Formulating Challenge Proposal

[oddball]

This eventually became a challenge from Gulliver to oddball, you can read what happened is this thread: http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=82036

Greetings to all!

I'm posting these ideas in hopes of getting useful input on how well I have put them into words, and whether the proposals seem workable and likely to be accepted should I decide to submit them in an application for the $1m Challenge, or if not, to elicit suggestions on how to improve them.

The proposal is in three parts, only two of which have so far been given much careful thought, as the third one may be too difficult to prove in a testing environment, however I include it here because I think it is sufficiently unusual to warrant consideration and am open to proving it if a suitable testing method can be devised.

Thanks in advance to anyone who may post helpful comments.

___________________________


A: Paranormal Awareness of Ancestral Details


NATURE OF CLAIM:

This claim is for the ability to accurately discern, through visual observation alone, and with no prior knowledge of a subject, certain data (as explained below) about an individual's ancestors, at least 75% of the time.


PROPOSED METHOD OF PROVING CLAIM "A":

An uninterested Referee will select twelve volunteers, over 21 years of age, who will affirm that they do not personally know and have never had any contact with the challenger or anyone associated with JREF, and that until at least their 18th birthday they personally knew both of their natural parents and all four of their grandparents. Anyone who lost a parent or grandparent while still a minor, or grew up in an adoptive family, cannot participate.

On the day of the demonstration, and shortly before it begins, the twelve volunteers shall present the Referee with truthful, written, brief, chronological accounts, going as far back in time as they can recall, for each progenitor, describing in their own words the progenitor’s general appearance, character and state of health, up to the present time if still living or to the time of death, if deceased; and the progenitor’s current age, or their age of demise.

The above descriptions (6 per volunteer, 72 total) shall be sealed, together, in an envelope, and locked in a box in view of the challenger and remaining untouched until the last part of the demonstration.

The challenger will sit quietly with each of the twelve volunteers, one at a time, for up to five minutes each, during which time no one will speak. The volunteer being observed shall face the challenger with fully-open eyes when so requested by a visual signal (or a light tap on the hand, in the case of blind volunteers). The challenger will make notes during each "sitting".

When all twelve volunteers have been so observed, the challenger shall deliver a verbal description of each parent and grandparent of each volunteer. The written descriptions previously provided by each volunteer will be compared with the challenger's verbal descriptions. If the challenger states information not included in a volunteer's written description, the volunteer may be asked to verify that information on the spot.

If at least nine volunteers find the challenger's observations largely accurate, challenger wins $1m. Challenger and JREF will work out in advance and agree on a precise definition of "largely accurate" in this context.

(398 words)

___________________________


B: Paranormal Diagnosis of Cancer


NATURE OF CLAIM:

This claim is for the ability to discern, in at least two out of three instances and without the use of any medical equipment or medically recognized form of testing, whether a given individual has cancer.


PROPOSED METHOD OF PROVING CLAIM "B":

An independent Referee who has no interest in the outcome of the challenge shall select group of at least 60 subjects aged 50 years or older, at least 10% and no more than 50% of whom, at the time of the demonstration, have been medically diagnosed with cancer in any form.

The cancer patients selected must not be in remission, and in their appearance must be indistinguishable from the other subjects with regard to their cancerous status (i.e. not obviously or incongruously bald from chemotherapy, or wearing a hospital gown or hospital bracelet).

Anyone who has not been diagnosed with cancer should decline to participate if they have any qualms at the prospect of hearing from the challenger that they may have cancer.

Each subject shall appear at the demonstration carrying a 3" x 5" card bearing their full name and a number (from 1 through however many subjects are in the group) and shall approach the challenger when so requested, hand over their card, state their name and date of birth, and remain quiet for one minute or until the challenger dismisses them, whichever is first.

These encounters shall take place with no one else closer than twenty-five feet from the challenger and subject being observed, although JREF at its option may observe the proceedings via one or more pairs of binoculars and/or any number of zoom lenses.

When the challenger has observed all the subjects at close range, the challenger will state the numbers of those who have cancer. The Referee should have already recorded which subjects have in fact been medically diagnosed with active cancer at the time of the demonstration.

If the challenger successfully identifies at least two-thirds of the known cancer patients in the group, challenger wins $1m. JREF and challenger will agree on a different winning percentage if the number of known cancer patients who show up for the demonstration is not divisible by 3.

(372 words)

__________________________


C: Raising the dead


NATURE OF CLAIM:

This claim is for the ability to revive a person who has died of natural causes within the 8-hour period immediately preceeding the revivification attempt, without using any medically recognized equipment or procedures, at least 50% of the time.


PROPOSED METHOD OF PROVING CLAIM "C":

[Here is where I'd need a lot of help devising a testing protocol! The only thing I am certain of is that the challenger would require any observers to remain silent and relatively motionless, and keep a distance of at least 5-6 feet.]

___________________________


Final note: I am willing to prove Claims A & B in a single day of testing, but if a workable method of proving Claim C is devised, I am unwilling to prove it on the same day as Claim A and/or B are proven.

[timokay]

Ok, I think you are out there, but I can't fault you for not giving us something to work with.

I have a few questions.

Claim A: What specific information can you discern by looking at someone? Can you tell specifically any of the following:
Age at the time of death of a relative.
Location of death of relative.
Cause of death of relative (and by this I would want you to be very specific, meaning exact cause of death, not just that "he had pains in his chest", or "He could not breathe"
Names of relatives (not letters)
Birthdates (again, very specific, not astrological signs)

Claim B:
Involving cancer patients, or potential cancer patients would, I imagine, be quite a logistical problem. What other ailments can you identify? Can you suggest a simpler ailment, that a large group of people may sufffer from, and yet is easily identified?

Claim C. I find this one to be highly ridiculous, so you certainly will be asked to provide affidavits for this one. I do not want to spend time on it, so I will simply ask, and please be brief in your response.
Have you ever raised the dead, and under what circumstances?

[steenkh]

A: Paranormal Awareness of Ancestral Details
(... snip ...)
If at least nine volunteers find the challenger's observations largely accurate, challenger wins $1m. Challenger and JREF will work out in advance and agree on a precise definition of "largely accurate" in this context.

This is a call for judging. It will never be accepted. This whole procedure of testing is dependent on judging whether a given description fits or not.

I think the JREF will prefer a method of testing where you will get the written statements and try to match them with the volunteers.

B: Paranormal Diagnosis of Cancer

I think this is a valid test, but it will be difficult to actually carry out. You will need to get willing test subjects, and you also need to pay for medical examinations to ensure that previous diagnoses were correct. Imagine what would happen if you find that somebody did not have cancer, although this person had a cancer diagnose, and you later find that the cancer diagnose was wrong, and the person in fact did not have cancer?

C: Raising the dead

How often have you done this in practice? If you could actually do this, I wonder why you need JREF's million. If you could demonstrate this time and again, you would get rich, immensely rich!

It can surely be testend, but it will not be accepted before you have provided the affidavits, and I have my doubts that getting those will be easy for you. Somehow, this claim makes you sound rather insincere! You should not try to apply for the JREF million with claims that you have never tried. In fact, you should only ever apply with claims that you have tried again and again so that there is not the slightest chance that you could fail, even if you had to repeat the test a hundred times!

[oddball]

Thank you very much for your questions, they are already helping me to clarify many aspects of the proposals. This is in reply to timokay, who began by asking what specific information can I discern by looking at someone, and can I tell specifically:Age at the time of death of a relative

Generally not if they died prematurely as a result of an accident, but otherwise, I can usually tell whether they lived past a particular "milestone" like 60, 70, 80, etc.Location of death of relative

noCause of death of relative

not often, but occasionallyNames of relatives (not letters)

noBirthdatesno


The type of information that can usually be seen is how robust one parent or grandparent was in relation to the opposite-sex (spouse) parent or grandparent; which side of the family had the most vitality and longevity, and from which progenitor(s) it derived, in order of descending influence (often going back 4 generations, but this degree of ability is not consistent enough to include it in the claim); in the case of deceased progenitors, which one (of a married pair) lived longer, and by approximately how much time (again at least in terms of decades, if not lesser intervals, and again only when premature accidental death did not occur). There are a few more stats which can often be pinpointed but those I've outlined about are the ones most often accurately discerned.Claim B: What other ailments can you identify?

Cancer is the most consistently discernable, however many other major illnesses (heart disease, alcoholism, drug addiction, schizophrenia, etc.) can often be seen.Can you suggest a simpler ailment, that a large group of people may sufffer from, and yet is easily identified?

I could, but I don't think there is a shortage of people in our modern society suffering from major life-threatening illness, and since it is usually so easy to detect cancer (I often notice cases in people shopping in supermarkets or going to the theater, or in other places where crowds are present - but of course I do not confront them with a pronouncement!) that is the condition I prefer to offer to demonstrate on.Claim C. Have you ever raised the dead, and under what circumstances?No. I was given careful instruction by someone who has done it, and also warned to be careful if I ever tried it not to let too many people know unless I wanted to be in a limelight or possibly endure negative consequences.

I imagine it would also be rather difficult to find a potential subject on whom to practice, and it never occurred to be to seek an opportunity to put the knowledge into actual practice. My reason for agreeing to accept the instruction at the time it was offered was the idea that it might someday come in handy to give a second chance to a loved one.

Only on one occasion after being taught the revival method have I actually been present when someone died a natural death, and at that time there were many reasons to refrain from trying to revive the person.

So, no, I could not provide affidavits for this claim, but if an opportunity to test it out did become available, either by chance or design, I sure would be happy to do it (and who would object, because after all, the subject would have nothing to lose if I failed), and I would have a reasonable expectation of succeeding.

[rjh01]

I do not understand your last post about claim A. You may need to re-read it and clarify it.

Claim B where you say that you can look at people and tell that they have cancer, unless you can verify this information it is worthless. You may be convinced that a person has cancer but they do not have cancer.

Claim C you have never done. So forget about this.

[oddball]

I think the JREF will prefer a method of testing where you will get the written statements and try to match them with the volunteers.

In that case, I think a questionnaire could be given to the volunteers, asking for specific information to be matched by the challenger.

I think this is a valid test, but it will be difficult to actually carry out. You will need to get willing test subjects, and you also need to pay for medical examinations to ensure that previous diagnoses were correct. Imagine what would happen if you find that somebody did not have cancer, although this person had a cancer diagnose, and you later find that the cancer diagnose was wrong, and the person in fact did not have cancer?

I can't say that I think it would be difficult to find willing subjects, although I hadn't given that aspect much thought yet. I will.... As to the second thing you wrote, I wasn't claiming an ability to accurately discern who is *not* afflicted with cancer.... Maybe I don't understand what you're getting at.

How often have you done this in practice? If you could actually do this, I wonder why you need JREF's million. If you could demonstrate this time and again, you would get rich, immensely rich!

Please refer to my reply (above) to timokay.

It can surely be testend, but it will not be accepted before you have provided the affidavits, and I have my doubts that getting those will be easy for you.

Yes it probably would be difficult to get affidavits, and come to think of it I would probably feel pretty strange about having to ask people to provide them, should the occasion arise. I'm certainly not about go around advertising for such opportunities, I think I'd be risking getting tossed into a nut house or something.

Somehow, this claim makes you sound rather insincere!

Yes, I agree with you there. Sometimes I don't spend enough time considering how people will react to things I might say.... I've led a fairly reclusive life for the last ten years or so, and prior to that I lived among people who did not find my abilities particularly surprising or unusual, and thus I failed to realize just how vastly different is the point of view of the majority of people in this modern society.

You should not try to apply for the JREF million with claims that you have never tried. In fact, you should only ever apply with claims that you have tried again and again so that there is not the slightest chance that you could fail, even if you had to repeat the test a hundred times!

This I agree with, in principle. But look at it from a slightly different angle (and I know my analogy isn't good at all, I'm usually not great at finding analogies that fit well), suppose you had spent a large part of your life among people who, as a part of their general culture, did not know there were such things as bicycles, and could not conceive of their existence, much less know how it feels to learn to ride one. You on the other hand knew all about bicycles and had started riding them early in your childhood. You would most likely become the brunt of heavy ridicule were you to start talking about some of your bicycling adventures among those uninitiated folk who had never seen a bicycle. But you would know in your own mind that you could get on a bicycle and ride it even if you hadn't been on one in decades and maybe hadn't done very much bike riding in your lifetime. You would not feel a need to practice, practice, practice riding a bike, in order to be certain that you could ride one given the opportunity.

That's the best I can come up with at the moment by way of explaining why I haven't found it necessary to keep testing the abilities I claim, or even to test one time the ability to raise the dead. I know it can be done and that no special skill is involved, only knowledge - not commonly known in this day and age, but mere knowledge, all the same. One who does not possess the same knowledge is virtually compelled to assess it's successful employment as some kind of inexplicable "trick", fluke or coincidence, while those who have the knowledge may even take it for granted.

You ask why I haven't tried to use this knowledge to "get immensely rich". Actually I already feel immensely rich, in one sense, just having had the chance to learn to do these "amazing feats". Winning a million bux and at the same time (hopefully) putting a foot in the door, so to speak, of the "mass consciousness" - whereby the fundamental principles, the basis of this knowledge and these abilities can begin being widely taught and applied to solving some of humankind's grave problems - would be the greatest reward I could ever wish for.

[oddball]

I do not understand your last post about claim A. You may need to re-read it and clarify it.

I'm not sure what needs clarification. If you feel inclined to elaborate, I'd welcome the opportunity to answer specific questions.

Claim B where you say that you can look at people and tell that they have cancer, unless you can verify this information it is worthless. You may be convinced that a person has cancer but they do not have cancer.

I'm pretty sure I didn't say the knowledge that they have cancer comes via looking at a person. Claim A involves visual observation, but I didn't say that Claim B works the same way.

For purposes of this challenge, my conviction that a person has cancer who hasn't been diagnosed is not at issue. The issue is whether I can identify 2/3 of those who *have* been diagnosed with cancer that is not in remission.

Claim C you have never done. So forget about this.

You're probably right, it may be best to forget C, but the ultimate decision might belong to James Randi.

[nathan]

A commonly proposed protocol for your claim A is one that is also proposed for astrological readings.

1) You provide 'readings' for N test subjects (in the manner you have described quite precisely).

2) Your readings are transcribed (or you provide them in written form.

3) Each test subject receives all N of your readings and selects the one that refers to them

4) You pass the test if M or more subjects actually do select the reading you made for them.

This has a number of useful features
1) the matching is done by the person to whom the reading is pertinant. this avoids them having to write down in advance all the important information you wanted. Your own procedure had a piece at the end discussing what to do if you mentioned something that they themselves had not written down.

2) if your predictions are so vague that they apply to most people, this will automatically be detected because the number of sucessful matches will be near the number that pure chance would suggest. Neither you nor the JREF have to decide whether something like 'your maternal grandfather lived into their 60s' is specific enough to be a significant feature of someone's life.

What the procedure is trying to avoid is a person's propensity to say 'yes, that applies to me' when given a list of relatively common features/incidents/whatever. (I'm sure you'll be able to find references on the web about how horoscopes do this, and that even when you mix up the readings, people still think the reading matches.)

IMHO your claim A is the simplest and easiest to test. I recommend you focus on that one.

[steenkh]

In that case, I think a questionnaire could be given to the volunteers, asking for specific information to be matched by the challenger.
Yes, this kind of testing has been proposed many times by the JREF. I am sure you could get an accept of such a protocol. You should also try to practise it before you apply.

