Alan Amsberg
New
I'm not sure where to start this thread but thought perhaps here was as good as place as any.
My goal is to send Alex a suggestion about his book and perhaps start a thread where others can do the same.
My suggestion:
To my mind, one terribly important piece of data is the missing data which is not talked about enough. By missing data, I mean things that we should "reasonably" have but which we do not have. Two examples spring to mind:
-I accept psychics and mediums. There is something real there. It has been documented for at least 150 years and has probably been around as long as people have existed. Yet, in all that time there are no mediums who can predict the horse races or the stock market. There are also no mediums who can reliably dial up the dead and reel off "sustained specifics" (i.e. lots of details on tap to convince a skeptic). Why is this?
-Similarly, we have had lots of UFOs but we have no nuts and bolts that have fallen off them and we don't even have any good photos. How is this possible?
This is talked about a bit by Kennedy: http://jeksite.org
One obvious reason is that "good" data is dismissed by the skeptical view of society. That's fair but there is more to it than that. I believe psi is actively evasive and capricious.
What does this mean? In my opinion it means that we are not dealing with a difficult to study natural phenomena but rather we are interacting with one or more intelligences who are playing a kind of game with us. Who then is this? Taking the medium/psychics example, I think it makes sense that there are multiple agents ("spirits") involved that that there is also a "regulator" who stops spirits from stepping over the line. This regulator would appear to be always present (it is never not there so there is never a crossing of the line) and to never make errors (again, the line is not crossed) and to have absolute authority (all spirits obey it).
Who can that be? "God" is the only answer in my opinion. This then makes these spirits "agents" of God.
My avatar is a game piece for this reason. I see all this as a kind of game. Anyway, my 2 cents.
My goal is to send Alex a suggestion about his book and perhaps start a thread where others can do the same.
My suggestion:
To my mind, one terribly important piece of data is the missing data which is not talked about enough. By missing data, I mean things that we should "reasonably" have but which we do not have. Two examples spring to mind:
-I accept psychics and mediums. There is something real there. It has been documented for at least 150 years and has probably been around as long as people have existed. Yet, in all that time there are no mediums who can predict the horse races or the stock market. There are also no mediums who can reliably dial up the dead and reel off "sustained specifics" (i.e. lots of details on tap to convince a skeptic). Why is this?
-Similarly, we have had lots of UFOs but we have no nuts and bolts that have fallen off them and we don't even have any good photos. How is this possible?
This is talked about a bit by Kennedy: http://jeksite.org
One obvious reason is that "good" data is dismissed by the skeptical view of society. That's fair but there is more to it than that. I believe psi is actively evasive and capricious.
What does this mean? In my opinion it means that we are not dealing with a difficult to study natural phenomena but rather we are interacting with one or more intelligences who are playing a kind of game with us. Who then is this? Taking the medium/psychics example, I think it makes sense that there are multiple agents ("spirits") involved that that there is also a "regulator" who stops spirits from stepping over the line. This regulator would appear to be always present (it is never not there so there is never a crossing of the line) and to never make errors (again, the line is not crossed) and to have absolute authority (all spirits obey it).
Who can that be? "God" is the only answer in my opinion. This then makes these spirits "agents" of God.
My avatar is a game piece for this reason. I see all this as a kind of game. Anyway, my 2 cents.