Jason Engwer either doesn't know about, or doesn't care about, authenticating evidence: The Enfield poltergeist farce, again

 I cannot believe what a dipshit Jason Engwer is.   I've written about his Enflield Poltergeist crap before.  See here and here.

He is expecting his readers to draw confident conclusions about the paranormal based on audio recordings of the "Enfield Poltergeist" that somebody else uploaded to YouTube.  See here.

Gee, Jason, have you never heard of authentication, and what is implied when you cannot or will not authenticate the evidence you supposedly want skeptics to deal with?

Or maybe you think authentication was invented only by skeptics to make sure they could get rid of most of the evidence for the spiritual world?

An examination of the people who uploaded that audio also doesn't inspire confidence:

DescriptionWe are The Paranormal Detectives - a duo of paranormal investigators that visit haunted locations in an attempt to catch evidence of the paranormal on camera. Everything you see on this channel is real. No evidence is tampered with. Nothing is faked. Be sure to subscribe to us and follow our journey of the paranormal world.

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheParanormalDetectives/about

In other words, Engwer wants his Christian readers to think that these promises of authenticity are dependable, when in fact the "paranormal detectives" won't claim to have been the person who made the recording.  

That would be like me telling you that the moon rocks in my possession are not fakes.  Given that i wasn't the one who originally obtained them, how the fuck could I possibly expect you to believe that claim of authenticity was reliable?

Engwer is willing to talk all day and night about what he knows from the tapes, but he doesn't upload them, nor provide any authenticity declaration.  See here.

Engwer created a post entitled "The Enfield Poltergeist Tapes Made More Accessible",  but, as usual, he doesn't direct us to downloads of those tapes. instead, he boasts "I've only listened to a small minority of the audio so far. I intend to write posts about the contents of the tapes as warranted."  See here.

Engwers most comprehensive resource page for this paranormal fakery appears to be "The Enfield Poltergeist And Skepticism", but, as usual, he doesn't provide links to downloads of the audio, but instead boasts "After the digitizing of Guy Playfair's tapes was completed, I wrote a post about it."  LOL!  See here.

Let's just say that if Engwer were being prosecuted for murder in court, and the chain of custody for the incriminating recordings had all of the flaws the "Enfield tapes" do, Engwer would be screaming his head off that charges need to be dropped for lack of authentication.  We skeptics are not the least bit unreasonable to demand, before we turn over our entire lives to an invisible man, that the evidence in favor of the spirit world meets the highest tests of authenticity. Jason, did you forget that spiritual evil exists everywhere, and according to you, especially in the case of people who are considering taking the spirit world more seriously?

And so you think that believing some shit found on the internet should be "good enough" to pretend that the reviewer has been placed under an intellectual obligation to either confess the reality of the spirit world, or confess their bias against supernaturalism renders them unable to objectively evaluate the evidence?

So unless Engwer thinks the authentication tests required in a Court of law are unreasonably high, he cannot balk at skeptics who demand that checkable Affidavits of Authentication demonstrating a chain of custody and authentication accompany these alleged recordings from the 1970's, before there is any chance of this evidence foisting the least bit of moral or intellectual obligation upon a skeptic to 'explain' it.

Yes, that would make things impossible for Engwer, because the two girls who played this joke on paranormal investigators have never done what would otherwise be normal in court, and testified under oath to the authenticity of those tapes.  At most they visited the haunted house 40 years later, and they have appeared on talk programs, but they have never done anything remotely near as serious as testifying under oath.

So the truth is, you don't have the first fucking clue how much of such alleged audio is authentic and how much isn't.  Maybe Jason has a better idea, but that is hardly relevant to the skeptic, who isn't getting anything more from Engwer except endless trifles about how skeptics aren't dealing with certain details and have misinterpreted the evidence.

Release the properly authenticated Enflield recordings, Jason, or use up some brain cells trying to reconcile the obvious contradiction between your strong belief that this poltergeist was real, and your own refusal to release the relevant recordings.

NOW what are you going to do, Jason?  Maybe direct us to equally unauthenticated videos and audios "from the internet" ?

Since Jason cannot be accused of being retarded, it is certainly reasonable to infer that Jason's refusal to release the tapes is not due to oversight, but intention.  Well gee, if the tapes prove so much, why are you unwilling to release them?  Did you have a deal with SPR to keep the tapes private so other people could make money charging access fees?  What exactly?

Did you have a vision of God who told you to avoid writing down what the clouds said releasing the tapes?