As to the second thing you wrote, I wasn't claiming an ability to accurately discern who is *not* afflicted with cancer.... Maybe I don't understand what you're getting at.

YOu will be given a number of test subjects. some of them will have diagnosed cancer, and some of them will not. If you can determine which ones have cancer, that would be equivalent to saying which ones do not have cancer.

What I meant was that you would probably feel cheated of the million, if you had made a single wrong choice, and then afterwards found that it was the diagnosis that was wrong, and you were right! (The JREF would be sorry if it went the other way, but they are very experienced at making protocols that prevent this from happening)

You ask why I haven't tried to use this knowledge to "get immensely rich". Actually I already feel immensely rich, in one sense, just having had the chance to learn to do these "amazing feats". Winning a million bux and at the same time (hopefully) putting a foot in the door, so to speak, of the "mass consciousness" - whereby the fundamental principles, the basis of this knowledge and these abilities can begin being widely taught and applied to solving some of humankind's grave problems - would be the greatest reward I could ever wish for.
If you could raise the dead, you would not need the JREF million in order to put a foot in the door of the mass consciousness. You would get immediate world-wide attention if you could do it just once!

As for test persons, you could approach the community of believers in paranormal things (that we call "woos"), and it seems that you have already lived in such a community, and I am sure that some woos would be more than willing to let you try to resurrect one of their loved ones. You would just need to have a (non-woo) doctor present, and you would not only have your first affidavit, but probably also all the headlines in the world!

Just how resurrection would work is the question. People die because their organs stop working. You would have to make actual physical changes in their organs in order to resurrect them - if they should not die again immediately a few seconds later. These physical changes should also be possible to perform on living people, right? What about animals? This would make all sorts of tests possible!

[steenkh]

By the way, oddball, can you detect skin cancer? And can you distinguish skin cancers from other cancers?

SKin cancer is relatively easy to determine by an experienced carcinologist, and assuming you do not have to view people when they are naked, the actual melanomas could be on parts of the body that are covered. This could make an easy test.

[oddball]

If you could raise the dead, you would not need the JREF million in order to put a foot in the door of the mass consciousness. You would get immediate world-wide attention if you could do it just once!

I did not say that I would need the JREF million to accomplish the goal. In fact I haven't given a lot of thought to what I would do with the million, beyond acquiring a reliable and minimally-polluting vehicle and a small homestead, and maybe doing a bit of travel, and getting the best dentist I could find to make some long overdue repairs to my teeth. But I could certainly find enough ways to spend the money, and do it quickly, without giving any of it away (although I'm sure the IRS would demand that I donate a hefty portion of it to the U.S. Treasury!).

And I'm not sure I would want to deal with a lot of attention from the world, either. I never thought of trying to gain attention by performing "miraculous" feats, because I am basically pretty lazy and laid back, as well as a very private type of person.

I see the opportunity presented here as one that could generate a lot of the right kind of publicity, and I think it would mostly be publicity that I would not have to be directly involved with. I wouldn't mind working behind the scenes in some capacity with a few converted skeptics who felt very excited at the prospect of what could be achieved by putting this kind of knowledge to work as I stated before.

I really don't want to bring religion into this discussion, but there is this movie which happens to deal with the topic of "God" that I can use to illuminate where I'm coming from... I watched this because I like Jim Carrey's comedy style. Have you seen this film, called Bruce Almighty? If not, please do, then you will completely grasp what I mean when I say that the initial attitude of the character of Bruce Nolan when he suddenly acquires all the "powers of God" is way different than how I would feel and act if I suddenly acquired fame and fortune by virtue of winning the JREF Challenge. And Nolan's amazement, and quick acceptance of the "existence of God" as portrayed in that film, is how I envision the attitude of the kind of people I would be so happy to be involved with after winning the $1m Challenge. My own attitude would be quite similar to the way Morgan Freeman played "God" in that movie: calm, confident, quiet, reserved, but still with a good sense of humor and a tendency to be a bit childlike from time to time.

The world doesn't need to learn how to raise the dead, whether human or animal. What it needs is to learn how to manage living on the earth in a happier state, without making war on one another and on nature which supports and gives us life. And the basic principles and understanding required before one can learn the art of raising the dead, diagnosing cancer without machines, knowing a lot of basic stuff about others' ancestors merely by looking at them, and many more abilities (not necessarily any suggested by applicants for the $1m prize to date) that are now considered "paranormal" by the dominant culture, are the very ones required to build the most basic tools for bringing about a truly peaceful civilization.

As for test persons, you could approach the community of believers in paranormal things (that we call "woos"), and it seems that you have already lived in such a community, and I am sure that some woos would be more than willing to let you try to resurrect one of their loved ones. You would just need to have a (non-woo) doctor present, and you would not only have your first affidavit, but probably also all the headlines in the world!

As I already mentioned I am not looking to see my name in lights or headlines, but rather would like to see that the kind of knowledge that enables one to acquire certain "paranormal" abilities becomes widespread, in whatever manner. I have not lived in any "woo" community, in fact I've got some very big bones of contention with those kind of people and have quietly helped to expose more than my fair share of charlatans who were much more than "harmless quacks" and actually inflicting serious damage on others. I used to call those folks "woo-woos". No, I would rather not have to be so closely involved with such people that I could persuade one or more of them to allow me to test my ability to resurrect the dead. If I decide to test the ability in preparation for using it as a claim in the JREF challenge, I will find people with whom I have a lot fewer disagreements.

Just how resurrection would work is the question. People die because their organs stop working. You would have to make actual physical changes in their organs in order to resurrect them - if they should not die again immediately a few seconds later. These physical changes should also be possible to perform on living people, right? What about animals? This would make all sorts of tests possible!

Most people die because they don't know how to keep themselves alive, or don't care to make the effort. Human tissue is capable of regeneration but must be given the right conditions in order to do so. Like Nobel Laureate Dr. Alexis Carrell, of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, learned in his 29-year experiment with tissue from a chicken heart: "The cell is immortal. It is merely the fluid in which it floats that degenerates. Renew this fluid at regular intervals, give the cell something on which to feed and, so far as we know, the pulsation of life may go on forever."

The method for bringing someone back from the dead is not a matter of making physical changes to their organs, it is a means of forcing the spirit-energy back into the body, which can then perhaps be repaired by whatever means may be necessary to keep it functioning, if this can be accomplished quickly enough. In the case of accident victims, it sometimes can, especially if their death was due to not getting access to life-saving medical treatment in time. People who die of unexplained (before autopsy) causes, or who were not showing obvious signs of impending death, will be easier to revive than those who were terminally ill and resigned to dying, or who committed suicide.

[oddball]

By the way, oddball, can you detect skin cancer? And can you distinguish skin cancers from other cancers?

SKin cancer is relatively easy to determine by an experienced carcinologist, and assuming you do not have to view people when they are naked, the actual melanomas could be on parts of the body that are covered. This could make an easy test.

Skin cancer is no easier to detect than other forms of cancer, steenkh, and I do not claim to have the ability to distinguish what type of cancer a person has, only that cancer is present. Nor is it usually necessarily for me to "view" a person to know that they have cancer, I just need to be in close proximity to them for half a minute or so. Other illnesses aside from cancer, however, would require viewing at least the person's face. I do think the cancer test would be an easy one.

[Garrette]

I agree that Claim A is your best bet regarding likelihood of being tested. I also think Nathan has it right in how to do the matching of descriptions; there really is no other way than that.

Regarding Claim B: Why does the card the subject holds need their name on it?

[Gr8wight]

Claim C. Have you ever raised the dead, and under what circumstances?No. I was given careful instruction by someone who has done it, and also warned to be careful if I ever tried it not to let too many people know unless I wanted to be in a limelight or possibly endure negative consequences.

I find this claim fascinating. Have you personally witnessed this person reviving the dead?

[Gulliver]

oddball,
May I please comment? I'm not nearly as experienced here as some and entreat you to heed their advice over mine.

First, I'm struck by how carefully and accurately you use the King's language. You express yourself well, and I appreciate the effort you take to make our reading easier.

Second, I should always commend those who come seeking information, even knowledge. The most important questions originate from the realization that we don't know something.

Now on to the proposals...

I believe that you have the cart before the horse. That's really a common error in these endeavors. You're asking what protocol to prove to JREF that this wondrous skill exists. You should first be asking, “How can I really prove to myself, and those close to me, that this wondrous skill exists?” I offer that you're attempting a Herculean feat with JREF. But even major projects can be accomplished in steps.

Consider proving the skill's existence to yourself as laying the foundation for the skyscraper of proving its existence to JREF. Every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

If you would kindly accept this idea and allow me to continue here, I'd be grateful.

Proving something to yourself is easier than proving it to someone else. In the later case, you must rule out additional concerns such as the possibility of fraud. You can trust yourself in many ways, though not every way. Self-deception, for example, must be eliminated.

Let me tell you of two examples of self-delusion in proving something.

First, please consider an intelligent, indeed scholarly, nurse whom I befriended in my graduate studies. She had proven to herself that there were more complicated births during full moons in her ward. She worked from 11 P. M. to 8 A. M. She dutifully noted whether she saw a full moon on nights with a birth requiring a call to a pediatric specialist. (You should note have she attempted to remove the subjective nature of her claim.) She would go to the window and look for the moon on those nights. If she saw a moon she recorded its phase. To prove her case to me, she showed her tally over the course of an entire year that 7 out of 8 times that she looked for, and saw, the moon on these nights, it was full. Here's how she deluded herself. First, she needed to consider the phase of the moon when the calls weren't made as well. Second, rather than look out the window she should have referred to a lunar calendar. You see full moons are out all night and the most visible. A new moon, which no one can see, was recorded only as that she couldn't tell the phase of the moon, not that a new moon was associated with that night's call. Fortunately, she had the dates for over a hundred observations and within 15 minutes and the use of a computer spreadsheet, we demonstrated that there was no reason from her data to conclude any lunar influence.

My second example, involves the scientific row over cold fusion. Pons and Fleischmann published a careful study demonstration that the heat observed in their carefully controlled experiments could not be explained by non-nuclear means. Their claim was more than amazing. I'm sure that these well-respected scientists did not indeed to reach the wrong conclusion. However after many years of follow-up by the scientific community the universal conclusion is that they were wrong. My best opinion to the source of their error was that they assumed that one obscure chemical reaction could not be the source of the additional heat. A meager graduate student, as I recall, found one such error.

If these people could make such mistakes, I suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, that you're making a mistake, indeed an honest one.

Would you be so kind as to allow us the opportunity to work with you to prove (again?) to yourself your claim? I'll be happy to assist. I believe the JR/E/F in true support of the "E" standing for Education will gladly answer a call for assistance.

Sincerely,
Gulliver

[steenkh]

And I'm not sure I would want to deal with a lot of attention from the world, either.
Well, you did mention that you would want to
"(hopefully) putting a foot in the door, so to speak, of the "mass consciousness"
I think it would be difficult to avoid attention and changing the world at the same time!

And the basic principles and understanding required before one can learn the art of raising the dead, diagnosing cancer without machines, knowing a lot of basic stuff about others' ancestors merely by looking at them, and many more abilities (not necessarily any suggested by applicants for the $1m prize to date) that are now considered "paranormal" by the dominant culture, are the very ones required to build the most basic tools for bringing about a truly peaceful civilization.

Human history has never been a history peace, so I suspect that this knowledge has never been widespread. I sincerely hope that you can more than "talk the talk", but also "walk the walk"!

I have not lived in any "woo" community,

This is slightly surprising, because you wrote

I've led a fairly reclusive life for the last ten years or so, and prior to that I lived among people who did not find my abilities particularly surprising or unusual, and thus I failed to realize just how vastly different is the point of view of the majority of people in this modern society.

... and that is pretty much what we would call a "woo" community!


Most people die because they don't know how to keep themselves alive, or don't care to make the effort.
I am somewhat at odds with this statement, and I note that there are no people on earth who just go on living and living! But never mind, that is not essential to your application for the JREF challenge!

Skin cancer is no easier to detect than other forms of cancer, steenkh, and I do not claim to have the ability to distinguish what type of cancer a person has, only that cancer is present.
That is a pity!

[ben m]

Oddball, perhaps you could share with us your *own* data. Have you kept records of your own "use" or "testing" of these claims? For example, how many times have you actually walked up to someone and said "I can sense that you have cancer"? How many of those times have been shown to be right, and how many wrong? (You can't count instances of "His doctor must have missed it, because I knew it was there") How many times have you done the opposite---walked up to someone and said "I can sense that you *don't* have cancer"? How many hits, how many misses in those cases?

The reason I ask is that there's a very common way of "tricking" yourself into thinking you have a paranormal power. Imagine Bob is walking around all day and occasionally gets weird vibes from people. He makes a vague mental note when it happens---"Whoa, there's something odd about Sally today. Whoa, Fred's doing it too." In the normal course of things, maybe he's gotten these weird vibes from 100 people at one time or another, but thought nothing of it. Then, out of the blue, word goes around the office---"Fred's been diagnosed with cancer", and Bob slaps himself in the forehead---"That must be the weird vibe! It was the cancer!" At this point, Bob has completely forgotten that he got weird vibes from Sally and 98 other people. Maybe one of the other 98 people also turns out to have cancer, and Bob hears about it, and remembers his vibe. "It's the same thing as with Fred! My weird vibe is actually *detecting cancer*!" Maybe later Bob hears about a vibe-less acquaintance, Geraldine, has come down with cancer. He wonders why he didn't pick it up, and comes up with an excuse---"I never made eye contact with Geraldine because she wears sunglasses. That must be why I didn't get a vibe."

Bob's "vibes", of course, are completely random and have nothing to do with cancer. What Bob has done is to remember guesses when they've been positively confirmed, and to half-forget unsuccessful and unconfirmed guesses---and, of course, "unconfirmed" predominates, because there isn't a buzz that goes around the office when someone is *not* diagnosed with cancer. Thus, everything that he actually remembers serves to confirm his "power"; the false-positives are ignored, and excuses can be invented for the false-negatives. This is called "cognitive bias".

So, Oddball, we'd be interested to hear about the experiences that you think have "confirmed" your power, and the experiences---certain to be less prominent in your memory, unless you keep records---where you never found out about a diagnosis or lack thereof.

[Cuddles]

One point to consider is that the JREF will only look at one claim at a time. I would recommend focussing on the first claim, since the second would be much harder to organise, and likely more expensive, while the third is unlikely to be looked at seriously at all, especially since you admit that you've never even tried it.

As to a procedure for the first claim, Nathan's post (#8) is a good start. This sort of claim is a fairly common one and I'm sure JREF will have dealt with a similar one before. It would probably be worth looking through the challenge archive to see if someone else had a protocol that could be appropriate.

Edit : This one might help - http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=41120

[timokay]

I agree with the consensus of the posters who are trying to help you. Please focus on Claim A, and try not to get sidetracked by your other two claims.

Please Oddball, be simple and direct.
Just state that "I can do Claim A, and this is how I can demonstrate it."

And listen to the protocol suggestions, and listen to the helpful suggestions on how to prove it to yourself. You may be able to clairify just why you think you can do these things.

