People arent scientific enough to see spiritual proof

[de_paradise]

A few years back I decided to learn the Tarot cards, not out of any spiritual affinity, but just because I had learned the art of cold reading (all the tricks and methods of pseudo "psychics") and the cards seemed more interesting than palms.

 

Well as I was learning, I pulled a some cards for friends, and I noticed that very often, even with good shuffling, some of the SAME cards would pop up when I drew more than once for the same person.

 

Shrug it off, who cares. But damnit, I spent years in university doing some pretty high level statistics courses, but even with the most basic one, I could understand that the probability of the events happening were absurdly slim, nearly impossible, for example (5x5x5/72x72x72) The weird thing was, it was happening really often. I knew mathematically it couldnt happen unless there was some other unaccounted for variable. I even googled this, and I found that there was this physics professor who was playing Tarot with his wife noticed the same weird statistical anomolies.

 

To this day, I have no idea how this happens, whether its spirits, multiple reality streams, etc. It doesnt matter really, what matters is that I noticed it and could not get beyond the fact that in this instance mathematics and science explainations were not sufficient. You cant shrug this off. At least I couldnt.

 

But I realized since then, many people have lots of stranger experiences, and they do shrug them off as if it didnt matter that our laws of science were being broken right in front of them. They are not scientific enough to say, wait, hold the phone, thats not possible, lets explore, lets find the truth.

 

So its really ironic and funny when the sceptics and doubters pull out the old "science" card, as if spiritual happenings were not scientific, and they are not just behaving like pre-programmed clones who are merely echoing some vastly insufficient body of accumulated and accepted knowlege.

[Erdrickgr]

An interesting post. I would agree that people will sometimes shrug spiritual happenings off without investigating. Maybe because of apathy, or fear, or for some other reason. I would consider myself a skeptic, and I think that any skeptic worth their salt would be a truth-seeker first and foremost, and would be able to say "lets explore, lets find the truth".

 

Having said that, many spiritual experiences are considered supernatural, and thus are outside the purview of modern, naturalistic science. Sometimes science can demonstrate that something is true, and sometimes it can't. But a more prevalent problem, I think, is that many people who accept supernatural activity want to have their cake and eat it to. On the one hand, such people don't want science interfering with their spiritual beliefs, and will ignore scientific results for any number of reasons. For example, when a valid study demonstrates that praying for cancer patients doesn't work, people just make excuses for why they can ignore the study, like saying that God can't be tested that way. On the other hand, when science does seem to validate something spiritual, all of a sudden it's trumpeted from the rooftops. "Aha! Science validates my belief! What do you say to that you stinkin' non-believers?" It reminds me of this overview of some polls on religion and science. Most notable to me in the article was this statement:

 

"When asked what they would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people say they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept the contrary scientific finding, according to the results of an October 2006 Time magazine poll."

 

People seem to want to hold to their beliefs, whatever they might be, whether they're a skeptic or a spiritualist. But, while I would agree with you that some skeptics will ignore the spiritual too easily, I think the larger problem is that many spiritual people will ignore science too easily. Or to put it another way, while some people aren't scientific enough to see the spiritual proof, many more people aren't spiritual enough to see the scientific proof.

Edited August 14, 2009 by Erdrickgr

[de_paradise]

I agree Edrickgr, that spiritual people often start to believe anything without much basis for the belief, and end up looking like kooks or loonies. And this tendancy makes us all look bad because then the people with the materiaist point of view (who are in the majority and have many texts and teachers behind them) can paint us all with the same brush. That is frustrating when one wants to point out anomolies and are met with overwhelming doubt and scorn, not unbiased curiosity.

