted by Gary Schwartz.

So, Edwards eschews Randi’s challenge and favors Schwartz, why? Because Randi demands strict scientific conditions and objective validation while Schwartz is extremely friendly toward paranormal claims and has less than scientific or objective conditions so that he can sell New Age books. Edwards’ mention of being analyzed by Schwartz (and yet still claiming he shouldn’t have to prove himself to anyone, go fig,) is like a murderer going to a rapist to defend his crime.

What is sad is how many people believe Edwards and others of his ilk. They take advantage of people because of their desire to believe. Debunkers like James Randi and Michael Shermer and Joe Nickell have performed (for no fee or paid for by a local college or skepticism group) spirit talks exactly like Edwards performs for an audience, and then at the end will inform the audience that it was all fake and teach how cold reading works and why. And there will still be people who will believe, some people will go up to them and tell them that they (Randi, or Shermer, or Nickell) actually do have the ability to speak with the dead but won’t admit it or realize it.

Gawd it’s so sad what people will believe because they WANT to believe. Before you laugh or scoff at those people who believe in Edwards, think about some of your own beliefs that are based on faith alone or very questionable evidence. WHY do you believe what you do?

Another link on “cold reading”.

A recent post on Debunking Christianity:

Paul Copan on Why God Would Send People to Hell

John Loftus continues his afterlife theme started with the blog I discussed on: Heaven and Free Will — Serious Questions.

Fascinating questions. Excellent reasoning. Here’s a clip I found compelling:

However, I find this almost absurd that the Christian God blames us for living our lives as if he didn’t exist because there simply isn’t enough reason to believe in him over any of the other gods, or no god at all, especially when we usually adopt the religion we were born into! I furthermore find it absurd that God is so upset that we don’t acknowledge him in this life that he will punish us forever for it, as if it hurts him that much for us not to acknowledge him. If he is omniscient, then he knows why we do what we do and why we believe what we do, and I fail to see how such a God cannot empathize with how we live our lives. We all do the best we can do given our environment and brain matter.

This is great! I love this comic: XKCD. It’s often so smart and clever! This one really tickled me. =)

(but then, I’m something of a crypto fan.) Which reminds me, in order to get the joke, you need to understand the method cryptographers use to teach and explain encryption processes and the like:

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

Knowing that, the comic is funny. =) But the punchline comes with the cartoonist’s mouse-over ALT tag:

“Yet one more reason I’m barred from speaking at crypto conferences.”

Dunno if you’ve noticed, but at the top of the blog, I’ve written a lil script that (semi-)randomly prints quotes up there. (There are a few quotes I’ve weighted to appear more often than others.)

Here’s a new one I’ve added that I got from The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe:

“If I was a religious person, I would consider creationism nothing less than blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer who has created that whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of misleading mankind?”

-Arthur C. Clarke

Some  believers in a literal Creation story would say the great and mighty Satan planted the mountains and mountains of fossil records to deceive us. But then, wouldn’t that imply that a deception on such a magnitude, providing evidently empirical evidence so expertly contrived as to be considered undeniable reality (to any person using the brain God gave them,) so many countless times more provable and accurate than the ONLY proof of Creation (a book written by humans,) …would imply that The Devil is more powerful than God. Or at least that God is implicit in the deception for allowing his creation to be so drastically and completely manipulated by Satan to convince humanity of a lie.

Sad and ridiculous.

I so often come upon these great questions freethinkers come up with that I SO wish I could get an apologist’s feedback on, but I never seem to have that opportunity.

I just came upon this post from Debunking Christianity:

Paul Copan and Free Will in Heaven

It’s short, and very poignant and poses FANTASTIC reasoned questions so I’m going to copy it below without permission:

One comment below asked the question about free will in heaven and whether or not the saved will have it. It’s a good question, and Christian philosopher Paul Copan has dealt with it. Here’s my response:

Paul Copan offers three possibilities with regard to free will in heaven [in “That’s Just Your Interpretation”, (Baker Books, 2001), pp. 106-108].

1) That through our truly libertarian free actions on earth we gain access to heaven where we no longer have this freedom to sin. But if heaven is a place where we longer have the freedom to sin, then God could’ve bypassed our earthly existence altogether. If there is no free will in heaven then why not just create us all in heaven? What does it matter what we did or didn’t do on earth? Furthermore, why reward someone by taking away their free will? If free will can be taken away without a loss of goodness, then why create us with it in the first place?