[petre]

Darn it, everyone already made all the points I had (good idea to focus on one ability, "A" seems the easiest to test for, nathan's protocol is as sound as I could imagine) except for one:

Could the ability described in 'C' be performed on non-human formerly-living entities? I suspect the answer is no. Why that is the case might be an interesting topic, but likely not helpful in developing a simple and useful protocol to test it.

[Rasmus]

A: Paranormal Awareness of Ancestral Details

It would probably be helpful if you could provide us with a sample reading. I find it very hard to judge your abstract descriptions and decide if they could be tested.

B: Paranormal Diagnosis of Cancer


Here, the biggest problem is that you have no way of knowing if your readings in public places are correct. I suggest you do not make this claim until you have tested it thoroughly for yourself. (In fact, you should test yourself for your first ability, too, because I fear your original protocol is open for a lof of ambiguity - and if you have been judging your ability in the past to the same standards, you might well be wrong.)

Also, don't worry about whether the number can be divided by three. "At least 1/3)" simply means you will have to round up to the nearest person, regardless of the number of subjects. Simplify things. (Or do you think this would be too demanding or unfair? In that case, maybe ask that the number be always floored down.)

C: Raising the dead

Wish I had known you sooner in my life...

Frankly, if you believe *this*, without ever having even observed it, let alone done it yourself, I have to severely doubt that you have tested your other abilities with any rigour at all.

Why should anyone treat the simpler, less astonishing claims with more scrutiny than this? If you could raise the dead, I would not hesitate to belive for even a second that you could also diagnose diseases by just looking at people. (Or any other thing you may seem fit to claim!)

But that you accept this believe without question tells me that you have probably not questioned your other abilities, either. Therefore, I doubt that what whatever you did was really suitable to tell if you8 had the abilities at all. Please do test yourself before you have to invest any kind of money into your application.

Secondly, I doubt your ability to raise the dead could be tested by the JREF. (Where would you get someone that had died during the last 8hrs on testing day?) What limitations are there? (Can you revive someoene who has been beheaded? Does the head have to be there?)

Never even mind the ethical implications. I have no doubt that the JREF will refuse the test (on humans, at least, but maybe you are willing to perform on lab rats?) on those grounds alone.

Allow me to address your bicycle analogy - because I think it might serve to tell you a slight logical error you have made:

You have never seen or ridden a bicycle yourself! You are not a cyclist in a community of non-cyclists. You are a non-cyclist in a community of non-cyclists that claims that he could ride a bicycle anytime he wanted. Without ever having seen one, mind you. Just because you chose to believe the daring stories of someone else who claimed that he had once used a bicycle.

You also claim that you just never had an opportunity or need to ride a bicycle in your entire life. Even though accesses is simple you want us to believe that you never needed to get anywhere quickly, or that one of your loved once could have made good use had you delivered a message or ran an errand for them?

Keep in mind also that what you are asking us to believe goes well beyond an unknown mechanical devise. (People throughout history have dreamed of being able to fly - and even though until very recently nobody has managed to do so, nobody would have thought it impossible. Birds fly, after all ...)

I do not wish to discourage you, but I sincerely ask you to re-examine your abilities critically.

[ben m]

A few more comments:

A) Suppose that you come into a cancer-detection test with 50 subjects and state "My powers tell me that they ALL of them have cancer". You'd be guaranteed to make a "correct diagnosis" for each of the cancer patients, but I'm sure you agree that this would not be evidence of anything paranormal. Therefore, you'd need to be very clear about your expected success rates on both subpopulations. You need to state clearly that your "cancer" diagnosis is X% accurate, and your "not cancer" diagnosis is Y% accurate. X and Y need not be the same.

b) If your family-history test centers on guessing whether one's grandmother or grandfather lived longer, keep in mind that men and women have different age distributions. If you blindly guess "the wife lived longer" in every case, you'll be right much more than 50% of the time. Also, you have to make sure that you're not simply guessing ancestries. "Hmm, your grandparents were African-American? Born about 80--90 years ago?" JREF has to provide a fixed set of categories for you to "predict"; limiting it to ages or who-died-first is probably a good idea.

c) You mentioned that you think you can can diagnose things other than cancer, just not as accurately. Keep in mind that it will be very hard for JREF to find 5 or 10 volunteers with active, diagnosed, but invisible/symptom-free cancers---it'll be hard to test you even if you claim 90% accuracy. On the other hand, your detection technique may be "non-visual". If you believe that you have 60% accuracy on *any* simple body-detection task, it might be easier to test---can you walk up to a door or a curtain and simply detect whether there's a human being on the other side? Can you tell whether a person still has their wisdom teeth, appendix, or tonsils? Can you simply sense pain---can you tell whether a person has a clothespin squeezing their finger or not? Any of these things would be easier to test; it's easier to find subjects, and easier to do many repeated trials, compared to cancer. Of course, don't volunteer to be tested for an ability you're not sure you have; JREF doesn't want you to fail a test, then go home and say "They tricked me into agreeing to a tonsil-detection test! I'm still sure I can detect cancer!"

[oddball]

Regarding Claim B: Why does the card the subject holds need their name on it

On arrival at the test site, each subject would be given a card with their name and number. The name is already recorded elsewhere by a Referee as being diagnosed with cancer or not. The subject has to hand me their card, and state their name too. This is to protect me from any cheating. I don't want to have to ask the subjects to show ID to me, so they come with these cards and hand them to me, and there is a list to back it up, so no one can be switched around.

The subject by the end of the test, having handed over their card to me, may have forgotten what number they were assigned, but I also know their name. I've made a note on each card that I detected cancer or not. If any questions arise, the cards can be checked against the list held by the Referee.

[oddball]

Oddball, perhaps you could share with us your *own* data. Have you kept records of your own "use" or "testing" of these claims? For example, how many times have you actually walked up to someone and said "I can sense that you have cancer"? How many of those times have been shown to be right, and how many wrong? (You can't count instances of "His doctor must have missed it, because I knew it was there") How many times have you done the opposite---walked up to someone and said "I can sense that you *don't* have cancer"? How many hits, how many misses in those cases?

-- snip cognitive bias illustration --

So, Oddball, we'd be interested to hear about the experiences that you think have "confirmed" your power, and the experiences---certain to be less prominent in your memory, unless you keep records---where you never found out about a diagnosis or lack thereof.

I'm starting to get backed up with a lot of unanswered posts so I will need to make this quick. Someone complimented me on my use of language. It takes concentration to write well, and even more concentration to communicate well in writing and yet be concise. And concentration takes time. A well rested body helps too, and I don't have either right now!

Anyway to answer your question, no, I have never approached anyone and commented on my opinion of the state of their health, without first being asked to do so. How often do you suppose non-MDs are approached by people inquiring about the status of their health? I can tell you, it doesn't happen much at all, but in cases where the subject may be seeking an alternative approach to healing themselves, they will sometimes seek the aid of an alternative healer of one sort or another.

In the past, I was a cancer "victim" myself, and according to the oncologist I was beyond treatment and terminal, that if I was lucky I had two months left, and I should go home and wrap up any loose ends.

I didn't want to die. I was only 21 at the time. So I made up my mind to find a means to heal my condition, and I did. I am still here, and cancer-free, 32 years later, thanks to what I learned, and the people who helped me learn it, and putting what I learned into practice in my own life.

It was clear to me after the first six months on this journey to recovery that I was not only going to survive the illness but also have a much higher overall quality of life than I had in the past, if I stuck with the program I was following. And more so, if I would reach out and help other sick people, as a way of repaying my debt of gratitude for getting a second chance at life.

So I undertook a deeper study of the healing modalities that I had employed to rid my body of an inoperable tumor. Part of that deeper study involved an apprenticeship of sorts with an alternative healing professional who consulted with many people suffering from so-called incurable illnesses, including cancer of all sorts. Part of that apprenticeship involved being present and taking notes during consultations.

As each person came into the consultation area, I was not aware of the nature of their health problem. Neither was my teacher. The person would hand my teacher a completed form and he would read it. This would take a few minutes, during which time usually no one was speaking and I had no notes to take, I just sat there.

After a few months of doing this week after week, I started to notice that I always knew before anyone spoke a word in these meetings which people had come to discuss their cancer. Since that time, I have found that I always "know" that someone has cancer before they or anyone else tells me about it.

I suppose the point I'm trying to make here is that I don't feel a need to test myself on this, as I've already done it, just as I know how to bake a pie, open a can of soup, sweep the floor and change bed linens. When I heard about the $1m Challenge I decided to consider capitalizing on my unusual ability to detect cancer, and sent a few questions to JREF, and got an extremely rude response.

I don't like dealing with rude people, so I just forgot about it for the time being. Then a few days ago I happened to find this forum, and started reading, and saw that there are now a lot more people involved in the challenge than there apparently were when I first found out about it, and figured they would help to balance any rudeness coming from anyone working directly with JREF, and decided to reconsider applying. I can still use the money, too.... :D

[oddball]

Could the ability described in 'C' be performed on non-human formerly-living entities? I suspect the answer is no. Why that is the case might be an interesting topic, but likely not helpful in developing a simple and useful protocol to test it.

It may work on other mammals. I never thought to ask the person who gave me the instruction about using it on animals. But I imagine it would be even harder to find suitable animal subjects to test on than to find human ones, and since I am not sure what modifications to the technique might be necessary to use it on an animal (and I am pretty sure that it would be slightly different for each species), or even that it would work on them, I'd sooner stick with humans, if this ever ends up being something I want to send JREF as a claim.

If I win the challenge with one of my "lesser" abilities, and there is no longer a prize to attempt to claim, there would be no point in it anyway. Raising the dead is not a miracle, it's just a very good way to get someone with a closed mind to listen to you about more important matters.

[oddball]

Suppose that you come into a cancer-detection test with 50 subjects and state "My powers tell me that they ALL of them have cancer". You'd be guaranteed to make a "correct diagnosis" for each of the cancer patients, but I'm sure you agree that this would not be evidence of anything paranormal. Therefore, you'd need to be very clear about your expected success rates on both subpopulations. You need to state clearly that your "cancer" diagnosis is X% accurate, and your "not cancer" diagnosis is Y% accurate. X and Y need not be the same.

That's why I wrote in my original proposal draft that no more than half of the subjects chosen can be people who have already been diagnosed with cancer, but at least 10% must be, and with the 60-subject minimum there would have to be at least 6 confirmed cancer patients in the group, and I would have to find at least 4 of them in order to win. If JREF wanted to up the odds of me losing, they could stipulate a higher number of subjects. Of course the Referee would be the only one involved aside from the subjects themselves who knew in advance which ones have cancer.

To prevent me from saying that they all have cancer, I can agree not to tell more than 50% of the people in the group that they have cancer. In fact what I would try to do is name the ones with medically-diagnosed cancer first and get "winning" out of the equation right off the bat. I guess it would also be a good idea for JREF to insist on including at least 10% subjects who have been given a "clean bill of health" within, say, six months immediately prior to the test, and that also need to detect at least 2/3 of those subjects. I'd have no objection to that.

If your family-history test centers on guessing whether one's grandmother or grandfather lived longer, keep in mind that men and women have different age distributions. If you blindly guess "the wife lived longer" in every case, you'll be right much more than 50% of the time. Also, you have to make sure that you're not simply guessing ancestries. "Hmm, your grandparents were African-American? Born about 80--90 years ago?" JREF has to provide a fixed set of categories for you to "predict"; limiting it to ages or who-died-first is probably a good idea.

I'll need to give this some more thought.

You mentioned that you think you can can diagnose things other than cancer, just not as accurately.

I don't think I said I would be less accurate with other diseases.

Keep in mind that it will be very hard for JREF to find 5 or 10 volunteers with active, diagnosed, but invisible/symptom-free cancers

They don't need to be "symptom-free". I will not be "examining" these people in any kind of depth, merely standing near them for less than a minute. I could probably do this wearing a blindfold. Maybe I should offer to wear one during the test.

On the other hand, your detection technique may be "non-visual". If you believe that you have 60% accuracy on *any* simple body-detection task

Snipped the rest. I can't detect anything other than cancer without using my eyes. Eyes help as a backup if I am not quite sure from non-visual indications, but I'm fairly sure I could still hit at least 2/3 cancer cases without using my eyes at all.

[Gulliver]

...
As each person came into the consultation area, I was not aware of the nature of their health problem. Neither was my teacher. The person would hand my teacher a completed form and he would read it. This would take a few minutes, during which time usually no one was speaking and I had no notes to take, I just sat there.

After a few months of doing this week after week, I started to notice that I always knew before anyone spoke a word in these meetings which people had come to discuss their cancer. Since that time, I have found that I always "know" that someone has cancer before they or anyone else tells me about it.

I suppose the point I'm trying to make here is that I don't feel a need to test myself on this, as I've already done it, just as I know how to bake a pie, open a can of soup, sweep the floor and change bed linens. ...

Please, please, please reconsider. Your statements point directly to several very obvious sources of error in your conclusion.

Consider, for example, that you have failed to block the experimental error caused by your (unintentional) observation of the demeanor of an individual faced with cancer. This observation alone, unnoticed by you, could be the source of your gift. You may be an excellent judge of body language. Remember the human mind is an amazing thing. You can do wonderful things. But just like a space shuttle pilot doesn't have a supernatural gift to accomplish amazing feats, you don't need (as least necessarily) a supernatural gift to know when someone has cancer.

Please.
Guliiver

[ben m]

Two noteworthy things, Oddball. First and most important: the "unconsciously ignoring false positives" effect is often present in things people do every day. If you didn't keep records, may I ask where do you get the "2/3 true IDs" prediction? Why not 100%? And why don't you know what your false positive rate is? (If sometimes your ability "triggered" on someone who was not, in fact, aware of having cancer, let's assume that it was a false positive; this gives you an upper limit, a most-pessimistic value for your false-positive rate.)

Secondly: you were observing people who knew they had cancer, were worried about their cancer, and were standing in front of a healer waiting to hear whether he could help their cancer. This is a good illustration of why JREF (and scientists generally) use "double-blind" techniques, in which no one involved in the experiment---testee, patient, scorekeeper---should know what the "desired" answer is until the experiment is done and the numbers are written down and waiting only to be added up. Why is that? Rather than discovering that you can "detect cancer", perhaps you have discovered the non-paranormal skill of being "very good at reading the worried expressions and body language of cancer victims?" (For example, a receptionist at a dentist's office might become very good at detecting toothaches, completely non-paranormally.) So, keep in mind that the JREF is not running the "empathy and facial-expression sensitivity challenge", but rather a "paranormal challenge"; if they agree to test your cancer claim, they'll probably want to develop a double-blind protocol in which you do not see your subjects' faces, or in which the subjects themselves do not know whether they have cancer. Difficult, I know---that's why so few (if any?)medical claims ever get tested, and why drug companies need to spend huge amounts of money testing their diagnostic tools.

Third: there are not now "a lot more people involved in the challenge". This forum is not officially involved in any way, we're just the spectators chatting and shouting advice from the box seats. Only the stuff going to challenge@randi.org is part of the challenge. Hopefully your participation here will help you put together a realistic and easy-to-test application. Let me add to the several posters here who have expressed appreciation for your clear and ready explanations, Oddball: thanks!

[oddball]

I'll try to cover a few more of the comments I need to address now in one post, briefly, because I am out of time for the day.

To Ben's #28: Thanks for the writing praise. The rest of what you wrote in your last paragraph is what I meant, I need the participation and assistance of others who are in some way concerned with the challenge, and I need for it not to be all rudeness.

