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free PARANORMAL/AFTERLIFE ebook: Please Review
    #2373229 -

Okay, welcome Swami!

You're likely one of the first ones in and thats a good thing because I especially want your analysis on this :smile:
But to all:

While surfing the net I stumbled upon an ebook available for immediate free download. It is called:

A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife
Irrefutable Objective Evidence
-- by Victor Zammit

It's a book where a former lawyer does just what the name implies: he brings forth his case as it would be done in front of a court of law.

The book consists of the most interesting sample from "paranormal/spiritual" research and practices including cases of people speaking/writing in languages not previously known, presenting former-life like knowledge and recorded voice phenomena and many other things. Now just that part is a treasure for anyone (sceptic or not) interested in these matters because its reasonably encyclopedic and, hey, free :grin:

It all builds up to his stance in defense of the Afterlife, or at least that most of these phenomena hold merit.
And when you're finished you're left with the information provided, the questions raised and the conclusions you yourself draw from it.
Two afternoons well spent and quite interesting :smile:

You will find the free 2002 version at the writer's own website.(Word 2000/2.4MB or PDF format/3.4MB. Please get the free must-have Acrobat Reader for PDFs at www.adobe.com , it will even read english aloud for the visually impaired and those too stoned to scroll.)
You'll find the ebook at:

http://www.victorzammit.com/book/

Well for me personally it was very worthwhile. Sitting in judgement over this case my verdict would be that I find the claim of "existence of the Afterlife" not proven (i believe in reincarnation but that stands apart from my verdict) and that some claims to me clearly are unfounded, but that the information presented strongly suggests the likeliness of transpersonal knowledge (people knowing more than they have or could have learned in their known lives in the usual ways) and abilities beyond the usually accepted human range may exist.

I surfed some skeptics sites to have this ebook debunked in the proper scientific manner. What I expected to find was a comprehensive dismissal based on sound methodical logic. Instead I found flagrant abuse of science, twisting up of definitions and emotional slanders and slurs aimed at the person and some of his claims and nothing to lull my neocortex into the good night's sleep it so direly needed :grin:

I invite you all to read this ebook (couple of hours, lotsa pages but a swift, interesting read even for my poor concentrationg ability) and post your opinions on it and perhaps get a discussion going.

Swami, I'm putting my trust in you on this. Although somebody on chat stated you would debunk the fourth leg on a horse I know your logic is sound and does not seem to suffer under your determination to expose new-age fluff in the posts that I have read.
If you got the time and will to invest the time please read this grandmother of all paranormal claims and give us your view on it. It's subtitle might well have been "Talcum powder won't cure this itch" so I hope you'll take up this challenge.

I saw the skeptic orgs with the scientific names but was not satisfied because they let logic quickies, psychological arguing and bad science cloud the -good science- that was called for.
I trust that upon reading this you will not hand out blessed flowers at the airport :wink: but what I read of you was basically sound science all the way, and my Inner Professor got taken in by this book. You insist on skepticism, but I have yet to see you twist up consistent  logic to get your way.
If you can devise an airtight debunking or better yet a science experiment effectively disproving the stance $1.000.000 awaits you in Australia, as seen elsewhere on the author's site.


To everybody who got this far: please read this interesting ebook (monkeywrench the office coffee machine and print a copy under cover of the mayhem :evil:) and Let The Games Begin !


.


--------------------
Omnicyclion.org
personal empowerment for the world

Shroomery and Bluelight sitting inna tree - Harm-re-duc-tion-har-mo-ny

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Re: free PARANORMAL/AFTERLIFE ebook: Please Review [Re: Asante]
    #2373321 -

Even if he goes on to beleive the ideas represented in the book, do you think he would admit a whole lot of times worth of humiliation? He will just make the ideas or evidence in the book blend into his own reality map and ideas, as if he had already knew and mensioned these things before on this forum. And this isn't an offense, as I would do the same. I am not on any side of any beleif system.

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Re: free PARANORMAL/AFTERLIFE ebook: Please Review [Re: Asante]
    #2373959 -

Although somebody on chat stated you would debunk the fourth leg on a horse...
Then they have no understanding whatsoever about how I look at things.