2) That God foreknows that no one who enters heaven will freely choose to sin. But if God has that kind of foreknowledge then again, what is the purpose of creating this particular world? It appears to be a cruel game of hide and seek, where God hides and we must find him, and only the few who find him will be rewarded while the many who don’t are punished when they die. If God has foreknowledge then why didn’t he just foreknow who would find him even before creating them, and simply place them in heaven in the first place?…then there’d be no one punished for not finding him. If heaven is a reward, then “it seems absurd for a wholly good God to force humanity into a position of ignorance regarding correct moral choice and then hold people accountable for such a choice.” [Suffering Belief, Weisberger, p. 136]. Furthermore, if this world is to teach us the virtues of courage, patience, and generosity in the face of suffering, then most all of those virtues are irrelevant in a heavenly bliss where there is no suffering or pain.

3) That those who enter heaven will be in “the unmediated presence of God” such that “not sinning will be a ‘no brainer’—even though it remains a possibility.” But if this is the case, then why do Christians think the Devil rebelled against God, since he was supposedly in the direct unmediated presence of God? How was it possible for the traditional Devil to have such an experience of absolute goodness and absolute power and still rebel against God?

I mentioned on my last post: Richard Dawkins on Penn Radio that there’s a TV movie hosted by Richard Dawkins you can find on YouTube:

Part One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ8_bIji7gQ

Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4xIi-TwY-Y

I encourage everyone to watch it! I wish it could be seen in every middle school in America. It is amazing!

Richard Dawkins was on yesterday’s Penn Radio, and the show can be downloaded here:
http://penn.freefm.com/episode_download.php?contentType=36&contentId=155831
He’s published a novel: The God Delusion, which helps to explain the ways and whys people believe in God, and how dangerous and morally devoid it is.

Below is a snippit and rough paraphrase of some of what was said on the show that I liked:

When asked the question about where morals come from, he expressed that they certainly don’t come from the Bible, “and you can prove that by simply reading the Bible. You will be horrified by the morality it presents.” People can find verses that advocate doing good, but you have to pick and chose, and by what system does one do that?
“If the only reason you do ‘good’ is because you’re being watched by the great survailence camera in the sky, you’re going to hell if you do ‘bad’ and you want to go to heaven, that’s a pretty ignoble reason for doing good.
People who do good for the sake of doing good are the ones we should really respect.”

There’s nothing special about any of the Creation Myths. Any five-year-old can invent the stories of Adam and Eve and a God poing “POOF! That now exists” or the world being on the back of a turtle.
True imagination is required to understand the life cycle of a star from nova to black hole. The great expansion creation of the universe is much more wonderful and amazing than any Creation story…and has the added benefit for being proveable.
It’s sad that the rational reasoned thinker, the scientist, is described as being cold and passionless while the “nutjobs” get the credit of having passion and wonder. Great wonder and amazement is found in the real! The existing universe! The rainbow is no less wonderful because it’s a result of the refrection of light energy through water…that makes it more amazing and fascinating than some deity going “POOF! Rainbows exist.”

Unfortunately when religion goes, what takes its place may be even worse, like New Age claptrap. (In response to being asked what he thinks about such things like the movie “What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?“)

It’s mentioned that he was in a made for TV film called “The Root of All Evil?” which can be seen on YouTube:
Part One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ8_bIji7gQ

Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4xIi-TwY-Y

He brought up the absurdity of the idea that once God’s off the table, then rampant chaos would ensue. people would go around killing and raping each other. He had the misfortune of being on a talk show where a caller said flat out that if it weren’t for God’s rules, he’d kill and starting with his neighbor. Now, that’s (hopefully) not representative of all religious people, but it’s certainly a serious indictment of the level of morality people have who believe without God morality ceases to exist or be important.
“That’s not the kind of person I’d like to know.”

There was a study done once where students were put in situations where they were given the opportunity to cheat on an exam, not knowing they were being watched. Students of various religiosity and atheists. The only group that did not cheat by and large was the atheists. (Jokingly, it was suggested that the atheists were capable of passing the exam without needing to cheat.)

More can be found on RichardDawkins.net.

Phil Plait of BadAstronomy blogged today about Rush Limbaugh’s 1st Amendment protected* diatribes accusing Michael J. Fox of shilling for political candidates in favor of stem cell research as therapeutic cloning. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Limbaugh is nothing more than an administration’s lackey with no sense of reason or integrity.

I’ve blogged, at length, regarding stem cell research and the value of human life on:

Personhood and Value of Human Life

and said about all I can say. Now here in Missouri we’re about to vote on an amendment that would not prevent any therapeutic cloning and stem cell research that is allowed by the federal government. Amendment 2. My wife recently received a mass e-mail from a friend cautioning against voting for the amendment. My wife, who I adore and greatly respect her wonderful balance of faith, reason, and intelligence, wrote a reply that I’m reprinting (with permission) below. It says what should be said beautifully.

