NYer posted it. You've been given due notice. If you want to mock playing with this "supernatural dynamite," or make her "the fool," your soul is in peril and not NYer's.
Penn and Teller can have a field day with this. However, just ask them if they've taken "Pascal's wager." It is in their mathematical best interests to do so by simple probability.
Francis X.
Thank you, Frank. For those who still think this is foolishness, here's the rest of the story.
I didn't take the ouija board seriously when I was a teen, until that hot summer day at my friend Tina's house.
There were 5 of us. My friend Joan and another girl were operating the ouija board. Joan had a 'spirit guide' named EOT who always showed up when we played with the board. That day was no different and he answered the same old stupid questions girls always pose. Suddenly, he spelled out - WARNING. We giggled, thinking it was all a game. He spelled it again - WARNING, and then the planchette stopped moving. No matter how many questions we asked, the planchette did not move. Laughing now, we asked "Is there anyone there?" and the planchette shot up to OUI (yes). Joan asked "And what is your name?"
The planchette moved so rapidly over the letters that we couldn't keep track of what was being spelled. I took out a pad and pencil to write down the letters, calling them out loud as I wrote them down. Whenever I missed a letter, the planchette would go back to it! The response to Joan's question was quite lengthy. The responder gave a lengthy list of names ending with .... "but my preferred call me BEELZEEBUL". That name I immediately recognized and whispered to the next girl that we had conjured up Satan. She didn't believe any of this.
'B' wanted to meet with Joan and asked all of us to leave the room so he could arrange for a meeting place. Still, no one took this seriously, which is what he banks on. We refused to leave the room, though. Joan decided to 'test' the spirit by asking a series of questions. One of the questions was to name the most evil people in the room. 'B' spelled out the names of Tina's two youngest siblings. That made perfect sense since they were still so close to God and quite innocent. Finally Joan asked what 'B' would give her if she met him. He said: "I'll give you anything your heart desires includinged". At that someone said - "You see. It can't be real because this spirit can't spell". I looked down at the letters again and gasped.
My friend Joan had a crush on a guy. He didn't know it. She was so smitten with him that she would crash parties in order to be close to him. In looking down at the letters again, I realized there was no misspelling. What 'B' said was: "I'll give you anything your heart desires including ED" - the guy Joan so desperately sought. At that time in her life, this was her biggest weakness and source of vulnerability. That is when I asked one of the children to bring down the Rosary beads.
BTW - several years later I was at home half listening to some sitcom on the tv. In this episode, a DJ got stuck in his booth. He couldn't move. Meanwhile a record played. It was gothic organ music and a voice called out the demons of hell. It droned through a long list of names. Still only half tuned in, my attention was immediately grabbed when I heard it say - EOT! That night, I destroyed the ouija board and called Joan.
I learned a life lesson that year and have passed it on whenever possible. The Evil One thrives on those who don't believe in his existence.
Errr... only with a flawed analysis and/or at least one invalid assumption. You can find discussions of the fundamental flaws in Pascal's Wager all over the net. Some are very simple (e.g. pointing out the invalid assumption required for it to work) while others are mathematically more thorough (e.g. a full-blown expected utility calculus using cost basis). It is essentially an economic argument.
In any case, Pascal got it wrong -- your mathematical best interest is in fact the exact opposite. It surprises me that people still use Pascal's Wager when it has been used as a canonical example of several types of invalid logic and flawed reasoning for ages, precisely because it is so well known and seductively specious. I blame the public schools...