Ouija board working a fact?

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Why would you even risk the possibility of invoking something which could do you irreparable harm?

If you wouldn’t invite a murderer or thief into your home, why would you play with a Ouija board?
 
It wouldn’t matter even if they tried to test Ouija boards because, even if the believers are wrong, they’ll invent an excuse for why the experiment failed to support their hypothesis.

I already suggested what I think is a reasonable test: Have children who cannot spell very well use the board and have a third party provide questions which require a vocabulary the children lack. Remarkably enough, the spirits will suddenly have difficulty spelling their own sentences.

But even if we did this test, the excuses would pour in: “The spirit was a child because it was drawn to the children using the board. That’s why it was misspelling the words!” “Children are too mentally fragile to channel spirits. This disrupted the connection the spirits need to communicate effectively.” “The spirits were just toying with us because they don’t like being subjected to experiments!”
 
To remind people of the original claim i poster in the first post:

“http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/are-ouija-boards-harmless
…
The above answer seems to imply that its fact that Quija boards allow contact to demons.”

From the link:
“The fact of the matter is, the Ouija board really does work, and the only “spirits” that will be contacted through it are evil ones.”
Oreoracle said:
It wouldn’t matter even if they tried to test Ouija boards because, even if the believers are wrong, they’ll invent an excuse for why the experiment failed to support their hypothesis.
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But that does not provide any information regarding the claim, it only would show that the respective believers claiming to successfully perform are stupid.

Because such a test would not involve the respective believers and a quija board and observers, but believers, observers and the “evil ones”. Such a test does not make in any way sense, if the willingness to cooperate of the third party, the evil ones, is uncertain.
Oreoracle said:
I already suggested what I think is a reasonable test: Have children who cannot spell very well use the board and have a third party provide questions which require a vocabulary the children lack. Remarkably enough, the spirits will suddenly have difficulty spelling their own sentences.
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Did you just suggest to include children in an experiment which aims at proving the existance of evil spirits by contacting them?

Your arguments and those of JapaneseKappa would be perfectly fine, if we assumed quija board works in some automatic and guranteed way maybe with some non-freewilled and/or harmless spirits or so.

But with a claim that malicious and intelligent entities are contacted, i cannot see the approach working.
 
JapaneseKappa said:
Faith is a lot easier to have when it is backed by evidence. In fact, I’d be willing to get possessed solely for the purpose of proving the existence of the supernatural.
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What makes you think that your own possession would be more proof than the possession of others who have already been possessed?
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
That shows you have faith in science.
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Sure, and it is easy to do because there is evidence science works. It was science, not mysticism that allowed us to build the computers we are currently using to communicate. Science has eradicated entire diseases, while faith healing only ever claims to heal a handful of individuals with poorly-understood diseases.

I’m entirely open to the possibility that there is a better process than science for determining which propositions are true and which are false. However, if some alternative wants to make a credible claim that it is better than science, it should at least be able to reproduce some of science’s “greatest hits” (or explain how science would erroneously achieve an incorrect hit.)
 
MtnDwellar said:
What makes you think that your own possession would be more proof than the possession of others who have already been possessed?
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The plural of anecdote is not data.

From the JREF contest: randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge/challenge-faq.html
If you are submitting a claim that works off a previous assumption, you have to present evidence proving the assumption correct first. For example, a claim of exorcism must have prior proof of the existence of demons, unless the existence of demons would be self-evident during the exorcism. If someone’s head spins ‘round the wrong direction during an exorcism, it is safe to say that demons (or some other entities) are responsible. Projectile vomiting, however, is nasty and probably explainable.
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Religion has a long history of ascribing “divine punishment” or “demonic activity” to illnesses with entirely natural causes. As far as I know, exorcism has never been meaningfully tested as a cure for anything.

I would be willing to participate in a study where people deliberately got themselves possessed so that the effects of possession could be verified. That would go hand in hand with testing what methods of possession work (e.g. do ouija boards produce the same symptoms?) After the symptoms and causes were established, we could test whether or not exorcism were effective cures for the symptoms of possession.
 
JapaneseKappa said:
Sure, and it is easy to do because there is evidence science works. It was science, not mysticism that allowed us to build the computers we are currently using to communicate. Science has eradicated entire diseases, while faith healing only ever claims to heal a handful of individuals with poorly-understood diseases.

I’m entirely open to the possibility that there is a better process than science for determining which propositions are true and which are false. However, if some alternative wants to make a credible claim that it is better than science, it should at least be able to reproduce some of science’s “greatest hits” (or explain how science would erroneously achieve an incorrect hit.)
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Faith in God works too. All things are possible with God!🙂
 
Amandil said:
Why would you even risk the possibility of invoking something which could do you irreparable harm?

If you wouldn’t invite a murderer or thief into your home, why would you play with a Ouija board?
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This makes sense, but then again, doing God’s Will and living a devout life also gets you much more attention from the Evil One. Look at all the sains who were viciously attacked by Satan, for doing God’s work. 🤷
 
Thorns said:
This makes sense, but then again, doing God’s Will and living a devout life also gets you much more attention from the Evil One. Look at all the sains who were viciously attacked by Satan, for doing God’s work. 🤷
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Yes but in the end, God won out.
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
Faith in God works too. All things are possible with God!🙂
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Faith in God is something one has, its not something that “works.”

