Pendantic

[Barney]

Hi chaps.

Some of the old crew may remember me. Long time absent as life pressures such as Blood Bowl and Wargaming have kept me busy.

As the old gang know , I am a pretty dyed in the wool skeptic and atheist. I listen to Tim Minchen on my MP3 player and I have TED podcasts in my car on the way to work. I have followed JW's down the street when they pass by my house asking for a conversation and I am pretty much on their banned list.
Last week I was having a lovely debate with a Chemtrail fan. That sort of stuff.
Well here is a story I wanted to share.

My mums in hospital with cancer and terminal, she is a devout Christian. (Nope its not a story of healing miracles).

The other week we traveled to see her (6 hour trip so we had to stop on the way at the Golden Arches.
The "Boss" was in and doing a good job of entertaining the kids. My daughter was watching the rope trick he was doing and the guy was skilled. He "separated the rope" and "Joined it together". I was quite close but diddnt see the slight of hand. My 13yr old Daughter was impressed but I have brought her up a skeptic and when she asked how he had done it i said "Dunno...its a common trick, notice however that he held his hands so you couldn't see the back of the rope?" She agreed.

We visited Gran and gave her a St Christopher's pendant, a tiny thing as it was just meant to be "symbolic" for her because her faith is so important.

Skip forwards a week to yesterday: Seriously this story IS going somewhere!

Me and Mrs Barney visited Mum again. She had changed wards and I noted that the pendant was missing. Obviously taken off her by the staff and lost or dropped or swept up. We were looking for it and we found a large cross in silver with a crucified Christ on it. "Ahh!" I said "I know whats happened mum, its got bigger! I now believe in miracles!" to make her laugh. My mum smiled as she knows my sense of humor.

After the visit we drove back. My Wife often wears a pendant we got from a seaside trip. It is a swirl made out of shell. It has a hole bored in the top which the string passes through and the string is closed by two knots and beads pass over the closure. What I am getting at is this thing is tied tightly and doesn't come undone. You can see where this is heading now yep?

When we got home we walked inside and Mrs Barney said "Hey Barney, come and tell me this. How the fuck did this come off?"

The string was round her neck, the beads were over the knot, the knot was tied and the loop continuous. The shell had come off and the hole was bored in it and there was no cracking around the hole. The shell was too brittle for a hairline crack to form (I assume) for the rope to work its way through.

"You must have snagged it" I said, but that doesn't explain why there string was intact or the shell intact.
"Perhaps its a hairline crack", but no. It isnt. (I havnt put it under a scope)
"Perhaps the string was pushed through the hole and we never noticed it before and its worked its way out?" But nope. That is possible, but nobody makes pendants like that and the way it hangs says otherwise.

"OK, I dont know", I said (That Mrs Barney had done it is another possibility , unless you know her and that she is as much of a skeptic as me, if not more)
"There is no reason to invoke the supernatural though" I said "There has to be a naturalistic cause. But OK lets try the supernatural. Spirits or force that made the pendant come off! Can you wiggle this packet of cheesy wotsits?"

The Wotists sat there unmoved.

"Well OK" I said. "They seem a bit shy all of a sudden..they are willing to take a pendant off a string but cant move a bag of crisps"

"Oh I dont think its supernatural" said Mrs B.
"Nor me , but I really cant think of a explanation" (Which I always have been able to do before.

Perhaps its Ronald McDonald doing it and he is a mighty deity.The entertainer we saw was not a poorly paid actor but the ACTUAL Ronald Mc Donald!
If it was a god then why use such a crap rope trick.
So I though about it. Am I a good historian of this? Well fuck yes, because I was skeptically analyzing it as I was looking at the evidence. Does my memory fail me. No, because I was thinking as I was examining the silly string " Hey, in examples of stuff like this- nobody can recall what actually happened and everyone's story differs slightly"

If it was Yaweh and Son then they should know that I work on evidence. I like things to be repeatable. That way we avoid errors. Or is it enough that in my highly charged emotional state that Yaweh and Son do a really shit magic trick to "sow the seeds of doubt in materialism". Seriously! Intervening in the world to fuck about with a pendant when Islamic State are slicing off innocents heads? Or decent Christians like Mum are dying painfully?

So lets look at Pattern recognition.

1. We have a recent religious pendant bought. It goes missing in hospital. 0 points for woo woo
2. A larger one appears with no explanation known. Oh hang on a second! A present from a friend who visited? 0 Points of woo woo
3. Ronald Mc Donald does some rope tricks. 0 points of woo
4. My wife's pendant comes off the string with no known cause and apparently against the laws of physics. 1 point of woo.