LOL

Jason once said "The case and the tapes deserve further study."  See here.

Correction:  the case and the PROPERLY AUTHENTICATED tapes deserve further study.  Which apparently means they don't become deserving of further study until Jason decides that the unbeliever's peril in refusing to believe in the spiritual is so great as to "deserve" giving them Jason's best possible evidence...as opposed to his ceaselessly trifling about this shit as if he thinks it was the 28th book of the NT.

Jason's post at the Paranormal Detective YouTube channel from about January 2021 is:

Jason Engwer 

2 months ago 

Thanks for posting these clips. I've listened to all of the tapes, in their digitized form, and have posted a lot of articles on the contents of the tapes, if anybody is interested. Search for a post titled "The Enfield Poltergeist And Skepticism" at Triablogue. The tapes have a triple-digit number of hours of material, including a lot that hasn't been discussed publicly much or at all. The evidence for the case is much better than people typically suggest.

Then why aren't you releasing the full and properly authenticated audio?  Maybe you are afraid of bowling over the skeptics with so much evidence for the spiritual world that skeptics will start committing suicide?  YEAH RIGHT.  Triablogue exists for no other reason than to stomp down skeptical arguments.  So we are reasonable to believe that if you seriously believed the Enfield tapes proved your conclusions, you'd have uploaded them by now.  You've had since July 2018 to do this, but you haven't.  You forfeit your right to balk if skeptics become suspicious that you know your evidence is nowhere near as compelling as you pretend.

So now that we know Jason has all the tapes digitized, we have to wonder why he thinks it would be better for the world if they were only given mere tidbits of unauthenticated bits of the tapes here and there, downloadable without the slightest assurance of authenticity, interspersed with his endlessly trifling comments about how skeptics didn't account for this and that.  FUCK YOU.  

Demolishing Triablogue: Jason Engwer's stupidity in pushing the Enfield Poltergeist

Jason Engwer can't seem to get enough of the Enfield Poltergiest case.  See here.

Engwer seems to think that because he can trifle all day long about non-absolute evidence deriving from accounts that contain a mixture of gullibility, intentional deceit, and unfathomable stupidity and coincidences, this "poltergeist" continues to disprove atheism by proving that immaterial life forms do indeed exist, hence, "god" cannot be automatically dismissed merely because he is an "immaterial" life form.

I've got news for Engwer.  There are several compelling reasons why the real existence of immaterial life forms isn't enough to render atheism foolish.

For the last 20 years I've been attacking the arguments for the historicity of Jesus' resurrection, which are now most cogently set forth by Christian apologists Mike Licona, Gary Habermas, and Bill Craig.

1st Corinthians 15:17 says Christian faith is futile if Jesus did not rise from the dead.  So the bible forces Engwer to admit that his whole theological world necessarily falls apart if Jesus didn't rise from the dead.  he cannot avoid that danger by merely carping that God's basic existence remain unaffected by Jesus' staying dead for 2,000 years.  In other words, Engwer must candidly acknowledge that if Jesus didn't rise, Engwer would still be in his sins, and his faith would be in vain, even if a resurrection failure left God's basic existence unaffected.  Engwer could not merely jump from "jesus didn't rise from the dead" straight over to "this doesn't mean atheists are out of danger!"   Jesus' failure to rise from the dead would, alone, put Engwer in the same degree of danger he thinks atheists are in.  How much danger is there in "your faith is in vain" and "you are still in your sins", and "we are found false witnesses" (1st Cor. 15)?

Let's inquire anyway:  What relevance would the alleged falsity of atheism have, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead?  Would the generic existence of the OT YHWH still somehow "show" that the atheist was in the same degree of "danger" of divine judgment?

Fanatics like Engwer, constantly hawking the Christian merchandise,  would insist that a successful debunking of Jesus' resurrection doesn't remove the atheist's own danger, for in that case, Engwer would use the OT YHWH as the fallback option, and this god is still wrathful against atheists (Psalm 53:1).

But there are serious problems with employing the OT YHWH in the effort to overcome the embarrassment of Jesus staying dead for 2,000 years:

First, as demosntrated above, Jesus' failure to rise from the dead results in vain faith, still being in your sins, and being false witnesses before god, and being "most miserable".  That will not disappear merely because Engwer would prefer to jump immediately from "Jesus didn't rise from the dead" to "that doesn't get the atheist out of trouble!".

