Paranormal and Supernatual

[VoxLupus]

yup yup, i agree completely vox. so you see why i say we shouldn’t discard the paranormal or supernatural? it’s a frontier yet unexplored... lol, well it has been explored but it seems it has been barred from further inquiry and branded as "pseudoscience"

If there was any empirical evidence that suggests, that psychics, ghosts, angels, demons, etc. existed, I would be the first to advocate further inquiry into this unknown realm. The fact of the matter is there is no empirical evidence that has been found, not for a lack of trying to obtain it either.

There comes a point when after so much time has been spent on subjects like Astrology, Dowsing, Homeopathy, Reflexology, they are all still pretty much the same as they were in the dark ages, there has been no progress in these fields and they never lead to anything new. Furthermore, their connection to reality not even tenuous. They are based on ideas that people just pulled out of their own asses.

There have been a lot of scientific studies done on these fields, particularly homeopathy, because it is so easy to test in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. They never perform any better than a placebo, this is because they are placebos. This doesn't stop it from being a multi-billion dollar industry.

You make it out like these ideas are being suppressed, but pseudoscience is alarmingly rampant in society, people believe thing for no good reason, usually to a lack of understanding of their own human nature and human psychology (being unaware of placebos for example).

Look, I don't really care what you believe personally, but I don't like to see people being mislead and distracted from how beautiful reality actually is. Promotion of these pseudo-scientific beliefs is almost always at the detriment of actual science, and I am sure that if more people pursued studies in real scientific fields, we might actually move further forward as a species, because those other beliefs have done nothing more than hold us back.

The truth is actual science is hard. To actually understand quantum physics requires you to have at completed at least a three year course of university level maths in advanced calculus, and that is before you even get to the physics side of things, which is a further several years of study. Siting down and making yourself feel fuzzy inside is easy, it is no surprise that the one produces tangible results and the other doesn't.

this mist leaks from you but when i endeavored to contain it within myself, a high level of copper started to manifest inside my body.

You might want to be careful with that, elevated levels of copper in your body is toxic to humans.

[Animew]

If you can figure out why sending a team of explorers into the Gariep Dam to look for a new continent is a stupid idea then you should be able to realise why investigating 99% of paranormal phenomena is a waste of time.

*gasp* what!? but you can see the other continent from the shore! surely there is a promised land waiting for me on the other side of those waters!

lol, just kidding. but seriously, that’s nothing like the paranormal. for instance, let’s take homeopathy right? i'm assuming since you can dismiss it offhand you have extensively reviewed the subject and know all there is to know about it so i'm not going to explain everything.
the pharmaceutical industry would have you ingesting concentrated foreign chemicals to merely stop symptoms of an ailment, often causing numerous other side effects in the process making you need to take more medication to deal with those side effects. making you pay a lots of money to nom lots of pills only to continuously treat a simple problem like a cold.

with homeopathy you encourage your own immune system to take care of a problem in its entirety with a few doses of something simple an inexpensive.
this does run the risk of sounding deceptively simple and has caused a LOT of misconceptions and fraudulent practitioners.
O_o the terminology kind of put me off at first too but if you actually take the time to look into the concept and individual remedies you may find that there is a lot more validity in the practice than you may think. <_< most pharmaceutical remedies are based on homeopathic remedies. just to give some examples: Mercurius corrosivus made from Mercurous chloride. Contemporarily, this substance is also made use of in the manufacturing of several fungicides. in homeopathy Merc. cor. is used to cure intestinal lesions caused by fungi like Candida and Aspergillus. normally these occur naturally and harmlessly in the intestinal tract but certain biochemical factors caused by emotional disturbances or physical trauma can disrupt your immunity (and in the case of your intestinal tract it can disrupt the PH levels as well) causing these pathogens to take hold.
the process of diagnosis in homeopathy investigates the patient in his/her entirety, allowing the homeopath to select (out of a myriad of remedies) the one relevant to the patients specific needs.
where a GP at a clynic or hospital would base his diagnosis off symptoms exhibited by the patient.
lol and if you can figure out why sending a team of explorers into the Gariep Dam to look for a new continent is a stupid idea then you should know that symptoms are not necessarily exclusive to any particular ailment.

So rakuen, I get that investigating each and every UFO sighting and every poltergeist would be silly… but I figure this is rather obvious and you would rather focus on the occurrences that carry some merit of truth and plausibility.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

with homeopathy you encourage your own immune system to take care of a problem in its entirety with a few doses of something simple an inexpensive.

