Lots of people have responded to me, including you, so you are wrong about that.

As for my beliefs not meeting your personal expectations, and your appraisal of my personality traits without having ever met me — so what? That is your opinion and not a fact, so it means nothing to me…but I do wonder if you had any point to it all, other then name calling?

If I am supposedly not listening, why do you still ramble on and on, and why is it that you ramble on and on about me and not about the topic line of Randi and ESP or your subtopic of homeopathy? I am open minded to ANYTHING you say, if you can back it up with facts. All we have is your word. It would be so simple and obvious to cite a few Internet links to some scholarly articles about how homeopathy works as wonderfully as you claim it does, but you are unable to do that.

This is the third time in a row that I have had to tell you that I am not the topic of discussion here, it is James Randi and the non-existence of ESP or the effectiveness of homeopathy. You have refused to talk about those things in the last three posts so clearly you are the only one here not listening and it is a waste of time to talk to you, and not the other way around. So I have had my say and you have had none, and I rest my case…

Correction: Only your side of the argument is doing that, not mine. I simply pointed out that homeopathy, like placebo, only works for those who are psychosomatic (and as for infants being ‘cured’, I already pointed out that the infants cannot be cured of something that some hypochondriac only imagined the infant having). People who know what logic and facts are do not resort to attacking the person instead of attacking the person’s argument.

“From now on I shall ignore them as most everyone else does”

You can be just like everyone if you want to be, but most everyone else seems to be a coward, especially when it comes to answering hard questions about their blind faith belief systems.

…come up with some lame excuse why you could not come up with neither the logic nor the facts to refute any of my points and then spend the rest of your “argument” calling me names instead. That is not very mature or professional and since you have been reduced to attacking me instead of the argument, proves that you lost this debate a long time ago.

Just because I am pro-science does not mean I am anti-paranormal or even anti-homeopathy. Your mistake.

What is there to figure out? I can tell a con job from the real deal without having to figure anything out and the paranormal is an example of a con job. Science only studies things that actually exist outside of our imaginations and, like you confessed, the paranormal will never be proven to exist. You can add the boggie man and invisible pink elephants to that list too, since they too are much like the mystical, magical paranormal fantasy.

“That does not mean they do not exist”

Of course they exist, but they only exist in your imagination.

“Therefore, the term ‘physical science,’ which is what you apparently choose to use as your beautiful king shit yardstick. It’s one way of measuring things, valuing, understanding, etc. It’s not the only way, however”

It is the only way that has been demonstrated to work so far. For example, in the last 100 years or so, the physical sciences has given us the light bulb, telephone, television, computers, automobiles, running water, central heating and cooling, refrigerators vaccinations, and put a man on the Moon — in other words, it has practically remade an entire new civilization. So what has your alternate method done for humanity in the last 100 years? How about the last 1000 or even 10,000 years? I can answer that for you: absolutely nothing. All we have are the poorly told excuses for why paranormal abilities only exist for the blind faith believer when no logical thinking types are around.

“Your understanding of placebo is rudimentary at best. Placebo does not necessarily equal ‘fake’”

Your understanding of my understanding is bogus. I never said placebos meant fake. In fact I said the opposite. Go back read what I wrote but this time pay attention.

“It’s a grim world you have drawn–this ‘facts and beliefs’ offering. You seem to insist on some bizarre binary system”

I do no such thing, you are the only one doing any insisting here. Furthermore, the world is a wonderful place just like it is and it just so happens that this world is like a place of ‘facts and beliefs’.

“that is just as much a belief as the angels/love and light agenda”

So you say.

“Where does experience and emotion fit into this dichotomy? History?”

Read some history and see for yourself where it fits. It is all there.

“If all that was required for the body to initiate a healing response was to ’believe’ in a remedy, then there would not be 100s of different remedies for different ailments, and they would not work on infants, etc”

Not everyone has or wants to have the same beliefs so even if belief had a 100% cure rate, the number of beliefs that would accomplish that would be uncountable.

Homeopathy is great for curing psychosomatic illnesses, but outside of that, the cure rate is zero. As for infants being “cured”, if people can imagine themselves having diseases that do not exist anywhere outside of their imagination, then why not be able to imagine infants having diseases that also do not actually exist anywhere except in their imagination? It would be easy to ‘cure’ an infant of a disease that really did not exist.

But for one, measuring paranormal occurences or claims is innately problematic. That does not mean they do not exist. My example of consciousness is relevant here too perhaps–although it is the reason we can have this conversation, and the reason that ’science’ and its measurements exist, its nature is a mystery in itself, and cannot necessarily even be measured. It can be said then, that its features are not compatible with science. The scientific method assumes and depends upon physical observation of some sort. Therefore, the term ‘physical science,’ which is what you apparently choose to use as your beautiful king shit yardstick. It’s one way of measuring things, valuing, understanding, etc. It’s not the only way, however.

There is meaning in other things, and other methods to understanding. And it doesn;t have to depend on ‘belief.’ It’s a grim world you have drawn–this ‘facts and beliefs’ offering. You seem to insist on some bizarre binary system, and that is just as much a belief as the angels/love and light agenda. Where does experience and emotion fit into this dichotomy? History?

Your understanding of placebo is rudimentary at best. Placebo does not necessarily equal ‘fake.’ I used the homeopathy example not to start an argument about it, but as an analogy. If all that was required for the body to initiate a healing response was to’believe’ in a remedy, then there would not be 100s of different remedies for different ailments, and they would not work on infants, etc. It is much more complex, but of course that is not going to fit into your binarism belief system.

I do not know.

“The paranormal will never be proven to exist”

My point exactly.

“It’s measured within a system that is not compatible with its features”

What in the world does that mean?

“It’s fairly a pointless debate, because the arguments are…”

…not based on facts. No one can argue with facts, but since the paranormal is based on belief instead of facts, any argument on the paranormal could go on and on forever — if not nipped in the bud with some facts first (or lack thereof).

“Scientist and debunkers claim the remedies only work because they have a placebo effect, so the remedies are devalued…So, the ‘placebo conclusion’ is therefore seen to both prove and disprove the remedies, depending on your reference point and belief systems”

Either you misunderstand their arguments or you are corresponding with people who are not practicing science. Homeopathic remedies are valued highly as a placebo because placebos are highly valued, but there can be no guarantees that a placebo will work for anyone at all since it depends on blind faith belief. That makes it unreliable and unpredictable. Yet no real scientist will say that placebos do not work, it is just that they do not work very well because as soon as the person stops believing in the placebo, it stops working. One cannot predict what one will believe or if they will stop believing. This does not happen with non-placebo remedies. Yet at times, the only thing that we have to offer that does work, poorly as it does, is the placebo. A point one percent hope is better than none at all, but the goal of science is to find something much better than a placebo.

“I think it’s extremely shortsighted to dismiss an entire world history of folklore and experience”

It would be shortsighted but that is not happening with me here. The paranormal is good fodder for psychologists — and psychology is a science too. What people believe about the world — true or false — tells us more about people than it does the world.

“To buy into the tired old programming of low status (’fictions’ etc. as you have previously stated) vs. high status (science) is rather pedestrian, common, and pretty much misses the point of real inquiry”

Good thing I am not doing that either. The thing is, I have the ability to tell the difference between reality and fantasy; fiction or fact; cure and placebo. There would be nothing wrong with believing in invisible pink elephants that make the world go ’round and can successfully cure you of some diseases, but it would be wrong to make the mistake of thinking that if blind faith belief in invisible pink elephants works for that one person that it therefore will work for everybody else because it will not — and it demonstrably never has.