Psychics...

[Scamula]

Psychics...

What do you all think about folks such as Sylvia Brown and John Edwards?

I think that there are some people who really do have this gift/power, but there are also many bullshitters. I have a friend who gives psychic readings and for the hell of it I allowed her to give me one. She was amazingly accurate but then again she is my friend so she already knew things about me.

[odin_dax]

Psychics...

What do you all think about folks such as Sylvia Brown and John Edwards?

I think that there are some people who really do have this gift/power, but there are also many bullshitters. I have a friend who gives psychic readings and for the hell of it I allowed her to give me one. She was amazingly accurate but then again she is my friend so she already knew things about me.

Psychics are like astrology readings, full of shit. There may be some ESP activity in the world. I've had dreams that have happened exactly, but that doesn't have to be ESP since there's so much we don't know about the brain. Maybe it's some fluke during REM sleep where we cross with the fourth dimension. Who knows? I've never heard of telekinesis being documented.

The thing is, psychics are masters of the word. What sounds specific, is really a general statement. It's when things seem relevant that we make the connection to ourselves. Further, numerous studies have been found to show astrology and psychics are fake. For example, most of the TV shows you see with Browne and Edwards are edited. They make mistakes, and the audience is interviewed BEFORE the show begins. That's how it works. Edwards has been debunked. Browne has also been debunked, and she refuses to follow up on the challenge she accepted from the Amazing Randi on Larry King to prove her ESP abilities (google Amazing Randi).

I believe there are people with certain levels of ESP, or have out of body experiences (hell, lucid dreaming is factual). Browne and Edwards are fake. In fact, anybody making a dime off it, is fake. Guaranteed. If people could do that, they'd be locked up in a government bunker somewhere.

Like I said, it's mostly wordplay. Remember that, and ask for specific statements when you come across a so-called psychic, even your friend.

[Eulux]

esp, lucid dreaming, and astral projections, yes. psychics, mindreaders, tarot, palm, any kind of divination, no.

[headcase]

How can you buy into ESP and not psychics?

You know ESP is measured in pounds per square inch? (Psi..... geddit?)

[Eulux]

generally, modern psychics go along the lines of, "call me now to find out your future!" I believe in an extrasensory power of some sort, but nothing along the lines of soothsaying...hope that explains things better.

[Esophagus]

I believe in gifted people, I don't know about psychics though. I believe in people with foresight, who can sense that something good or bad may happen. People like John Edwards on the other hand, complete bullshit.

JE: Anyone in the audience have arecently dead relative?
(note thats why most people go to the show)
JE: Starting with an, I believe its M?
(note he only believes. he picks a fairly common letter so that it should work, but if it doesn't he can always pick a similar letter)
Woman: I do.
JE: Hmm... Were they a relative, or close family friend?
(he will try and leave his options open again. saying "they" so the audience member can point out the gender for him. close family friend or family member will leave the board open for him. and with the choices being given, the audience member will likely point out which it was.)
etc. etc.

[headcase]

If you look hard enough for an aura then of course you'll see one. What kind of equipment detects them?

[headcase]

The hand sensor itself has various contact points on them; these are connected with certain organs of the body, as well as measure the electromagnetic field of the user and can thus deliver information about the energetic and auric qualities of that person. The hand sensor can also measure deviations in temperature, humidity and static electricity in the environment and the person, allowing for greater precision in data gathering.

Does it detect an paranormal aura or the the quite normal energy waves everyone emits? I'm skeptical.

These data parameters are then projected as a radiant, colored aura field around the body on either a Polaroid photo or onto a computer or television screen.

Right.... so the maachine detects the waves then creates the "aura" itself. Like how a WinAmp visual projects the music as dancing colours.

In short, these kinds of biofeedback probes can pick up your spiritual energy.

I think not...

[odin_dax]

Brain waves are real.

Certain thoughts produce predictable brain waves.

And I believe we have receptors for brain waves. This is based on nothing more personal feelings.