Also, Ben, the people I was exposed to in the apprenticeship were probably at least 80% serious, life-threatening illnesses, but not even close to a majority of those in the "serious" group were there because of cancer.

I am not a doctor and would never presume to tell anyone that I believed they were cancer-free even with their consent. That is known as practicing medicine without a license and can get one into a lot of trouble. I don't think it would need to interfere with a test like this, however, if my results statement was only given to the Referee and not disclosed to the subjects.

And Rasmus, I am not at liberty to discuss details of any resurrection attempts, who made them on whose behalf and how they turned out. I can only say that I know it works and have every reason to expect it would work if I tried it on some who could be successfully revived. Sorry about that.

Gulliver, I think I've covered your question in #27 in a couple of my other recent responses.

Thanks ever so much to everyone who's taken the time to comment and probe! You're helping me more than you may know and more than I have time to say at the moment.

[Gulliver]

Gulliver, I think I've covered your question in #27 in a couple of my other recent responses.

Okay, I'm confused. I've read #27 four times. I can't find a single question mark. Perhaps you're refusing to reconsider your position that you've proven your skills as accurate and supernatural to yourself.

If so, I firmly believe that you're now wasting our time. Please know that you'll get nowhere with the challenge as long as you continue with the inherent defects that we've pointed out to you.

I mourn that someone as intelligent as you, as demonstrated by your clear thought and writing, would continue along this path of conviction when others have lit the way to reason. Randi often comments how sad it is when he encounters the well-intentioned self-deluded who can't be awoken. Perhaps you might modify your resurrection skill to an enlightment one and apply it to yourself. Ah, now there's a skill for which I'd pay $1,000,000 out-of-pocket to have. (Checkbook at the ready!) Imagine the possibilities. As Robert Burns said, "O wud the power the giftie gee us, to see oursels as others see us."

Signing off,
Gulliver

[oddball]

Gulliver, I interpreted part of your #27 post as a question: "Will you please reconsider?"

If in fact it's the consensus of those participating in this thread that I am wasting their time, I will quit posting. Otherwise, anyone who thinks that my purpose is to waste others' time is free to quit participating.

[Gulliver]

Gulliver, I interpreted part of your #27 post as a question: "Will you please reconsider?"

If in fact it's the consensus of those participating in this thread that I am wasting their time, I will quit posting. Otherwise, anyone who thinks that my purpose is to waste others' time is free to quit participating.

Regarding your first point, an imperative statement is not a question, but I did understand your meaning. (Nasty nits these grammar constructs can be.)

As far as your second point, you have both my vote and my sign-off on this thread. (PM me if you decide to reconsider your self-proof.)

Best wishes for the future,
Gulliver

[oddball]

If you didn't keep records, may I ask where do you get the "2/3 true IDs" prediction?

Yes, of course you may ask anything you wish, that's why we're doing this.

The answer is, that's the highest number I think I can beat under the circumstances, allowing for the stress involved in being in a test in the first place (I tend to choke under pressure of any kind), and probably the added stress of sleep loss (an overactive mind combing over all the "stuff" involved in the process).

In the past I've been about 95% accurate in situations where these forms of stress were not a factor.

[Gr8wight]

Yes, of course you may ask anything you wish, that's why we're doing this.

I see you have either missed, or totally ignored my question. I will ask it again.

Did you, at any time, personally witness someone being ressurected from the dead?

[oddball]

Yes, but I won't divulge any details because I was asked to keep them confidential. I didn't mean to avoid your question, in fact I thought I answered it in a reply addressed to someone else. I'm also curious to know why you are so interested in this. It's not paranormal to witness a resurrection, is it? And I can't prove to anyone that I did witness one, can I? So what is the point of the question, or were you just curious?

[Gr8wight]

Yes, but I won't divulge any details because I was asked to keep them confidential. I didn't mean to avoid your question, in fact I thought I answered it in a reply addressed to someone else. I'm also curious to know why you are so interested in this. It's not paranormal to witness a resurrection, is it? And I can't prove to anyone that I did witness one, can I? So what is the point of the question, or were you just curious?

You have not answered the question. You said:
I can only say that I know it works and have every reason to expect it would work if I tried it on some who could be successfully revived.
You have both ignored the question, and then tap danced neatly around it.
A simple yes or no answer is all that is involved. That will divulge no details of any kind.

Have you personally witnessed this person ressurecting the dead?

I don't need to know who the person is, who the dead person was, where or when it happened. I am just asking you to state, honestly, whether or no you have personally witnessed this event. Did you?

[oddball]

What part of Yes (the first word in my last reply) didn't you understand? and why aren't you answering my question: what is the point of your question, or were you just curious?

[fromdownunder]

I did not say that I would need the JREF million to accomplish the goal. In fact I haven't given a lot of thought to what I would do with the million, beyond acquiring a reliable and minimally-polluting vehicle and a small homestead, and maybe doing a bit of travel, and getting the best dentist I could find to make some long overdue repairs to my teeth.


In the past, I was a cancer "victim" myself, and according to the oncologist I was beyond treatment and terminal, that if I was lucky I had two months left, and I should go home and wrap up any loose ends.

I didn't want to die. I was only 21 at the time. So I made up my mind to find a means to heal my condition, and I did. I am still here, and cancer-free, 32 years later, thanks to what I learned, and the people who helped me learn it, and putting what I learned into practice in my own life.

Well, if I am reading you correctly, you cured yourself of cancer, can bring other people back to life, but need a dentist to fix the problem you have with your teeth.

Could you please explain why, cancer and death are curable by your methods but damaged teeth are not?

Norm

[oddball]

Any tooth that has been filled, capped, or extracted can never be restored to its original condition. The means I used to heal the cancer could have prevented the decay and obviated the need for filling, capping and extraction, if I had known about it soon enough (or in this case if my parents had known and applied it), but since that didn't happen, I was stuck with what was left, and a lot of that stuff is in need of repair now.

[Flange Desire]

It's not paranormal to witness a resurrection, is it? And I can't prove to anyone that I did witness one, can I? So what is the point of the question, or were you just curious?

You are probably correct that 'the witnessing of a resurrection is not paranormal'. We can see stuff and call it whatever we like.

But I am more interested your implication that resurrection is actually real.

This is of earth shattering importance and worth far more than a measly 1mill and a bit of chatter on a forum. It would cause a HUMUNGOUSLY GINORMOUS ruckus if it were real.

I also note in a later post that you can cure cancer (perhap only in yourself) in some paranormal way.
This is also worth a Nobel Prize at a minimum and surely WORLDWIDE NOTORIETY (and lots of other similar words in capital letters).

Consider: Why are these abilities not so 'well known' if they are real.

[Flange Desire]

Hi Norm fromdownunder and welcome to the forums.
Beaut day down here - looks like an absolute cracker of a weekend coming up.
No sign of any ressurections lately though.
maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate!

[oddball]

I am more interested your implication that resurrection is actually real.

This is of earth shattering importance and worth far more than a measly 1mill and a bit of chatter on a forum.

Yes, I understand what you're saying, and I agree with you, but I think it's unlikely that you and I would agree on why it is important, or that many others who frequent this forum would appreciate it in the same way I do. Or maybe not.

If I may ask, why *do* you feel it is so important? What urgent uses would you find for the ability to resurrect the dead?

It would cause a HUMUNGOUSLY GINORMOUS ruckus if it were real.

Like cloning did?

I also note in a later post that you can cure cancer (perhap only in yourself) in some paranormal way.

No, I didn't claim that my cancer cure was paranormal. It was accomplished in a much more "normal" manner than such widely recognized efforts as chemo"therapy", radiation "treatment" and surgery.

This is also worth a Nobel Prize at a minimum and surely WORLDWIDE NOTORIETY (and lots of other similar words in capital letters).

Consider: Why are these abilities not so 'well known' if they are real.

We've come a long way in that direction in the last 30 years or so. It will come.

One big change has to happen before the world at large is even able to consider a "new" approach to cancer. That change will happen when large numbers of people start accepting the fact that we create and must cure our own illnesses by ourselves. The greatest illness of all is arrogance.

Such widely held beliefs as disease is an accident that happens to a person, that such accidents cannot be avoided, will have to be abandoned, and replaced with the certainty that no one else has the power to cure one's own illness.

The "medical-industrial establishment" gets filthy rich off of drugs and other treatment approaches which at best alleviate the symptoms of illness and do not effect a real cure.

A person who has actually been cured of an illness has learned how the illness came about and what they can do prevent it from recurring, without resorting to modern-day "miracle drugs" or invasive procedures.

Most people live a very long distance from knowing that the choices they make from moment to moment and day-to-day are in fact what controls their own health condition. Many are hopeless cases in that regard and will never become well.

It isn't my purpose to write at length about these issues. I am only interested in planting a few thought-seeds and perhaps being given the chance to demonstrate that the fruit of what I have learned is well within the grasp of anyone who reaches for it.

What I am really interested in seeing is more and more people taking responsibility for their own health instead of depending on doctors and hospitals and prescription which only enable them to, at best, live with a little less discomfort.

When that happens it will be of infinitely much more value to the world than the ability to bring a human body back to life for a while. JMHO.

I've helped a few other people heal themselves of cancer. One was a leukemia case, one was lymphoma, one was bone cancer. But I was only an informant to them. They had to take the information that I passed along and use it, apply it in their lives, to effect their own cures.

Any cancer patient who still has a reason to live and the will to live and an appetite can do what I did, if they are able and willing to follow some relatively simple instructions. There's no unusual expense of money involved, either. Whether they succeed or fail is entirely up to them.

[steenkh]

Any cancer patient who still has a reason to live and the will to live and an appetite can do what I did, if they are able and willing to follow some relatively simple instructions. There's no unusual expense of money involved, either. Whether they succeed or fail is entirely up to them.
This particular argument is considered bad form here: It is a common woo argument that if people get healed, it id due to the woo treatment, if they are not healed, it is their own fault. Try to avoid this line or you will be treated badly at this forum!

[steenkh]

Come to think of it, the more you delve into woo claims, the more credibility you lose. Concentrate on the claim you want to use for the application, and rebuild the credibility by actually applying!

Once you have got hold of the million dollars, I can promise you that we will look much more favorably towards your other claims of healing, and resurrecting people from the dead.

[Gr8wight]

What part of Yes (the first word in my last reply) didn't you understand? and why aren't you answering my question: what is the point of your question, or were you just curious?

I'm sorry, oddball, I missed the "yes" when I read your reply. In answer to your question, I am trying to evaluate you and your claims. A part of that process is discerning, if possible, what your beliefs and biases are.

Regarding your claim that you have personally witnessed a dead person being revived I formulate several possibilities.

1) You are speaking of a medical doctor in a trauma center or emergency room who revived someone who had been clinically dead for a short period of time.
possibility:high
probability:low to medium

2) You are lying.
possibility:high
probability:unknown

3) You were fooled by the person who claimed to be performing the ressurection
possibility:high
probability:high

4) You truly witnessed a paranormal event that modern science cannot explain
possibility:extremely low
probability:virtually nil

Have I missed any other possibilites?

[petre]

In my brief scan I ran into something about a "consensus applicant is wasting time". Since that seems to be requesting opinions, I'll offer mine: very little of my time is being wasted by the continued discussion since I am only scanning for information I find relevant or interesting, such as indication an application has been submitted or other communication has occurred with a JREF representitive, or requests for assistance in achieving that. So it's ok by me if you wish to continue discussing other matters with other posters, it doesn't waste a significant amount of my time.

[steenkh]

In my brief scan I ran into something about a "consensus applicant is wasting time". Since that seems to be requesting opinions, I'll offer mine: very little of my time is being wasted by the continued discussion since I am only scanning for information I find relevant or interesting, such as indication an application has been submitted or other communication has occurred with a JREF representitive, or requests for assistance in achieving that. So it's ok by me if you wish to continue discussing other matters with other posters, it doesn't waste a significant amount of my time.
Most of us want a forwards movement in the thread: new relevant queries, requests for advice, challenge application dispatched, JREF contact achieved, and so on. When the would-be applicant stops discussing his claim but becomes more interested in discussing background information that we find highly improbable to be a truthful description anyway, we could reach the point where we feel that not only is the applicant wasting his own time, but we are wasting our time, not just by reading the thread, but by actively giving advice.

It is easy to believe that the applicant is pulling out (and experience supports us); and we get disappointed.

[petre]

Most of us want a forwards movement in the thread: new relevant queries, requests for advice, challenge application dispatched, JREF contact achieved, and so on. When the would-be applicant stops discussing his claim but becomes more interested in discussing background information that we find highly improbable to be a truthful description anyway, we could reach the point where we feel that not only is the applicant wasting his own time, but we are wasting our time, not just by reading the thread, but by actively giving advice.

It is easy to believe that the applicant is pulling out (and experience supports us); and we get disappointed.

That looks like one vote each side so far.

Anyway, I prefer to keep limited optimism that as long as the thread continues to live and the poster remains unbanned, there's a chance that they may actually apply. I'm fully confident that a moderator would lose that optimism before I do, and close down the thread or move it.

Maybe to save some time, others would like to borrow some of my scanning methods. Often in a thread, often it will reach a point where a particular individual needs to address a point or provide some other information for the thread to really move forward. You can then just scan for their username and check the post to see if it addresses the point. If not, you can just keep scanning. I've found it really cuts down on the time.

[timokay]

Most of us want a forwards movement in the thread: new relevant queries, requests for advice, challenge application dispatched, JREF contact achieved, and so on. When the would-be applicant stops discussing his claim but becomes more interested in discussing background information that we find highly improbable to be a truthful description anyway, we could reach the point where we feel that not only is the applicant wasting his own time, but we are wasting our time, not just by reading the thread, but by actively giving advice.

It is easy to believe that the applicant is pulling out (and experience supports us); and we get disappointed.

THANK YOU!!!
Applicants will never submit a formal application if we let them get sidetracked by repeatedly asking them about the more "fantastic" aspects of thier claim. Don't we want to see people actually get tested?

[oddball]

This particular argument is considered bad form here: It is a common woo argument that if people get healed, it id due to the woo treatment, if they are not healed, it is their own fault. Try to avoid this line or you will be treated badly at this forum!

Understood. To clarify what was meant in this instance, let me point out an obvious discrepancy between the "woo" argument you mentioned and my own statement: I never "treated" anyone, nor did I come remotely close to saying that I did.

[timokay]

Oddball. What specific information can you identify about a persons' parents and grandparents just by looking at them? List as many specific things as you can. Please.

[oddball]

I'm sorry, oddball, I missed the "yes" when I read your reply. In answer to your question, I am trying to evaluate you and your claims. A part of that process is discerning, if possible, what your beliefs and biases are.

Regarding your claim that you have personally witnessed a dead person being revived I formulate several possibilities.

1) You are speaking of a medical doctor in a trauma center or emergency room who revived someone who had been clinically dead for a short period of time.
possibility:high
probability:low to medium

2) You are lying.
possibility:high
probability:unknown

3) You were fooled by the person who claimed to be performing the ressurection
possibility:high
probability:high

4) You truly witnessed a paranormal event that modern science cannot explain
possibility:extremely low
probability:virtually nil

Have I missed any other possibilites?

Yes you have. Well, not wholly missed.... I'm referring to your point #4 above, where you said "paranormal event that modern science cannot explain".