So why am I letting you chaps know all this shit? Well I thought it would give you a laugh and also perhaps I haven't covered some bases of explanations.
I've never had an event I couldn't explain and welcomed your opinions and no doubt derision!

[ghoulslime]

First of all, I am sorry to hear about your mum. Mortality has no happy endings. I trust that you will not deny your poor mother the comfort of her leprechauns, while she awaits the arrival of Anubis.

I am sitting in a faraway place at the moment, waiting for a shitty conference call that may or may not materialize before I hit the hay, so I will have a try at this mysterious riddle.

1. That ANYTHING doesn’t go missing in a hospital is a fucking miracle.

2. That some unknown person brought a crucifix to the death bed of a dying Christian, and left it as a source of solace to a fellow believer, surely suspends the known physical laws of the universe, and threatens to rend the very fabric of space-time! Not!

3. Ronald McDonald can undo the fly of a random 12-year-old boy in the public restroom of a hamburger joint, cop a feel, back off, jack off, stick a finger up his bum while tucking his semi-rigid hot dog back into his baggy yellow pants, and return to the birthday party as his sniffs his finger and blows up an elephant balloon – and you are surprised that he can tie some fucking knots? 37 years of attending boy scout summer camps is bound to lead to some skill sets besides buggering children while they sleep.

4. It is obviously the work of ghosts - very, very knotty ghosts.

[dogpet]

[Barney]

But how can the ghosts undo knots? To undo a knot they have to have a physical presence to interact with the fabric. This means they have matter. If they have matter the matter can technically be analysed and we can find out what elements the matter comprises. If it is a new element then we can measure its atomic weight. They can thus be affected by other matter that interacts with them. Like say silver. I can use a silver discarding sabot from a Challenger 2 tank and blow the crap from them.

Meh. I am a Ward manager of a NHS psychiatric ward. It amazes me when a patient leaves with anything they came in with. Thats a no Brainer.

I think the hospital chaplain left a new and completely different pendant because st Christopher smacks of Kafolikness and yaweh is a protestant.

Anyway. My repeatable experiment didn't work. It's very much attached still and Yaweh is having some difficulty with the knot. I still have no rational explanation but I think I can discard gods input. If he undoes it again, then he will have a chance at a convert.

[Barney]

Cheers Dogpet. This is another explanation that would fit. Perhaps we just didn't notice the ring thing. I am fairly sure it had none but yeah, its a excellent theory. i will check my car for a piece of metal.

You know. The more I type about this the more I am feeling I have just blown all my credentials.

Nice call though. I mean how much notice do we actually take of our everyday objects?
I suppose that's why I asked. It seemed like a fun thing to explore.

[dogpet]

Ring could have been catgut or something? Shit im bored

[Barney]

And just checked with Mrs B. She says no ring...its one of her fav pendents, but its still possible.

[dogpet]

Then pagan magic is the only remaining explanation!
Or Mrs Barney on the wind-up?

Abalone amulets protect the witch from negative energy.

Burn the witch!

[Barney]

Nahh. Both of us pretty much remember the damn thing having no ring. Still theres probably a rational explaination....Possibly....Or are there more things in heaven and earth than something something in your philosophy Horatio? Was it Horatio. well Shakespeare said it...I think so he has to be right. Cos he is fucking Shakespeare.

But wait....is this Jesus trying to communicate with me? The hard hearted one. he actually has physically intervened like I asked him to and I still shun him??

Yeah pretty much. Undo the knot again Yaweh and we can talk turkey.

[Barney]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74SQ6w6LdU0

[ghoulslime]

dogpet wrote

Ring could have been catgut or something? Shit im bored

Catgut? How could a cat tie his guts into a ring, unless it had super powers or very strong faith in the Lord? I’m not saying that it is impossible, just improbable. All things are possible through Christ. For example, Jesus once put the devil into a whole herd of pigs. That measure of virility is no mortal feat! I know a guy from West Virginia who also had similar experiences, though on a smaller scale. Anyway, God moves in mysterious ways, and so do cats. That’s got to be it then!

[ghoulslime]

dogpet wrote

This reminds me of a personal experience years back in Bangkok. I met a woman who assured me she had a lovely shell of sorts that she wanted to show me, and made explicit insistence that there was a nice hole in the shell that I would be happy to see. Upon closer examination, it was an entirely different configuration than I expected – strings, and rings, and other things. And I really wasn’t sure how to tie it all together. These things can be very confusing.

[Smellyoldgit]

Puckered butt-hole shells are hard to come by ......

[ghoulslime]

Smellyoldgit wrote

Puckered butt-hole shells are hard to come by ......

...or come in!

[Kinich Ahau]

Cue bearded clam joke!