 

I've been through this stage and I'll tell you why it happened. When my Kundalini started awakening, my view of the human body, biology, our relationship to the earth etc...many things were starkly proven on a daily basis how the prevailing viewpoint, the one we all learn in high school and college, was flawed. That causes a rejection of many accepted truths, but also causes a void in how to explain why shit happens. So into that void any new agey, moon worshipping extra terrestrial explaination can make its way in. Its a scary time, trust me, and that is why many Kundalini people go nuts. You dont know what life is about anymore, but just about everyone you know has got it wrong--thats hard to accept. (this is where you can accuse me of being egotistical and like a born-again christian who thinks he has a lock on the truth. no trust me man, it was NICE being one with the standard atheist viewpoint, i was very happy thinking life was about sex and money and death after 78 years)

 

And the larger problem IS that the run on the mill person who believes that they are scientific, but merely an unthinking clone with much bias and a complete reliance on what they are told. The reason that this is the larger problem is because the truth remains buried, while the fringe spiritual people are a minority.

[Marblehead]

My opinion.

 

Spirituality is real for each and every one of us. Some choose to ignore it, others hold it closely in the conscious mind.

 

Spirituality lies in our sub(un)conscious mind. It includes all those things we know that we thought we didn't know. It is the source of all inspiration/intuition.

 

No, I cannot prove what I just said. But it has been proven that we have an unconscious mind.

 

Be well!

[Meson]

[johndoe2012]

This is a good topic. Funnily enough, I was thinking of posting a thread here regarding science vs spirituality.

 

There is a real need for scientists to explore spirituality because that's what science is about: exploring nature and document it.

 

I have just re-started my spiritual journey and I see a lot of crap, misinformation and also blatant lies regarding qigong and internal alchemy. This needs to go away so we arrive closer to the truth to enable more people to gain enlightenment or living closer to Tao.

 

You know people will change their habits if they get scientific proof. Also if Kundalini experiences were better documented, maybe people wouldn't lose their mind but we would be able to help them.

 

Many so-called spirtitual people or new agers think science is bad, while it is the morality and values, i.e. the people behind that are abusing it.

 

The scientists in the West need to learn from the Chinese and pay attention to spirituality. Maybe with the opening of China, documentation of Qi-effects etc. we can get Western scientists aboard.

[Marblehead]

Hi Wtm,

 

Just to comment on myself. I have turned to Native North American spirituality for that part of my life. I feel is it the most compatible with my Taoist beliefs than any other form of spirituality out there.

 

Be well!

[DalTheJigsaw123]

My opinion.

 

Spirituality is real for each and every one of us. Some choose to ignore it, others hold it closely in the conscious mind.

 

Spirituality lies in our sub(un)conscious mind. It includes all those things we know that we thought we didn't know. It is the source of all inspiration/intuition.

 

No, I cannot prove what I just said. But it has been proven that we have an unconscious mind.

 

Be well!

 

Well put!

[Marblehead]

Thanks Leon.

 

Be well!

[Pietro]

A few years back I decided to learn the Tarot cards, not out of any spiritual affinity, but just because I had learned the art of cold reading (all the tricks and methods of pseudo "psychics") and the cards seemed more interesting than palms.

 

Well as I was learning, I pulled a some cards for friends, and I noticed that very often, even with good shuffling, some of the SAME cards would pop up when I drew more than once for the same person.

 

Shrug it off, who cares. But damnit, I spent years in university doing some pretty high level statistics courses, but even with the most basic one, I could understand that the probability of the events happening were absurdly slim, nearly impossible, for example (5x5x5/72x72x72) The weird thing was, it was happening really often. I knew mathematically it couldnt happen unless there was some other unaccounted for variable. I even googled this, and I found that there was this physics professor who was playing Tarot with his wife noticed the same weird statistical anomolies.

 

To this day, I have no idea how this happens, whether its spirits, multiple reality streams, etc. It doesnt matter really, what matters is that I noticed it and could not get beyond the fact that in this instance mathematics and science explainations were not sufficient. You cant shrug this off. At least I couldnt.

 

But I realized since then, many people have lots of stranger experiences, and they do shrug them off as if it didnt matter that our laws of science were being broken right in front of them. They are not scientific enough to say, wait, hold the phone, thats not possible, lets explore, lets find the truth.

 

So its really ironic and funny when the sceptics and doubters pull out the old "science" card, as if spiritual happenings were not scientific, and they are not just behaving like pre-programmed clones who are merely echoing some vastly insufficient body of accumulated and accepted knowlege.