I know your logic is sound and does not seem to suffer under your determination to expose new-age fluff in the posts that I have read.
Thank you.

Before I get started (have yet to read it), your author has already violated a Swami rule by leading off with "Irrefutable Truth". I once created a thread on this type of false argument. I hear many variants on this like when Bill O'Reilly of Fox News stated that, "Any thinking American could see..." (HIS conclusion on the War in Iraq). In one does not agree, then the viewer MUST be an unthinking ignoramus by default.

Do you see what I mean? If one refutes an irrefutable truth, then what does that say about the author or reader? Let the "facts" speak for themselves and allow the reader to draw his/her own conclusion


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The proof is in the pudding.

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Re: free PARANORMAL/AFTERLIFE ebook: Please Review [Re: Asante]
    #2374141 -

First let us examine Zammit the man. Is he a clear-headed, rational researcher? Her is how he responds to a skeptic article here :

"AUSTRALIAN SKEPTIC DESCENDS TO THE DEEPEST LEVEL OF IDIOCY!

A response by Victor Zammit to an article 'Challenging Times' by Barry WIlliams published in The Skeptic Summer 2001.

(Closed minded skeptics have failed miserably in Australia. Conversely, New Age support is growing at a fantastic rate - from a few thousand fifteen years ago to millions to-day buying, listening to radio and TV watching New Age material)
Gullability says nothing about truth, Victor. And this from a lawyer!

Because, instead of trying to rebut the EVIDENCE I presented, this very low minded skeptic tried to attack the person.
Attacking the person is wrong now, isn't it Victor? Let's see how many times you do this in one page of rebuttal:

1. "...uninformed, ignorant closed minded materialist non-entities skeptics..."

2. "Intellectually unequipped, this non-entity Barry Williams, a usually uninformed dogmatic materialist...."

3. "... closed-minded materialists...."

4. "...low-minded..."

5. "...FAILED to get off his lazy butt ..."

6. ".. this misguided and uninformed materialist ...."

7. "...Barry totally out of his depth...."

8. "You only need an IQ of 20..."

9. "...you Barry, the skeptic, have to get off your lazy butt, to do some heavy research if you have the brains..

10. "Clearly, Barry Williams a typical loser and defeatist ...

Now none of this refutes his e-book, but does show us an emotionally immature mind which may indicate something important about the nature of his ability to do unbiased research.


--------------------



The proof is in the pudding.

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Re: free PARANORMAL/AFTERLIFE ebook: Please Review [Re: Asante]
    #2374180 -

His main piece of evidence (and as I previously stated in my thread "Best Evidence" if this falls flat, then why bother with the rest?) is that of the EVP (or Electronic Voice Phenomenon).

Rather than read and speculate, any interested parties should do their own research. I dabbled with this some 20+ years ago with my Teac 3440 four track reel-to-reel and got nothing promising, but a bunch of vague distant hissing maybes; the audio equivalent of seeing Jesus in spilled milk.

Skeptics will tell you it is in cross-modulation from different racks, incompletely erased tracks and possible transmission pick-ups from TV, radio and CB (and possibly cell phones today). The proponents will say otherwise, but here is the real deal: completely digital recording appears to come up empty-handed. Do the spirits not like digital or is it because most all of the other types of electronic "leakage" are bypassed.

I set up my own experiment with a quality microphone, 96kbit A/D converter and Cakewalk Home Studio. Let run for 30 minutes at a high recording level and except for the occasional whoosh of a car driving down the street or me closing a door in the background, I got nothing but silence. Sure it is only one short experiment, but I see no reason to continue UNLESS someone has a better idea.

Addendum: Apparently I need to try this again with a "white noise" source such as running water or AM hiss. Why the spirits would need this is beyond me (get it? heh heh). It apparently takes dozens of "tries" to be able to hear he spirits in the noise. Once again, appears like a mind seeing patterns in clouds. I will report back."

Edited by Swami (02/24/04 12:03 AM)

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Re: free PARANORMAL/AFTERLIFE ebook: Please Review [Re: Asante]
    #2374478 -

I just downloaded the pdf...
Don't expect a line-by-line dissection as it would be VERY long.


--------------------
Note: In desperate need of a cure...

