I saw this on TV, which explains it :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_and_the_Truth_of_Murder
The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
71–80 of 105 posts
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Arthur Conan Doyle famously embarrassed himself with the Cottingley Fairies fake [1]. A grown man, believing in fairies -- small women with butterfly wings -- based on some dodgy (doctored) photographs. He went beyond believing in them; he actually promoted the case. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies
That Wikipedia page is worth the read. It's amazing how many people they duped! The photos are unedited but they include cardboard cutouts. It's immediately obvious to my 21st Century eyes that the fairies are drawings, but apparently they fooled a lot of people. The 5th photo is the only one that doesn't look immediately like a cutout. It's believed to have been the result of a double exposure, but one of the women…
I don't laugh at the technology itself -- today those photos look ridiculous but I believe people could find them realistic back then.
The dumb thing is believing fairies exist at all. If I see "convincing" evidence of fairies, with today's technology, I would still remain skeptical. It would take a lot more for me to even begin to wonder. Because fairies don't exist, we know where they come from in folklore and literature, and there's so much evidence they don't exist (along with unicorns, the Yeti, gremlins, etc) that a couple of convincing photographs or videos is simply not enough.
Conan Doyle wouldn't have been fooled had he been a skeptical, inquiring mind. Alas! He was just gullible.
Famously, Conan Doyle had Sherlock claim:
> When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Unfortunately Doyle, because he so wanted to believe, didn't really eliminate the impossible. He carelessly dismissed the most obvious option: that the two girls were playing him for a fool.
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
That Wikipedia page is worth the read. It's amazing how many people they duped! The photos are unedited but they include cardboard cutouts. It's immediately obvious to my 21st Century eyes that the fairies are drawings, but apparently they fooled a lot of people. The 5th photo is the only one that doesn't look immediately like a cutout. It's believed to have been the result of a double exposure, but one of the women…
I don't laugh at the technology itself -- today those photos look ridiculous but I believe people could find them realistic back then. The dumb thing is believing fairies exist at all. If I see "convincing" evidence of fairies, with today's technology, I would still remain skeptical. It would take a lot more for me to even begin to wonder. Because fairies don't exist, we know where they come from in folklore and lite…
Yes but we must also consider what he thought would be the benefit of promoting the fairy stories for him? Of course, fame. The famous person who discovered and proved to the world that fairies exist.
Doyle was not a scientist but he admired scientists, discoverers of truths and he desired to be one. He also desired that other people should believe him, that would give him great power.
Think about all those conspiracy theories floating in US today, why do people spread them? It's a Ponzi-scheme, the originators of a conspiracy get great power by having many followers who believe them.
The other side of it is that of course people want to believe great stories that might prove to them afterlife will be better than the current one. JFK is still alive, anybody?
Fairies Wear Boots - Black Sabbath
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
have been into Spiritualism for some bizarre reason Most religions have afterlifes, and that implies some kind of spiritualism. And a mere 50+ years ago, Christianity was almost universally accepted in the West.
Spiritualism is a specific movement which all major branches of Christianity and most other major world religions reject.
But Christianity is irrational because it is based on Bible, and there are so many contradictions in the Bible. So whether Christianity rejects or approves Spiritualism doesn't tell us much.
Of course Christianity rejects ALL other forms of irrational belief. And so do all other "true" religions.
Buddhism is relatively cool however, it focuses on how we can alleviate suffering of living beings, not of spirits.
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spiritualism is a specific movement which all major branches of Christianity and most other major world religions reject.
But Christianity is irrational because it is based on Bible, and there are so many contradictions in the Bible. So whether Christianity rejects or approves Spiritualism doesn't tell us much. Of course Christianity rejects ALL other forms of irrational belief. And so do all other "true" religions. Buddhism is relatively cool however, it focuses on how we can alleviate suffering of living beings, not of spirits.
Christianity is based on the conversation between God and His chosen people from the creation of the world until now, with that conversation moving towards and flowing from the Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of the Second Person of the Trinity. Part of which is in the Bible (everything is not in the Bible alone - e. g. the list of the books of the Bible isn't in the Bible)
Mere Christianity by Lewis is a pretty good introduction to the idea, as is Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? Most of the stories are well done even if not every bit of his "ratiocination" holds up. I feel like one can enjoy them for what they are without trying to take them as real-life forensic science.
It just sits a bit bitter when you used to look at him as an unconventional man who employed the scientific process of deduction to solve his cases.... only for you to later realise that he was applying abductive reasoning the whole time, whilst claiming otherwise and chasing down any lead like a mad dog. Holmes wasn't smart, just driven.
Wasn’t the whole concept of detective work fairly new when the books were being written? The earliest Holmes stories are quite indebted to Poe’s work with C. Auguste Dupin and he invented the form.
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#77Oh, we seem to project modern attitudes on historic events. At that time, a divorce for any reason was a scandal.
I can well imagine she just left, embarrassed, ashamed, confused, no plan, no internet in the palm of her hand to ask it what to do.
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#78Was this not just a bender?
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#79Quite the story! I never heard about this before, and I’m a huge fan (admittedly that’s fan of the books though, rather than the author herself). The story/novel mentioned in the article (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd) is famous in literary circles for $reasons - if you haven’t read it and you enjoy reading that sort of book, you’re missing out! (It does look like she staged a murder scene from her books intending to f…
I have read similar recommendations about the book and read it because of those. The problem is that if you recommend the book for it's "unique plot twist", the reader will keep looking for clues on how the resution may not be the most obvious and figure it out pretty fast. Then it is actually no surprise at all anymore. At least this happenend to me. It would serve the book better if it was recommended as a great (b…
I’d recommend you take a look at the book “Who Murdered Roger Ackroyd?” if you want a slightly different take on the book and its twist
Re: The strange disappearance of Mrs Agatha Christie (2022)
#80Newlands Corner sits at the top of a pretty steep hill by UK countryside standards, so it's not that unlikely that a 1920s car would have struggled around there. I just cycled up that hill earlier today and it wasn't fun. There are a few photos around [0] from the original incident. However, the whole thing is fairly universally assumed to have been a publicity stunt. This is a fairly well known story locally. Here's…
Bit silly as a publicity stunt, I'd think. But presumably that photo was taken after her car had been recovered, because the incident report describes it being piled nose-first into undergrowth not evident here. That suggests the accident started with a loss of control - which, at night on an unlit road in a century-old deathtrap like that one, wouldn't just be easy to do but likely quite hard to avoid. I've been in…
> But presumably that photo was taken after her car had been recovered, because the incident report describes it being piled nose-first into undergrowth not evident here.
Also, that doesn't appear to be a Morris Cowley. It's much too tall, and the grill is all wrong. That's likely a police vehicle.