 

Why don't you test it?

So far you only had the glimpse of something, but to be scientific you need to go through the long (and boring) of setting up an experiment, predict what will happen, run the experiment, and observe how what you predicted, and what was going to happen where different. And you need to do this a number of times. Say 100. So that you can get some statistical data on what you are observing.

 

Now it is very important that you do not fall into a trap. A trap that many non scientists people tend to fall into when they start doing science. That is the trap of ignoring the results we don't like. You need to decide when the experiment will start, how many times you will run it, then you run it, and then you observe. You don't just run it, and ignore the ones you don't like (or forget, you need to take note of all the times your run the experiment, and of every single card that came out). Also you need to make sure that you are fair respect to when you stop the experiment. This is why you need to decide before hand how long should it last.

 

Finally, in your prediction, you should be aware that no experiment will come out as an exact average. The phrase I once found was "on average nothing is average" which I think is true and gives the idea. Now for this you would be better to speak with a realt statistician. SOmeone who can tell you how far from the exact average is ok, and how far should your alarm bell start to ring. This is really important.

 

I remember a paper where they studied the effects of prayer "to the judeo-christian God" on the effects on health. So they took those people in the hospital, measured their health, and then asked them to pray. I don't remember how much, and how long where the experiment lasting. Once the experiment was over they measured all the vital caracteristics. And they compared with the measures done before. And then out of all the possible things that could have gone better, they discovered that the average of how the kidney (or was it bladder) worked was sensibly better. SO they produced a paper claiming that praying the judeo christian God was good for the kidney and bladder.

 

Where is the error?

 

That because they checked all the measurements, each of them was not going to be exactly on average. If the number of different measurements that you are measuring is big enough, your are bound to meet one which is an outlier. Just because statistically it happens. If they did it again, they would probably found that now the Judeo Christian God was good for something else (say the heart, or the knee, or the cerebro-spinal fluid, or...). In short their paper was not giving us any real better predictiva ability that we had before.

 

And this is why it is important to get a statistician involved. Because it is really easy to reach false conclusions.

 

You mention you have studied statistics at the uni, so maybe you might not need a statistician. I would. My math degree did not cover stats nearly at all.

 

BTW, here is a wonderful talk that again express how easy it is to get statistics wrong when we just follow our intuition.

 

But please do not consider that I am trying to stop you. Quite the contrary. Scientists are normal people. Just get paper and pen, make some calculations, predict, then take the tarot cards, and try to see how does reality compares to our mechanicistical view of reality.

 

Then once you have discovered something, you need to measure it, test it and reproduce it. So now suppose you found that the Tarot card The Judgment appears much more often then usual. Then you need to make new predictions, basing yourself on your new understanding of the world. You now predict that The Judgment will appear more often. So you go through the 100 times again (this would be good to do it twice). And you see if you are correct. If you are (both times you run the full experiment your prediction was sensibly better than reality) you probably have a paper.

 

But what if the next time the outlier is not The Judgment. Now we have a problem. It could be that the Tarots are reflecting the fact that reality has changed, or simply that in every statistical series of draws you always have some anomalies. And that is statistically ok, and statistically predictable (have I already mention to keep a statistician next to you?).

 

How do you test that?

If the statistician cannot tell you, you can still use an empirical method. You take another set of 21 cards. Not the taror. And then repeat the experiment with those cards.

You repeat it 100 times *3. And then compare. Do you find the same level of outliers in those cards (and thus the problem is a statistical problem) or do you find that those produce a sensibly different pattern. If this is the case, you have the ground to suspect that the Tarot cards are the culprit.

 

My take is that you will find outliers, that those outliers will be different from series of experiment to the other, and that if you try with non Tarot card you will have the same outliers. BUT if you try with non tarot cards without writing down every card (both in the Tarot and in the non Tarot) you will not see the outliers. This is because your mind has a tendency to remember images, and stick with them. More than remembering particular numbers out of 21.

 

Try it, test it, and let us know. Seriously.

