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Originally Posted by John Freestone  The classic example is believing that you're 'psychic' because people appear to phone you just at the moment you're thinking of them ..... Meanwhile, we do not get excited about the times we think of Molly (don't ask) and Molly doesn't phone. |
As I said, I understand your point very well.
I do want to make a point which Brian Josephson, a Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics who researches telepathy, has made quite eloquently before. The point is simply this:
If a particular event is rare or difficult to observe, this does not mean that it does not exist.
For example, I walk into the forest 200 times and I do not observe the rare African blue-spotted butterfly. Then I walk into the forest on the 201st time, and I do observe the rare African blue-spotted butterly.
It would be ridiculous to say that since there were 200 occasions that I did not observe the African blue-spotted butterfly, and only on one occasion did I observe it, therefore the African blue-spotted butterfly does not exist.
Substitute the African blue-spotted butterfly with "solar eclipse"; "UFO"; "telepathic event"; "demonic possession"; "Siamese twins"; "Loch Ness monster"; "levitation"; "quantum entanglement"; "enlightenment";
and you see my point. This is not to say that all of these things are true or not true, but that if any of them were true, then it would be a logical fallacy to believe that they are untrue simply because they are rare and/or difficult to observe (based on our current ability to perceive).
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Steve's wife, Erin, for example, claims to regularly converse and interact with all sorts of non-physical entities (spirits? ghosts? demons? angels? etc).
Assuming she is honest, it is safe to say that she has no doubt about the existence of such entities.
However, most of the rest of us are not able to converse and interact with non-physical entities in any way close to what Erin does, or claims to do. In other words, such entities, if they do exist, are not observable, or not easily observable, by us.
Therefore many of us would feel drawn to conclude either:
(1) Erin is a huge liar; or
(2) Erin is mentally ill
and those of us who do that may just want to take a moment to remind themselves that that which is rare or difficult, or rare or difficult
for us, to observe, is not therefore necessarily non-existent.