That something is water. Homeopathic dilutions are like single molecules diluted in the ocean. If homeopathy were true then simple tap water would kill you because of the homeopathic doses of poisons and simultaneously cure every known disease. Just take a cup of coffee and keep diluting it and see if it becomes stronger or weaker.

If you really are interested in learning about alternative medicine I would highly recommend Trick or Treatment which covers acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and one I've forgotten in detail as well as summaries of many others. There are also many relevant chapters in Bad Science.

[Animew]

If there was any empirical evidence that suggests, that psychics, ghosts, angels, demons, etc. existed, I would be the first to advocate further inquiry into this unknown realm. The fact of the matter is there is no empirical evidence that has been found, not for a lack of trying to obtain it either.

what i keep telling you is that you should not be too quick to believe that there has really been no evidence. consider what such evidence would do the current power structure, that alone should give you an idea to what extent people would go to in order to hide it if it WAS there. i encourage you to expose yourself to media that you know to be propaganda and then think hard and deep about what you have been exposed to your entire life. i'm not saying there is a conspiracy to keep you from the truth, only saying that thinking there cannot be one is rather naive and borders on blatant ignorance.
when lack of evidence is all it takes to convince you that the evidence does not exist you are gullible my friend.

There comes a point when after so much time has been spent on subjects like Astrology, Dowsing, Homeopathy, Reflexology, they are all still pretty much the same as they were in the dark ages, there has been no progress in these fields and they never lead to anything new. Furthermore, their connection to reality not even tenuous. They are based on ideas that people just pulled out of their own asses.

again i would urge you to do some looking into these fields yourself before criticizing them and playing them off as something pulled out of an ass.

There have been a lot of scientific studies done on these fields, particularly homeopathy, because it is so easy to test in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. They never perform any better than a placebo, this is because they are placebos. This doesn't stop it from being a multi-billion dollar industry.

if you knew something about homeopathy you may be able to distinguish the frauds from the legitimate practitioners. it is really sad that some would abuse peoples ignorance to get money out of the sick, but the pharmaceutical industry has tricked far more money out of sick people than homeopathy could ever hope to.
lol! also if you test a homeopathic remedy for a cold via double blind placebo controlled trials, you would need to test it on clones of a person since each remedy is for a specific persons unique physiology.

You make it out like these ideas are being suppressed, but pseudoscience is alarmingly rampant in society, people believe thing for no good reason, usually to a lack of understanding of their own human nature and human psychology (being unaware of placebos for example).

*sigh* what would you do if you can’t stop people from sharing information? you share misinformation... doesn’t take the CIA to figure that out... by the absolute GLUT of prissy ass bulshit about most spiritual subjects it’s almost obvious that these ideas are being suppressed. it’s getting ever harder to sift through all the ridiculous crap to get to anything meaningful, as they disguise it extremely cleverly with wording and well thought out nonsense. i really don’t blame anyone for not believing in some of these supernatural things. but you may find yourself believing in things for no good reason too vox, how many of the facts that construct your beliefs were established by you personally? it may sound silly but think about it, we are biologically prone to trusting and knowledge is power, it just takes one asshole to use science and the understanding of the brain to use it against other people to keep them ignorant. (the fact that this has actually happened numerous times should really be some indication of how easy it is.)

Look, I don't really care what you believe personally, but I don't like to see people being mislead and distracted from how beautiful reality actually is. Promotion of these pseudo-scientific beliefs is almost always at the detriment of actual science, and I am sure that if more people pursued studies in real scientific fields, we might actually move further forward as a species, because those other beliefs have done nothing more than hold us back.

ah vox... when will you realize, that is EXACLY how i feel. but ask yourself, what have our current line of scientific inquiry led us? we found new ways to kill each other and our planet. we labor physically and mentally to benefit only a select few. how has that been moving further forward as a species?

The truth is actual science is hard. To actually understand quantum physics requires you to have at completed at least a three year course of university level maths in advanced calculus, and that is before you even get to the physics side of things, which is a further several years of study. Siting down and making yourself feel fuzzy inside is easy, it is no surprise that the one produces tangible results and the other doesn't.

but it’s not suppose to be hard! don’t you find it funny how after you spent years studying something the moment you actually understand it you can explain it simply. i have been collecting books from all kinds of time periods and to me it’s obvious that someone wants to make it harder to obtain knowledge. and have you ever tried asking a physicist about physics? O_O most the time they don’t even know what they are on about themselves. this is not due to ideas becoming more complex either. whenever i get stuck on something in physics i just have to switch to an older text book and there it is... same thing just not as burdened by nonsense.
*sigh* both yield tangible results, and I actually find the esoteric a lot harder to understand than science. the difference is that with anything esoteric you have to go physically stuff the proof down someone’s throat for that ONE person to open his mind, where any theoretical physicist can publish a paper about reality blankets and how when 2 collide it creates the universe, in order to get a cult following. O_o and for some reason i seem to be the only one to find that odd and freaking suspicious.

