What do atheists have to say about incidents like these?

[Audie]

Lol, I understand your view, I do. But we're speaking about people, i.e., Christians, who already say they accept Christ. (I'm one.)
If they question Jesus expelling demons, which many times was mentioned at the same time while he was healing people, then why not question that, too? Then why call themselves, Christian?

Of course, I believe many deny Christ (and, by extension, God) by their willful actions. Titus 1:16

If you understood what i said (lol, and all)
why did you then proceed to show you did
not? You put you lol in the wrong place.

 

[Audie]

Here's the way it worked:
People contacted the Randi Institute claiming they could demonstrate paranormal phenomena.
Randi set up controlled experiments.
People failed to produce the results they claimed to be able to produce.

There is a multitude of evidence available...One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge - Wikipedia
There are other skeptics groups that have had the same results.


OK. Then it should be easy for you to provide evidence of his distortions and dishonesty.






I look to the positive results claimed by parapsychologists and findings by serious investigators.

[/QUOTE]

What motivation would there be for distortions anf
dishonesty except by those with the paranormal
claims?

For the invedtigator -
A- you dont need them, the show will flop on its own
B- stupid to deliberately miss out on being part of
this astounding event

 

[Audie]

Only if you use science loosely...very loosely.

Like a grade school teacher who chirps
"You are all little scientists".

 

[gnostic]

You can make claims about anything you want, or about anyone you want. These claims are all irrelevant, without evidence that can stand on its own. Without evidence that can be falsified or can validate conclusively, claims will always be just that. In early Egyptian history, do you know what people did to the person that exposed that they were being conned? They stoned him to death. Maybe people are better off staying conned, then to expose them to the truth of them being conned.



Randi is a magician of over 50 years experience, so I doubt if he could be so easily fooled by magic or professional cons. However, his foundation is not the only foundation searching for proof of the supernatural or the paranormal. There are other organizations throughout the world. Why haven't any of these professional cons, or magicians, already collected their bounty in over 50 years? What would be the motivation behind hiding a new discovery, and possibly missing out on a Nobel prize? Your view of the motives of professional researchers and scientists is not only skewed, but self-serving. Your logic seems to be, if the results don't fit your belief, just discredit the people deciding the results. This is textbook cognitive bias.

And it doesn’t help George-ananda’s when he accuse anyone to be “adherents” to materialism and scientism, simply because he doesn’t like empirical evidences, testable evidences or scientific method.

His preferred method of investigation is anecdote, and George think anecdotal evidence is superior to verifiable evidence.

It is a frequent tactics used by creationists, fundamental theists and anti-science philosophers. So, it only weakened any argument made by George-ananda.

 

[Audie]

And it doesn’t help George-ananda’s when he accuse anyone to be “adherents” to materialism and scientism, simply because he doesn’t like empirical evidences, testable evidences or scientific method.

His preferred method of investigation is anecdote, and George think anecdotal evidence is superior to verifiable evidence.

It is a frequent tactics used by creationists, fundamental theists and anti-science philosophers. So, it only weakened any argument made by George-ananda.

Oh now, it is not "simply" because.
You can think of other reasons.

Lets see you explain the utility of
claiming that someone"adhetes to"
( the grim vice of) "scientism."

Or calling someone a materialist.

 

[ecco]

Ghosts, Veridical Near Death Experiences, telepathy, remote viewing, spirit communication, telekinesis, miracles, etc. to be quality phenomena that I believe to be real.

I believe telepathy, remote viewing, telekinesis, etc. to be verified by competent parapsychology professionals.

I asked for verified examples and the above is your response.

Can you describe your list of requirements for an example to be considered 'verified' by your terms? You can make the requirements impossible, but then so what?

Why are you making this so difficult? By verified I mean resultant from a double test conducted by an independent agency/entity. A mother saying her kid walked up walls is not verified. A Uri Geller saying he can bend spoons is not verified since you can go on youtube and learn to do it. A Sylvia Brown saying she can tell your future or talk to you dead aunt is not verified.

Why don't you just post a couple of specific things that you consider "verified" and I'll let you know.

 

[Rational Agnostic]

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but as for me, I dismiss them as hogwash.

 

[ecco]

You should read it one more time, but this time — open your eyes.

Intake Officer's Report

Page 2 of the intake report clearly says:

“Medical staff reported that while the children were at their primary doctor’s office the medical staff reported that they observed [child’s name] be lifted and thrown into the wall with nobody touching him...”

Read carefully. "Medical staff reported that while the children were at their primary doctor’s office the medical staff reported"... Clearly there are two different groups of Medical Staff.

There is one medical staff - let's call them "group A". Then there is the primary doctor’s medical staff in the primary doctor’s office - let's call them "Group B".