Second, would Engwer encourage atheists who remain unimpressed with the historical evidences for Jesus resurrection, to become Orthodox Jews in a way that was consistent with the OT?  Probably not, yet using this god as the fallback position leads to that consequence.  How could Engwer argue that even if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, the OT YHWH doesn't want people to worship him today the way he instructed Moses and the prophets to worship him?  Did the classical theist god change his mind in the last few centuries?

Third, the OT makes God's wrath against deceptive theists far more clear than Psalm 53 sets forth God's wrath against atheists.  Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18 prescribe the death penalty for anybody who would use signs/wonders or "word of the Lord" in a way that is not truly from God:

1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder,
 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,'
 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
 4 "You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
 5 "But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.   (Deut. 13:1-5 NAU)

 19 'It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.
 20 'But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.'
 21 "You may say in your heart, 'How will we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?'
 22 "When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him. (Deut. 18:19-22 NAU)

But no equally clear requirement of the death penalty is prescribed for Gentiles who deny this god's basic existence.  Where does the bible say people who deny god's basic existence are to be put to death?  It doesn't.

If it be more likely that Jesus remained dead for 2,000 years than that he rose (i.e., if any naturalistic explanation for the resurrection testimony is more likely true than the "god did it" explanation), then the sign or wonder of Jesus' resurrection, along with the Christian "word of the Lord" accompanying such sign, constitute the very types of misleading misconduct that this particular OT god is wrathful against.

In other words, if the historical probabilities favor Jesus staying dead more than the theory that he "resurrected", then the Christians would be in just as much trouble from the OT god as they think the atheists are.  If that is the case, then the fact that Christians are under the wrath of God as much as atheists, would intellectually justify the atheist to conclude that Christians do not have spiritual authority, so that what "god" wants is anybody's guess.

Hammering into oblivion the alleged evidence in favor of Jesus' resurrection renders irrelevant any evidence for immaterial life.  The point is that Engwer is accomplishing zero apologetics good with all the time, money and effort he expends pushing this "immaterial life is more likely than not" crap.  As the above indicates, attacks on Jesus' resurrection can be so powerful that they render god's basic existence irrelevant to the atheist. 

This is why I encourage other bible skeptics to recognize that refuting the historical theory that Jesus rose from the dead has more power than in trifling with apologists about the philosophical shortcomings of "theism"...or in helping Engwer commit the sin of word-wrangling (2nd Timothy 2:14) by bickering with him about whether there is anything about the Enfield Poltergeist case that puts the honest reader under any degree of intellectual compulsion to keep the door open to the possibility of immaterial life forms or the "spirit world".

And what do smart people do when they conclude that the preacher is in just as much trouble with his own god, as he thinks YOU are?  We convert to his religion, obviously, but only after Googling his claims for the next 55 years to make sure we don't end up incurring the wrath of god for making a theological mistake in the process.

A final argument is that Christianity's "truth" is irrelevant to modern-day people, since there is nothing in the bible indicating its authors ever intended anybody beyond the audiences they identified, to bother with what they had to say.  Engwer can trifle that an author can possibly intend for a wider audience than he specifically identifies, but that would be Engwer's burden, and he isn't going to turn that possibiltiy into a probability by merely noting that the bible and Christianity have survived for 2,000 years. 

For the Christian to argue that Christianity only survived for 2,000 years only because God was pushing it, is for the Christian to necessarily go outside their happy place (the bible) to make use of non-biblical historical evidence.  After all, precision requires that we ask the nuanced question "what form of Christianity is the right one, and how do we know it survived for 2,000 years?"  And the NT has no tolerance for forms of Christianity that Paul disapproved of (Titus 3:9-11, Galatians 1:8-9).  The mere historical survival of various groups that named the name of Christ in ways contradictory to each other, doesn't constitute the survival of "Christianity", but only the survival of "various contradictory Christianities".  Nothing about this suggests that among the lies and embellishments, one of those forms of surviving Christianity was the "true" one.

Since forms of Christianity Engwer says are false, were part of that rise (i.e., Roman Catholicism), we are not unreasonable to deny "god's" activity in keeping Christianity alive through the years.  Since Engwer is not a Calvinist (at least that's what he said some years ago), he cannot pretend that we are under some type of intellectual compulsion to accept that God also wanted the heretical forms of Christianity to survive in history.  Non-Calvinist theology allows for people to do things contrary to god's will.

