A colleague recently told me about when a close family member died, he had a feeling that something was wrong but only learnt several hours later about the death

This is not the first time I've heard a similar story. This got me thinking, maybe there is something in this. But being the ultimate skpetic I looked for a rational explanation.

The idea that I came up with involved psychology rather than any sort of paranormal phenomenon.

Say person A is sitting reading the newspaper when a loved one passes away unexpectedly, he/she has no idea of the death and carries on reading the newspaper completely unaware. A few hours later he/she gets a phone call delivering the sad news that person B passed away at 3pm that day.

Person A, either consciously or unconsciously, thinks back to what he/she was doing at 3pm (reading the newspaper in this case) and the memory of sitting there reading the newspaper becomes permanently linked in their mind with the feeling of loss and sadness that they experienced when they learnt the news. When they think back on the events of the day, in their state of emotional turmoil and vulnerability, the memory of feeling loss and sadness at the time when they were actually happily sitting reading the paper, seems absolutely real.


Please don't think i'm belittling anyones emotions or feelings on the death of a loved one, that is certainly not my intention.

I've come up with this theory independently but it's certainly possible that others have suggested this before, I'd be interested to hear if anyone has heard similar theories about this phemonenon.

So, do you think this theory is a plausible explantation?

A priest in a small rural town was very fond of his 10 chickens and 1
handsome cock he kept in a hen house behind the rectory.

One Saturday night the priest discovered that the rooster was missing.

At the same time the priest heard rumors of cockfights being held in town.

Shocked and dismayed, he decided to say something during Mass.

During Mass he asked the congregation, "Who among you will confess to sporting a handsome cock?"

All the men stood up.

"No, no," he said. "That's not what I mean. Who among you will confess to having seen a handsome cock?"

All the women stood up.

"Oh, no," he said. "That's not what I mean either. Who among you will confess to having seen a cock that doesn't belong to you?

" Half the women stood up.

"Oh Lord," he said. "Perhaps I should rephrase the question: Has anybody seen my cock?"

All the choirboys stood up.

Read the full story here

A man making a trip from Puerto Rico to South Florida to raise money for his religious education remains hospitalized Monday after he was struck down by a bolt of lightning which flew from clear blue sky on Sunday. He was selling religious materials when he was hit.

Hailu Kidane Marian was working with members of his religious group, selling religious materials door-to-door in a Northwest Miami-Dade neighborhood, when the bolt from the blue struck him down.

"I heard a boom, and I looked and the guy jumped back, and he just laid there, stiff," said witness Maria Martinez.

Paramedics say Marian was not breathing and his heart was not beating when they arrived, but they were able to revive him and rushed him to Jackson Memorial hospital, where he was in critical condition Sunday night.

Members of his religious group waited outside the hospital throughout the night for word of his condition.

"He's unconscious, he's in a coma," said Francisco Perez, leader of the Puerto Rico-based group. "It's difficult what happened, you know, but what can we do? Things happen in life, but we still believe in God."

An open letter to Richard Branson asking him to stop giving airtime to evil conmen who explit vulnerable people in the name of entertainment, ie so-called "Psychics" and "Mediums".

For those in the UK who also want to write to Richard Branson, his address is

Sir Richard Branson
Virgin Group Ltd,
120 Campden Hill Road,
London,
W8 7AR

I will post any reply I get from Richard Branson, please let me know if you get any replies to your letters.

If you are outside the UK you may instead wish to write to the owners of channels in your country which show so-called "psychics" and "mediums".

Dear Sir Branson,

I am writing to you regarding the programming on your TV channel "Living" and "Living2". I am most dismayed to find that you are continuing to show programmes such as "6ixth sense with Colin Fry".

I know that you are an intelligent person and you are well known for your philanthropic activities, so it is clear that you care for your fellow humans. It puzzles me therefore that you give air time to these dangerous charlatans.

All so-called psychics and mediums, use psychological tricks such as cold reading to make high probability guesses about their victims quickly picking up on signals from their subjects as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, and then emphasizing and reinforcing any chance connections the subjects acknowledge while quickly moving on from missed guesses.