You might want to be careful with that, elevated levels of copper in your body is toxic to humans.

that is why i stopped, i'm working on a way to detect it in other ways at lower concentrations. it’s really hard to study as while it appears gaseous it disperses at a constant rate, even when at high saturation in hermetically sealed containers regardless of light temperature or pressure.

That something is water. Homeopathic dilutions are like single molecules diluted in the ocean. If homeopathy were true then simple tap water would kill you because of the homeopathic doses of poisons and simultaneously cure every known disease. Just take a cup of coffee and keep diluting it and see if it becomes stronger or weaker.

yea, that one confused me at first too. O_O i mean wtf, the original substance is no longer IN the freaking container anymore, it shouldn’t be able to cause the symptoms. and then they go on with the more you dilute it the stronger it gets!? щ（ﾟДﾟщ）IMPOSIBRU!
yet somehow it does produce the symptoms. so what exactly makes those symptoms? O_O i mean cummawn... how can that not make you curious, how can water cure something? it can’t be placebo effect if the patient never even knew you were treating him... and your question about why you don’t simultaneously die and get your cancer cured from drinking tap water is also really profound. where is the difference?

If you really are interested in learning about alternative medicine I would highly recommend Trick or Treatment which covers acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and one I've forgotten in detail as well as summaries of many others. There are also many relevant chapters in Bad Science.

thanks, i'll give it a read.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

Please stop with the conspiracy theories. They are not needed or appreciated.

[Animew]

Please stop with the conspiracy theories. They are not needed or appreciated.

O.o how come you guys always find something completely irrelevant and fixate on just that?
why not just respond to the points i raise? a conspiracy to suppress the study of the supernatural IS relevant to the supernatural don't you think?
it's like you just invent shit to complain about if i stop giving you legit shit to bitch about.
clearly you have no interest in discussion.
*sigh* now, since you are an admin i can't add you to my ignore list.
and as for your adminship, if you want to use your status to bully me off the website, why don't you just go ahead and perma-ban me for sharing my opinions? it would save both of us a lot of grief and we can avoid derailing threads like these with personal bickering. i'm not going to sensor my beliefs just because you don't find them agreeable. challenge my points, don't just call me names or threaten me please.

[VoxLupus]

for instance, let’s take homeopathy right? i'm assuming since you can dismiss it offhand you have extensively reviewed the subject and know all there is to know about it so i'm not going to explain everything.

You would be surprised. My aunt practiced homeopathy and I even helped her repair some of her equipment she used to prepare some of her remedies; and while suffering from viral encephalitis and being bedridden for several months, causing to me to miss about six months of school, my mom took me to all manner of alternative medicine facilities, including acupuncture, crystal healing, multiple homeopathic practitioners, Intravenous Vitamin Therapy, and probably some other things I can't remember. They were expensive, and they didn't help. Since it was a virus there was not much that could be done. The modern medical practitioners didn't pretend that they could treat it just to milk my parents for money, but the alternative medical practices had no such ethical qualms.

I had no knowledge of the efficacy of any of these treatments at the time. Since then I have read and done research on homeopathy, and various other alternative medical practices, and in all the studies, the patients treated with these never perform better than patients on a similarly administered placebo.

lol! also if you test a homeopathic remedy for a cold via double blind placebo controlled trials, you would need to test it on clones of a person since each remedy is for a specific persons unique physiology.

actually, no. You can easily prove that a treatment is effective without the need for clones. especially when a treatment is claimed to treat a specific ailment, such as Mercurius corrosivus being used to treat intestinal lesions. If the treatment does indeed work, a randomized group of people receiving the treatment should on average recover faster than a randomized group that receives a similarly administered placebo. If you can show me a peer reviewed study that demonstrates this I will consider it as a feasible treatment.

. <_< most pharmaceutical remedies are based on homeopathic remedies. just to give some examples: Mercurius corrosivus made from Mercurous chloride. Contemporarily, this substance is also made use of in the manufacturing of several fungicides.