Furthermore, a strong argument could be made that Paul was a heretic, the Judaizer gospel was much closer to what Jesus intended for Gentiles, and therefore, the very fact that the true form of Christianity died out and continued being replaced for 2,000 years by various fake forms, makes it reasonable, even if not infallible, to conclude that Christianity's evolution through 2,000 years had more to do with a misrepresentation that the bible god hates (Deut. 13 and 18, supra) and less to do with God trying to keep some semblance of the truth alive. 

This rebuttal to the "Christianity survived through the centuries" apologetic will be formidable to most Christian apologists even if it isn't in the eyes of "Calvinists", who say God infallibly predestined people to commit all the sins they will ever commit.

Enfield Poltergeist: challenge to Jason Engwer

UPDATE July 27, 2019

Since authentication of evidence is everything in investigation by outsiders, especially in this Enfield poltergeist case that Engwer himself admits involved fakery by the main players, I hereby request Jason Engwer to provide to me ALL of the audio, video, testimonial and documentary evidence he has obtained in the matter of the Enfield Poltergeist case.  Will Engwer comply?  Or will he argue that skeptics are being irrational by asking for the most authenticated forms of the relevant evidence?

Please contact me by email to barryjoneswhat@gmail.com, to discuss possible ways you can communicate this evidence to me.
--------------------------------------

Over at Triablogue, Jason Engwer has reached a new low with his obsessive need to attack naturalism and prove that the supernatural exists.  His latest?  An endless amount of blogging to defend an alleged incident of poltergeist activity that happened between 1977 and 1979 in England, known as the Enfield Incident.

One wonders whether Engwer could put his sophistry skills to convincing use telling us that the Lutz family attorney was more than likely just kidding when confessing that the Amityville Horror was a hoax.  Anything to keep sinners interested in the supernatural, amen?  God surely approves of the honorable lie, doesn't he?

Anyway, this exposè will be updated regularly.  Here's the story:

In 1977, a poltergeist allegedly invaded a house in England occupied by a divorced mother and her two daughters.  Read the Wikipedia article for quick introduction.  Read the Rational Wiki article for a more cynically skeptical view.

For the next two years, this phenomena was investigated by various people.  Most came away skeptics, but a few kept this matter alive by their conclusions that the haunting was real.

Jason Engwer claims that he funded the digitization of the certain audio recordings of this incident made by Maurice Grosse.

First, a question:  Jason, how do you think the god of the Old Testament feels about you putting forth substantial amounts of Christian money and effort to prevent the destruction of things that allegedly testify to activities promoted by devils and spiritists?

 27 'Now a man or a woman who is a medium or a spiritist shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones, their bloodguiltiness is upon them.'" (Lev. 20:27 NAU)

 10 "There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer,
 11 or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead.
 12 "For whoever does these things is detestable to the LORD; and because of these detestable things the LORD your God will drive them out before you. (Deut. 18:10-12 NAU)

Second, I'm sure you will, like a cheap lawyer, trifle and pretend that because you do this in the effort to achieve the apologetics goal of proving the supernatural to be real, your bible-god thus approves of your expenditure of time and money this way. Sorry, that's not likely:  in Acts 19, despite the possibility that apostle Paul could have preserved the books on magical arts owned by recent converts, ostensibly so that he could expose truths about the devil, no, Paul's converts decided that permanently destroying such things was best:

 18 Many also of those who had believed kept coming, confessing and disclosing their practices.
 19 And many of those who practiced magic brought their books together and began burning them in the sight of everyone; and they counted up the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.
 20 So the word of the Lord was growing mightily and prevailing.   (Acts 19:18-20 NAU)

Third, if you are so damn sure that the standard apologetic fare you push through your website (i.e., the NT documents are historically reliable, atheism is logically fallacious, Jesus' resurrection is a secure fact of history,  etc, etc.) is seriously in accord with truth, and if you believe god blesses your efforts through such arguments, can you really say that the benefit of resurrecting what you think are the devil's works outweighs the risk that some of these recordings will motivate non-Christians to dive even more deeply into spiritualism and other forbidden areas?  Are standard Christian apologetic arguments not enough, that you have to resurrect gossip about the devil's activity in the world?

If you are doing just fine with your standard pop apologetics, can you really say that more is always better?  Can you really say that any evidence of the supernatural is always best displayed to the entire world?  Sorry, Jason, the bible does not express or imply that god will lift the ban on materials in support of idolatry/spiritism/satan merely because the Christian plans to use them for a godly purpose.  You don't believe yourself deficient in holy and godly arguments and evidence for Christianity, you don't think you are so lacking as to need the help of materials that have far greater potential to lure your non-Christian readers deeper into the occult. 