"Group A reported that while the children were at their primary doctor’s office Group B reported..."

That's call hearsay. There is not report/statement directly from the primary doctor’s medical staff.

*AND page 4 of the intake report says:

“[child’s name] had the weird grin on his face and began to walk backwards while the grandmother was holding his hand and he walked up the wall backwards while holding the grandmother’s hand and he never let go. He flipped over and landed on his feet in front of the grandmother and sat down in the chair.”

There is noting in the report that indicates who allegedly saw this. There is nothing in the report that indicates who said this.

No member from FCM Washington or the psychologist's office is quoted as saying this.

The report is poorly written in that it omits who saw what and who said what.

 

[Truly Enlightened]

And it doesn’t help George-ananda’s when he accuse anyone to be “adherents” to materialism and scientism, simply because he doesn’t like empirical evidences, testable evidences or scientific method.

His preferred method of investigation is anecdote, and George think anecdotal evidence is superior to verifiable evidence.

It is a frequent tactics used by creationists, fundamental theists and anti-science philosophers. So, it only weakened any argument made by George-ananda.

I think Carrie explains it best.

A scientific approach to the paranormal

 

[gnostic]

I’ll link the report again so that there are no excuses.

Intake Officer's Report

Also, you said:

“had you provided more than just tabloid article in your first post, you wouldn’t be getting so much skepticism in the first place.”

Well, the fact of the matter is that the OP does contain links to the official reports (the link to the indianopolis star, which is posted not once but twice in the OP, contains each of the reports mentioned).

What’s wrong with you dude? You try so hard to look like you know what you are talking about, but you for some reason cannot pay attention to the most basic of details.

You must enjoy coming off as an someone who is incompetent.

Me reading this horribly written “report” the 2nd time around, isn’t going to change a damn thing.

Most of the time, I am second-guessing who said what, but the person writing the report (Valerie Washington, the family case manager) wasn’t the eyewitness, so the report is nothing more than pure bloody hearsay.

 

[George-ananda]

Here's the way it worked:
People contacted the Randi Institute claiming they could demonstrate paranormal phenomena.
Randi set up controlled experiments.
People failed to produce the results they claimed to be able to produce.

There is a multitude of evidence available...One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge - Wikipedia
There are other skeptics groups that have had the same results.


OK. Then it should be easy for you to provide evidence of his distortions and dishonesty.

Why are you making this so difficult? By verified I mean resultant from a double test conducted by an independent agency/entity. A mother saying her kid walked up walls is not verified. A Uri Geller saying he can bend spoons is not verified since you can go on youtube and learn to do it. A Sylvia Brown saying she can tell your future or talk to you dead aunt is not verified.

Why don't you just post a couple of specific things that you consider "verified" and I'll let you know.

I say there are controlled tests proving by fantastic odds against chance and careful observation supporting telepathy, remote viewing, gifted mediums, telekinesis, etc. and the hard-core skeptic will say the testers were incompetent. I would come back with no they were not incompetent but hard-core skeptics clique together to deny any positive results. And then the debate can continue until someone eventually has to walk away. I know by now there is no point in doing that again and again.

But even then we are talking about a sliver of types of paranormal phenomena. On the OP case it is non-reproducible phenomena so the type of verification you are insisting on is not even reasonable to expect. The best we have are the investigations and observations of the witnesses and experiencers so we can just listen to everything and judge likeliness. That is where I take the full body of cases and consider likeliness of anomalous phenomena based on quantity, quality and consistency. Certainly one case can be erroneously reported, but is it reasonable to believe that happens in every paranormal claim? That becomes a judgment. For reasons such as this I believe it is much more reasonable to believe in so-called ghosts than not as one sample phenomena. You can conclude the other way and then we will have to just differ unless one convinces the other. I personally consider the evidence for spontaneous paranormal phenomena to be overwhelming from the quantity. quality and consistency of events in the human experience.

 

[Tazarah]

Read carefully. "Medical staff reported that while the children were at their primary doctor’s office the medical staff reported"... Clearly there are two different groups of Medical Staff.

There is one medical staff - let's call them "group A". Then there is the primary doctor’s medical staff in the primary doctor’s office - let's call them "Group B".

"Group A reported that while the children were at their primary doctor’s office Group B reported..."

That's call hearsay. There is not report/statement directly from the primary doctor’s medical staff.



There is noting in the report that indicates who allegedly saw this. There is nothing in the report that indicates who said this.

No member from FCM Washington or the psychologist's office is quoted as saying this.

The report is poorly written in that it omits who saw what and who said what.

Regardless, none of these statements were made by the mother like how you claimed. The above mentioned statements were made by medical staff from either the hospital or the primary doctor’s office.

