Has anyone heard of Ky Dickens? I am digging into her work now after seeing her on the Rogan show. Super fascinating scenario of supposedly demonstrated telepathy between parents and non-verbal children.
Here’s the link if anyone is interested
Here is a short two minute summary video from The Telepathy Tapes channel
And some counter evidence
I only watched the two minute segment. Just to make sure they were using telepathy in the same way I use the term. For me claims of telepathic communications falls under magic and I just don’t believe in it. There is no actual evidence that anyone can read someone’s thoughts in that way. I mean sure, without talking someone may be able to read the general drive in the person. Like a woman who is talking to a guy who keeps glancing down and on and again. She can be fairly certain he’s just gawking at her.
But there is no stranger things type of magic. In horror films there is also a common trope that someone who has some form of a disability like autism, often has some sort of power. “ The Darkness”, “ Boogie Man”, “Come Play” and the “Innocents” all play around with this trope. Outside of horror you often see shows also like thrillers where someone on some sort of spectrum has a super memory. Throughout the army in the intelligence community every now and then you also find someone clearly on the spectrum. Several times they walk with a hand on a wall following the bricks. Rumors going around that they can pick out shapes like missiles in satellite images. The Geospatial Analys/imagists 35 series. But almost every single one of them fails out. Not saying this is not possible. Kim Peek after all is said to have memorized the phones books so well in his area that strangers that said their names to him, he could toss out their address and who lived around him. Though I’m under the impression they no longer think he had autism but something else. But even this , if all true and not mythicized, comes far short of reading a person’s thoughts.
I know there are supposedly mentalist and hypnotist that can do things like use tricks and product placement to guess several things that the person will choose to do. Saw some reality show once where a mentalist would mask people a series of questions and guess the answer to last one…. Like a series of math problems, color of fruits and then guess what vegetable you’re thinking of. Product placement, influencing and so in can do this to some degree. But in highly skeptical of it.
But I can’t imagine person, even if they are an autistic man, can’t read the numbers of strangers who are thinking it in their minds.
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My thoughts…
- The limits of my own experience is not the limit of reality itself.
- I believe reality is not completely objective (i.e. the same for everyone). That means I do not dismiss claims of belief by other cultures in various spirits as just nonsense.
- Just because I don’t believe God will break the laws of nature He created doesn’t mean I think we are limited to natural explanations for everything. THIS is the reason for my opposition to magical interpretations of the Bible, particularly that which leads to a theology of cessationism – and not some kind of materialism or scientism.
- I believe in a God who created for relationship and thus one who is actively involved in the events of our lives. I have explained how quantum physics allows for this. And while it is far far more difficult for others to take advantage of this causal window, it is not impossible. Regardless, anything which implies an alteration of natural probability distributions would be excluded.
- On the other hand, I wouldn’t be too sure that there are no natural explanations. I remember that TV show “The Mentalist” which shows that just being observant and paying attention to things most people don’t see often looks magical to other people.
- People with a strong desire to see something are notoriously easy to convince of it. This is just an afterthought, meaning considerable caution here is very much justified.
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This is an interesting statement. It made me think about how this could be possible.
There are two obvious causes that make us see the objective reality in a subjective way.
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The observers differ. Our brains may interpret the signals in a different way. We cannot all see the same colours or hear all sounds. Some can see the sounds almost like colour.
How we experience the tastes and smell varies between people.
Some are more sensitive in ‘reading’ people, either through practise or natural abilities.
Some can interpret small signs in the surrounding nature better than others, usually because of practise and experience. -
The viewing point (position) differs. We look at the world from different locations and that shows us a different aspect of the objective reality. Relatively small differences in the position can lead to differing observations about what happened, as can be seen in the interviews of eyewitnesses. This difference is amplified by the personal differences between the observers.
In both cases, the objective reality is the same. The subjective reality seems to differ because of the two reasons explained above.
I cannot see an explanation that would form a differing actual/objective reality around the observers. We share the same universe and reality, we just do not all see it in an identical way.
It is possible because reality is more than just the physical. Physical reality is objective – it is the same for everyone. It is the spiritual reality which is subjective and not the same for everyone.
@mitchellmckain @SkovandOfMitaze Thanks for sharing your perspective on this. I appreciate the point of view you both bring.
I’ve been thinking about this a little, and my hunch is the facilitated reading abuse cases were not so easy to dismiss because there is some degree of transference of spirits. Some of the hard skeptics who were knowledgeable of the cases, admitted unintentional gestures and body language from the facilitator could be causing the non-verbal person to report graphic abuse that never occurred. In other words, what happened isn’t as easily dismissed as a Ouiji board session.
The difficulty of outright dismissing the experience of the parents Ky Dickens talks about… and given my own experience… the facilitator or parent may be projecting their experience on a person of limited conscious awareness… or it could be the non-verbal has a highly developed or augmented consciousness… pretty amazing either way.
As for Ky Dickens, I didn’t finish the Rogan interview, but she made a statement to Rogan that struck me as totally sincere and yet naive. That the non-verbal could easily read if a person was misleading them in a way to harm them.
Maybe we have a different understanding or definition of what the spiritual reality is.
I believe there is a spiritual reality and that it is as real and objective as the physical reality. Some people may see something of the spiritual reality but generally, we cannot observe it in the same way as we observe the physical reality. That makes the interpretations and descriptions about it subjective, although the reality itself would be objective.
Although I believe in the spiritual reality, it is not obvious for me what it is. I assume that the spirits are part of it but I do not know how angels, evil spirits and other creatures of the spiritual reality are connected to and affect the physical reality. I do not either know how God, who is spirit (John 4:24), affects our reality, for example how God speaks to believers when there is no audible sound. Yet, I know from experience that God sometimes speaks to us, even if much of what is claimed to be messages from God originate from the subconscious mind of the person, not God.
