first case....... chessplaying ghosts
Yes. Correspondence with the dead proven by Prof. Eisenbeiss.
Who from the non-god position will correlate the simplest explanation with the observations? Two guys played a chess game? That is all the article outlines. One of the guys claims it was not him playing chess, but a dead person. There is nothing beyond that to examine. Not only is that not proof it is not evidence either. It is a claim.
A claim backed up with impressive statistics and Salient Points that (apparently) will not be explained by the skeptics in this thread.
There is nothing in there that comes close to science. These are well know parlor tricks. You really should look at what the amazing Randy can do. He will show you how to do this. In science the test would be double blind and not a set of questions you take home and return months later.
A telling clue is that NEVER in the history of the world has someone shown the ability to communicate with the dead in a controlled experiment. Those who have tried may have believed they could do it, but when they get to the lab they claim that "the psychic energy is wrong" or some such nonsense. If someone could do it in scientific experiment it would be huge. Just one time.
Or it could be even more problematic. Assume for a second that communication with the "dead" is possible, but only in rare situations. If it is possible, but not possible all the time, this would fall beyond the scope of science anyway as consistent replication is necessary to build scientific rigor. I'm not stating this as an argument in support of communication with the dead, but rather as a reminder that there does exist phenomena which is either too rare, too large, or too small that is beyond the scope of pure science. Unfortunately, those who assert specific phenomena in the absence of their own experience will use this as a crutch in support of their assertion, which is essentially a guess, anyway. Speaking from my own experiences with meditation, I believe I have directly experienced that which scientists would claim is unfounded based upon a lack of evidence (i.e. the expansion of my consciousness to occupy a region of spacetime that extended beyond my physical body), and due to my undisciplined meditation routine, I would not be able to confidently replicate my experiences at will in a controlled setting, though I have replicated the experience on three distinct occasions.
Nonetheless, Occam's Razor is still a good rule to follow in these types of debates.