I think you a little confused about this. The use of Mercurous chloride as medication predates the invention of homeopathy. It was used as a diuretic and laxative as part of something called the Heroic medicine therapies. These where particularly dangerous and unproven treatments that scientific advances later replaced. It is not even used as a fungicide anymore, and its use in most products has been virtually discontinued due to its toxicity.

I would say homeopathy was actually an improvement over Heroic medicine therapies, since at least you are just drinking water rather than actual poison.

ah vox... when will you realize, that is EXACLY how i feel. but ask yourself, what have our current line of scientific inquiry led us? we found new ways to kill each other and our planet. we labor physically and mentally to benefit only a select few. how has that been moving further forward as a species?

Life expectancy doubled in the past 150 years, thanks to scientific medical advances. I am so glad that I don't live in a pre-scientific era, where plagues were rampant and people were burnt for being witches or heretics. I suppose some civilizations wouldn't have been pretty cool, but I wouldn't trade my computer, cellphone, and a whole lot of other awesome technologies for any of it.

As for "we labor physically and mentally to benefit only a select few", you do realize that this has pretty much always been the case, and it is arguably better now than it was through out most of recorded history. Egyptions and pretty much every notable civilization had slaves. I am not going to get into politics now, maybe I would share them in another thread, but I don't think you can blame science for this.

again i would urge you to do some looking into these fields yourself before criticizing them and playing them off as something pulled out of an ass.

You keep disregarding me because you assume I haven't looked into these things and that is why I don't believe them. I don't believe them because I have looked at them, and haven't just blindly accepted them.

As for the conspiracy theories, it is pointless arguing about them, because any evidence contrary to the conspiracy is always part of the conspiracy itself.

[Ryall]

it’s obvious that someone wants to make it harder to obtain knowledge.

lol, it would stand to reason that they will try everything in their power to suppress knowledge of it... just like what’s really happening today. you can google how to build an atomic bomb but you can’t get your hands on any authentic alchemical text or any information on thaumaturgy... and everything you CAN find is white washed or BS'd up. interesting coincidence amirite...

i'm not saying there is a conspiracy to keep you from the truth, only saying that thinking there cannot be one is rather naive and borders on blatant ignorance.

Animew, don't mince your words alright? You are emphatically stating there is a conspiracy. The only person who would be naive and ignorant for not considering they are wrong at the moment, would be you, because you are the only one who finds these illogical theories convincing.

when lack of evidence is all it takes to convince you that the evidence does not exist you are gullible my friend.

That's the thing though: your musings are based on speculation without real proof, and a large part of your speculation is based on the idea that institutions, like pharmaceutical companies, are withholding knowledge from us, like homeopathy, so that they can exploit us. The thing is, if homeopathy worked, they would still be able to make massive profits off of it, because of factors like economies of scale, barriers to entry, and market share.

Furthermore, instead of spending so much money undertaking risky research and development projects to create new medicine, manufacture these costly products, and then run a massive cover-up on homeopathy, the pharmaceutical companies could just make working homeopathic remedies - which would be a lot cheaper to make than conventional medicine - and they could then spend a little bit of money lying about the contents of their medicine, pass it off as regular medicine, and then charge the same price. That would be a lot more profitable, easier, and a lot less risky.

If homeopathy is the cure it's made out to be, a little marketing spin could fix any discrepancy between alleviating symptoms and curing the disease.

ah vox... when will you realize, that is EXACLY how i feel. but ask yourself, what have our current line of scientific inquiry led us? we found new ways to kill each other and our planet. we labor physically and mentally to benefit only a select few. how has that been moving further forward as a species?

Scientific inquiry has made the world a worse place? That's complete rubbish, and I don't need to rely on statistics that are, "part of some government conspiracy," to tell you that either: you can just speak to older generations. People are living longer; they have better nutrition; there are new cures for diseases ailments; far fewer people die giving childbirth; education is better, and there is so much new technology which improves our quality of life. Would you like a list?

If we were to look at the statistics though, you'd see that even though the world's population is at an all time high, 200 million less people are starving than in the past 25 years, and the world is more peaceful than it's been for thousands of years.

it's like you just invent shit to complain about if i stop giving you legit shit to bitch about.

None of your "shit" is "legit," and when you have to defend it, you get snarky, and start repeating yourself like we didn't understand what you were saying the first time. People get tired of that, and so they stop addressing your points. They don't want to argue with someone who will ignore their points, and then fling mud back at them.