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I find this very telling. You put these together as if something which is subjective isn’t real. That is the common assumption which I am disagreeing with.
Something is only objective when you have a reasonable basis for expecting other people to agree with you. I don’t think that is the case with spiritual things.
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That would be the basis of faith communities… it also helps, and it’s a real hope for me looking forward, that reasonable people (or communities) can disagree about some of these things
You have such communities in great diversity because there is no reasonable basis for expecting others to agree with you. People either agree with you and thus join your community or they do not and thus they join some other community. AND… when it comes to spiritual things of religion, more disagree with you than agree with you. That is the nature of subjective truths.
With science however, there is a reasonable basis in the measurable evidence for people to agree with you whether they do so or not. That is objective truth.
Same for logic and math, ie. the impossibility of an infinite collection of objects in this universe or any conceivable universe.
And given one’s experience of spiritual things, ie. the conviction of sin, there is no question that you are right… but not so right that you would compell another by force to join your community…
Not the same. These are not a matter of evidence. Logic depends on what premises you start with, and math depends on what questions you ask.
Only according to the premise that the universe itself is finite.
According to current scientific understanding, whether the universe is finite or infinite is unknown; while the observable universe is finite, the overall universe could potentially be infinite based on current models, but we cannot definitively confirm this due to limitations in observation.
My personal inclination is to think the universe is finite. But… I see no logical incoherence (either scientifically or theologically) in the idea that the universe could be infinite.
No. My claim is measurable. We can ask people if they agree or disagree, and we can observe the numbers in these communities of belief you have talked about.
Compelling people by force to join a community has nothing to do with being right. That is question of morality and the kind of world you want to live in. I would fight against the kind of world where people are compelled as you suggest.
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What evidence is there for that?
There is also this:
“Without a contradiction, I have through mere pure concepts a priori no mark of impossibility.”
Kant
Infinite space may be given, and an infinite collection still won’t be possible. No limit on the (natural) number of objects though.
As would I… which would join us in the (hopefully) larger group 
That is not a matter of science but of definitions. I made no claim that evidence is the only basis for truth, only that it is the basis for scientific findings. Of course science uses both logic and math – depends on them. But none of that changes the simple fact that logic and math are not a matter of evidence. Perhaps the question here is whether there is a reasonable basis for an expectation in math and logic for people to agree with conclusions. In the case of math, definitely. For in that case, unlike in science, we have proofs. In the case of logic it depends. When it comes to the rules of logic, it is the same as math, a matter of proof. But in the use of logic for other conclusions then it matters what premises you start with. There can only be a reasonable basis for an expectation of agreement if they first accept those premises you start with.
Your quotation of Kant hardly seems relevant let alone proof for anything.
That is the definition of an infinite collection.
An infinite collection is when there are supposedly an infinite number of objects
Goes back to whether logic, ie. the principle of non-contradiction, has any relation to reality… Kant says that reality cannot contradict itself and I agree with him… people still disagree about the possibility of true contradictions… which is ok… I guess
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It seems we used different definitions for ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’.
I used the word ‘objective’ refering to something as it is, as someone with a perfect knowledge would describe it. It means that the objective description of the matter is not influenced by personal feelings or opinions. Something can be objectively what it is, even when humans do not have means to study the matter properly and therefore, only have subjective opinions that cannot be verified.
‘Subjective’ refers to our subjective opinions, feelings or interpretations about the matter.
Your definition is perhaps a more common one and I should have tried to use other words, even if it is sometimes difficult to find correct words (English is not my native language).
What I tried to say is that reality is what it is, independent of our viewpoints, opinions and interpretations. With reality I mean both the physical and the spiritual realities. I believe both exist. The difference between these are that we can make repeatable observations of the physical reality but usually not of the spiritual reality. Therefore, our opinions and interpretations of the spiritual reality are subjective although the spiritual reality is not dependent on our subjective opinions. The spiritual reality is the same for all although our beliefs and descriptions about the spiritual reality are subjective and may paint diverging pictures about it.
For example:
God either is or is not, although different religions and denominations paint differing pictures about God and atheists deny that God exist.
Spirits either are or are not, independent of our subjective beliefs and claims.
Depends what you mean by “collection”. If you mean a set of objects that are collected by gathering or enumerating them, yes; if you just mean a set of a certain kind of object, then no – an infinite “collection” of objects, i.e. an infinite set, can exist if things started out that way. One way to say it is that if you start with a finite number, you will never reach infinity by adding to it – to get an infinite set you have to start with an infinite set.
I frequently kan’t follow Kant; this one is just a bit obscure (but profound).
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Incorrect. That is just circular. The question is what does it mean to say a collection has an infinite number of objects? The answer is that there is no limit on the number of objects in that collection. If you start counting then you never finish no matter how long you keep counting. That is how the word is defined in a math class.
It occurs rereading this that there is a further distinction to be made. It is always assumed in something like a math class, that when you speak of a collection you are not speaking of something dynamic (where things are added while you examine it) – so if the number of objects is a function of time you are looking at it only for a fixed value of time. When speaking of the possibility of an infinite universe we are speaking of one which was never finite even in beginning. This is because we do not assume that the expansion of the universe was an expansion from a finite beginning only that the observable part of universe began extremely small. The point is we have no evidence to exclude the possibility that the universe was always spatially infinite and the big bang was an expansion everywhere in this spatially infinite universe. I am not saying I believe this is what happened but only that science hasn’t excluded the possibility.
Although space may have been concentrated into a single point at the Big Bang, it is equally possible that space was infinite at the Big Bang. In both scenarios the space was completely filled with matter which began to expand. There is no centre of the expansion, the universe is simply expanding at all points . The Big Bang and the Expansion of the Universe.
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