That sounds like faith, not science. I thought you were incapable, but I guess I was wrong. Only when it's convenient, eh? :tongue1:

Auras are also real. Auras are energy fields that special equipment can detect and visualize. Depending on the spectrum produced... various things can be deduced. Some say cancer can be predicted by them, to something as asbtract as a person's motives, character, and other qualities of their physical and mental state.

I personally don't believe in auras (and I'm not saying that just to be an asshole). I need proof. As for detecting them, there must be some scientific explanation. Body radiation? If someone has cancer, I'm sure the body chemicals would change, no?

If auras were real, that would be a great step in proving other metaphysical areas have possible validity. (Okay, I'm being an asshole. :kidding:)

The bright white holy aura is just that. Jesus was said to have a bright white/yellow aura, something said to be common among altruists, and some spiritual leaders (not all, actually some have 'bad', dark, auras).

So you think Jesus was holy now?

Some people can see auras with the naked eye. I had a G/F who could see auras since a child. She was always afraid of saying anything about it... til I mentioned it one day. She also believes in ghosts, and spirits -quite strongly.

Proof?

Told me my aura was usually blue or green with mixtures of yellow. I can see auras under the right conditions. It takes a solid background wall, a fairly well-lit room, and a lot of focus around 18" away from a person's body. Even then it's really dim and faint.

Drugs don't count.

[odin_dax]

Brain waves are real.

Certain thoughts produce predictable brain waves.

And I believe we have receptors for brain waves. This is based on nothing more personal feelings.

That sounds like faith, not science. I thought you were incapable, but I guess I was wrong. Only when it's convenient, eh? :tongue1:

Auras are also real. Auras are energy fields that special equipment can detect and visualize. Depending on the spectrum produced... various things can be deduced. Some say cancer can be predicted by them, to something as asbtract as a person's motives, character, and other qualities of their physical and mental state.

I personally don't believe in auras (and I'm not saying that just to be an asshole). I need proof. As for detecting them, there must be some scientific explanation. Body radiation? If someone has cancer, I'm sure the body chemicals would change, no?

If auras were real, that would be a great step in proving other metaphysical areas have possible validity. (Okay, I'm being an asshole. :kidding:)

The bright white holy aura is just that. Jesus was said to have a bright white/yellow aura, something said to be common among altruists, and some spiritual leaders (not all, actually some have 'bad', dark, auras).

So you think Jesus was holy now?

Some people can see auras with the naked eye. I had a G/F who could see auras since a child. She was always afraid of saying anything about it... til I mentioned it one day. She also believes in ghosts, and spirits -quite strongly.

Proof?

Told me my aura was usually blue or green with mixtures of yellow. I can see auras under the right conditions. It takes a solid background wall, a fairly well-lit room, and a lot of focus around 18" away from a person's body. Even then it's really dim and faint.

Drugs don't count.

[odin_dax]

Odin, I refuse to talk to a retard, such as yourself. I am not going to justify myself to an idiot, such as yourself.

That's: "a person of the lowest order in classification of mental retardation, having a mental age of less than three years old and an intelligence quotient under 25. "

Quite accurate and precise.

So, in other words, I use the same basic arguments you've used in the "Does God exist thread", but since you're on the receiving end of it, you can't counter. As well, you can't come up with a statement other than "I believe" to support your original claim. You're a hypocrite. :owned:

Again, resorting to insults... Sad. :crucified

[odin_dax]

You're still acting like an idiot. Insult or not, it's a fact.

I can not prove anything to you, you have proven you're incapable of absorbing information. You're also incapable of learning anything for yourself. That makes you an idiot. Get my drift?

I am greater than you, because I don't give a fuck about what an idiot like you says.

More insults rather than support. Now you're just sounding like a religious fanatic.

[ComfortablyNumb]

I'm gonna have to side with Odin on this one, Fire, you aren't providing any sort of evidence for your claims, you just sound like a hippie raving about body auras and magical energy forces, man.- not being an asshole, just making an observation.-

[Armalite]

Fire, don't ever associate your ideas with mine ever again. You are sounding like 100% idiot here. Hypocritical, dogmatic, and immature. You sound like someone on the rebound from a religious upbringing, am i Right? You recently rejected your family religion in the face of criticism and controversy, and you are still very sensitive about it. in addition, you may not understand fully the logical and empirical arguments against religon, let alone what nontheist schools of thought are out there yet. You need to stop being arrogant, admit you don't know, and start reading. That would be the most scientific and logical thing to do.

