I'm not deeply spiritual or superstitious when you get down to it, despite how some of my debates on other subjects have gone.
That said, I do think there is a lot of wierd stuff out there, and I'm constantly surprised how many "sensible" and totally "scientifically grounded" people are unwilling to push their luck when it comes to certain things, more so in many cases than those who seem like they would be more scared. I could tell some stories, but it would be pointless.
The bottom line is that in general the extraordinary (if it exists) and the ordinary do not generally intersect. There is no easy path to power, really flashy wierd stuff, or anything so generally dangerous that it presents a threat to joe-blow or else by the nature of such things we'd all be aware of it.
Simply put there have been enough things credited to psyhics, occult scientists, or whatever else, where I don't dismiss the possibilities out of hand, but also don't think that anyone with any kind of serious talent in this area would be working to amuse people at a game magazine. What's more as I understand the theories involved, the arguement basically is that a likely future is being determined based on the way the universe naturally gravitates, but things can be changed and simply by making a prediction and telling people about it can cause that change. What's more the bigger the question being divined on, and the more possibilities, the vaguer it becomes with the scope.
I'm not defending this guy as real, but rather pointing out that there are people who do that kind of thing and make big bucks doing it, probably because some of them have produed results sufficient to warrent it. In general anyone with that much money is probably not going to be stupid either.
You sit down and mock this kind of stuff, but then every once in a while someone does a show on "wierd and unexplained sh@t", and you have people bring out guys that are exactly the opposite of "the psychic friends network" with it's disclaimers or whatever, and they go into convinctions and such that have been obtained based on leads from psychics and the like. You also find out that for ghosts and "psychic phenomena" is legally accepted as existing, in fact there are laws in some states like New York that requires realtors to disclose when a house or property has a history to the prospective buyers due to various incidents.
My point being that it's foolish to act like this stuff is everywhere, but at the same time I don't think it's quite right to jump on someone's beliefs unless they are taking it to an insane everyday level. The best approach is to remain skeptical of course, even if you acknowlege certain possibilities, but even in doing so you don't need to be rude.