[Animew]

You would be surprised. My aunt practiced homeopathy and I even helped her repair some of her equipment she used to prepare some of her remedies, and while suffering from viral encephalitis and being bedridden for several months, causing to me to miss about six months of school. My mom took me to all manner of alternative medicine facilities, including acupuncture, crystal healing, multiple homeopathic practitioners, Intravenous Vitamin Therapy, and probably some other things I can't remember. They were expensive, and they didn't help. Since it was a virus there was not much that could be done. The modern medical practitioners didn't pretend that they could treat it just to milk my parents for money, but the alternative medical practices had no such ethical qualms.

I had no knowledge of the efficacy of any of these treatments at the time. Since then I have read and done research on homeopathy, and various other alternative medical practices, and in all the studies, the patients treated with these never perform better than patients on a similarly administered placebo.

O_O sugoi! respect man. things like encephalitis scares the heck out of me, if someone told me my brain was swelling up id probably die of heart failure. but you then have a lot more experience in the subject of homeopathy than i do. it’s really messed up that you were scammed like that though. i personally experienced a bogus medical doctor scam in my childhood though. <_< rittelin... the miracle cure for troubled children. but never mind that.
so you had experience with both acupuncture and crystal healing too? O_o i could never understand the concept behind crystal healing tough. when used in conjunction with something like reiki perhaps... <_< but just putting rocks on someone?

actually, no. You can easily prove that a treatment is effective without the need for clones. especially when a treatment is claimed to treat a specific ailment, such as Mercurius corrosivus being used to treat intestinal lesions. If the treatment does indeed work, a randomized group of people receiving the treatment should on average recover faster than a randomized group that receives a similarly administered placebo. If you can show me a peer reviewed study that demonstrates this I will consider it as a feasible treatment.

now you see, therein lay the misconception and the word twisting. something like Mercurius corrosivus does not claim to be used to cure intestinal lesions. it is just a common correlation that i noticed. as i understand the process of diagnosis in homeopathy, you first build a detailed profile on the patient. i suppose herein lies the potential for charging people lots of money by charging per consultation? and then after you decide on a treatment best suited for the patient. the fact that the remedies are diluted substances hardly containing anything does make it seem rather bogus but as a stupid teenager i tried a high potency Kali Cyanatum on someone completely unaware and he exhibited symptoms. O_o of course i freaked the hell out because it’s freaking cyanide and that stuffs dangerous. but the dilution was so much that there was actually no cyanide left in the water. and cyanide doesn’t exhibit that acutely even if taken in minute doses. this may have been coincidence but it was enough to make me curious. even though the symptoms didn’t present itself in me when i tried the Kali Cyanatum. the thing is, it ties in with other theories (esoteric ones) about essentia and hence the line of inquiry that led me to the "mist" thing.
the problem with finding any reliable information on homeopathy is that there is little (if any) consistency in the information available making it hard to tell apart what’s just modern bogus and what is legitimate.

I think you a little confused about this. The use of Mercurous chloride as medication predates the invention of homeopathy. It was used as a diuretic and laxative as part of something called the Heroic medicine therapies. These where particularly dangerous and unproven treatments that scientific advances later replaced. It is not even used as a fungicide anymore, and its use in most products has been virtually discontinued due to its toxicity.
I would say homeopathy was actually an improvement over Heroic medicine therapies, since at least you are just drinking water rather than actual poison.

*nod nod* true that. lol, and yea it’s a definite improvement considering they used to swallow entire chunks of the stuff. the zulu nation used a system of heroic medicine (some probably still do) lol, i remember reading about them using boophone disticha on wounds even though they used it as arrow poison ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but i suppose if your heart isn’t beating as much you bleed less.

Life expectancy doubled in the past 150 years, thanks to scientific medical advances. I am so glad that I don't live in a pre-scientific era, where plagues were rampant and people were burnt for being witches or heretics. I suppose some civilizations wouldn't have been pretty cool, but I wouldn't trade my computer, cellphone, and a whole lot of other awesome technologies for any of it.

O_O amen to that! but let’s face it. today people are being burned for being foreign. iv'e personally seen some horrible things done to people by other people, no real progress have been made as a species... we have shiny new stuff but we still just use it to clobber each other. i'm not saying science is bad, it's definitely the best thing to come out of humanity but the way people misuse it will only get worse as it advances. if we neglect our own spiritual development and even deny it's existence while we continuously place more power in a single hand we will only exacerbate an already dangerous predicament.