[odin_dax]

I'm not a coffee maker, I don't have a filter.
kettle.

I recommend getting one to filter out stupidity and ignorance before you start typing your drivel again.

[odin_dax]

See, I knew you had it in you. How's the weather like down here? Nice, huh.

Care to actually make a statement on the issue? I've presented the argument. Armalite and Comfortably seem to view the issue the same as me.

Here's more for you to chew on. Please make a direct response, or none at all. We don't need more of your petty insults to litter this board.

"Debunkers of paranormal activity deny claims of the existence of auras. James Randi, for example, has for many years offered one million US dollars to any person capable of repeatedly detecting auras; no one has yet succeeded, although at least one person has tried and failed (see The $1 million challenge). One such test, which was televised, involved one aura reader standing on one side of a room with an opaque partition separating her from a number of slots which may contain either actual people or mannequins. The aura reader failed to identify which partitions had which behind them, by claiming that all were concealing people."

"Many mystics have claimed that images of the human aura have been captured by way of Kirlian photography (named after the Soviet scientist who invented the process, Semyon Kirlian), although the results of empirical studies of the Kirlian photo process seem to suggest that rather than revealing the human aura, many Kirlian photos may instead be capturing snapshots of a ordinary physical process. Dr. Thelma Moss (1974, Ch. 2), formerly of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, was one psychologist actively pursuing studies of Kirlian photography, obtaining many nice-looking photos in the process, and although she was indecisive about what was involved, she seemed to suspect some kind of unknown radiation. Physicist William Tiller (1974; Boyers & Tiller, 1973), then at Stanford University, proposed that Kirlian photos may be exhibiting an electrical phenomenon known as corona discharge, which often seen during thunderstorms and is the proposed process behind the phenomenon of ?St. Elmo?s Fire.? When a Kirlian photo is taken, the object which we want to see the supposed aura of (e.g., a person?s finger) is placed either on a metal electrode or between two parallel metal plate capacitors that are separated by a small distance from a photographic film plate. An electrical current passed through the electrode or the capacitors produces a separation of charge, freeing valence electrons from the object and creating a small electric field that ionizes the molecules in the air around the object. Once this electric field is large enough, electrical breakdown of the air occurs and conducting paths in the visible light range can appear as the electrons recombine with the ionized molecules, emitting photons in the process (a lightning bolt is an example of electrical breakdown on a massive scale). Multiple conducting paths can have a kind of glowing, colorful display, and this is corona discharge. I myself have witnessed it in physics lab demonstrations on electricity and magnetism, and, if one ever got close enough, it could be witnessed on the tips and along the edges of metal weather vanes and lightning rods on the tops of tall buildings during a thunderstorm (one reason that they are there is to reduce the collection of charge by releasing electrons collected by the building back into the air, and thus helping to reduce the likelihood of massive breakdown, i.e., a lightning strike, on the building). Very faint and brief displays can also occur on conductive objects (such as our skin) if the conditions were right (in Kirlian set-ups, those conditions, which are not likely to occur naturally, are artificially induced). It is possible that different colors may be generated based on the elemental composition of the object (each element in the periodic table gives off it own unique color spectra) and, as Pehek, Kyler, and Faust (1976) argue, the amount of moisture present on the object. In the case of human skin, this is likely to come from perspiration along the surface of our hands, as Montandon (1977) argues. The images of the supposed aura in Kirlian photographs I?ve looked at appear very similar to corona discharge, and given the methods by which they were produced, I?m more inclined to agree that we are seeing this rather than the emanations of the supposed human aura."

[odin_dax]

Everything emits an aura, though living things generally have much stronger aura than 'dead' inanimate objects. Put your hand close to someone, you can feel them before you touch them. This is not as easy with an 'dead' inanimate object. Feelings > Faith. Everything you observe creates feelings -I hope.