Or did you suddenly discover what a convenient blessing it can be to become a Calvinist and insist that everything you do, including even drawing people's attention to the tricks of the devil, was predestined by God and thus unavoidable?  I think its funny that you and Steve Hays have such violent disagreement on whether Calvinism is biblically justified.  Sort of warns the non-Christian reader that by becoming genuinely born again, we gain NO ability to correctly discern any biblical thing.

Fourth, I detect nothing in the New Testament that expresses or implies that God approves of methods of promoting Christianity that involve giving money to non-Christian organizations that specialize in preserving evidence of the devil's activity on earth (thus, satanic organizations).  Jesus and Paul did plenty of evangelism and apologetics.  Don't you think the bible's inerrant record of this model is sufficient for your faith and practice?  Apparently not.

Fourth, Jason, at any time in your communications with SPR, did you evangelize them or make any attempt to persuade them to repent and accept the gospel, yes or no?

Fifth,  I decided to do my own research into the Enfield Follies with as much of the first-hand evidence as possible.  So I sent the following request to SPR, the same organization Engwer paid to digitize the Grosse-tapes:

-----------beginquote

Hello,

I am interested in researching the so-called Enfield Poltergeist, the matter you advertise at

https://www.spr.ac.uk/news/enfield-haunting

A man named Jason Engwer is claiming to have funded the digitization of the Maurice Grosse's Enfield tapes.

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-enfield-poltergeist-tapes-made-more.html

I request the following materials in my attempt to investigate that phenomenon.  Please let me know which materials are not free, and what the cost would be, if any.

If any of the below-requested materials cannot be produced, please explain why.  For example, they are copyrighted, or the owner refuses to give permission to distribute, etc.

1. A full unedited copy of the contract and any other documents Mr. Engwer signed with you or with other organizations/persons/agents.  How much money has he paid you so far to digitize the Grosse-tapes?
2. A full unedited copy of all other communications you sent to or received from Mr. Engwer at any time, whether by letter, email, internet post, or otherwise.  I would like to know how extensive Mr. Engwer’s requests for evidence were.
3. Links to all the audio files concerning this incident that you have already made available to, or that you intend to make available to, Mr. Engwer.  I have found some websites that purport to host some downloadable versions of those tapes, but I would feel better if I could obtain those digital files from you directly.
4. Downloadable versions of any notes, diaries, investigative files or other written memoranda created between 1970 and 1987 by any investigator before, during and after they visited the house where the poltergeist allegedly was.
5. Any BBC broadcasts on radio and television you have, which mention the incident, or interview witnesses, etc.
6. All video and audio evidence that you believe is not available elsewhere.
7. All photographic and video files that anybody ever made of this phenomena at the house in question, between 1970 and 1987, including the photos allegedly depicting levitation, object movement or any other type of allegedly paranormal  activity.
8. All information and facts you have about the mother Peggy Hodgson,  the daughters Margaret and Janet, their father, and any family members, friends or neighbors.
9. Any reports filed by any police or welfare or social workers who may have made some type of inquiry or investigation into this incident at any time.
10. The most extensive biographical information you have about Maurice Grosse, John Burcombe, their investigations into any other incidents of alleged paranormal activity, and information on anybody else not already identified, supra,  who attempted any type of inquiry or investigation at any time into this incident.
11. I also seek your opinions on Jason Engwer's arguments that this was genuinely supernatural activity.  Does anybody at SPR suspect that the the Hodgson children were responsible, to any degree, for faking or attempting to fake any type of supernatural phenomena?  Does any of the evidence establish that anybody engaged in any type of deception or foul play between 1974 and 2005 concerning this incident?
12. All documents containing your answers or rebuttals to any skeptics who argue that this entire incident is just one giant hoax.
13. A listing and description of all the Grosse-tapes and any other audio recordings made between 1977 and 1980 relative to this incident, that is, the recordings that you decided not to digitize, the dates those tapes were originally recorded, and your reasons for not digitizing them.
14. References to any other persons, organizations, websites or companies that have audio, video, written, photographic or other source material you do not have about this incident.
15. The current mailing address, telephone number and any email addresses of Margaret and Janet Hodgson, or, if they wish not to be contacted, why they wish not to be contacted.