You're mostly right in saying that "modern science cannot explain" how it is possible to resurrect a dead person without using "known" or medically recognized instruments or techniques. Where you're farther off is in referring to such an act as a "paranormal event" - but that is entirely forgiveable in view of the fact that it almost has to be categorized as paranormal by anyone who doesn't know the technique or how it works and has not seen it successfully performed.

When I say you're partially right regarding the first part of your point #4, I'm speaking from the standpoint of knowing that when this technique is demonstrated to any modern scientist or medical researcher, and the principles and methodology behind it are explained to them, there's an excellent chance that their response would be something to the effect of "Ah... so that's all there is to it" accompanied by a rapid reassessment of their previous understanding of what energy is and how it functions. Then, depending on the individual, he or she would either undergo a corresponding mental adjustment to that newfound understanding (probably followed by an urgent desire to review old research and find where it might be applied in other areas where they had reached stubborn dead-ends), or tell themselves - in spite of having been a firsthand witness - that it must have been some sort of trick, fluke or coincidence, and then try to forget that it ever happened.

The ability to resurrect the dead was not as uncommon in the past as is it today. By "the past" I mean the distant past. Older civilizations of which we have no written accounts.

By now the reason that I say resurrection of the dead is not a paranormal event should be obvious, but in case it is not, let me reiterate it in another form: The technique is simple to perform and easily repeatable by virtually anyone who has been shown how to do it, given they have at least a rudimentary grasp of the principles on which it is based. Those same principles are the foundation of an entire body of knowledge that can be applied to any number of endeavors more useful and practical than raising the dead.

I can't speculate on why those who practiced resurrection in antiquity didn't make the technique widely known. Perhaps it wasn't a well-kept secret. It's even possible that it was so widely known and practiced that no one bothered to write of it, or that any such writings were lost in some global cataclysm that also killed nearly everyone who knew the technique.

But the fact is, at least one person who knew the technique survived, or passed it on to someone who did survive, or some documentation survived and was incorporated into later documentation, or, failing that, someone rediscovered the method by studying any ancient documents explaining the method's underlying principles that were still available to them, and experimenting until they got it right. Maybe it was rediscovered without the aid of any written documents.

We may never know the actual sequence of events which had as their end result the virtual absence of awareness of this technique in the modern world. Nevertheless, it is not wholly unknown at the present time, and written instruction on how it is done does exist, but the body of knowledge, of which the technique for reviving a dead body is a tiny part, has yet to be recognized by the modern medical community as being worthy of serious examination.

There are other people than myself who are better qualified for the task of expounding, for the benefit of the medical and scientific communities, on how the principles of the aforementioned body of knowledge could be used to solve a whole host of troubling issues in their fields. Why one or more of those people has not come forward and offered to demonstrate one of its more "miraculous" applications, for the purpose of drawing attention to its validity and potential for opening new avenues of approach to solving otherwise intractable problems, is not for me to say, as I have not asked them. The only one I know how to contact is somewhat difficult to reach and probably unaware of the JREF challenge, otherwise he might have already offered to give a demonstration of some sort. And I am not certain that if I did get hold of him and explain what JREF is about and what it is offering, that he would agree to participate, but I suspect that he would want to, even if he is not able (he is rather aged and frail these days and may not be up to any long distance travel). The last time I spoke with him was almost 19 years ago, but I was in contact with his eldest son much more recently. I will try to reopen that line of communication and see what happens....

As a footnote to your original post I want to say I can understand that you expressed strong suspicion that I am lying because you don't know me and have no experience that would have shown you anything on which to base an assessment of my character and integrity, and I suppose that is a reasonable starting point for you. Nevertheless I don't take kindly to blind accusations. If you can't prove that something I have said is untrue, I'd appreciate being given the benefit of any doubt until you can. It might not be the "scientific way" but it is what works best with me.

Thanks.

[oddball]

Oddball. What specific information can you identify about a persons' parents and grandparents just by looking at them? List as many specific things as you can. Please.

Timokay, a little patience will go a long way here. Know that I'm not ignoring you (or anyone else who may have called for a reply from me and not gotten one yet), and I'll respond to your post properly soon.... I've just spent quite a block of time answering another post, and I do have a very full life outside of this forum and considerations about how to formulate my challenge proposal. In fact I have some urgent catching up to do right now as a direct result of spending more time than I intended here in the last few days.

Thanks!

[oddball]

I've got a little time now to respond to a few points that have been raised in this thread that I haven't already answered.

It would probably be helpful if you could provide us with a sample reading.

I'll work on this soon.

Allow me to address your bicycle analogy - because I think it might serve to tell you a slight logical error you have made:

< snip >

Keep in mind also that what you are asking us to believe goes well beyond an unknown mechanical devise....

I do not wish to discourage you, but I sincerely ask you to re-examine your abilities critically.

First of all I will state firmly that I am not asking anyone to believe anything I say, but rather to examine it critically, and if it raises doubts, hold those doubts only until such time as you have seen sufficient evidence to lay them to rest.

Personally, all my life I've been an extreme skeptic. In fact I've been so much of a doubter that I've gotten myself into some *very* sticky situations due to my unwillingness to take something "on faith".

For me, faith is something one can properly have only as a result of firsthand knowledge and experience. I'm sure you've heard Jesus Christ quoted as having said to the apostle Thomas, "Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed."

Well, outside of a religious context (and I don't "believe" J.C. was speaking in a religious context when he made that statement), I can attest that J.C. did have a point! There are many forms of blessings that have nothing to do with religion. The opportunity to avoid some difficulty by taking sound advice can be a blessing.

I look back on parts of my life and fervently wish that I had "believed" something I was told, rather than having to test it out myself! I'll forego elaboration because this is not the time or place for it, but I think we've all done this.

With regard to Claim C, the main requirement is good hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity. Those I know I have "in spades". Sure, I've lost a bit due to age and slight weakening of eyesight, but I do have a pair of glasses and am not so old or infirm that I'm too shaky to carry out the necessary maneuvers.

A bit digressive but to illustrate my claim of above-average manual dexterity and hand/eye coordination (as well as boast a bit!) I have achieved some minor feats, including, inter alia:

[drumroll]
At age 10: Shooting an 87 at a par-3 18-hole golf course the first (and only) time I ever played golf

At age 15: Winning a blue ribbon in an open art exhibit/competition in a large city, where most of the many other exhibitors were adults, and it was only the third painting I had ever done (a portrait)

At age 18: Taking first place for accuracy in a large frisbee tournament (sponsored by a major brewery), and this was my first-ever frisbee competition (and done while under the influence of a few too many bottles of beer!)

At age 21: Losing a provincial snooker tournament by a single point, the first time I ever competed in a snooker tournament and after having played the game of snooker for only a little more than a year, against players who had been competing in tournaments for many years

At age 28: Consistently hitting a small moving target (an aluminum beverage can, floating down a stream on a log) from a distance of about 15 yards with a rifle, and it was my first (and only) experience with shooting a gun of any kind
Sorry for going slightly off-topic but I couldn't resist inserting that short but relevant list to illustrate that having done these things, I can't fathom being too clumsy to be accurate performing the much less demanding and far smaller motions involved in resurrecting a body (and no, it does not involve "laying on of hands").

But what you want to see is whether the technique when correctly performed actually works. With a bit of luck perhaps you will have the chance to find out. I do think coming up with a protocol for my Claim C will be more challenging than doing the same for A and B combined, unfortunately, but I'm not giving up on it just yet.

Moving on:

Human history has never been a history peace, so I suspect that this knowledge has never been widespread. I sincerely hope that you can more than "talk the talk", but also "walk the walk"!

So far as we know from recorded history, yes, there has always been conflict, mostly over territory. But even when I couldn't say with the kind of certainty that James Randi would need to have, that there have been long periods of peace (measured in millennia), I'd be very hesitant to insist that they have never occurred and/or never will.

... and that is pretty much what we would call a "woo" community!

Perhaps you would also call the people I'm talking about "woos" but I can tell you that on the whole they have even less respect for actual "woos" than JREF skeptics do.

...I note that there are no people on earth who just go on living and living!

Perhaps not in this day and age, but there have been people who lived many multiples of what we now consider to be a normal human lifespan. No, I am not referring to anyone mentioned in the Christian Bible. Those relative-immortals may have existed, but others like them most certainly did, and a few possibly still do.

[steenkh]

So far as we know from recorded history, yes, there has always been conflict, mostly over territory. But even when I couldn't say with the kind of certainty that James Randi would need to have, that there have been long periods of peace (measured in millennia), I'd be very hesitant to insist that they have never occurred and/or never will.
Not just recorded history. Archaeology also shows sign of conflict from the first cities and onward.

Perhaps you would also call the people I'm talking about "woos" but I can tell you that on the whole they have even less respect for actual "woos" than JREF skeptics do.
Well, I do not want to debate this, but I think that it should be obvious that although they do not consider themselves "woo", that their beliefs are not exactly backed up by facts. Otherwise you would not want to have a go at the JREF million with these beliefs!

Perhaps not in this day and age, but there have been people who lived many multiples of what we now consider to be a normal human lifespan.
Fascinating, but can you back it up with evidence?

[oddball]

I've just hatched an idea for a potential preliminary test for my Claim A, which could possibly be done entirely online!

Mind you this is almost coming to me as I type so please bear with me and suggest improvements if it doesn't come out perfect on the very first go (as I doubt it will)....

Could we find, say, two dozen volunteers either on this forum or elsewhere or a combo of both, who fit the following EASY criteria:

1. are unknown to me
2. are not from adoptive families
3. are over 21 years of age
4. knew both of their parents and all four grandparents at least until they were 18 years old
5. would be willing to answer a short list of general questions about those progenitors, and send those answers to an impartial referee by email
6. are able to provide close-up, full-frontal photographs of their faces, or of the faces of others who consented to participate in the test and answered the list of questions, to an impartial referee

The photos could be digital or digitized by scanning, or snail-mailed to the referee for scanning.


The photos would have to be adequate for me to use in place of a face-to-face encounter with the subjects participating in the test. I could gather a small collection of example photos that best illustrate the quality of photo that will work for me, for the volunteers to emulate when taking and selecting their own shots to send to the referee.

At a pre-determined time, the referee would send me, by email, one at a time, the photos that have been provided by the volunteers, and that in the referee's best judgment are of a quality comparable to that of the example photos. I would have to email back my comments within a pre-determined amount of time, starting from the time-stamp on the referee's email containing the photo. As soon as my comments are received by the referee, another photo will be sent, and so on.

My comments can then be posted right here, along with the photo owners' previously provided answers to the question lists.

Like I said initially, this is off the top of my head for now, so I'm sure it will need refinement. But how does it sound so far?

[steenkh]

This will not do, because there are no definite criteria for how to match your comments to the question lists. There is no way around this: you will have to get the anonymised question lists, and then you should try to match those lists with the faces. If you want you can start writing down your comments as you proposed, but then you yourself match the anonymised lists with your comments before passing the results to the one who is testing you.

[oddball]

you will have to get the anonymised question lists, and then you should try to match those lists with the faces.

I'd have no objection to doing it this way. What would the protocol be for ensuring to me that I was getting the genuine article - i.e. photos of the actual subjects who filled out the lists that are submitted to me, as opposed to a bunch of lists provided by different subjects than the subjects of the photos I am given?

[Gr8wight]

Yes you have. Well, not wholly missed.... I'm referring to your point #4 above, where you said "paranormal event that modern science cannot explain".

You're mostly right in saying that "modern science cannot explain" how it is possible to resurrect a dead person without using "known" or medically recognized instruments or techniques. Where you're farther off is in referring to such an act as a "paranormal event" - but that is entirely forgiveable in view of the fact that it almost has to be categorized as paranormal by anyone who doesn't know the technique or how it works and has not seen it successfully performed.

When I say you're partially right regarding the first part of your point #4, I'm speaking from the standpoint of knowing that when this technique is demonstrated to any modern scientist or medical researcher, and the principles and methodology behind it are explained to them, there's an excellent chance that their response would be something to the effect of "Ah... so that's all there is to it" accompanied by a rapid reassessment of their previous understanding of what energy is and how it functions. Then, depending on the individual, he or she would either undergo a corresponding mental adjustment to that newfound understanding (probably followed by an urgent desire to review old research and find where it might be applied in other areas where they had reached stubborn dead-ends), or tell themselves - in spite of having been a firsthand witness - that it must have been some sort of trick, fluke or coincidence, and then try to forget that it ever happened.

The ability to resurrect the dead was not as uncommon in the past as is it today. By "the past" I mean the distant past. Older civilizations of which we have no written accounts.

By now the reason that I say resurrection of the dead is not a paranormal event should be obvious, but in case it is not, let me reiterate it in another form: The technique is simple to perform and easily repeatable by virtually anyone who has been shown how to do it, given they have at least a rudimentary grasp of the principles on which it is based. Those same principles are the foundation of an entire body of knowledge that can be applied to any number of endeavors more useful and practical than raising the dead.

I can't speculate on why those who practiced resurrection in antiquity didn't make the technique widely known. Perhaps it wasn't a well-kept secret. It's even possible that it was so widely known and practiced that no one bothered to write of it, or that any such writings were lost in some global cataclysm that also killed nearly everyone who knew the technique.

But the fact is, at least one person who knew the technique survived, or passed it on to someone who did survive, or some documentation survived and was incorporated into later documentation, or, failing that, someone rediscovered the method by studying any ancient documents explaining the method's underlying principles that were still available to them, and experimenting until they got it right. Maybe it was rediscovered without the aid of any written documents.

We may never know the actual sequence of events which had as their end result the virtual absence of awareness of this technique in the modern world. Nevertheless, it is not wholly unknown at the present time, and written instruction on how it is done does exist, but the body of knowledge, of which the technique for reviving a dead body is a tiny part, has yet to be recognized by the modern medical community as being worthy of serious examination.

There are other people than myself who are better qualified for the task of expounding, for the benefit of the medical and scientific communities, on how the principles of the aforementioned body of knowledge could be used to solve a whole host of troubling issues in their fields. Why one or more of those people has not come forward and offered to demonstrate one of its more "miraculous" applications, for the purpose of drawing attention to its validity and potential for opening new avenues of approach to solving otherwise intractable problems, is not for me to say, as I have not asked them. The only one I know how to contact is somewhat difficult to reach and probably unaware of the JREF challenge, otherwise he might have already offered to give a demonstration of some sort. And I am not certain that if I did get hold of him and explain what JREF is about and what it is offering, that he would agree to participate, but I suspect that he would want to, even if he is not able (he is rather aged and frail these days and may not be up to any long distance travel). The last time I spoke with him was almost 19 years ago, but I was in contact with his eldest son much more recently. I will try to reopen that line of communication and see what happens....

As a footnote to your original post I want to say I can understand that you expressed strong suspicion that I am lying because you don't know me and have no experience that would have shown you anything on which to base an assessment of my character and integrity, and I suppose that is a reasonable starting point for you. Nevertheless I don't take kindly to blind accusations. If you can't prove that something I have said is untrue, I'd appreciate being given the benefit of any doubt until you can. It might not be the "scientific way" but it is what works best with me.

Thanks.


Oddball,

You have misinterpreted my post. I did not express strong suspicion that you were lying. I expressed that the probability that you were lying was unknown. I did express a strong opinion that you have been fooled. I still hold that opinion.

The rest of your post is complete and utter bollocks.

