MiracleQuest Continues: Another Response To jim

While doing some "fall cleaning" around here, I found today's post in the "drafts" folder.

Although the original exchange occurred over a month ago, and I'm unsure why I'm responding to a guy who banned me from his blog for an unspecified "breach of honesty" while he apparently has no problem calling me names like "mealy-mouthed prick" all over the internet, but dedication to the arguments must overlook the uglier sides of debate. Granted, I know what one or two of you might be thinking: "Ah cl, we hate it when you rehash these 'he said this, I said that' arguments. Why burden us with your own online social difficulties??" It's not that. Rather, I feel there are some cogent rebuttals here on my part, and I thought it would be a waste to just trash the post.

So, let's get to it. Comments welcomed.

As a side argument in our discussion over limb regeneration at SI's in July, I mentioned a personal anecdote from my own experience that I believe constitutes solid evidence for what most people have in mind when they use the word supernatural. In response to my video game incident, jim replied:

..tapes falling and landing in a certain configuration is hardly against the natural order.

Folks, this is a textbook circular argument, plain and simple. We can't begin with the conclusion we're trying to argue. By use of the word falling, jim indicates that he's begun with the conclusion he needs to demonstrate with reason.

A rationalist should ask more questions. As relayed in the incident, three humans all saw the same thing and it was not explainable by appeal to natural gravity: 4 or 5 Xbox games stacked on top of additional components atop a big-screen television do not suddenly beeline at 45-degree trajectories landing still stacked about 5 feet away. In no way is that as dismissible as you've attempted, with a circular argument nonetheless.

As for me, I did ask more questions. Instead of merely jumping to the conclusion that favored my pre-existing worldview, I endeavored for weeks to devise a mechanistic explanation for this event, for example testing to see if maybe the music we were listening to didn't vibrate the games off the television. It sounded plausible for about a millisecond, but before even running the tests I quickly realized if that were the case, the games should have fallen straight down alongside the television, and scattered upon impact. Perhaps coincidentally, or not — who knows — a month or two later, me and my buddy were sitting there listening to music and playing video games again, this time without his girlfriend. The set-up was almost identical, and all of a sudden, the games did happen to vibrate off the television, presumably from the deep bass because they acted just as I'd predicted: they fell at a 90-degree angle, straight down alongside the television screen, and scattered upon impact. This situation repeated itself on a third occasion as well.

The differences between first incident and the latter two are undeniable, and the details utterly demolish all dismissals yet put forth, which are not based on a reasonable paring of the evidence (Dominic's 'kinetic' or 'psychic transference' theory held the most water IMO). 

So say what you want about me jim, but I've clearly made my case here.