It's woo - not really any different to astrology!

@Jnei Oh dear. That's sad. I really liked my M-B profile. Which I suppose points to its unreality!

That's OK, I like Astrology!

It was very popular here in the UK!

@Jnei cool! Unlike most US tv, it was not complete garbage.

Google the terms. New physics is quackery of the highest order - not new developments in physics, but an entirely different subject, taking an "alternative" and decidedly non-scientific approach. Cold fusion is, at least to a degree where it deserves to be properly refuted, potentially scientific fact, with a wide range of evidence to suggest it might be possible and therefore very much not free energy (which relies on perpetual motion machines, magical thinking and a complete lack of understanding of basic physical laws). As for "lumping together a whole bunch of things I don't like", I made sure in the introduction to this group that I in fact have a very great fondness for all this stuff - it's great fun.

Finally, if you have any links to these persuasive ESP studies and excellent evidence for reincarnation, I'm sure many of us in the group would absolutely love to see them. I look forward to it, because I'd dearly love for both to be real.

@Jnei OK, you have persuaded me, but I’m a woo sort of guy and I don’t want to join a sceptic’s forum. I’d about as soon rejoin the Baptist Church.

There are all kinds of books that describe ESP research. Dean Radin has written some good ones.

I just had a great interchange on this forum about reincarnation. Here’s an article in Scientific American that is very convincing IMO.

[blogs.scientificamerican.com]

@Jnei This is from the Scientific American article:

“ Towards the end of her own storied life, the physicist Doris Kuhlmann-Wilsdorf—whose groundbreaking theories on surface physics earned her the prestigious Heyn Medal from the German Society for Material Sciences, surmised that Stevenson’s work had established that “the statistical probability that reincarnation does in fact occur is so overwhelming … that cumulatively the evidence is not inferior to that for most if not all branches of science.”

She is talking about the work of psychiatrist Ian Stevenson who conducted a program at the University of Virginia for the investigation of reincarnation.

Dr. Stevenson was meticulous in his research. From time to time parents would report a child who was talking about a previous life. Someone would go and interview the child, using strict protocols. In many cases it was possible to learn who the previous person had been, who the family was, and where they had lived. A team would go with the child to that location and in many many cases airtight corroborating information would be uncovered. Every statement by the child would be carefully recorded and compared with on site findings. This is from the Scientific American article: “Importantly, their statements are, in principle at least, empirically falsifiable. If adults don’t automatically dismiss young children’s utterances as gibberish, any spontaneous comments suggestive of a past life can be carefully recorded, so researchers like Stevenson might later confirm or disconfirm their accounts.”

Thousands of cases were carefully documented and referenced, and Stevenson has published several books which document those cases. Arch-skeptics of course attack the books, but I haven’t read of a skeptic who traveled to various locations and interviewed the people involved. The skeptics just brand the books as “anecdotal”, and without further ado they dismiss decades of work by Dr. Stevenson and his staff, remaining securely zipped up in their cocoons of ignorance and bigotry.

Yet here’s a quote from one of the skeptical articles:

“An unlikely advocate of Stevenson’s research was the great sceptic regarding otherworldly things, Carl Sagan. In his popular science classic, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Sagan observed that this new field of study into children who “sometimes report the details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation”, deserved “serious study” (Sagan, 1995, p. 285).

@WilliamFleming Anecdotes are not data. Sounds like Stevenson had a healthy dose of confirmation bias. Or perhaps it was the LSD he took. Regardless, if you're going to start talking about reincarnated souls, you might as well accept religion.
The reason most of us are agnostics is because we hold a healthy dose of scepticism.

@MsDemeanour

But anecdotes ARE data. Anecdotes can be investigated and confirmed by corroborating evidence. Read the article. There are a lot of other articles also about the work of Dr. Stevenson.

How can you pronounce Dr. Stevenson’s work to be bogus when you haven’t even looked at the studies? The notion of reincarnation certainly challenges the materialistic world view held by so many skeptics, However the spirit of science is to be open to new ideas and to be willing to examine all evidence.

Reincarnation need not be thought of as supernatural. IMO there’s no such thing as the supernatural. Just because we don’t understand phenomena doesn’t mean they are supernatural. What it means is that we need to broaden our world views.

I am not a fan of the soul concept. Who or what is it that is supposed to have a soul? It makes more sense to say that our true self is associated with a variety of organisms, providing conscious oversight.If you are mired in the mud of materialism and think you are only your body, then reincarnation makes no sense, but if you are open to the concept of Universal Consciousness then reincarnation fits handily, along with a lot of other unexplained phenomena.

Just because someone shares memories with a dead person does not mean that they ARE that person. IMO both selves are illusions. Maybe it’s something like remote viewing.

I consider myself to be a skeptic also. There’s more to skepticism than going around debunking everything that is in conflict with your cherished world view.

Damn, I did forget essential oils - I'd better get some peppermint oil quickly!

@KissedbySun Both work. Allegedly!

I prefer snake oil.

Hey now, I use essential oils for real things. They make good cleaners and topical antibiotics. As for diffusing them into the air for different effects, that's mostly a load of shit.

@FatherOfNyx You're right. Seriously, some have actual good uses.

@dare2dream My daughter was stillborn and resuscitated. As unlikely as it was, she pulled through.. but naturally her nervous system took a hit. When it's time to sleep, she'll toss and turn and spasm. So I made a balm with essential oils that are claimed to help with nerves. There is a huge difference in how easily she falls asleep when I use the balm.