[oddball]

You have misinterpreted my post. I did not express strong suspicion that you were lying. I expressed that the probability that you were lying was unknown.

You said the possibility that I was lying is high. How you are differentiating between "possibility" and "probability" is unknown to me. But the insinuation that I told one lie pales now that I see you saying everything I wrote in my reply to you above the last paragraph is lies.

The rest of your post is complete and utter bollocks.

I respectfully demand that you present evidence to support your allegation that everything I wrote is false, or else withdraw that defamatory and libelous statement.

[oddball]

Well, I do not want to debate this, but I think that it should be obvious that although they do not consider themselves "woo", that their beliefs are not exactly backed up by facts. Otherwise you would not want to have a go at the JREF million with these beliefs!

Why wouldn't I?

You ask if I can back up with facts the contention that there have been extremely long-lived people on earth. The answer is no - not to you, and not at this time. But I have no reason to believe that such people have never existed, just as you have no reason to believe that Einstein did not exist, even though you probably never met the man or spoke to him and probably don't know anyone who did.

Could you prove to a member of a culture that does not have a written language and does not understand any of your spoken languages that Einstein lived? You might show them photographs of an atomic explosion, a photo of Einstein, and some writing by Einstein, and try as best you could with sign language to explain who Einstein was and that his contribution was primary in making atomic bombs possible. But you would not have proven to that person that Einstein did exist, because he doesn't have the capacity to understand the kind of evidence you're using.

[calebprime]

...

[/INDENT]Sorry for going slightly off-topic but I couldn't resist inserting that short but relevant list to illustrate that having done these things, I can't fathom being too clumsy to be accurate performing the much less demanding and far smaller motions involved in resurrecting a body (and no, it does not involve "laying on of hands").

...



You said the possibility that I was lying is high. How you are differentiating between "possibility" and "probability" is unknown to me. But the insinuation that I told one lie pales now that I see you saying everything I wrote in my reply to you above the last paragraph is lies.



I respectfully demand that you present evidence to support your allegation that everything I wrote is false, or else withdraw that defamatory and libelous statement.

neither defamatory nor libelous, nor even all that insulting.


You have an excellent command of English. Yet you seem surprised that people here think resurrection of dead people is an extraordinary claim. You are being very coy about resurrection. It's as if you're saying "oh, no big deal, happens all the time."

BTW, no cloning of humans has happened yet. And yes, cloning has already caused something of an uproar.

Back to protocol. Don't worry about responding to insults. Just come up with a test.

[Loss Leader]

When I say you're partially right regarding the first part of your point #4, I'm speaking from the standpoint of knowing that when this technique is demonstrated to any modern scientist or medical researcher, and the principles and methodology behind it are explained to them, there's an excellent chance that their response would be something to the effect of "Ah... so that's all there is to it" accompanied by a rapid reassessment of their previous understanding of what energy is and how it functions.

Oddball, if what you are saying is at all true, I urge you to utterly abandon the JREF challenge right now and type out an article detailing the exact methadology for reviving the dead. Then send your article to, well, everyone. Send it to medical journals, magazines, newspapers, woo websites and the JREF. Even if 99.9% of readers thought you were wrong, one might try your technique and report success.

I don't know how close you have to be to the dead body, but you could also wander into a hospital and just start reviving the recently deceased. They always have plenty of them there. Taking a job as a volunteer at a hospital or nursing home for a few hours a week would also put you close to those likely to pass away in your presence.

Alternatively, you could offer to trian some of the medical doctors on this JREF site. I am sure they would be glad to listen to you and attempt to implement your teachings. Doctors, after all, must try everything to heal a patient and your technique certainly couldn't make the patient any more dead.

Forget the HREF. You'll be the most famous person in the world. They'll rename continents after you.

[nathan]

I respectfully demand that you present evidence to support your allegation that everything I wrote is false, or else withdraw that defamatory and libelous statement.
Oddball, stop getting distracted by this. Focus on your claim that members of this forum have recommended is the easiest to test for.

[oddball]

calebprime, you say "neither defamatory nor libelous, nor even all that insulting". Do you actually think that calling someone a "complete and utter" liar, without presenting so much as a shred of evidence to back up the allegation, in a public forum visited by thousands upon thousands of people every single day, is not defamatory or libelous to the accused?

If he had written "I don't believe anything you just said" or "I think you are lying", he'd have been expressing an opinion; but he wrote: "your post is complete and utter bollocks". Not "I think your post is...." or anything that would indicate an opinion rather than an accusation.

If this person sits in judgment of everything I wrote and declares that it IS false, shouldn't he back that up with some facts? Is it only the ones perceived here as "woos" or "woo-ish" who are required to provide facts to back up what they say?

Just come up with a test.

In process. Will appear in a new thread devoted ONLY to examination and construction of the test. Hopefully no troll will find it interesting enough to do more than read.

[calebprime]

Oddball,

You have misinterpreted my post. I did not express strong suspicion that you were lying. I expressed that the probability that you were lying was unknown. I did express a strong opinion that you have been fooled. I still hold that opinion.

The rest of your post is complete and utter bollocks.

www.erinhart.com/glossary.htm -

My apologies for jumping in. You asked me a question. Quick response only. "Bollocks" just means something like b.s. It's the equivalent of saying "the rest of your post was... b.s., or silly, or nonsense, or rubbish." "Defamatory and Libelous" implies something legally actionable. Laws differ between Britain and America, of course, but simply calling something someone wrote "b.s." doesn't get anywhere near the standard.

Because he was carefully listing the options as he saw them, his posts weren't all that insulting. Expect some tough talk, but expect that people will work with you if you propose specific tests and ignore the baiting. In the interest of moving the thread forward, please don't respond to my more germane comments. Like others, I was simply very curious about the resurrection claim. My bad. Soldier on.

[oddball]

Oddball, if what you are saying is at all true, I urge you to utterly abandon the JREF challenge right now and type out an article detailing the exact methadology for reviving the dead. Then send your article to, well, everyone. Send it to medical journals, magazines, newspapers, woo websites and the JREF. Even if 99.9% of readers thought you were wrong, one might try your technique and report success.

The exact methodology already appears in at least one neglected manuscript that is probably part of at least a few thousand medical libraries in North America alone but is discounted and trivialized by those who have never seen any of its principles being used nor bothered reading about its empirical and philosophical underpinnings, simply because they won't take the time to investigate something that others have flippantly decided must be "bunk" due to its being so different from what they've been taught in the past. Yet they keep a copy as a medical curiousity or maybe an example of why "primitive" methods "don't work". Why should anything I wrote receive any more attention?

I don't know how close you have to be to the dead body, but you could also wander into a hospital and just start reviving the recently deceased. They always have plenty of them there. Taking a job as a volunteer at a hospital or nursing home for a few hours a week would also put you close to those likely to pass away in your presence.

Unless you're a great master of the technique you do have to touch it, and must usually roll it over as well.

Alternatively, you could offer to trian some of the medical doctors on this JREF site. I am sure they would be glad to listen to you and attempt to implement your teachings. Doctors, after all, must try everything to heal a patient and your technique certainly couldn't make the patient any more dead.

I may do that at some future time. Right now though I really need to focus on winning the $1m prize so I can take care of a few things that are much more urgent to me than becoming a world-famous teacher of something that really isn't of much value other than as a curiousity.

So what if doctors and even laymen learn how to resurrect the dead? Unless they know how to teach them to regain their vitality once they've been revived, dead people may as well stay dead.

If I decide to teach I much prefer sharing what I know of reversing degenerative disease (or better yet not degenerate to the point of illness in the first place).

Forget the HREF. You'll be the most famous person in the world. They'll rename continents after you.

I've said several times that I have absolutely no interest in fame (and I meant it). If I manage to open a crack in the door to some deadlocked minds, I'll defer the mantle to my elder and better friends who may be more ambitious than me.

[timokay]

Oddball, can you please answer my question?

What specific information can you identify about a persons' parents and grandparents just by looking at them? List as many specific things as you can.

And I will be patient, but you have posted paragrahs regarding the other aspects of your claim, and yet you have not taken the time to answer my very simple questions. All I ask for is a list. I do not need to know how or why you do it, or what it means.

[Gr8wight]

You said the possibility that I was lying is high. How you are differentiating between "possibility" and "probability" is unknown to me. But the insinuation that I told one lie pales now that I see you saying everything I wrote in my reply to you above the last paragraph is lies.

Possiblity refers to those things that are possible. Probability refers to those things that are probable. If you are unsure of the difference between those two terms, I suggest dictionary.com...or grade two.



I respectfully demand that you present evidence to support your allegation that everything I wrote is false, or else withdraw that defamatory and libelous statement.

I didn't say, imply, or allege that everything you wrote was false, or that you were lying. I said that it was bollocks. I used that word because the forum software will not publish the my first choice.

I choose not to support my statement. Not because I can't, but because the truth of it is evident to anyone who can read...and think. Your statements were not only bollocks, they were plain silly. A five year old could pick out the holes in them.

I also choose not to withdraw my statements because they were neither defamatory nor libelous. And because your demand that I do so was highly amusing, and I'm hoping to watch you turn purple, sputter a few times and explode.

[Gr8wight]

The exact methodology already appears in at least one neglected manuscript that is probably part of at least a few thousand medical libraries in North America alone but is discounted and trivialized by those who have never seen any of its principles being used nor bothered reading about its empirical and philosophical underpinnings, simply because they won't take the time to investigate something that others have flippantly decided must be "bunk" due to its being so different from what they've been taught in the past.

:: Deep breath :: That was quite sentence.

Please name the manuscript to which you refer.

[Loss Leader]

Oddball, I must say that you answered my post exactly as I expected. I believed you would resist being nailed down and forced to give specifics and you have. I believe that when it comes to the type of things you will be able to tell about people's ancestry, you will become as slippery as the provebial eel. However, I certainly hope this is not the case. As such, please help me by starting here:

The exact methodology already appears in at least one neglected manuscript that is probably part of at least a few thousand medical libraries in North America alone

Please name this manuscript and/or its authors.

With such astonishing aplications to modern medicine and all modern thought about physics, I am sure you will have no qualms about pointing out the manuscript to which you refer.

[oddball]

Please name this manuscript and/or its authors.

With such astonishing aplications to modern medicine and all modern thought about physics, I am sure you will have no qualms about pointing out the manuscript to which you refer.

You seem to presume that my motives are... whatever you think they are, which ain't necessarily so.

First off, if I provide the information you're requesting, I would be shooting myself in the foot by killing my chances of using Claim C for the $1m challenge. And secondly, at this point in time I am not urgently interested in what happens to modern medicine and "all modern thought about physics", as I have personal concerns to which I am choosing to devote my time before tackling anything not directly and intimately related to my own life. And selfishness is neither illegal nor immoral. If you or anyone else is really curious about the manuscript I mentioned, you have the option of finding it the same way I did: through personal effort.

And Gr8wight, regardless what word you picked to call me a liar or imply that I might be lying, you still did that, so quit backpedalling. If you don't care to "pick out the holes" in my statements, go rag on someone else. I don't even care to hear why you seem to think I'll ever "explode" but I am of the opinion that anyone who hopes to see another explode is a pervert, and I have no time for any sickos in my life right now, so please leave me alone.

[oddball]

Oddball, can you please answer my question?

What specific information can you identify about a persons' parents and grandparents just by looking at them? List as many specific things as you can.

And I will be patient, but you have posted paragrahs regarding the other aspects of your claim, and yet you have not taken the time to answer my very simple questions. All I ask for is a list. I do not need to know how or why you do it, or what it means.

Sorry for the delay, Timokay! Here ya go:

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=64072

[steenkh]

You ask if I can back up with facts the contention that there have been extremely long-lived people on earth. The answer is no - not to you, and not at this time. But I have no reason to believe that such people have never existed, just as you have no reason to believe that Einstein did not exist, even though you probably never met the man or spoke to him and probably don't know anyone who did.
The belief that Einstein has lived can be backed up with facts. It does not matter if soem Indians in a jubgle soemwhere would not understand what I am saying. I was asking you if you could also back up yoor assertation about extremely long-lived humans, and I note that you cannot, which is as I suspected.

Instead of discussing these fascinating beliefs of yours, you should perhaps start thinking about how to actually demonstrate some of it. Right now you are increasingly giving us the impression that in the end, you will not live up to your claims, and that you are, in fact, just an oddball!

[oddball]

The belief that Einstein has lived can be backed up with facts. It does not matter if soem Indians in a jubgle soemwhere would not understand what I am saying. I was asking you if you could also back up yoor assertation about extremely long-lived humans, and I note that you cannot, which is as I suspected.

What I was trying to convey to you is that, just as you could not convince a person, whose entire culture and world-view is so radically different from your own that it makes ordinary communication all but impossible, of some past event of which he has no direct knowledge, I cannot persuade you to accept as fact that any past event occurred, particularly when the "facts" regarding such an event are only knowable by means of a cognitive process (for lack of a better description) of which you are presently incapable.

Instead of discussing these fascinating beliefs of yours, you should perhaps start thinking about how to actually demonstrate some of it. Right now you are increasingly giving us the impression that in the end, you will not live up to your claims, and that you are, in fact, just an oddball!

It wasn't my intention to discuss in this thread the concepts you call "fascinating beliefs"; I have done so out of courtesy to those who have asked me various questions. But regardless why I bothered to explain anything about my experience and way of thinking, whether or not you get the impression that I will not live up to my claims is irrelevant. What counts is whether or not I do. So there is no point in speculating as to whether or not I can, is there?

[steenkh]

oddball, you are probably right that we will not be able to understand each other. this situation will persist until you go to the actual demonstration. That would give us common ground! Our contention that you are holding beliefs withoput evidence will completely vanish!

So, how far are you with the preparations?

[oddball]

how far are you with the preparations?

Check my last reply to timokay, above.

Guys and gals, let's close this thread.... It has become a waste of my time.

[saizai]

Oddball: I have a pretty simple suggestion for you.

Go volunteer at a large hospital's emergency trauma unit for a while. They have a pretty regular rate of deaths from a wide range of causes. Ones that, in many cases, are eminently worth reversing if you can.

You could probably use the practice.

[oddball]

Oddball: I have a pretty simple suggestion for you.

Go volunteer at a large hospital's emergency trauma unit for a while. They have a pretty regular rate of deaths from a wide range of causes. Ones that, in many cases, are eminently worth reversing if you can.

You could probably use the practice.

That's a good idea and I appreciate your taking the time to share it with me. Unfortunately the closest hospital to my location is a small one, more than an hour's drive each way and I simply can't afford the time, not to mention the gasoline, plus my car is old enough that it needs to stay parked as much as possible to make it last until I can afford to either fix it or get something else. The closest "large" hospital is, I dunno, maybe 250 miles give or take 30 or so. On top of all this, I hate hospitals and would prefer to avoid them as much as I possibly can. But they're quite welcome to bring any good resurrection candidates to my location at any mutually convenient time....

[saizai]

That's a good idea and I appreciate your taking the time to share it with me. Unfortunately the closest hospital to my location is a small one, more than an hour's drive each way and I simply can't afford the time, not to mention the gasoline, plus my car is old enough that it needs to stay parked as much as possible to make it last until I can afford to either fix it or get something else. The closest "large" hospital is, I dunno, maybe 250 miles give or take 30 or so. On top of all this, I hate hospitals and would prefer to avoid them as much as I possibly can. But they're quite welcome to bring any good resurrection candidates to my location at any mutually convenient time....