Without them... we'd just be robots, and faith wouldn't exist!

Kirlian effect is not an aura. It's ESD (electrostatic discharge). It's also called the corona effect: http://www.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/services/tde/new/recherche/recherche1/Intro/corona.htm

The aura is your EMF (electromagnetic field). It's due to the energy that flows through you. I call this the spirit, and it is eternal. Conservation of energy -it's a law. Just as a battery can spin an engine, a generator spinning charges the battery. Hybrid cars use this concept, with wonderful results.
http://www.toyota.com/prius/

Next time, try to keep reading, or keep googling. Yes, I know it's hard, you have to think of search terms to get results you want, but I know you can do it.

Matter stores greats amount of potential energy. And even though you can't see it (without a microscope)... or even feel it (unless you try)... all matter vibrates.

I should ask James Randi if I can wear googles made of pinacyanole bromide filters.

And the test he presents is not really fair. Auras are usually very weak in people now-a-days. The life force they contain is weak because they fail to eat a healthy diet, and they fail to exercise daily. And they fail to hold strong beliefs.

It's believed meditation can control your aura, monks are said to have been in complete control, and they'd 'hid' their auras purposefully, though there's many explanations.. one is concentration of spirit energy.

Or consider the story of the Buddah. His disciple comes to him, and before he has a chance to say anything. The Buddah says to him, "what's that in your pocket?" The disciple pulls out a bag containing 100 hits of LSD. The Buddah grabs them, takes a handful, and gulps them down. The disciple looks on in awe. Buddah then says to him, "why do you need this? Think this will get you high?". The disciple has no words. The Buddah knows, but questions anyway. Buddah then tells him, "I'm already there, this stuff has no effect on me".

I see you have no basis in science. That's fine. I don't care what you believe, just proving a point. Point proven.

[headcase]

Well in that case I'm equally correct in saying that I consider my body heat to be my spiritual energy. It's eternal, only it dissipates into the universe after I die.

You could argue that point, but calling it "spiritual energy" is naive or intentionally misleading, as if you were trying to offload some "aura detectors" to the masses seeking meaning and direction....... but I digress.

[Armalite]

Why are you attaching supernatural aspects to natural phenomena? Body heat is not "spiritual energy", electromagnetic fields are not "auras". They are simply naturally occuring phenomena grounded entirely in the real world, with no arbitrary purpose outside physics.

Just because you see a natural phenomena that resembles a spiritual one from early 1900s spiritual revivalism does not make it supernatural.

That's not science, that's jumping to conclusions.

[odin_dax]

It's correlation.

I never said spiritual energy. o.0

I said that life energy is the spirit.

It comes in many forms, air we breathe, heat we produce, electrical energy, neurons, synapses, digestion, converting matter into energy is what out bodies do.

Without that energy we are dead.

Without breath (spiritus) we are dead.

That used to be all people went on for death. Either they're alive and breathing or they're dead and not.

I would think someone like yourself would be more versed on etymology.

What's the difference between life energy and regular energy?

Also, in another thread you tried to make the unprovable claim that the universe is a closed system. I see this aligns with your religious beliefs, so let us accept the premise as fact for the moment, but that begs the question - if all energy in the universe is self-contained, what caused the big bang? Since you've rejected any proof of existence beyond the third-dimension, I really fail to see how the big bang could have ever occurred in a self-contained universe. Explain.

[ComfortablyNumb]

It's correlation.

I never said spiritual energy. o.0

I said that life energy is the spirit.

It comes in many forms, air we breathe, heat we produce, electrical energy, neurons, synapses, digestion, converting matter into energy is what out bodies do.

Without that energy we are dead.

Without breath (spiritus) we are dead.

That used to be all people went on for death. Either they're alive and breathing or they're dead and not.

I would think someone like yourself would be more versed on etymology.

