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Originally Posted by Ethel Small  You "scientists" (I use quotes because I highly doubt you've actually done anything to contribute to science) are just as close minded as the extreme religeous types that were afraid of knowledge in the dark ages. If you can't be open to new possibilities then new hypotheses and technology would never happen, open your mind! |
My work involves researching sexual health practitioner decision making in cases of suspected abuse and child protection referrals. The contribution to scientific understanding and advancement is probably quite low (it's not blue sky science after all) but the potential benefits to practitioner understanding and risk assessment definatly have tangible benefits in terms of actually helping improve outcomes for children at risk.
Science isn't dogma, confirmation bias and coincidence (as you should know from studying psychology) provides a satisfying explanation for what you report experiencing.
Where any of the events you dreamt about vastly outside of the realm of what would probably have occurred. Note you mentioned not winning the lottery as an example so how mundane/extraordinary were the events that gave you the experience of déjà vu?
It's also worth mentioning the work of Loftus on memory. There is plenty of research to suggest that memory is notoriously unreliable. Can you be 100% sure that your recollection of the original dreams wasn't altered in someway (small or large) to fit with your thesis of prediction?
Finally you would really expect some dreams people have to match future events just by chance. How often do you dream? How often do you dream about normal life events? What's key here is not how many times you were correct but more importantly how often you were wrong. If your wrong more then right then that would strongly imply coincidence. The classic example is of course someone ringing you when you were thinking about them versus the vast amount of times you weren't...
The experience could be valid, no one could really say for sure, however we now a lot about human psychology and this body of work can explain the experience without needing to introduce extra complexity.
We probably have seemed somewhat harsh in our questioning, but it's ironic to suggest that we are being close minded when we are putting forward alternative hypotheses and you are advocating a faith based position.