I'm sure you can appreciate why serious investigation requires that I obtain the evidence from sources as close as possible to the original authors.  Finding some of that stuff on unauthorized internet sites might make for interesting viewing, but can only hamper the investigation when the questions of authenticity inevitably arise.

Thank you for your help,

Barry Jones

-------------endquote

I sent that email today, August 13, 2018, so we'll have to wait and see how willing the SPR is for unbelievers to evaluate their claims using as much of the primary source material as possible.  I'm hoping they don't get commercial on me and insist that most of the requested evidence is proprietary and costs money.  

Maybe Jason will say I am unreasonable to bother these nice folk because I could get much of this off of the internet.  That's right Jason:  If its found on the internet, skeptics have no choice but to admit it's true.  What's next?  Gonna start tithing to Ron Wyatt's ministry?  Skeptics can't refute that picture of a chariot-wheel at the bottom of the Red Sea, so Wyatt has surely been used by God to smack down atheism and extol the inerrancy of the bible?

For now, Jason entitled one of his posts as The Enfield Poltergeist Tapes Made More Accessible

Jason, are you going to make those digitized audio files more accessible to the public?  Or is there a limit to how accessible you think these critically important tapes should be?

For now, yes, you guessed it, Mr. Engwer seriously believes that the iconic photo of a girl standing above her bed proves that she was levitated or at least "thrown" by paranomal powers:

What Burcombe witnessed, corroborated by Peggy, demonstrates that the poltergeist had an interest in levitating people in the manner reflected in the photographs.

Ready to see a picture that proves levitation can be done by ghosts?

















Maybe Jason can tell us how suspicious we should be that an alleged levitation that a regular camera caught, could not be caught on a video camera.  Until that day, assuming these pictures are accurate copies of the originals, this is nothing but girls jumping on beds.  It's also an otherwise smart apologist allowing his deluded religious zeal to cloud his brain.

Jason's god is apparently capable of creating the entire universe, parting the Red Sea, taking people up into heaven by whirlwind and chariots of fire, even causing the earth to stop turning just so Joshua has enough time to complete a battle....yet Jason's god apparently wants Jason to refute atheism by arguing that a picture of a girl above a bed is depicting levitation, not jumping, and hence the supernatural realm exists.  Does this send me running to repent in dust and ashes?



Hey Jason, how hard do you think it would be for a jailhouse lawyer to get some attention by arguing that the accidents that happened on the set of the original Exorcist movie cannot be explained on purely naturalistic grounds?  Yeah, go google that shit and discover the 67th book of the bible.

And while you are at it, assure skeptics that they have no hope of being able to debunk the fanciful miracle accounts in evangelist Mel Tari's 1971 best seller "Like A Mighty Wind".  The last I heard, those miracle stories were told by "eyewitnesses" and "corroborated", so atheists simply have no choice: god exists.

Updated regularly.

Update: July 27, 2019

Engwer got his shovel, apparently, and started digging into the bottom of the credibility barrel, once again.  He has posted a long rambling article doing what he does best, trifling about largely unknown events that he apparently gained knowledge of by listening to audio recordings made in 1977.  See here. 

I will respond point by point, not to the entire article, but to his own admissions that some of this stuff is baloney, since, as I will argue, such admission fully justifies broadbrushing the entire Enfield incident as a mixture of foul play and one paranormal researcher looking for fame and money.

First, there is the New Testament.  Nowhere does the text express or even imply that a follower of Christ should spend their time gossiping about paranormal events to the degree that Jason Engwer trifles about the details of this bullshit Enfield Poltergiest yarn.  Go ahead, read your NT, then ask yourself what Jesus wants the Christian teacher to focus on.  "Gossip about evil spirits as originally conveyed by a non-Christian person who had an interest in evil spirits" is not even close.

Second, the obvious:  the main players, to my knowledge, have never given their testimony under oath, in situation where they stood a risk of going to jail for lying.  So you'll excuse me if I don't give a shit about the girls being willing 40 years later to maintain their supernatural explanations while talking to tabloid tv reporters.

Third, I tried to gain the same tapes, videos and evidence from the same source Engwer allegedly got them, and after being told my request was being routed to others, received no more response.  That ought to tell you how interested the custodians are in allowing the evidence to be evaluated by disinterested parties.  They stand for paranormal activity.  They don't allow skeptics to see the most authenticated evidence, and Christians don't allow Mormons to interrupt Sunday services.