You lied and said that no source other than the mother made a statement, which has been proven to be most untrue.

Now, you are discrediting the statements made by the medical staff and you are changing your argument to “it’s all hearsay”.

I thought only the mother made a statement?

And yeah, it’s all hearsay simply because you say so, right?

Lmao.

 

[Tazarah]

Me reading this horribly written “report” the 2nd time around, isn’t going to change a damn thing.

Most of the time, I am second-guessing who said what, but the person writing the report (Valerie Washington, the family case manager) wasn’t the eyewitness, so the report is nothing more than pure bloody hearsay.

It’s not hearsay because the medical staff reported what they had witnessed and it was recorded into the document.

In order for the statements from either medical staff to be included into the report, they would have had to have been recorded in some other kind of document.

Officials can’t just write reports however they want to and include any kind of random information, everything is based off of facts and the medical staff clearly reported what they had seen. So to claim that it’s all “hearsay” is pure ignorance.

 

[gnostic]

It’s not hearsay because the medical staff reported what they had witnessed and it was recorded into the document.

In order for the statements from either medical staff to be included into the report, they would have had to have been recorded in some other kind of document.

Officials can’t just write reports however they want to and include any kind of random information, everything is based off of facts and the medical staff clearly reported what they had seen. So to claim that it’s all “hearsay” is pure ignorance.

You really don’t know what hearsay means do you.

The case manager who wrote the intake officer report isn’t the one who “eyewitnessed” what happened to the children.

The case manager wrote in the report that medical staff reported the sighting from another medical staff from the primary doctor’s clinic. That is hearsay.

The primary doctor is never named, nor the any of the staff that supposedly witnessed the child being thrown against the wall.

The only names that appeared in this report is the mother, and the family case manager. With such a report, how can anyone take this seriously.

And that was four years ago.

What have been said or seen since then? And if children were now in state custody, are there any more witnesses to supernatural events since this report was written? Did paranormal events (demon possession) just stopped?

What are the fates of the mother and her children?

There are no followed up, no more “official” sightings. Not a peek since, until you brought this up from 4-year-old tabloid.

Are you just tidy-tiny little suspicious since there are no more news, officially or unofficially?

 

[Tazarah]

You really don’t know what hearsay means do you.

The case manager who wrote the intake officer report isn’t the one who “eyewitnessed” what happened to the children.

The case manager wrote in the report that medical staff reported the sighting from another medical staff from the primary doctor’s clinic. That is hearsay.

The primary doctor is never named, nor the any of the staff that supposedly witnessed the child being thrown against the wall.

The only names that appeared in this report is the mother, and the family case manager. With such a report, how can anyone take this seriously.

And that was four years ago.

What have been said or seen since then? And if children were now in state custody, are there any more witnesses to supernatural events since this report was written? Did paranormal events (demon possession) just stopped?

What are the fates of the mother and her children?

There are no followed up, no more “official” sightings. Not a peek since, until you brought this up from 4-year-old tabloid.

Are you just tidy-tiny little suspicious since there are no more news, officially or unofficially?

I know that the case manager did not witness any of the events. When did I ever say that they did?

And when does the report say that the medical staff reported the sighting from a seperate medical staff? The report clearly says that various medical staff was interviewed.

The report does not say that a seperate medical staff told the medical staff what they had witnessed, and even if they did then what does that matter? It was all recorded.

So if medical staff witnesses a patient having a seizure at one location and then they report to a seperate medical staff what they had seen, I guess that’s all “hearsay” too, according to your logic.

Why do you keep mentioning the “tabloid” as if it negates the fact that multiple other news outlets reported on this story?

Yes it happened 4 years ago, and there was a follow up and the news articles do mention how everything turned out.

But according to you, 4 years later everybody should be talking about this everyday when they wake up in order for it to be taken seriously.

Your logic is so incredibly flawed, and you are dishonest when it comes to dealing with facts.

I honestly don’t care if you take it seriously or not. Like I said earlier, everybody is entitled to their own opinion and can believe what they want to, but it’s extremely childish to say that the evidence does not say what it says — you act as if you have the final word and say regarding what is factual or not and whatever you say is the final authority, as if you are higher than the various officials (police officers, social workers, etc.) who were involved in this case, which I find completely hilarious.

It’s even more childish to throw insults just because you have a different opinion about something than somebody else does.

And then you complain about the report not having the names of the staff or the doctor, why would it include the names? So that you can call and verify and make sure that they were telling the truth? LOL

You are not a case manager, you have absolutely zero authority, and your opinion is completely irrelevant.

You are nothing more than some random guy on the internet who likes to run his mouth and feed his inferiority complex.

