The terms "Open minded" and "Close minded" are tricky.
The "true believer" is just as close minded as the dyed in the wool cynic; for each has made up their mind, once and for all, that what they believe is indeed reality. The cynic is simply not open to the possibly of such phenomena, and the believer is not open to the possibility that they've experienced a misjudgment in perception.

To be truly open minded means you admit you just don't know, or can't know; agnostic, skeptical, etc..
This is the category I fall into.

By the way, I also wish to state for clarity's sake that I feel there's a vast difference between being skeptical and being cynical. Skepticism is healthy and reasonable, it doesn't not preclude an open mind, only a discerning one; cynicism, not so open.
Those who've known me on this site for the past 9 years could attest to my change of mind, from hard core skeptic/cynic (I believe at one time my signature here was "Science is my religion") to someone who, through personal experiences, now feels there may well be something outside of what we currently know to be the "laws" of physics, such as Jung's concept of "Synchronicity". Personally, I feel I've lived and observed some things that just defy what I'd deem as "reasonable" coincidence. That is, of course, in itself, a subjective line to draw, but that's my prerogative.

There is little doubt that there are fakers and charlatans out there, and always have been, but at the same time, it'd be a logical fallacy to deduce that therefore, anyone who claims paranormal phenomena are faking it or misled. http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presump......isation/

I admit that modern science, where it stands today, cannot really support these claims, but I also know that science is not a static thing. It is a self-correcting, forever marching process; science should never be wielded as dogma.
Long ago, we "knew" the universe was geocentric; we "knew" that an imbalance of the "four humours" caused illness; we scoffed at the idea of organisms too small to be seen with the naked eye; we scoffed at the notion of manned flight; we believed the Universe always existed (steady state), ad infinitum.. but it's always with new discoveries that catch us off guard, often aided by new technologies or devices, that we find ourselves eating our words and redefining the nature of reality as we "know" it.
And, as the saying goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Then again, you can't "prove" a negative, but that doesn't negate the above axiom either.

For that reason, I try to maintain a truly open mind that there just might be something to it all, some new "energy" (for lack of a better word)yet to be directly observed and categorized. By the same token of an "open mind", however, I also accept that it may be simply a fault in perception or logic.
I may well become close minded someday soon and come to believe (some)paranormal phenomena to be real, and to be honest, I'm heading that way now. But at least, I'll acknowledge that the matter is closed for me.

That is a very strange thing for you to have said? I had a dream last night about being held in the arms of a lovely spirit. We walked arm and arm over a strange bridge together, our pulses were one, and a magnificent orb of light guided us into......

RCP!!!
You need to hop a flight to NYC to see Play Dead...Todd does that scenario every night on stage.

I hope to be there in the next couple of months. Dinner and drinks on me! You supply the mushrooms. We can talk about Roth.

Yes we will!
I would indeed enjoy that evening and the tickets will be on me!

Is this egregor's twin?

The only difference I would have with this statement is that I would use "True Skepticism."

Unfortunately, numerous people calling themselves skeptics think that cynicism, predeterimined ideas and a closed mind is all that is required to be a "skeptic." Usually, this pseudo-skeptic uses their know-it-all attitude in an attempt to close the minds of others out of fear that they might be proven wrong and would then have to actually question their limited world view and concept of self.

Herbert Spencer wrote, "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation."

It is a shame that the pseudo-skeptics, often self-proclaimed defenders of science, are often a a block to true scientific inquiry.

I'd like to quote Niels Bohr here, who had a horseshoe above his door. When asked if he really believed it brought him luck, he replied: "Of course not, but I'm told it works even if you don't believe in it."

If I am being asked, if I believe in astrology, I usually answer: "No. But then, I'm a Libra, and Libras don't believe in astrology."

At the risk of inflaming the masses

http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/Logical%20Fallacies.htm

Awesome quote, I love it!

Yup.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raining_animals

In other news, there's no such thing as mind reading

Anthrocentric (human-centered) fallacy -- Consider the example of a preacher who one day takes someone supposedly possessed of a demon, throws his hand on her forehead, and shouts, "Get out! Leave this body!" Even supposing that demons exist, one might find it curious that they understand English, obey peremptory commands, and are easily influenced by incantations and rituals. The a.f. here occurs at the presupposition level: human language, reason, instincts, and desires are assumed to be the orbit around which everything else in the universe (including the aforementioned demons) revolve.

We are very strange self indulging creatures and take ourselves way to seriously. A billion years from now absolutely no one will have cared. But this has been most interesting!

Or perhaps the AF here is assuming that such entities could not and would not do these things.

Within the preacher's belief system it's completely reasonable and logically consistent that the demon would respond in to his actions. The same thing goes for anyone who deals in such matters.

I don't think any of the mentioned assumptions are necessarily there. There are many explanations for why that ritual may (or may not) work that do not necessitate an anthrocentric bias. Not that this says anything, one way or the other, about wether any of this is or is not true or is or is not effective but it's to common to take one small action or aspect of a belief system, analyze it out of context, come to some conclusion about it and assume that you are so much smarter than the person you are talking about because obviously they have not thought about it this way before.

I recently had an interesting conversation about this after sitting through a Presbyterian service with my Uncle (Catholic) my mother (Siddha Yogini) and myself (Orthodox Neo-Pagani-Satano-Christlimew).

One more thing about the AF example:



This example makes the fallacy that the preacher in the example believes:
1)That the entity understanding English is necessary.
What if the effect of the english words on the preacher's psyche created an etheric charge that blasted the demon out of the body? (that was jargon laden, but just used as an example of one possible alternative)

2)Demons are easily influenced.
just pointing this out, where does it say that this was easy? What if it was emotionally, psychologically or energetically very difficult?

3)Demons are influenced by incantations and rituals
This statement assumes that incantations and rituals do not actually do anything and that the demon must only be responding to the actions of the preacher.

I'm not saying that any of this is true only that I think that this excerpt has a few logical fallacies of it's own (I was going to go through and see if the list itself labelled adn explained these fallacies ...but I didn't).

Well presented seadog93. Professor Laban Shrewsbury would approve,
I miss my days at Miskatonic.

LOL!

I know this was said 8 years ago, but it is still a terrible analogy. There are people who claim they are Horatio Nelson, and I can confirm that no one alive today is the Horatio Nelson.


Everyone wants to be taken seriously, so people get upset when even their most ridiculous beliefs are questioned. Look, for instance at Jim Callahan (although I suspect he is more fraud than deluded). Perhaps a more accurate analogy would be people who believe god made the world in six days. Try showing them the proof of evolution in DNA coding.
But the fact of the matter is, and I do state this as fact, there are no spirits, or any similar thing that anyone can channel. And anyone who claims to do so IS either deluded or fraudulent.

I was going to try and put lots of evidence into this but there is no need, the evidence is so overwhelming and abundant. The evidential burden clearly does not lie with the non-believer, we have already made our case a million times over. And yet the believers have yet to submit one bit of substantiated evidence.

Those who say "never say never", being unable to disprove something does not count as proving it is possible enough to be considered. You can not disprove that I did not sneak into your cave last night with a bit of shiny metal I found in a meteor creator and use it to plant this hallucination of a world filled with cars, planes, music, art, brick houses and strangest of all, computers. You can not prove that I did not do this and you are in fact in a cave, in a coma with no technical knowledge further than how to make fire and craft a crude flint axe. But I wouldn't lose any sleep over it, because the chances are about as high as someone's dead conciousness trying desperately to speak to us through slimy weird people to let us know that "that thing we have been worrying about is fine".

Jack.

Wonderful