If you are in any doubt that their so-called abilities are nothing more than trickery, then please take the time to review the work of famous sceptics James Randi and Derren Brown who are able to replicate the results of the "psychics" and "mediums" using the same trickery that the charlatans themselves use. James Randi has had $1,000,000 on offer for many years to anyone who can prove any sort of paranormal ability, to date nobody has succesfully won the challenge and I am confident that this will continue to be the case.

I would also suggest that you speak to any mainstream grief counsellor who will tell you that the only way for a greiving person to recover from their grief is to learn to accept the loss and come to terms with the fact that their loved one is no longer around. So you can see that the cynical manipulation of the bereaved by these evil charlatans such as Colin Fry will only lengthen the greiving process.

Please stop this awful exploitation of vulnerable people and stop showing these awful shows on your TV network as soon as possible.

Yours Sincerely

G Edwards.

I'm sure a lot of you have seen the video by Kirk Cameron entitled "an atheists worst nightmare, the banana".



For those who haven't seen it here's a link. Basically he argues that the banana is so well designed, being tasty, nutritious and easy to hold and eat that the only possible explanation is that they were designed by God.

My first reaction was to imagine the evolutionary process that produced bananas. Of course a fruit that tastes like crap and is difficult to eat is only going to be eaten as a last resort, whereas a nice, tasty nutritious fruit that is easy to eat will be the first choice for any animal. When a fruit gets eaten it's seeds get distributed far and wide in a handy little package of manure. So by a gradual process of natural selection, the tastiest fruit thrive and spread. Hey presto we have a yummy banana.

I was wrong.

Fortunately, the truth does not support Kirk Camerons argument, but instead blows it completely out of the water.

Here is a natural wild banana



Wild bananas have fairly dry fruits with large seeds and no pulp. In Southeast Asia, the primitive seeded bananas are termed tae manu, meaning animal feces, implying that they are only eaten during times of famine.

The banana we see today is a result of years of selective breeding. So they were inteligently designed.

Here are the inteligent designers, the early native pioneers of agriculture in Papua New Guinea. I'm sure they would appreciate Kirk Cameron's compliment but they'll be the first to admit that they are not Gods.



I'd suggest to Kirk Cameron that next time he does a little research before making silly claims that he can prove the existance of God with a banana.

This has got to be the worst website in the history of the internet, truly dreadful on an epic scale.



You think that looks bad?

On the actual site, the rainbow background is a looped graphic cycling through all the colours, that white blob is a dove which flies around the page, and I'm not even going to mention the awful continuous looped "music".

If you really want to subject your eyes to this abomination, click on the link below.
Works best (or rather worst) using IE.

Let me see it.
Those with photosensitive epilepsy will probably want to avoid this one.

Some people might find Pat Condell's subject matter and opinions offensive - viewer discretion recommended.



Personally, I love this guy, he tells it like it is without pulling any punches. His delivery is thought provoking and witty. Check out his other vids at the link below:

Pat Condell on Youtube

Well this seems pretty flawless logic to me. If anyone has spotted any logical fallacies, please leave a comment.

The Argument from Evolution, by Kyle J. Gerkin in his article ‘A Counterclockwise Paley’,

1. Organized complexity is the product of conscious design or natural selection.
2. Intelligence is an example of organized complexity.
3. Thus, intelligence is the product of conscious design or natural selection.
4. Intelligent beings are capable of designing intelligence (i.e. computer artificial intelligence programmed by humans).
5. However, only one mechanism has been discovered that can produce intelligence without requiring the existence of a prior intelligence. That mechanism is evolution through natural selection.
6. Thus, the first intelligence evolved.
7. Evolution requires:
   1. Self replication (heredity) with slightly imperfect copying fidelity (mutation).
   2. An environment that can favor one replicator over another (competition).
   3. Time for (a) and (b) to manifest themselves.
8. None of the conditions in (7) were present before the existence of the universe.
9. Thus, intelligence did not exist prior to the universe.
10. Therefore, the universe did not have an intelligent creator.