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Re: REPLY TO READ'S POINT ON REVELATION
Read, Dwight ANTHRO (Read@ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU)
Wed, 26 Jan 1994 10:59:00 PST
Steve M (aka seeker1) earlier wrote:
>> c) The knowledge was obtained by parapsychological means.
and then adds in his most recent post:
I am only interested in those
that fall into (can only be explained by) category c. I think that
throughout human history there have been at least a few.
and then adds a purported instance of this:
> All I am interested in is one simple fact. Before the moment of
>'revelation,' he did not know his son was terminally ill. After the moment
>of revelation, he did know this fact, and was able to save the boy's life
>since the doctors were able to halt the condition... this illness was in
>fact one which he had never heard of prior to this moment of 'revelation.'
Steve M is convinced that parapsychological phenomena exist and the essence
of his comments center around this claim. I remain a skeptic--e.g., how many
instances are there where someone had a revelation that was then false? Is
the purported instance reported here outside of a chance occurance?
Reporting of anecdotal accounts of this kind are extraordinarily biased
towards only reporting instances where there appears to be concordacne
between the 'revelation' and otherwise 'unknown' information. The
distribution to which the event needs to be compared to know if it could have
occurred by chance or not is seldom if ever discussed, hence leaving the
anecdote largely meaningless as evidence.
D. Read
READ@ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU
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