[Sloppy Zhang]

I've worked with tarot myself, and know what you mean, but I have also worked a bit with sleight of hand trickery, and I know there are plenty of ways to shuffle a deck, or make it look like you're shuffling a deck, but keep the deck in order.

 

One thing to do is examine how you shuffle. Some people, without realizing it, do things in sets of even numbers, or sets of odd numbers. You could cut a deck, cut it again for good measure, cut it again to be safe, and cut it again just for the heck of it, and wind up having the cards be in roughly the same place (they went from top to bottom, bottom to top, top to bottom, and from bottom back to top).

 

It's really easy to overlook stuff like this, ESPECIALLY when you are trying to pick it out of your own behavior.

 

One suggestion is to get a deck of cards, and mark a card, maybe with some tape on the corner, maybe mark several cards. Shuffle a deck several times, paying attention to how you shuffle, cut, and how many times you do each. Then with your marked deck do the exact same shuffle, and see where the cards in the deck move. You'll notice how easy it is to shuffle "really well", but have several cards be in the same general area.

 

That's especially true after you do tarot card readings. If you just put all the read cards on top, and shuffle in such a way that the cards stay close, you could easily do several readings for one person in a row and have nearly the exact same cards

 

And, everything that Pietro said is good. It's really important that you keep track of every single trial, keep the method the same, be sure to only test one variable, and all the other stuff involved in the scientific method. I don't like how so many people think that science and say, spirituality, or paranormal are mutually exclusive. It's just making sure you are seeing what you think you are seeing.

[Pietro]

I've worked with tarot myself, and know what you mean, but I have also worked a bit with sleight of hand trickery, and I know there are plenty of ways to shuffle a deck, or make it look like you're shuffling a deck, but keep the deck in order.

 

One thing to do is examine how you shuffle. Some people, without realizing it, do things in sets of even numbers, or sets of odd numbers. You could cut a deck, cut it again for good measure, cut it again to be safe, and cut it again just for the heck of it, and wind up having the cards be in roughly the same place (they went from top to bottom, bottom to top, top to bottom, and from bottom back to top).

 

It's really easy to overlook stuff like this, ESPECIALLY when you are trying to pick it out of your own behavior.

 

One suggestion is to get a deck of cards, and mark a card, maybe with some tape on the corner, maybe mark several cards. Shuffle a deck several times, paying attention to how you shuffle, cut, and how many times you do each. Then with your marked deck do the exact same shuffle, and see where the cards in the deck move. You'll notice how easy it is to shuffle "really well", but have several cards be in the same general area.

 

That's especially true after you do tarot card readings. If you just put all the read cards on top, and shuffle in such a way that the cards stay close, you could easily do several readings for one person in a row and have nearly the exact same cards

 

And, everything that Pietro said is good. It's really important that you keep track of every single trial, keep the method the same, be sure to only test one variable, and all the other stuff involved in the scientific method. I don't like how so many people think that science and say, spirituality, or paranormal are mutually exclusive. It's just making sure you are seeing what you think you are seeing.

Thanks. I agree that science and spirituality are not mutually exclusive. Although some time to sinthesis out of this dicotomy is a greeater quest than out of different religions.

 

So, what is a good method to shuffle cards, then?

What do professional players do?

 

I assume they must have studied the topic really well, to avoid being played.

[johndoe2012]

Proving The I Ching

 

"proves" I Ching using mathematics.

 

Regarding shuffling cards, professionels use machines to get a "random" sequence. I'm not sure it is totally random, depends on the implementation.

Edited August 15, 2009 by wtm

[de_paradise]

Thanks for your replies guys. If I have inclination one day maybe I will set up the experiment.

 

However if what you take from this thread is that sometimes human shuffling of cards yeilds non-random turn cards, then you probably have missed my main point--which was, keep your eyes open for weird things, because you might catch some spiritual activity going on's. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDZBgHBHQT8 (BTW, often I shuffled, then spread the whole deck face down and let the querant pick the cards)

Edited August 15, 2009 by de_paradise