There are a few people here who know my real name (including Alex and Andy). For a variety of reasons, including the safety of myself and my family, and professional ones, I would not want my real name to be published openly. In any event, this is a pretty common feature of internet forums. The vast majority of forum posters use pseudonyms.
That said, aside from the handle issue, what you see is what you get.
It's interesting. These Skeptics - and let's not fool ourselves, this is exactly what Arouet is, one only need look at his consistent messaging throughout these forums to realize he's not only a Skeptic,
but a pretty hardcore one.
Arouet claims he's open minded, but that is hardly the case: he and Linda make use of many of the standard Skeptic talking points ad nauseum. Linda herself has repeatedly lied about having read
Phantasms of the Living based on the original discussion we had a few months ago. That she seems to think that it is somehow entirely believable that she would read
half the book (which would be about 500 pages in 2 or 3 days) and
not realize that she had only read half of it - is not only preposterous, but given her attitude here toward me and others - shows just how intellectually dishonest and arrogant a woman she is. She is even more dismissive I find than Arouet. At least he pretends to have some semblance of respect - but not by much.
But it is interesting the double standard these guys (Skeptics) practice, they do whatever they can to remain anonymous, especially given the hatchet work done on
Wikipedia - but you notice how all the names you find there - the guys who come up with whatever excuse they can to get people banned - within hours sometimes - practicing intellectual dishonesty, since Wikipedia clearly is meant to be a
collaborative effort - that these people - these Skeptics - all hide under pseudonyms there, just like Arouet hides here. And we all know why - because they have very little respect for anyone else's opinion but their own. They are
obsessively sure that they got their facts rights - and that psi phenomena itself is basically just "woo". As I pointed out earlier, Arouet and Linda here have done nothing but attack anyone both intellectually AND condescendingly like they are Mom & Dad intellectual authority figures - attack the many posters who actually believe in science (
not materialism) - insisting their judgement
must be flawed. That the methodologies used by men such as William James or Frederic Myers or Tyrell or Ian Stevenson, Van Lommel or Sartori, are not reliable - in essence cannot be deemed good enough, or in other words, the science being used is not real science - it's
pseudo-science.
But getting back to the double standard - these Skeptics make every effort to remain anonymous, but have no problem outing anyone they can and smearing that person publicly either via Wikipedia or RationalWiki or on Blogs.
It's a remarkable and immoral double standard. They want respect but give none to anyone who has a more open mind than they regarding unknown phenomena. Truly - this is not science being practiced here, but just another kind of fundamentalism, the kind of fundamentalism that led to men like Bruno being burned at the stake, or men like Ian Stevenson having his biography viewed by millions - smeared to make it appear he was a
gullible unscientific individual.
It is interesting to see this kind of anonymous fundamentalism in action. Even a hundred years later, we have this incredible bias that Hodgson, Hyslop, Myers,James and Jung talked about. The data doesn't matter at all. Reason doesn't matter at all. There is no reason or science on display here - all I see is intellectual dishonesty, condescending ignorance and arrogance. And above all, clear unreasoning
bigotry toward the scientific data provided for psi (or nde's).
My Best,
Bertha