Eating food is not something that “works”, its just something we do out of necessity.
 
CHRISTINE77 said:
Yes but in the end, God won out.
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Some people mess with Ouija boards and God seems to win out in the end too 🤷

Secondly, you dont know if God wins out in the end everytime with those who were devout and still attacked. We only know of thw popular cases. Im sure there have been many who were strong in faith and lived very good lives, only to be tempted heavier than normal.people and were lead astray. Perhaps many of the bad priests are examples of this?
 
JapaneseKappa said:
I’ve never heard of anyone faithing themselves to the moon, or sticking their frozen dinner in a faithowave-oven.
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This reminds me of my aunt who calls her microwave a “miracle-wave”. :rotfl: I think it’s some sort of inside joke I’ve yet to understand.
 
JapaneseKappa said:
The plural of anecdote is not data.

From the JREF contest: randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge/challenge-faq.html

Religion has a long history of ascribing “divine punishment” or “demonic activity” to illnesses with entirely natural causes. As far as I know, exorcism has never been meaningfully tested as a cure for anything.

I would be willing to participate in a study where people deliberately got themselves possessed so that the effects of possession could be verified. That would go hand in hand with testing what methods of possession work (e.g. do ouija boards produce the same symptoms?) After the symptoms and causes were established, we could test whether or not exorcism were effective cures for the symptoms of possession.
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I don’t follow. Data is plural for datum. Anecdote is something altogether different.

This happens all of the time. People don’t believe the eye witness testimony. They don’t believe the published accounts of exorcists. They don’t believe the pictures or videos. Photographic evidence and eye witness testimony are accepted in courts of law. People can be put to death largely on these evidences, yet, they are not proof of the supernatural for some people.
 
MtnDwellar said:
People don’t believe the eye witness testimony. They don’t believe the published accounts of exorcists. They don’t believe the pictures or videos. Photographic evidence and eye witness testimony are accepted in courts of law. People can be put to death largely on these evidences, yet, they are not proof of the supernatural for some people.
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Science does not work like a courtroom. Claims must be reproducible and falsifiable. We only settle for this weaker standard of evidence in court because crimes obviously cannot be “reproduced” for everyone to see.
 
MtnDwellar said:
I don’t follow. Data is plural for datum. Anecdote is something altogether different.

This happens all of the time. People don’t believe the eye witness testimony. They don’t believe the published accounts of exorcists. They don’t believe the pictures or videos. Photographic evidence and eye witness testimony are accepted in courts of law. People can be put to death largely on these evidences, yet, they are not proof of the supernatural for some people.
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nytimes.com/2011/08/25/nyregion/in-new-jersey-rules-changed-on-witness-ids.html

An anecdote is simply someone’s story. It is not necessarily accurate, nor did it come about in any sort of controlled manner. It very likely comes prefiltered through personal biases and preconceived notions. You can go around a collect a bunch of anecdotes (alleged eye witnesses, fuzzy pictures, etc) but it does not constitute any sort of data you could use as scientific evidence.

You could certainly use the collection of anecdotes to generate a hypothesis, but they don’t constitute data; that you have to collect deliberately under carefully controlled conditions.
 
Oreoracle said:
Science does not work like a courtroom. Claims must be reproducible and falsifiable. We only settle for this weaker standard of evidence in court because crimes obviously cannot be “reproduced” for everyone to see.
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You hit the nail on the head. The standard for evidence of paranormal cannot be a scientific standard. Why would the actions of incorporeal beings be reproducible? The actions of us corporeal beings is only reproducible within some wide margin.
 
JapaneseKappa said:
Sure, and it is easy to do because there is evidence science works. It was science, not mysticism that allowed us to build the computers we are currently using to communicate. Science has eradicated entire diseases, while faith healing only ever claims to heal a handful of individuals with poorly-understood diseases.

I’m entirely open to the possibility that there is a better process than science for determining which propositions are true and which are false. However, if some alternative wants to make a credible claim that it is better than science, it should at least be able to reproduce some of science’s “greatest hits” (or explain how science would erroneously achieve an incorrect hit.)
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IDK if id trust science that much, after all, it wasnt that long ago, that it was common knowledge that radium was a good cure all for about anything that ails a person, science backed this up too, not going to list them all, but you get the jist of this…only look at recent history to see how wrong science has been about alot of things…today, we laugh about all the things people believed in, but it will also be true, people 100 yrs from now, will be laughing at us and our science, and cant believe those goofy people back then really believed in that…the only question is what are some of these things our modern scientific world will be completely wrong about?
 
Thorns said:
This makes sense, but then again, doing God’s Will and living a devout life also gets you much more attention from the Evil One. Look at all the sains who were viciously attacked by Satan, for doing God’s work. 🤷
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Exactly. This is how I know that I am with God.

I’d be more concerned if I wasn’t being attacked.
 
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