—quote—

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

http://www.sos.mo.gov/elections/2006petitions/ppStemCell.asp

The “no cloning” battle cry has been raised, and I’m certain that nowhere in Missouri is it louder than in the southwest corner. Betwixt and between since the Civil War, Show-Me citizens in this corner of the state square off, draw lines in the dirt, and stubbornly dare our neighbors and brothers to cross them. And Amendment 2 seems to be no different. Proponents say it’s our chance for a cure for devastating and deadly diseases. Opponents say it’s immoral cloning of human embryos and pure trickery if you think otherwise.

Here’s what I know so far. The Amendment says that it will ban implantation of SCNT blastocysts into a womb, thus banning “cloning.” But since opponents say the process of creating Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer blastocysts (or embryos) is cloning, then the deed is already done, and that is a human life being destroyed (which would be considered wrong, no matter how many cures may come of it). So there are two points of view to the same issue.

Proponents of the Amendment would say that the blastocyst is not a human, but a collection of cells created in a Petri dish. With no chance of development, let alone survival, without being implanted in a womb, is it truly more than a collection of living cells? Does it deserve more reverence than, say, spermatozoa?

One of the other troubling arguments surrounding this Amendment is that of funding. I have heard opponents say that the Amendment writes biotech companies a “blank check” for their work. I sincerely hope those who believe this will read the Amendment itself, rather than listening to propaganda. I’ve included a link on this page. The Amendment simply guarantees that if the federal government or a private group provides funding for stem cell research, a local politician can’t divert the funds or block the research based on his own political beliefs. In other words, if I leave $2mil in my will to a biotech company in Springfield for stem cell research, the City Council can’t decide they don’t like my decision and divert the funds to Cox South or St. Johns, or worse yet, someplace like City Utilities. The Amendment does not give, guarantee or arrange any funding for stem cell research. It just says no one can take it away.

I find myself in favor of stem cell research. I think, like most Missourians, appropriate precautions must be in place. There are difficult decisions to make. And I think Amendment 2 goes a long way toward ensuring safety and moral behavior, though perhaps not far enough. But the potential benefits for saving lives and curing diseases is a worthy goal. If it is done using resources that are otherwise misused and discarded, I fail to see the abuse. Living cells that would be thrown away or left to die are instead used to save lives and stop suffering on earth. I like to believe even the angels would praise those efforts.

However, I think one thing most Missourians aren’t talking about is the fact that this Amendment will basically define for the entire state when we think human life begins. Are we human and alive (and sacred) when we are a collection of less than 100 cells in a Petri dish? Or does that happen later, when we are “knit together in our mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13)? Either way, is Missouri ready to deal with the consequences of having made that definition? I think that’s the question we need to ask ourselves when we go to vote on Amendment 2.

—end quote—

* The 1st Amendment in the Bill of Rights protects ALL speech, even and most especially speech we don’t like and don’t agree with. And thank goodness for that!
(No, thank the rational and freethinking Founding Fathers!)

A fantastic weekend for religious topics in other blogs!

Let’s start with Bad Astronomy and his latest regarding the current infallible Pope’s overturning of the previous infallible Pope’s attitude toward science.
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/10/22/pope-of-wax/

The Pope recently used the myth of Icarus to characterize scientific arrogance, equating Icarus’ melting wings as a lesson to not reach too high. Phil Plait prefers to see the arrogance of Icarus as being an error of blind faith and lack of testing and research and acknowledging reality.

Things start getting really interesting over at Debunking Christianity:

Four Points Concerning The Problem of Evil, Christian Apologetics & The Bible

Discusses the problem of evil and Christian Apologetics. Here’s a couple of snippits:

Note that if God is perfectly good and has freewill then a freewilled being can exist in a state of perfect goodness. But if God has freewill then wouldn’t it be possible for God Himself to commit evil, or become evil? (Or do Christian apologists employ a different definition of “freewill” when it comes to “God?”) Conversely, if God does not have freewill then doesn’t that imply that freewill is not necessarily of ultimate value and that humanity has something even God lacks?

And this little tidbit:

I wonder whether Christian apologists have ever come to grips in a truly convincing fashion with the ways their God is portrayed (either in reality or metaphorically) in the book that they claim “reveals” the truth of their beliefs to humanity? For instance does the DEVIL threaten to cast people body and soul into hell? No. That type of imposed suffering is God’s design. Does the Devil get portrayed as wiping out every breathing thing on the planet except some ark survivors? Nope. That’s God again. Does the Devil command the destruction of everything that breathes in certain cities? Does the Devil send plagues, famines, poisonous snakes, and opposing armies to teach people lessons like the God of the Bible is portrayed as doing? Does the Devil strike husband and wife both dead if they lie about giving all of their earthly possessions to the church?

No wonder the Gnostics believed the Biblegod is actually the cosmic villain! I mean, think about it. Satan in the Hebrew tradition was not a fallen angel, but simply a servant of God’s. His name in Hebrew mean “adversary” which simply means tester. It was Satan’s job to simply test people. Throughout the Bible it’s God who slaughters, commands to slaughter, murder, commit genocide, do a HUGE list of terrible atrocities that are worse than anything found in Greek or Roman pantheon. The article linked above has a huge list of God performed atrocities from the Bible. Youch!

