From enki, reply #140:
Just a one-off comment (and possible reply) aside, if I may.
Enki, I recall you telling us on a couple of occasions that your father was a spiritist, and that he once taught you how to divide a cloud with your thoughts. I'm just curious as to why you seem to have, what seems to be, rejected everything he may have shown you. And any talk of 'spirit'.
I understand if you do not want to comment on my observation.
Hi SweetPea,
Indeed my father was a spiritualist(not spiritist). He even claimed to have a Red Indian guide. It is worth saying that many spiritualists at that time claimed to have guides, many of whom were Red indian, by the way. As a young man I attended many a spiritualist meeting by choice, and I was not impressed at all. Sometimes I had messages from whatever spiritualist medium was present, and it became obvious to me that they were attempting to 'cold read'. Occasionally I played up to their questioning, and found that they simply built on the ideas that came from me, however false they were. Unfortunately it seemed to be the case that their spirit guides couldn't see through my falsehoods at all. So, it was a case of garbage in, garbage out.
One thing my father never did was to try to influence me in accordance with his beliefs, and for that I am grateful.
Yes, indeed, he suggested that he had the ability to break up clouds by the power of his thoughts, especially white fluffy ones. I too found I had the ability to break up clouds as long as I concentrated on them for long enough. It didn't take me long however to work out that such clouds are quite naturally continually changing their shape, dissipating, joining etc. and this had nothing at all to do with my mental abilities. Indeed, I remember doing the same trick with my own children and grandchildren, and, wonder of wonders, they could do it too. Of course, when the trick had run its course, I always told them that it had nothing to do with the mind, but everything to do with the nature of clouds.
You also might be interested in knowing that myself, my wife, my brother-in-law and a friend(when we were all much younger) actually investigated a series of 'ghostly' happenings that were supposed to have occurred in our local area. I remember, on one occasion, staying all night(Xmas Eve, actually) at a local working men's club in the centre of Hull(it had originally been a set of Victorian police cells, where, reportedly several inmates had died.) I won't bother you with the details of the so called 'ghostly' happenings that had been reported, but suffice it to say that we found not the slightest evidence of anything untoward, and, indeed, we were able to explain, by quite natural means, one of the pieces of phenomena that others had experienced.
So, to answer your question regarding my father. It's no problem at all, by the way. I'm sure he did influence me in all sorts of ways, as did my mother(e.g. moral thinking, curiosity, interest in science etc.) He actually built a 'cat's whisker' radio which fitted into a ring, then built a superb valve radio, and I had the greatest respect for his talents.
However, probably because I have never come across any demonstrable evidence of 'spiritual' powers, or gods etc., until that time arrives, I have no belief in such things. If others wish to believe in such things, fine, as long as it causes no harm, and they do not start claiming such things as 'facts' for others when they clearly are not. The fact that my father was a spiritualist makes not one jot of difference to my lack of belief in such matters, except I would claim perhaps that it gave me greater insight into the workings of spiritualism. He was well aware of my views and it caused no problems whatever.
I am much more in sympathy with, for instance, such books as 'Snake Oil' by the late John Diamond or 'Bad Science' by Ben Goldacre, and I have a distinct dislike of the idea of attempting to ride on the back of what science produces in order to retrofit it to cherished beliefs(often with no understanding of what the science actually says/does not say) when no such action is warranted.