Fourth, to my knowledge Engwer has never provided any authentication for these "tapes".  I don't mean that he is lying about having such tapes.  Unless he thinks "authentication" a negligible issue, the lack of authentication automatically justifies wholesale skepticism (i.e., not suspension of judgment, but judgment that the incident was completely faked with no supernatural anything to it).

Fifth, Engwer tells the reader nothing about why historians and courts of law agree that second-hand testimony is generally considered inferior to first-hand.  Had he done so, he'd risk some of his readers asking "why don't you conduct a personal interview with the main players who are still alive?".  Then Engwer would have to disagree with historians and legal authorities and pretend that second-hand evidence, whose authenticity he has no personal knowledge of, is "just as good" as under-oath testimony from the main players.

Sixth, I would like Engwer to make available to me ALL of the audio recordings, video recordings, and any other documentary or testimonial evidence that he has obtained about the Enfield incident.  If he wants to be taken seriously when he pretends this crap was likely genuinely paranormal, he will not fear investigation into the matter by somebody who does not subscribe to the paranormal.  Any refusal of Engwer to fork over said evidence, shall be taken to mean that he is fearful that a purely naturalistic explanation of the evidence would be equally if not more reasonable than his own. 

I've only given a few examples of the sort of qualifiers that could be added to what I said earlier about Margaret and Janet's suspicious behavior. I wouldn't claim that these qualifiers satisfactorily explain everything. But I do think they satisfactorily explain some things.

Then we have a problem not different from that facing the jury after they heard the rape-victim admit she has lied repeatedly in the past about rape.  Does it prove the current rape didn't happen?  No. Would it intellectually justify the jurors who choose to find her lacking in credibility?  Yes.  In a rape case where the physical evidence only shows sex and it is only the woman's testimony that says "rape", you cannot blame the jurors who, upon hearing her confess to lying about rape in the past, to consider allowing a potentially guilty rapist go free to be a higher priority than jailing a potentially innocent man.

My overall assessment of the altered states of consciousness is that it's highly probable that at least much of what happened was paranormal, but that some of it is suspicious, sometimes even highly suspicious.

Then you cannot blame the atheist or skeptic who uses their intentional fakery to broadbrush all the evidence, call it bullshit, and forget about it.  The issue is not whether lawyers who specialize in sophistry can always raise trifles that skeptics cannot completely blow out of the ballpark.  The issue is whether insisting on the purely naturalistic basis for all the Enfield Poltergeist activity is "reasonable".  It is.  In Engwer's word, nobody is reasonable to be skeptical of a story until they have taken several years to do doctoral-level research into it and extracted reluctant confessions of foul play from all of the the main players.  Well fuck you, reasonableness in skepticism doesn't require such extreme analysis.  Otherwise, you are a dipshit to ever render a skeptical opinion about anything, since in all likelihood you didn't exhaustively investigate it beforehand.

A lot of what occurs during these episodes is trivial, immature, vulgar, nonsensical, and embarrassing.

And yet you expect us to believe the girls made free choices to fake some symptoms while sincerely believing the poltergeist was genuinely supernatural?  Where exactly do you think skeptics go wrong by using the "highly suspicious" and "nonsensical" acts of the girls to broadbrush the entire matter as fake?

I'd expect many people to dismiss the phenomena because they're so different than what's commonly expected from a poltergeist.

There are no reliable records of genuinely poltergeist activity in the first place, so the fact that the Enfield phenomenon involved elements no present in movies entitled "poltergeist" means exactly nothing.

But common expectations are often poorly informed.

A rather stupid statement given that because they are "common", they represent the collective wisdom of a lot of adults, and therefore usually aren't poorly informed, at least when it comes to ghosts.  non-Christian adults have lots of morally and intellectually justified "common expectations" (the dangers of joining cults, unprotected sex, drunk driving, college education gives you a boost in the job market, etc).

And the suspicious aspects of the phenomena have to be evaluated alongside the evidence we have for the paranormality of the events.

And the woman's testimony that she was raped needs to be evaluated alongside her confession that she has lied about rape in the past.

You can't focus on the former while ignoring the latter.

You don't cite to any rule of historiography or rule of evidence that prohibits smart people from using some evidence of foul play in the record to broadbrush the entire matter as fakery and delusion.  I really hope you don't become a judge...you'd have to first do doctoral level research into a litigant's credibility before you could issue a ruling during an evidentiary hearing.  Sorry, but in the real world, credibility determinations can be reasonable even if they don't answer every trifle a Pharisee could possibly raise.

