You mean nothing that you have seen yourself, right?
I mean nothing I've seen
and nothing scientifically validated.
That's a pretty rude assumption to make, on your part.
How are you to know someone else's level of understanding of scientific principles?
Not an assumption at all. In this case I was basing my opinion of the level of scientific understanding by Draka's post, the one post I was responding to:
I also find it almost really amusing to see all the people who say "ideometer effect" and other such stupidity as well.
...and ascribing a supernatural explanation simply ignores Occam's razor and has no logical reason to be favored. Again, my post was referring to Draka's post, a post which was a textbook example of someone who is not applying scientific principles such as parsimony.
How are you to know whether or not someone actually weighed out the doubt against experimental results?
I read the post. That's how.
Do you have data suggesting otherwise, such as some experimental protocol that was followed?
Why is it that an explanation via spirits and magick is a "lazy" one to you? Couldn't the same be said if you just read the scientific explanation from a Google search, rather than testing it yourself?
It's lazy because it violates Occam's razor, it's lazy because well understood scientific explanations are more than adequate to explain alleged ouja board events- as far back as 1852 the ideomotor effect was proposed and applicable here. There is zero evidence for a spirit world, or psychic phenomenon, or the supernatural. These explanations are lazy because they're proposed with no means of falsification and nothing to back them up. It's like arriving at the conclusion that rainbows are created by pixies and leprechauns without actually investigating the optical physics involved even though the materialistic scientific explanations not only adequately explain rainbows, there is also absolutely no evidence any pixies or leprechauns are involved- they're a superfluous explanation.
And my position isn't based on a Google search. William Benjamin Carter provided the ideomotor explanation a century and a half ago, and no other explanation has been substantiated more than his. So no Googling was necessary; I've read plenty on paranormal claims in general.
As I said, I was a skeptic myself, especially having been brought up in a Catholic family, being taught that Ouija boards were fake AND "evil." I knew about the ideomotor effect. I knew it was possible that the other person was messing with it. I took all those into account. The first several times, I couldn't believe any of it. But trying again and again, the doubt began to fade.
I'd give anything to see these claims validated. Try again with some test conditions applied and record the results. If a university were to set up some ouija board tests and you were able to show something anomalous was occurring, the scientific world would be enthralled.
If you were willing to learn anything about the spirit world...
"That's a pretty rude assumption to make, on your part.
How are you to know someone's level of understanding of [claims of the spiritual world]?"
...you'd know that spirits don't tend to do the same things every time, nor do they like being told what to do.
I'm confused- you just said:
"I knew about the ideomotor effect. I knew it was possible that the other person was messing with it. I took all those into account. The first several times, I couldn't believe any of it. But trying again and again, the doubt began to fade."
Which is it? Do they appear again and do spooky stuff like it's some bad 80s horror flick or do they
not repeat things? Your explanation is the classic psychic caveat of "it always works when I'm with believers but skeptics inhibit my power" or "ghosts don't like to make their presence known to doubters" or "fairies hide whenever unbelievers are in the glen" type of justification. Most ouija board claims
are mundane and repetitious- it's usually either/and gathering allegedly secret information those present shouldn't have access to as well as the planchette mysteriously moving on its own. Since these two things are so common it shouldn't be difficult to replicate it under controlled situations. The problem is that when controls have been applied nothing happens.
Have you tried any of this yourself?
Have I tried a ouija board? Of course. Have I been involved with experiments with those who claim to gather info' via ouija boards? Yes, I've done it in the past as a psychology class experiment and a few other experiments. There's nothing to suggest anything supernatural is involved.