Good resurrection candidates are unlikely to come to you. But they're available aplenty there. Surely it's worth a couple hours on a weekend of your own time & gas?

[oddball]

Good resurrection candidates are unlikely to come to you. But they're available aplenty there. Surely it's worth a couple hours on a weekend of your own time & gas?

A couple of hours is barely enough to drive there and back. To get to a big enough hospital to have a reasonable chance of hitting a day when someone had died or might die within 8 hours would consume two whole days in travel time alone due to the kind of roads going to the bigger city and my inability to sit in one place for more than 30 minutes or so without a stretch and a short walk (due to old injuries).

And I doubt I could just walk into a hospital and say "Hey, I only have a short time so listen up, who've I got to see to get clearance to attempt to resurrect your latest failure? How many DBs have you got on hand at the moment anyway? What did they die from? How long ago? Think you could save any of them if they started breathing again?" I'm sure before I got the second sentence out, they'd have orderlies all over me and someone trying to inject me with thorazine or something like it.

No thanks!!!

[Loss Leader]

First off, if I provide the information you're requesting, I would be shooting myself in the foot by killing my chances of using Claim C for the $1m challenge. And secondly, at this point in time I am not urgently interested in what happens to modern medicine and "all modern thought about physics", as I have personal concerns to which I am choosing to devote my time before tackling anything not directly and intimately related to my own life. And selfishness is neither illegal nor immoral.

Oddball, please be assured that I consider you neither selfish or immoral. I consider you to be deluding yourself. If you will read the histories of those who have applied for the challenge in years past, you will see a pattern of grand claims, followed by backpeddling followed by an almost frantic search for an excuse to not prove the claim. This is because the paranormal ability is not real and exists only as a psychological cruch by which some people convince themselves they are "special." I see nothing in your behavior that indicates differently.

You won't point me to the manuscript because you are saving that claim to win a million dollars? Let me assure you that the JREF will NEVER test your claim to raise the dead. There is no ethical way to convince a family to give their dead relative over to you for who knows what. It will never be done.

And you can't resurect the dead because it's too far a drive to the hospital? That's just nonsensical. If you have this power, use it. Otherwise never mention it. You are not impressing anybody.

As for your proposed test protocols in the new thread, I find most of the questions too vague to be of any use. I suspect that you will never come to an agreement on protocol. As things firm up, you will vanish.

And I got all this from the fact that you won't tell me the name of the manuscript.

[Gr8wight]

And Gr8wight, regardless what word you picked to call me a liar or imply that I might be lying, you still did that, so quit backpedalling. If you don't care to "pick out the holes" in my statements, go rag on someone else. I don't even care to hear why you seem to think I'll ever "explode" but I am of the opinion that anyone who hopes to see another explode is a pervert, and I have no time for any sickos in my life right now, so please leave me alone.

I'm not sure whether your accusations are simply hyperbole, or stem from a lack of reading comprehension, but I most certainly did not call you a liar in any post in this thread. Up til now, I did not believe that you are lying. I believed that you are hopelessly self deluded, but not lying. However, watching you tap dance around the questions put to you, without ever providing an answer, I may have to question that belief. Frankly, I'm skeptical.

[oddball]

As for your proposed test protocols in the new thread, I find most of the questions too vague to be of any use.

What is vague about "What have I missed, or misstated?"? What is vague about the way I asked for help with the "anti-trickery" protocols?

[oddball]

I'm not sure whether your accusations are simply hyperbole, or stem from a lack of reading comprehension, but I most certainly did not call you a liar in any post in this thread.

What "accusations" have I made against you?

I was neither exaggerating or misunderstanding anything with the possible exception of how you think and behave. Apparently you think that calling someone else's statements rubbish or b.s. or whatever is not the same as accusing them of lying. I can't imagine a place where such a belief is common. Where I live now, where I was raised, and pretty much everywhere I've ever been, people do not make such statements unless they believe someone is lying. It's the same as calling them a liar.

Up til now, I did not believe that you are lying. I believed that you are hopelessly self deluded, but not lying. However, watching you tap dance around the questions put to you, without ever providing an answer, I may have to question that belief. Frankly, I'm skeptical.

One thing's clear, we're looking at things through very different filters. Mine tells me that I've been answering as many questions as I can, as quickly as I can manage to do so. Even when all I'm ready to say is "I'll get to that soon".

I can't be here 24x7 and when I am here I'm doing the best I can within my own limits and constraints. I don't answer something right away, it doesn't mean that I never will. It might also mean that I prefer not to answer "just yet".

But maybe what you really mean is I'm not giving the sort of answers that are expected or desired. I honestly don't know.

[webfusion]

oddball says:One thing's clear, we're looking at things through very different filters.

Yeah, no doubt. Oddball is looking throught a woo filter.

[Gr8wight]

What "accusations" have I made against you?

You accused me of calling you a liar.

I was neither exaggerating or misunderstanding anything with the possible exception of how you think and behave. Apparently you think that calling someone else's statements rubbish or b.s. or whatever is not the same as accusing them of lying. I can't imagine a place where such a belief is common. Where I live now, where I was raised, and pretty much everywhere I've ever been, people do not make such statements unless they believe someone is lying. It's the same as calling them a liar.

I don't follow you. I consider everything that comes out of the local parish priest's mouth to be "rubbish or b.s." but I don't consider him a liar, either. He genuinely believes everything he says. Doesn't make any of it worth its weight in bat guano, though.

I have clearly stated that I believe that someone has pulled the wool over your eyes with this ressurection thing. You have been fooled. You continue on this path by fooling yourself with all the silly rhetoric about recovered mystical knowledge of ancient lost civilisations.

Every woo that comes to these forums all think that they are going to wow us with their novel and revolutionary ideas. Oddball, you have not said one single thing that we haven't all heard before. Your arguments are trite and very, very common in the woo woo world, and absolutely none of them can be substantiated.

I still haven't called you a liar anywhere here. Haven't even come close.

[oddball]

You accused me of calling you a liar.

I don't follow you. I consider everything that comes out of the local parish priest's mouth to be "rubbish or b.s." but I don't consider him a liar, either. He genuinely believes everything he says. Doesn't make any of it worth its weight in bat guano, though.

I can gather from what you say here that you honestly did not mean to accuse me of lying. Can you see from what you quoted of my post why I thought you were accusing me?

I have clearly stated that I believe that someone has pulled the wool over your eyes with this ressurection thing. You have been fooled. You continue on this path by fooling yourself with all the silly rhetoric about recovered mystical knowledge of ancient lost civilisations.

I never said that the knowledge was mystical. If you ever become familiar with it you will see that it is not mystical. It's just a different way of understanding the physical, mechanical laws of nature than you are accustomed to, and with that understanding you can do some things that you couldn't know were possible before, much less do them.

I still haven't called you a liar anywhere here. Haven't even come close.

[Gr8wight]

I can gather from what you say here that you honestly did not mean to accuse me of lying. Can you see from what you quoted of my post why I thought you were accusing me?

No.

I never said that the knowledge was mystical. If you ever become familiar with it you will see that it is not mystical. It's just a different way of understanding the physical, mechanical laws of nature than you are accustomed to, and with that understanding you can do some things that you couldn't know were possible before, much less do them.

Then name the manuscript.

[steenkh]

I never said that the knowledge was mystical. If you ever become familiar with it you will see that it is not mystical. It's just a different way of understanding the physical, mechanical laws of nature than you are accustomed to, and with that understanding you can do some things that you couldn't know were possible before, much less do them.
That sounds pretty mystical to me!

[Paul2]

Oddball, your reluctance to be specific and answer questions directly raises doubt about your credibility, not surprisingly.

[Gr8wight]

Oddball, your reluctance to be specific and answer questions directly raises doubt about your credibility, not surprisingly.

Also behaviour we see over and over again here.

[Flange Desire]

But we must commend her for not turning purple and exploding in a splutter.
Her posts are pretty lucid, with only the normal amount of evasion.
But we still await the list of questions for the questionaire.

[Gr8wight]

But we must commend her for not turning purple and exploding in a splutter.
Her posts are pretty lucid, with only the normal amount of evasion.
But we still await the list of questions for the questionaire.

He/she/whatever still has not applied.

[rjh01]

Not even attempted to win the money in the other thread that is going begging. Oddball has the same amount of psychic power as I do. I claim to be the best powerful psychic around.

[oddball]

I got a bit of a start this evening when I used the facilities in a public establishment where the lighting is different from my home. First time I've seen my face in a different light in quite some time. The reflection showed a person who appears to be recovering from two black eyes. Lack of sleep will do that to a face.

Anyway, although I have yet to catch up all the way on sleep, I did get enough of a rest for my thinking to be a little more straight, and I realized why I can't go forward with a claim on the cancer detection ability right now.

I don't think my exposure to cancer patients in situations where I know what kind of cancer they have is sufficient. Since there are a great many different kinds, it is therefore possible there are some forms that I cannot detect.

I didn't keep notes for myself when I had the chance, 30+ years ago, on how many of which different kinds of cancer I was around in my brief apprenticeship. And since that time, although I have detected cancer among people in crowds in public places, I didn't have the chance to find out what kind they had.

So before I could make this kind of claim and expect to win the challenge with it, I would have to do some studies to find out for myself whether or not there are forms of cancer that I routinely miss, and if so, which ones. I will work on this after I figure a simple and inexpensive way to get that kind of study done.

Meanwhile I can proceed with developing a suggested protocol for the ancestral details claim. In case no mutually acceptable (and affordable) protocol for that is found, I will have Claim B in waiting, and Claim C next in line if I have the same difficulty with B.

[William Smith]

I got a bit of a start this evening when I used the facilities in a public establishment where the lighting is different from my home. First time I've seen my face in a different light in quite some time. The reflection showed a person who appears to be recovering from two black eyes. Lack of sleep will do that to a face.

Anyway, although I have yet to catch up all the way on sleep, I did get enough of a rest for my thinking to be a little more straight, and I realized why I can't go forward with a claim on the cancer detection ability right now.

I don't think my exposure to cancer patients in situations where I know what kind of cancer they have is sufficient. Since there are a great many different kinds, it is therefore possible there are some forms that I cannot detect.

I didn't keep notes for myself when I had the chance, 30+ years ago, on how many of which different kinds of cancer I was around in my brief apprenticeship. And since that time, although I have detected cancer among people in crowds in public places, I didn't have the chance to find out what kind they had.

So before I could make this kind of claim and expect to win the challenge with it, I would have to do some studies to find out for myself whether or not there are forms of cancer that I routinely miss, and if so, which ones. I will work on this after I figure a simple and inexpensive way to get that kind of study done.

Meanwhile I can proceed with developing a suggested protocol for the ancestral details claim. In case no mutually acceptable (and affordable) protocol for that is found, I will have Claim B in waiting, and Claim C next in line if I have the same difficulty with B.

You seem on a productive path, oddball.



But I can't wait for your test proposal of Claim C.

[oddball]

You seem on a productive path, oddball.

If only you knew! And if only I could share certain things without it costing me more time than I can spare as well as (I'm sure) calling down no end of ridicule from you guys.

But I can tell you this much at least: The preparation for taking on this challenge, regardless which of the claims ends up being the one I go with, involves certain forms of self-discipline which can produce very rapid results.

Consider an athlete who abandons most athletic activity and takes a sedentary job, and after some years the ability to perform as he once could diminishes. But since he was in excellent shape when he abandoned his athletic activities, if he resumes them before he goes "past the point of rescue", he'll have an easier time getting back in shape and will reach a higher level of ability sooner than someone who was sedentary all his adult life and takes up an athletic sport after the age of 40.

The conditions that enable the abilities I am claiming to have act similarly to the athlete example. Use it or lose it. So I've resumed the conditioning practices that I had let lapse (or was more or less forced to discontinue for a long time) and in the process am already experiencing "flashes" of long-forgotten phenomena which I once took for granted. I won't name or describe them here and now for want of time and because there's no point in it even if I have the time, but I wanted to mention this because your comment brought it to mind. I am indeed on a productive path.

But I can't wait for your test proposal of Claim C.

You've got to either wait, or come up with one that you think is do-able and that will satisfy the JREF. If you do, feel free to brief me via PM.

[Gr8wight]

I can't go forward with a claim on the cancer detection ability right now.

I don't think my exposure to cancer patients in situations where I know what kind of cancer they have is sufficient. Since there are a great many different kinds, it is therefore possible there are some forms that I cannot detect.

Excuse number one. Two to go.

[William Smith]

...
You've got to either wait, or come up with one that you think is do-able and that will satisfy the JREF. If you do, feel free to brief me via PM.

I guess I will have to wait, since I consider it impossible by our means at this time.

One question can't wait though: Have you ever "raised" someone from the dead, oddball?

[oddball]

I guess I will have to wait, since I consider it impossible by our means at this time.

One question can't wait though: Have you ever "raised" someone from the dead, oddball?

That question's been asked and answered before in this thread. No I have not done it myself, but I have every reason to be confident that the technique works and that I could perform it successfully.

Forgive me if I bow out of active and constant participation in this forum for the time being, as I have some very urgent real-life challenges to address, and they require my near-constant attention until I get them handled and under control.

[William Smith]

That question's been asked and answered before in this thread. No I have not done it myself, but I have every reason to be confident that the technique works and that I could perform it successfully.

Forgive me if I bow out of active and constant participation in this forum for the time being, as I have some very urgent real-life challenges to address, and they require my near-constant attention until I get them handled and under control.

If it fits your busy schedule, oddball, consider doing it (for newbies: raising the dead) without a Challenge Application since you "have every reason to be confident that the technique works and that I could perform it successfully".

Like NOFX have said: Do it for "The Cause".

[Rasmus]

That question's been asked and answered before in this thread. No I have not done it myself, but I have every reason to be confident that the technique works and that I could perform it successfully.

Excuse me for being blunt - but this is just plain stupid.

Every reason, you say?

You've got to be friggin' kidding me here.

You have not observed the raising of your dead, you have not performed the rasing of the dead, you haven't talked to anyone that claimed they have been raised from the dead. You do not know enough about the procedure to take as much as an educated guess as to how it applies to animals (but you do know you have to turn around the corpse). As far as I can tell, you are not in contact with anyone who observed the procedure or performed them, either.

All you have is the word of the person who taught you how it is supposedly done. Without reading over the thread again: You haven't commented on why anyone should trust that person's credibility, their sincerity or their claimed ability.

You think you have every reason to believe you can do it?

You have the worst, smallest reason imaginable to believe that it can be done at all, let alone by you.

If the procedure is as as basic and simple as you claim it is, then please give us instructions! Every day - no, every second - people die that are worthy of being resurrected. I consider it inhuman and irresponsible fo you to keep secret such knowledge!

(Yes, one could argue that some deserve to die - but I doubt that that would be sufficient reason to not make the secret widely known.)

[Flange Desire]

Spot on Rasmus!

Oddball implied that the ability to ressurect the dead is a trainable skill.

Please consider ...
Knowledge of humungous importance is available (to some special folk).
How is it kept secret from the rest of us?
Why is it kept secret from the rest of us?

Seriously Oddball, can you address these pertinent questions above.