I've made some comments in the past about why the poltergeist may have behaved as it did on occasions like these.

Jesus also said God was his Father.  Like it matters.

I've also discussed why people would sometimes fake incidents in a genuine paranormal case.

I have to wonder...should I look up that discussion?  Or should I obey 2nd Timothy 2:14?

I'll have more to say about both subjects in later posts.
But I want to conclude this post with some comments about the personal aspect of paranormal research. I opened the post by referring to how the tapes on these altered states of consciousness are the hardest ones to listen to. That's primarily because of the personal implications involved.
Tapes 22 through 24 in Grosse's collection have stood out in my mind in this context. They were recorded in the middle of November of 1977, on a night when the Hodgsons were staying at the Burcombes' house. Janet was in one of the bedrooms, Margaret and Billy were in another, and Peggy was in the third. Peggy was ill at the time, so much so that she couldn't take care of her children. (See the segment here in a November 1977 television program that alludes to the situation.) In his book, Playfair refers to how Peggy had "collapsed in total exhaustion" and had a "breakdown" around this time (81, 88), and it's sometimes said that she had a nervous breakdown at least once during the case. Both of the girls were going in and out of altered states of consciousness, often screaming, crying, groaning, and such, with Janet exhibiting unusual strength and being violent at times, as levitations and other paranormal events went on simultaneously.

Sorry, you don't have any convincing evidence of levitations.  Yet you droll on and on, constantly peppering your evaluation with references to how paranormal acts were actually taking place. 

Grosse was frequently moving back and forth among the rooms, trying to keep up with everything that was going on, moving his tape recorder from one location to another, and directing the other people involved.

Sure is funny he never got video of the poltergiest moving or levitating objects.  The fact that the older evaluations seriously set forth a series of pictures showing a girl jumping on her bed as her being thrown around by a poltergeist, justifies full skepticism alone. The very fact that you have to admit fakery and then trifle that the fakery doesn't necessary mean there was no poltergeist, cooks your goose.

He got some help from the Burcombes, and Mrs. Edwards, who I referred to earlier, was there. But it had to be a miserable experience for Grosse.

Not if he was making money or seeking to make money/gain notoriety.

As he tells Edwards on that night, "it's a dreadful thing to watch". I don't know how anybody could listen to these tapes without having a lot of respect for Grosse and appreciation for the difficulty of the work he was doing.

Easy, Grosse was seeking to turn this spectacle into money and notoriety, which seems likely given that he was exactly an "paranormal investigator", or so all internet sources agree.

But you sympathize with the Hodgsons more than anybody else. In some ways, what Janet went through was worse than what anybody else experienced. For the most part, her trance states (as distinct from her dreams) come across as highly convincing and agonizing experiences.

Kids are sometimes very good at deceit.

But it's hard to tell just how much she was aware of at the time, and she didn't seem to remember much about the experiences afterward.

Or she remembered it all full well, but realized that by saying she was suffering amnesia, should be drastically lessen the likelihood of saying something that might contradict her earlier testimony.

By contrast, Peggy had to watch what her children were going through without being able to do much about it, and she remembered it. During one of the episodes, she commented that "It cuts you in pieces inside." (GP20B, 13:35)

Yes, some people can be gullible.

There are a lot of reasons why the neglect of paranormal research is so appalling.

But you are a "Christian".  The bible never expresses or implies that any "Christian" spend the same amount of time trifling about particular instances of alleged evil-spirit activity that you spend.  Among all truthful statements the world has ever produced, the statement "the people at Triablogue intentionally misinterpret 2nd Timothy 2:14 so they can feel better about their ceaseless sins of word-wrangling" ranks near the top.

We should think about the effects that neglect has on the people who go through these experiences.

Or you can think about preaching the wurdagawd.  Read your NT, then you tell me which one Jesus would more than likely wish for you to engage in.

We should also consider the implications for a culture when people don't care or think much about these issues.

I do.  I consider how much more advanced society would be if nobody believed in ghosts.

We should also consider what it means when an allegedly "bible-believing" Christian like Engwer devotes substantial amounts of Jesus' time and money to helping resurrect gossip about what Engwer himself admits is the activity of demons.  Had Engwer read Genesis 3, he might have figured out that focusing on the devil and what he has to say can do nothing but lead to ruin.

It is my suspicion that Engwer's motive has nothing to do with Christianity, he simply loves to create opportunities for him to 'wrangle words' with other people, which would be a violation of 2nd Timothy 2:14.