Then…

The Problem of Evil, Alvin Plantinga & Victor Reppert

Another interesting, but more philosophical approach to evil. A little dryer, but still very interesting regarding the messed up and blind approach apologetics have regarding “evil” and reality.

A quote:

I have even GREATER difficulty imagining that humanity (and every other organism on earth) have been placed in such a universally deadly situation in order that human beings might “hear the Word of the Christian God” and either choose to believe a book written by true believers, or die an everlasting death.

And then the article:

I Changed My Mind

Which is basically just one person’s emotional response to a chapter of the book “Why I Rejected Christianity” dealing with the argument from evil debate in Christian apologetics.

So a new embassy is in the process of being built in Iraq–the largest embassy, ever!

The last two military appropriations bills had wording in them that would declare that we wouldn’t have a permanent presence in Iraq. Guess what. The Republicans had the wording removed both times.

Is there any doubt whatsoever that we are imperialistically occupying Iraq?

Meanwhile, while the $1billion mini-city is being built, the Iraqi infrastructure we destroyed is still a shambles, the middle-class that existed under Hussein is gone, moderate secular society is gone and Muslim fundamentalism is growing, women used to be treated fairly and now they can’t go out without wearing burkas, over 600,000 more people have been killed in the last 4 years than would have under Hussein (not counting American lives,) we’ve allowed a civil war that’s fueled by sectarian religion to flourish which is creating more executions and torture than was ever done under Hussein, our actions there have deepened American resentment from even moderate Muslims and pretty much the whole world, and has destabilized much of the surrounding region and put us in a terrible position to have to deal with REAL threats like Iran or N. Korea, we’re having to borrow billions of dollars from other nations, including Mexico for god’s sake, to fund this Iraq war, (China basically owns half our government at the moment,) and the Talibahn (the real supporters of terrorism) is regaining control of Afghanistan (that country that was the real support for alQueda, remember,) and the number one most wanted man in the world is still at large.

Wow, what a success! Yes, let us “stay the course” until we have a victory in our pockets! Because it’s all working so well! (If you’re Cheney’s Haliburton that is. It’s all about the oil and the corporate contracts, and if you don’t realize that, there’s no hope for your delusional fantasy world.)

Is This The Morality, The Values Issues of Which You Spoke Of?

Bush signs torture bill; Americans lose essential freedom

From BadAstronomy blog:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2006/10/18/katie-couric-is-a-bonehead/

Phil discusses how it’s sad someone whose career depends on the fruits of space research and development would question whether a paltry sum of money should be spent on continued space research.

Read the article, please; it’s fascinating!

Here’s a snip:

Also, I have heard the this argument that NASA money should be diverted to social programs a million times, and it’s wrong every time. First, 17 billion bucks sounds like a lot, but on the scale of the US government it really isn’t. NASA is the smallest of the government agencies, and the budget is not very big compared to others. Did you know we are spending 11 million dollars per hour on Iraq? That’s nearly 2 billion dollars every week! Now does NASA’s budget sound so big?

(Bold font mine, italics his.)

SFGate: World Views : Bush signs torture bill; Americans lose essential freedom

[A]s in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China or Pol Pot’s Cambodia, anyone labeled an “enemy combatant” – again, by whom; by Bush? – can be whisked away and never heard from again. That kind of authority, in the hands of corrupt or untruthful politicians, may or may not be an effective tool in some kind of “war on terror,” but it certainly can be a useful tool when it comes to silencing their opponents.

Is this really what we want to be known for in the world? After 40 years of no one having any problem with the Geneva Conventions, nobody claiming “they’re too vague” until this administration, now we’re the western nation that allows politically defined criminals with no rights? And torture is fine? Is that the kind of American value we really want to be known for?

Meanwhile, come to find out, Bush didn’t even know there were such a thing as Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam two months before the invasion. That’s like trying to invade Northern Ireland without knowing there’s such a thing as Catholic and Protestant, except worse. There’s no wonder the administration had no concept of a civil war occurring after we threw the established government into upheaval and destroyed their infrastructure and starting raping the country for billions of dollars of war profiteering for Haliburton and their ilk. How can you invade a country without knowing the very volatile and even recent political/religious history of the country?

Even this year, leadership of the intelligence community have been asked by journalists if they know the difference between Sunni and Shiite, and many important figures have admitted to not knowing, including the CIA admin in charge of recruiting Muslem operatives.

bush is a bloody idiot, his administration is a cabal of criminals and crooks and filled with an unbelievable amount of hubris, and they will destroy this nation if we let them.