Less seriously Oddball, and no offense intended, but why would you be privvy to this humungously important knowledge while the rest of us aren't? Why should you be so special? After all, I would hazzard a guess that you are probably much like all the rest of us. Or you are the one person in a few billion that just happens to know the bloke who can raise the dead. Wow - what an improbable thing that this would be true AND you also own a computer, have an internet connection, and speak English!

[Rasmus]

(Yes, one could argue that some deserve to die - but I doubt that that would be sufficient reason to not make the secret widely known.)

Allow me to elaborate on this a little more now that I am done working for a while. I think it is important.

Earlier, you said:

Only on one occasion after being taught the revival method have I actually been present when someone died a natural death, and at that time there were many reasons to refrain from trying to revive the person.

Now, please, do tell us what those many reasons were. I think I have demonstrate that you use strange ways to enumerate reasons, and I doubt you will really have that many reasons - let alone good ones - but I will once more grant you the benefit of the doubt and ask what those reasons were.

What reasons could you have to feel justified to let a person die (remain dead, if you like) whom you could have easily saved ? Who was it? Hitler? Dylan Klebold? What terrible crimes against humanity must that person have committed that you decided they should better be dead than live? (I think even Saddam Hussein was granted proper treatment after his capture, right?)

Did you feel a need to punish that person? Who was the jury, then?

Here in Germany, and I think the same holds true for many other places, you would commit crime by refusing to help a person if you could easily do so without risking your own health or life. What were your risks? What unspeakable things would have happened to you or others had you allowed that person to be revived?

And I am not even going to begin to explore what would happen if every run-of-the-mill plain vanilla doctor would start make such decisions instead of helping to the best of their ability regardless of who their patient was.

What put you in a position to be better equipped to make such a decision? What allows you to do what would - at best - leave any doctor without a job?

What makes you special, so superior and so much better than the rest of us?

On a more personal and yet, much more general note, if I dropped dead at your feet because of an unexpected heart attack (assuming that is a condition that wouldn't prevent you from reviving me), and assuming you didn't know or recognize me: What would you do? Am I worthy to live? How would you make that decision? In your view, do I have a right to live, or will it be required that I prove my worthiness? Earn or simply buy your benevolence or mercy?

If death is so easily reversible, then how is being dead any different from life-threateningly ill? Would you have felt justified killing the person that you just decided to not bring back to live? How is there a difference? And if there is a difference between "killing" and "letting die" (and I think there may well be) then what is the difference between "letting die" and "letting remain dead"?

Finally, if you were not to share your secret with the world - what entitles you to so much power over your fellow men? How do you justify that you should be master over my life to such an extreme degree?

Can you at least give any guarantees that you will not abuse that power?

I dread to ask - but why should we let you live?

[oddball]

Flange, Rasmus: I've already addressed most of your questions earlier in this thread. I'm beginning to regret ever mentioning the subject in a public forum.

As I've already stated on this forum somewhere, I've been a hermit for quite a few years, but I have kept in touch a bit through the internet and other media, and I happened to find out about the $1m challenge, and thought raising the dead would qualify to win. But I didn't consider as well as I perhaps should have that the very mention of a claim of such an ability would raise an uproar.

I'll address questions in random order, as I am still tired out (mentally).

This knowledge is of great importance, yes, however in the context that Rasmus seems to think it is most important - to restore "worthy people" - it is in fact next to useless aside from being a phenomenon at which to marvel. Why?

Most people who die these days from anything other than irreparable physical damage due to injuries have irreversible degeneration of some sort. In either case if they were brought back to life they could not be assured of having enough time in which to effect repair of their injuries or reversal of their degeneration, and would only be miserable being alive again. So on an ethical basis alone I would not want to attempt to revive them.

The only other person that most people have heard of being able to raise the dead is Jesus Christ, thanks to New Testament accounts of Lazarus. Notably, there are no other accounts of Jesus raising other dead people, which leads me to suspect that he only did it once and then only to demonstrate that he had enough important things to relate to others, and was so intent on being given the chance to be heard, that he wanted to do something to quickly convince people to hear him out.

Notable also with regard to Jesus Christ is the fact that he got a lot of attention and hence followers by restoring sight to a blind person and making a cripple walk again. If we accept that he may have done these feats, we can thereby assume that he was adept enough at healing to have very quickly restored Lazarus to good health after bringing him back from the dead, and thus did not have to deal with the matter of ethics that I mentioned above.

If we do accept that Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead, then unless we are either religious zealots or blind, we have to assume that someone taught him how to perform these feats, or at least taught him in principle how they can be done, and that he developed the abilities to a very high degree during the time he was conspicuously absent from public life (from age 13 through 30).

It's been theorized by my own instructor that J.C. was dominated by what he calls an excessively sentimental level of thinking, and that his failure to attain a higher level of wisdom is the underlying reason he wasn't able to avoid persecution and crucifixion at such a young age. But we can't fault him for that, because who could expect someone not only barely past age 30 but who also had lived most of his formative and early adult years in so much seclusion that no public record exists of his activities during that time, to have developed enough worldly wisdom to keep from "getting caught" by an egotistical monarch with an axe to grind.

I hasten to add that there are numerous accounts of J.C. having said something to the effect of, "All these wonders you have seen me do, also shall you do, and even greater ones than these." Sounds to me like he was telling his followers to do him the honor of studying a little harder and exceeding his expectations as well as his accomplishments. Instead they apparently chose to deify and worship him.

At any rate, and regardless where the knowledge came from that Jesus employed, unless we dismiss out of hand all the historical accounts of Jesus' public life, we must accept that it existed as recently as a little more than two thousand years ago, but at that time and for whatever reason it was not commonly known. It is therefore not a far reach to assume that the knowledge survived to this very day. I happen to know that it did, and where it can be found, and I am not particularly anxious to spread it far and wide, for reasons I hope I have made abundantly clear in this thread by now.

Also please note that I have not claimed to be the only living human who has this knowledge. I know there are others, I just don't know how many or where any of them are at the moment. There may be many more than I might guess if I ventured a guess. They may be keeping it to themselves for their own reasons, and I do not presume to know what those reasons are or might be. Or they may simply be waiting for an opportune time to introduce themselves to the world at large. I just do not know!

What I do know is that raising the dead serves no useful purpose in the present day and age aside from calling attention to oneself and the risk of being ostracised or worse. It may be useful in winning a million from James Randi, and thereby also winning an opportunity for the theoretical foundations of the knowledge, which enables an ability as remarkable as raising the dead, to be more widely accepted and studied. If that can happen, so much the better.

As to instructing others, as I said before there are people much more capable than I am of communicating the knowledge to which I am alluding. If I can persuade one of them to take on the $1m challenge, I will do so, if I don't win it myself first. But even if I do win, I will defer the instructing to those with better qualifications and experience as teachers than I have.

Rasmus - and whoever else constitutes the "we" of whom you write in that final question - you should let me live because to stop me from living you would have to murder me, and that is against the law. It is not a crime punishable by death to allow someone who has died to remain dead, and even if it was, I have not been convicted and your "we" are not commissioned with carrying out my lawful execution.

You asked about the person I did not choose to revive. He was almost 100 years old and had been suffering with pneumonia for weeks. His lungs had filled with fluid just prior to his death, so even if he was revived, he would have been unable to breathe. We were over 100 miles from the nearest hospital at the time and without the means to get there, as well as quite a distance from a functioning telephone. Also, his daughter was present and wouldn't have allowed me to do anything to the body. From her the word spread within hours that her dad was gone. So even if this man could have been revived, I wouldn't have wanted to saddle this woman with the task of explaining that her dad *was* dead, but didn't stay that way, and why not. I wouldn't have wanted to raise an uproar in her community, either, by reviving her dad for a very short time.

[nathan]

Oddball,
where have you been before you came to this forum? You've indicated in your posts that:
* you've been a hermit, which I take to mean isolated from society in some way
* you're nearly always tired, which seems to indicate your life is unstructured
* you're having trouble keeping a regular diet, forgoing hot meals for an extended period
* you're having trouble with the issues of everyday life, such as going to the grocers to buy food
* you're having to withdraw from this forum because of some emergency that requires your immediate attention
* ... yet you continue to post here
* you make claims about raising the dead
* you're comparing yourself to Jesus Christ

Have you been hospitalized for an exended period and recently been discharged?
Have you lived in supervised accomodation or something, and recently left that to live independently?
Have recently stopped or changed medication?

Please understand, I'm not asking out of morbid curiosity, but because I want to help you.

[oddball]

Oddball,
where have you been before you came to this forum? You've indicated in your posts that:
* you've been a hermit, which I take to mean isolated from society in some way

I haven't got time to write enough of a personal history to adequately explain the circumstances that led to my living alone for a long period. And even if I had the time, I wouldn't be writing about them here. At least, not now.

* you're nearly always tired, which seems to indicate your life is unstructured

I live in a non-air-conditioned house, and we had a hellaciously hot summer. I was barely able to sleep for a couple of months due to the heat.

* you're having trouble keeping a regular diet, forgoing hot meals for an extended period

Yeah. Been short of time, due to decreased ability to function slowing me down. Decreased ability to function due to lack of proper sleep for a couple of months.

* you're having trouble with the issues of everyday life, such as going to the grocers to buy food

If shortage of money and time is what you call trouble, then yeah, I've had some lately.

* you're having to withdraw from this forum because of some emergency that requires your immediate attention

My need and desire to withdraw have thusfar been outweighed by the desire to avoid seeming impolite or evasive by ignoring questions directed to me. I wish the questions would stop or at least slow down, and that whoever has any would just hold them for a while, or send them via PM.

* ... yet you continue to post here

Sure I do. It's one of a very few "public" places where I've encountered any noticeable degree of intelligence in the crowd. That makes it attractive to me. But I still need a break....


* you make claims about raising the dead
* you're comparing yourself to Jesus Christ


That's a stretch and a half. Read carefully what I actually said. Nowhere did I claim to have raised a dead person, nor make such a comparison in the sense that you seem to be implying... that I may be like the nutcase character of Jack McDermott (played by Peter Boyle) in the hilarious 1989 movie "The Dream Team" with Michael Keaton.

Have you been hospitalized for an exended period and recently been discharged?

No, I haven't. Even if I had, I wouldn't be telling strangers about it on a public forum.

Have you lived in supervised accomodation or something, and recently left that to live independently?

No, ditto....

Have recently stopped or changed medication?

I've never been on medication, other than an occasional aspirin for a toothache.

Please understand, I'm not asking out of morbid curiosity, but because I want to help you.

If you really want to help me, quit asking questions like these. It's really hard for me to believe you are serious when you ask stuff like this. I realize you want to know more about me, and I don't want to be cagey. I just need a break from the computer without offending anyone or giving the impression that I want to avoid answering their questions. So far I've done my best to respond to everyone (except those who've been unaccountably rude) in a timely manner. I haven't wanted to be accused of "god" knows what because I didn't respond or didn't do it quickly enough.

So unless you have a real need to know something from me, just let it ride for now, OK?

[fromdownunder]

At any rate, and regardless where the knowledge came from that Jesus employed, unless we dismiss out of hand all the historical accounts of Jesus' public life, we must accept that it existed as recently as a little more than two thousand years ago, but at that time and for whatever reason it was not commonly known.


oddball, while I do not wish to derail this thread, I cannot let this statement go. Surely you must be aware that the only thing close to a verifiable source for Jesus outside of the Bible is one, possibly two very brief references in the writings of Josephus (written many years after the "events"),

There are also no references to miracles outside of the Gospels, which were not written until 40-70 years after Jesus death, if in fact he ever existed.

And none of the writings, even the Biblical ones, were from eye witnesses. (Well, maybe 1 Peter at a stretch, perhaps Jude, but many scholars doubt these as well)

So, using the idea of Jesus as a potential source for claims of the possibility of raising the dead is simply invalid

Norm

[nathan]

Thanks for responding.

That's a stretch and a half. Read carefully what I actually said. Nowhere did I claim to have raised a dead person, nor make such a comparison in the sense that you seem to be implying

You claim you have a procedure to raise people from the dead. Claim it's something that's easily done, claim that you could do it (but haven't done it) and claim that the only recorded instance of someone raising someone from the dead is Jesus Christ raising Lazarus.

I don't believe you. Apply or go away.

[nathan]

Yeah. Been short of time, due to decreased ability to function slowing me down. Decreased ability to function due to lack of proper sleep for a couple of months.
Yes, and my point is you've got your priorities out of whack. If you've got a reduced ability to function, you shouldn't be spending what little you have on this message board. you should be using it to sort your life out.

[nathan]

If shortage of money and time is what you call trouble, then yeah, I've had some lately.
And are you doing anything about it, or just complaining?

[nathan]

My need and desire to withdraw have thusfar been outweighed by the desire to avoid seeming impolite or evasive by ignoring questions directed to me. I wish the questions would stop or at least slow down, and that whoever has any would just hold them for a while, or send them via PM.

You say one thing, yet do another. You started off spawning several threads of discussion -- don't start complaining when that requires you to respond a lot.

How would PM'ing the questions help? Hey everybody, let's each one of us PM oddball the same question -- that'll sure make it easier.

[nathan]

If you really want to help me, quit asking questions like these. It's really hard for me to believe you are serious when you ask stuff like this.
Let me get this straight. You find it surprising that we're questioning your rationality when you claim to be able to raise people from the dead? For you that's a perfectly normal thing to be able to do?

[Paul2]

Most people who die these days from anything other than irreparable physical damage due to injuries have irreversible degeneration of some sort.
What a howler! I have two words for you: Drowning victims.

Do you still think it's wise not to publish your technique of raising the dead for every lifeguard in the world to employ?

[Flange Desire]

I asked Oddball about the knowledge of how to resurrect the dead ...
Knowledge of humungous importance is available (to some special folk).
How is it kept secret from the rest of us?
Why is it kept secret from the rest of us?

And I recieved a very long, lyrical, and beautifully written response.
But unfortunately this response did not address the questions at all.

MUCH SNIPPED FOR BREVITY
This knowledge is of great importance, yes ...
...
we must accept that it existed as recently as a little more than two thousand years ago, but at that time and for whatever reason it was not commonly known. It is therefore not a far reach to assume that the knowledge survived to this very day. I happen to know that it did, and where it can be found
...
I know there are others...
They may be keeping it to themselves for their own reasons, and I do not presume to know what those reasons are or might be.

We are in general agreement that this knowledge is of great importance.
Let's not debate too much about how greatly important it is.
We could just say for now that it is of moderately great importance,
and that any evidence for it would attract VERY WIDE INTEREST.

How is it kept secret from the rest of us?
Why is it kept secret from the rest of us?

Can you guess any reasons why 'for whatever reason it was not commonly known' 2000 years ago?

If it was 'not commonly known', but it is a 'fair reach that it has survived to today', then how was the knowledge passed on?

You say you know that the knowledge did survive till today and where it can be found.
How is it that you know, but billions of others do not know?
[I could ask what puts you apart from the other N THOUSANDS of biblical scholars, but this isn't even a biblical study thing - the general question remains - what puts you apart from the N BILLIONS of others who could have the knowledge but don't]

You say that you know there are others that have the knowledge, but cannot hazzard a guess as to why they would not publisise it.
This sounds very much like a response from a CTer to me (no offence).

C'mon Oddball! Just a few simple, short, succinct answers please!

[Darat]

You can read what happened next when Gulliver challenged Oddball to prove one of her claims in this thread: Gulliver's Challenge - Oddball's claim of raising the dead (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=82036).