The exorcisms of Latoya Ammons [indy star]

Strange events lead Ind. family to resort to exorcism [usa today]

Latoya Ammons, Indiana Mother, Claims Demon Possession, Authorities Corroborate | HuffPost [huffington post]

Haunting in Indiana leads to family’s exorcism, child’s levitation: Reports - NY Daily News [new york daily news]

Latoya Ammons [fox news]

The Devil & Latoya Ammons [the american conservative]

Latoya Ammons Exorcisms - Indianapolis Star incredible story of demons [esquire]

Priest performs exorcism on child caught up in portal to Hell [abc]

 

[ecco]

I say there are controlled tests proving by fantastic odds against chance and careful observation supporting telepathy, remote viewing, gifted mediums, telekinesis, etc. and the hard-core skeptic will say the testers were incompetent. I would come back with no they were not incompetent but hard-core skeptics clique together to deny any positive results. And then the debate can continue until someone eventually has to walk away. I know by now there is no point in doing that again and again.

But you cannot give a single example. On the other hand, not one psychic predicted 9-11.

But even then we are talking about a sliver of types of paranormal phenomena. On the OP case it is non-reproducible phenomena so the type of verification you are insisting on is not even reasonable to expect. The best we have are the investigations and observations of the witnesses and experiencers so we can just listen to everything and judge likeliness.

On the OP case, the primary document of "evidence" is a report from a caseworker whose job it was to show a judge or adjudicator that the children needed to be taken away from the parent. The only eyewitness is the mother. The other observations of anything paranormal are from second hand hearsay. Even you must agree that second hand hearsay is not evidence of anything.

That is where I take the full body of cases and consider likeliness of anomalous phenomena based on quantity, quality and consistency. Certainly one case can be erroneously reported, but is it reasonable to believe that happens in every paranormal claim? That becomes a judgment. For reasons such as this I believe it is much more reasonable to believe in so-called ghosts than not as one sample phenomena. You can conclude the other way and then we will have to just differ unless one convinces the other. I personally consider the evidence for spontaneous paranormal phenomena to be overwhelming from the quantity. quality and consistency of events in the human experience.

So, a lot of people say there are ghosts therefore you believe in ghosts.

Harry Houdini was an outspoken disbeliever and buster of everything paranormal. He never claimed that he could pass his body through solid substances. One of his illusions was that he would be locked in a large metal milk can. A curtain was placed separating the can from the audience. In short time, Houdini would appear at the back of the auditorium. Even though he publicly insisted there was nothing paranormal about his act, some of his audience were always convinced he could indeed pass his body through the metal milk can. I guess that would include you.

 

[Windwalker]

But you cannot give a single example. On the other hand, not one psychic predicted 9-11.




On the OP case, the primary document of "evidence" is a report from a caseworker whose job it was to show a judge or adjudicator that the children needed to be taken away from the parent. The only eyewitness is the mother. The other observations of anything paranormal are from second hand hearsay. Even you must agree that second hand hearsay is not evidence of anything.






So, a lot of people say there are ghosts therefore you believe in ghosts.

Harry Houdini was an outspoken disbeliever and buster of everything paranormal. He never claimed that he could pass his body through solid substances. One of his illusions was that he would be locked in a large metal milk can. A curtain was placed separating the can from the audience. In short time, Houdini would appear at the back of the auditorium. Even though he publicly insisted there was nothing paranormal about his act, some of his audience were always convinced he could indeed pass his body through the metal milk can. I guess that would include you.

You need to fix your quotes in this reply. You assigned my name to someone else's words.

 

[ecco]

You need to fix your quotes in this reply. You assigned my name to someone else's words.

Apologies.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Dude, we get it — you don’t think that the evidence is sufficient enough (regardless of who or where it came from), so according to you it’s all BS, simply because you said so.

We get it.

And I "get it" that you have no actual refutations to what I say because I am describing the situation in completely representative detail. You know the kind of evidence I would be expecting - and you understand that it can't be produced - because these situations ARE NOT REPRODUCIBLE. You can't experiment on them, you can't "figure them out", you can't deconstruct or even observe with intent. All you can do is throw your hands up in the air, say you don't know what happened (because face it - YOU DON'T KNOW) and move on.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Where does the report say that “the kids were performing and encouraged to do so by the mother’s behavior.”?

Where does anything say that? You lie everytime you post and then you lie about lying. Why do you make such a big deal out of it?

You act like people don’t have two eyes of their own and can’t read the report for themselves.

First you said that the statements provided by the medical staff were not accurate because “they should have worded their statements differently”, or because they “were exaggerating”, when the staff clearly reported what they said, and now you yourself are changing the meaning of what the statements in the reports mean.

Lmao.

I saw that line in your links as well. It is there.