Correlation means absolutely nothing in regards to causation. If you are determined you can find a correlation between anything and everything. an example of this is the example used by the church of the flying spaghetti monster which states that global warming is caused due to the lack of pirates in the world seeing as lobal warming rates have steadily risen as the number of pirates in the world dropped. correlation dosnt neessarily mean a damned thing.

[odin_dax]

Correlation means absolutely nothing in regards to causation. If you are determined you can find a correlation between anything and everything. an example of this is the example used by the church of the flying spaghetti monster which states that global warming is caused due to the lack of pirates in the world seeing as lobal warming rates have steadily risen as the number of pirates in the world dropped. correlation dosnt neessarily mean a damned thing.

Those damn pirates.... Always causing trouble, they are!

[Armalite]

Good jab with the pirates.

Also note how he dodged the question of how he is deriving supernatural-ness from purely natural phenomena. Or how life/spiritual/soul/mojo energy is different from regular physical energy.

BTW dax, if the universe is indeed a closed system, the second law of thermodynamics would prove the creationists right and most likely kill evolution. And, as I understand, most prevailing theories today involve an uncreated universe. The big bang is so ridiculously outdated. It's a real testament to science education in this country that an outdated idea from like 1930 is still widely regarded as "Science's Answer for the Big Question."

[odin_dax]

BTW dax, if the universe is indeed a closed system, the second law of thermodynamics would prove the creationists right and most likely kill evolution. And, as I understand, most prevailing theories today involve an uncreated universe. The big bang is so ridiculously outdated. It's a real testament to science education in this country that an outdated idea from like 1930 is still widely regarded as "Science's Answer for the Big Question."

In other words, Fire's belief in the universe contradicts his religious beliefs.

As far as I know, the Big Bang theory wasn't the prevailing thought until cosmic background radiation was detected in the 60's.

[Armalite]

In either case, the big bang is outdated.

[headcase]

That reminds me of that thread in Flame Lounge titled "Soda + Chlorine = Fire", which, with some simple algebra, comes to Fire - Chlorine = Soda. There, solved the mystery about how they make Coca-Cola.

Point being, if you use aemantics to prove the existence of the paranormal, your not great at arguing.

And I don't think any of us are in a position to say E=MC^2 is incorrect.

What do black-hoels have to do with the big bang?

Finally, you are completely misunderstanding the concept of "time". "Seconds" and "minutes" and so on are human measurements made for the sake of clarity. If we never existed to give them a name, time would still exist. If time didn't exist, everything would happen at once (or forever, as I've been over several times elsewhere). Expand your consciousness a little.

[odin_dax]

You know, I couldn't decide if this guy was for real or just another troll, but after days away followed by that incredibly ridiculous response, his ignorance and stupidity must be real.

Since all his responses sound like pseudoscience at best, there's no point reading this thread any longer. Of course, I'm sure I'll be called an idiot again because 1) I didn't comprehend his nonsense, 2) I chose to ignore the parts that make sense (to which, logically and scientifically speaking, there are a lot), or 3) I simply disagreed. Hell, if I agreed, he'd still probably go off.

[odin_dax]

Oh, for the sake of beating a dead horse and the spoils of war... haha...



I don't have much for religious beliefs. Theorizing doesn't make something a belief. Taking a side in an argument doesn't necessarily mean anything.

How is the big bang out-dated? Know anything about neutron stars? A cup of a neutron star contains more mass than New York City. Why is everything in the Universe expanding from a central point?

How bout the theory of blackholes?

I'm not sure exactly what you think makes a closed system universe impossible. Entropy probably plays a role, though. E=mc^2 is not true, because it doesn't account for entropy. But it's the concept that's important to understand, even though it's not 100% accurate.

It's funny, that in that long-winded response you failed to address the most central question on the opposite side, if the universe is a closed system, what caused the big bang?

As headcase pointed out, what about black holes?

Time as we know it is not a dimension. Entropy would be more of a universal dimension than seconds, minutes, etc.

LOL!

I'm not here to prove or disprove anything to any of you (via scientific method). I think I have proven that. :naughty:

Yeah, I agree. I think you have proven you can't prove anything, scientifically or otherwise.

------
Okay, I'm done.