Ouija Ouija Woo Woo

Question from Dominic:
Athiests talk so much about the existence/non-existence of God but how about evil? Have any of you played the Ouija board lately? I’d like you to take that silly little test and then tell me if you believe in a power of darkness. And, if so, than if God is gone is our world then ruled by evil?

Answer by SmartLX:
A great test for immediately afterwards is to use a Ouija board blindfolded. The ideomotor phenomenon is quite sufficient to explain how people who are not aware of guiding the pointer over the board are nevertheless directing it mechanically and quite precisely, because when they can no longer see the board the pointer immediately goes astray. The spirits by themselves are blind, it would seem, and the apparatus behaves exactly as if they weren’t there. You’re left with a pattern on a plank of wood that’s probably copyrighted by Parker Brothers.

The apparent effectiveness of a Ouija board when used as intended is therefore not good evidence for the existence of ethereal spirits, much less evil spirits and much, much less a god to balance them out. Even if you did know evil was real, this by itself as an argument for the existence of a good god would only be an appeal to consequences. Evil is real, so…what? You hope there’s a God or we’re all screwed?

5 thoughts on “Ouija Ouija Woo Woo”

  1. There are many witnesses who have seen bad come from that board. Not only that there are people who have seen other supernatural things that can not be explained away. People who have seen and experienced demons and there possessing of an individual. And not only that there are way too many miracles that have no other explanation but that of a Creator. The Atheist forget predictions made in God’s word that took place way after it was written. And the skeptics who have tried to prove that the predictions came after the event, have always come up short in explaining why.

  2. I’m sure some awful messages have apparently come out of ouija boards, Gerald, but it does look like you only get out what you put in so it’s all about the people with a finger on the pointer. More generally, we’re not going to know whether these “supernatural things” can be explained away if we don’t know what they are. Pick your best example and make a question for the site about it, we’ll take a look.

    I wasn’t kidding about Parker Brothers, by the way. A board game company has the rights to what’s now the most common ouija board configuration, and even mass produces them to a small extent. You can see the copyright notice at the bottom, all over Google Images. If spirits are working through this thing, they’re familiar with the brand standard.

    As for predictions, again we have to look at them individually but there are alternatives to the false dilemma of divine foreknowledge or pure chance. See my piece on the subject, and if the predictions you’re thinking of don’t fit into any of the categories I’ve defined go ahead and put a comment in there.

  3. I am not sure why these spirits need humans to put their fingers on the pointer for the pointer to move. Why can’t the pointer be operated by the spirits themselves, directly so that there is absolutely no doubt … they seem powerful enough if we are to go by accounts of “disasters” and “miracles” that credulous people give of dealing with Ouija boards.

    Difficult to buy into the notion of powerful spirits intending to cause terrible harm but won’t lift a finger (literally) to move a board game pointer on their own.

    1. To Rohit:

      Regarding the pointer: Why don’t you be the first to try? It is well known that people who are possessed can turn material objects on their own. But, no matter what happens I only asked this question because when I was younger I had an experience with the Ouija board. I asked it some very personal questions and it writes out its response in 17th century English. Now, I don’t know about you but I do not go around talking in early English. My spelling is perfect. If it was somehow a response from my own mind, I would never have thought about spelling things in such a way–and yes, it did know all of my secrets. Secondly, after using it for a while the pointer kept making frantic circles around the board and spelling out random curse words. Again, I am not one who uses profanity. Whatever conclusion you draw out of this, you can take it or leave it, but for me I will always remember this singularly creepy experience.

      1. Well … perhaps I will some day … would be interesting to find out which demons might be possessing me 🙂

        The sub-conscious mind is a very curious thing. There are things that it brings to fore when we are in non-normal brain states (relaxed or excited) that we didn’t know we knew/ were capable of.
        A personal anecdote about the power of the subconscious – back during my college days I heard of this person who had never been formally trained in English and could only speak broken English. He and his dorm mates took some cannabis one night … and lo & behold … the guy started speaking in perfect English. His English got back to “normal” when the drug wore off. The brain state induced by the cannabis obviously made this person somehow “recall” all the rules of grammar,diction etc. he had ever encountered – though he had never been formally trained in the language.
        I doubt it was spirits speaking through him.
        When his friends told the guy what he did, the guy just couldn’t believe it and thought they were pulling his leg, till they made him hear his recording. He was a bit weirded out (I think he believed that he got possessed when he used).
        One doesn’t need to go to external chemicals to induce such brain states … external events of various intensities can trigger them as well. That’s what I usually ascribe Ouija board and other such experiences to ( I do not mean to de-value anyone’s experience by this … I just ascribe a more plausible explanation for an implausible/ non-normal experience. The experience’s positive or negative impact on one’s psyche cannot be taken away).

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