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Re: free PARANORMAL/AFTERLIFE ebook: Please Review [Re: Swami]
    #2374729 -

Hey, the man's a lawyer!

As far as I'm concerned he's entitled to his rantings as that indeed stands apart from his book.
He likely lacks the competence for a scientific approach so he mainly uses "legally sound" evidence and reasoning, which is far from him getting seated on a chair thats not for him.

As far as this in-thread friction goes *carefully backs away looking at their hands* i think it is ok to religiously persecute the paranormal :smirk: as long as you don't stray from the method.

Now I believe in two kinds of facts:
Firstly the facts that cannot be reproduced reliably and secondly those that can. Only the latter count as science, which i find flawed. Throughout human history there were lots of eyewitnesses to lightning, yet it could only be reproduced from the 1800s onward by the advent of the electric arc. In any case there are some things we cannot reproduce reliably -yet- because we do not have the facts together to make that happen.

In these cases we're cavemen again, shouting at the lightning and closing our eyes so the Thunder God can't see us. I think a long steady outpour of eye witness reports should not be too easily dismissed. But in the end I do believe that the right variables make it happen, thus everything being reproducable if understood enough, and thus i see scientific logic of a higher order (or more useful) then unreproducable realities, since the internally consistent beliefs system of science (unlike that of the intelligent psychotic) has spun off many things that are objectively useful, such as aluminum foil you can wrap around your head so God can't hear you sin :lol:

I find your experiment too brief to disprove the voice phenomena. However you have reminded me of the SETI project which I might look into today. NASAs Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence project has (presumably) not turned up anything rock solid, but i'm going to surf after whether they have found some interesting, statistically significant anomalies they could not substantiate. Now technically their multiband monitoring was not played back (required for the voice phoenomena) but presence or absence of remarkable statistical improbabilities may help us along a bit.

If we could reel in a million the Shroomery could at last become dialup-friendy :grin: and bring the annual worldwide valium consumption down by a few kilos among those who are in fact used to decent surfing speeds.

Being religious and scientifically oriented I would rather see us properly reel in the skeptics million (proving < /life > is an incorrect epitaph) then lifting a million off that lawyer by conclusively proving we dissolve into nothingness for all eternity.
Where would you like the mil to come from, Swami? If you're agnostic you wouldn't mind from which side it came (or prove dual reality and collect them both :evil:) but if you honestly like disprove the paranormal you are in the realm of antignosticism.

*sighs* ah well lets get my morning coffee & breakfast and upload yesterday's cooking into the ceramic server.
Blessed be my comfy loser existence..  :lol:


.


--------------------
Omnicyclion.org
personal empowerment for the world

Shroomery and Bluelight sitting inna tree - Harm-re-duc-tion-har-mo-ny

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Re: free PARANORMAL/AFTERLIFE ebook: Please Review [Re: Asante]
    #8256505 -

finally- someone who is actually responding to this book in an openminded, non-dogmatic way!
I too, have read this book and have found it, if not confirmation for the afterlife, at least decent food for thought. Everything else I have found on the internet has been either passionate praises for this man or completely sub-standard and insubstantial dismissal and insult against the book and author. just google-search victor dammit and you will see what i mean. I must admit, however, the man's vehement defense for the afterlife and sometimes vicious attacks against debunkers has seemed a little uncalled-for and eccentric.
Also, EVP is definitely NOT the most substantial evidence for the afterlife on this site. At the risk of boring my readers, I present, in my opinion, the admissability of the evidence presented.
victor seems to have divided his evidence into 25 different groups(not including opening, what happens when... and opening)
First, essentially dismissable
1.reincarnation-no evidence really presented here.
2.Deathbed visions
3.Out of body experiences or OBEs.
4.The ouija board
Meriting further investigation
1.Near Death Experiences or NDEs
2.electronic voice phenomena-EVP
3.instrumental trans-communication-ITC
4.Direct Voice Mediums
5.Cross Correspondences- I don't fully understand this yet.
6.Proxy sittings
7. Remote Viewing
8.Quantum Physics
Essentially admissable
1.Scole Experiment
2.materialazation Mediumship
3.Helen Duncan
4.Psychic Laboratory experiments
5.most investigated medium ever.

Anytihng i havent put i do not fully understand yet. Chao!

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