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[Shiny Ninja]

What does the Bible teach about psychic mediums? My mother and her friend are both self-proclaimed Christians but her friend claims to also be a psychic medium, and my mother believes her. This seems to be a bit contradictory to the religion that asks you to defer to god to handle the afterlife. What's the deal here? Thanks!

[jimwalton]

Psychics, fortune-telling, astrology, palm-reading, card-laying (cartomancy), psychometry (identifying the characteristics of an individual through some object he wore or used), and any other type of fortune-telling is forbidden in the Bible.

Lev. 19.31; 20.6, 27 are some biggies.
Dt. 18.10-12 forbids them also.

The same prohibitions run through all of Scripture: 1 Chr. 10.13; Isa. 8.19; 44.25; Ezk. 21.26; Micah 3.6, 7; Jer. 29.8; Zech. 10.2; Acts 16.16-18; Gal. 5.20.

Your mother and her friend are incorrect, and you are right. There is an inherent contradiction between psychic mediums and the Christian faith.

[Evil Genius]

So, looks like Christians believe in them then? Enough to forbid their practices?

[jimwalton]

We believe there is real spiritual power behind the false claims of the psychic world. They have access to spiritual forces, but not enough to be able to know what they claim to know. Their knowledge is more limited than they admit, and the spiritual power behind their knowledge is real. In that sense, we believe in them enough to forbid their practices. There is something to psychic powers, and they're actually right some of the time in remarkable ways. That's why they're forbidden in Scripture. They lead falsely and from an ultimately perverse source.

[Evil Genius]

> They have access to spiritual forces

Do you have evidence of this?

> the spiritual power behind their knowledge is real

Can you please elaborate on what that power is?

> There is something to psychic powers

What is this 'something'?

> they're actually right some of the time in remarkable ways

What is it they're right about? And if they're right, why don't we have huge industries dedicated to utilizing the part that's right? You know... if they were right about crystal energy, we would have crystal energy power plants. And if they were right about spiritual healing, we would have entire fields of medicine devoted to that. But... we don't. So, either your claims are completely without basis, OR capitalism just isn't that ruthlessly focused on turning a profit.

[jimwalton]

Many of the "dark arts," such as telekinesis, apports & levitation have been shown to be hoaxes. Most fortune-tellers and psychics have been shown to be frauds. There used to be a TV show called "Crossing Over with John Edward," but his "powers" have never been verified as authentic. The quatrains of Nostradamus are too generalized to be assessable. Jeane Dixon seems to have made some stunning predictions, but there were many things she predicted that didn't come true. It's usually easy to separate the authentic from the frauds, and the "authentic" parts get pretty sketchy. The problem is that we can't go back in history to verify any of this stuff.

It's hard to know what to think about apparitions (claimed to be real by many eye-witnesses). I've actually known very rational and educated people—some good friends of mine—who have seen ghosts. Their stories are creepy, and there's no reason for me to doubt them, given the source.

Once for the fun of it I followed my horoscope every day for about two months. It was never once right, though sometimes it gave me an awful good laugh. But sometimes fortune-tellers actually get it right, which makes me wonder if the odds were in their favor that day or if there was some other power at work.

As you might guess, I believe in spirit beings and in spiritual forces. I also believe in objective morality, so I assume some of these beings are good and others are evil.

I also know that divining rods work (dowsers), and I don't understand that a bit. They use it in Vermont all the time to good success. Weird if you ask me.

[Evil Genius]

> been shown to be hoaxes been shown to be frauds too generalized to be assessable the "authentic" parts get pretty sketchy

So... if I understood what you just said correctly, you have every reason to believe that none of this stuff is real, only claims which have been refuted by all available evidence. But... you still believe in it?

> can't go back in history to verify any of this stuff

Isn't reproducible evidence the very foundation of knowledge? What's more likely? The laws of physics were suspended? Or people made a fantastic claim which turned out not to be true?

> I also believe in objective morality

That one's pretty easy to demonstrate: If objective morality were a thing, we would all agree on what's 'right and wrong'. So this is just another claim which flies in the face of all available evidence.

> I also know that divining rods work (dowsers), and I don't understand that a bit. They use it in Vermont all the time to good success.

There is a reason you will never, ever find a reputable (or even not reputable) environmental or engineering company that uses divining rods for site characterizations.

So you've failed to address the capitalism argument for any of these things, so your argument amounts to "Capitalism isn't ruthlessly focused on profits." which I don't think anyone would agree with.

[jimwalton]

> you have every reason to believe that none of this stuff is real

No, I believe that most of it is fake. I think there are occasional expressions of this stuff that is real, but they are few and far between.

> Isn't reproducible evidence the very foundation of knowledge?

It's the foundation of some kind of knowledge. There are many different kinds of knowledge, and certainly reproducible evidence is one of them, but a far cry from capturing the title of "the very foundation of knowledge." Science has a place, but it has to know its place as well. There is inductive, deductive, and abductive reasoning, to name some. Reproducible evidence is only part of the knowledge picture.

> That one's pretty easy to demonstrate: If objective morality were a thing, we would all agree on what's 'right and wrong'. So this is just another claim which flies in the face of all available evidence.

Oh, but we do. Not a single one of us would agree that it's right to torture and kill a child for the fun of it—to name one piece of objective morality. No one, unless they were extremely mentally ill, and we would all recognize that the only reason they thought it was OK is because they were so sick, because we all agree that this is never right.

> So you've failed to address the capitalism argument for any of these things, so your argument amounts to "Capitalism isn't ruthlessly focused on profits." which I don't think anyone would agree with.

I don't really understand where this comes from, why you've written it, and how it fits into the conversation. We're talking about the legitimacy of the psychic "arts".