Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Gullibility and skepticism


I watched one of those 'ghost' programmes last night - you the type, several people are convinced they have a spirit in their house, a TV crew calls in a medium, a paranormal investigator and a skeptic, a whole bunch of gadgets, and they all 'investigate'. A pity no psychologist is included, becau'se with the lights off, the medium using a number of hypnotic techniques, and the combined effect of an aging house and 'group-think', everyone except the instruments and the skeptic are completely convinced that they have 'experienced' a ghostly phenomenon.


Shame on you! Even when the instruments fail to show any signs of change that are usually meant to indicate that a 'presence' is present, this is explained away by the medium who says 'the spirit is taking care not to reveal itself today'. So even lack of evidence is evidence to confirm the 'spirit realm'.


And the answer to the family's distress? A so-called 'clearing' where the medium and a bunch of candles are arranged in a decorative fashion around a table, the lights are off and both a wonderful hypnotic voice and the use of latin (why do ghosts understand latin??) are used to 'remove' the spirit and - off it goes, and off the family goes saying 'the house feels so much lighter and cleaner now'.


When there is soooooo much in the world here and now that we can wonder over, why oh why do we need to have this sort of rubbish on TV?!!!


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