As for "we labor physically and mentally to benefit only a select few", you do realize that this has pretty much always been the case, and it is arguably better now than it was through out most of recorded history. Egyptions and pretty much every notable civilization had slaves. I am not going to get into politics now, maybe I would share them in another thread, but I don't think you can blame science for this.

O_o i'm not blaming science for anything. i'm blaming human beings that misuse science to lord over others. ancient slaves were actually treated a lot better than slaves today. O_o in fact there are more people in slavery today that there ever was. i fear our cold interpretation of our fellow human beings could see this being more mainstream one day. but that’s a topic for a different thread indeed.

You keep disregarding me because you assume I haven't looked into these things and that is why I don't believe them. I don't believe them because I have looked at them, and haven't just blindly accepted them.

i'm sorry. yes, that was pretty presumptuous of me. the thing is, i'm still looking into them myself. i have by no means just blindly accepted them. i am just not blindly accepting everyone else’s assessment that the esoteric is bogus either. i am probably THE most skeptical person alive today. lol, i'm so skeptical that i don’t believe myself when i don’t believe something. hence i like making sure.
having had paranormal experiences myself i have to figure out what they really were. if there is a rational explanation i will be satisfied but if some of these things turn out to be legit i'll be satisfied too...and it’ll have the added bonus of being pretty awesome too.

As for the conspiracy theories, it is pointless arguing about them, because any evidence contrary to the conspiracy is always part of the conspiracy itself.

well i just find it pretty weird that no one seems to think that it’s possible for rich people to come together and have a plan. what’s wrong with being safe rather than sorry? lol, i'm building bunkers and hoarding food not just for when the red shields come for my freedom but also for when the power goes out thanks to escom or when zuma declares himself a monarch. heck even for when siener fan rensburg's prophecy comes true.

[Dredge]

it’s obvious that someone wants to make it harder to obtain knowledge.

lol, it would stand to reason that they will try everything in their power to suppress knowledge of it... just like what’s really happening today. you can google how to build an atomic bomb but you can’t get your hands on any authentic alchemical text or any information on thaumaturgy... and everything you CAN find is white washed or BS'd up. interesting coincidence amirite...

i'm not saying there is a conspiracy to keep you from the truth, only saying that thinking there cannot be one is rather naive and borders on blatant ignorance.

Animew, don't mince your words alright? You are emphatically stating there is a conspiracy. The only person who would be naive and ignorant for not considering they are wrong at the moment, would be you, because you are the only one who finds these illogical theories convincing.

when lack of evidence is all it takes to convince you that the evidence does not exist you are gullible my friend.

That's the thing though: your musings are based on speculation without real proof, and a large part of your speculation is based on the idea that institutions, like pharmaceutical companies, are withholding knowledge from us, like homeopathy, so that they can exploit us. The thing is, if homeopathy worked, they would still be able to make massive profits off of it, because of factors like economies of scale, barriers to entry, and market share.

Furthermore, instead of spending so much money undertaking risky research and development projects to create new medicine, manufacture these costly products, and then run a massive cover-up on homeopathy, the pharmaceutical companies could just make working homeopathic remedies - which would be a lot cheaper to make than conventional medicine - and they could then spend a little bit of money lying about the contents of their medicine, pass it off as regular medicine, and then charge the same price. That would be a lot more profitable, easier, and a lot less risky.

If homeopathy is the cure it's made out to be, a little marketing spin could fix any discrepancy between alleviating symptoms and curing the disease.

ah vox... when will you realize, that is EXACLY how i feel. but ask yourself, what have our current line of scientific inquiry led us? we found new ways to kill each other and our planet. we labor physically and mentally to benefit only a select few. how has that been moving further forward as a species?

Scientific inquiry has made the world a worse place? That's complete rubbish, and I don't need to rely on statistics that are, "part of some government conspiracy," to tell you that either: you can just speak to older generations. People are living longer; they have better nutrition; there are new cures for diseases ailments; far fewer people die giving childbirth; education is better, and there is so much new technology which improves our quality of life. Would you like a list?

If we were to look at the statistics though, you'd see that even though the world's population is at an all time high, 200 million less people are starving than in the past 25 years, and the world is more peaceful than it's been for thousands of years.

it's like you just invent shit to complain about if i stop giving you legit shit to bitch about.

None of your "shit" is "legit," and when you have to defend it, you get snarky, and start repeating yourself like we didn't understand what you were saying the first time. People get tired of that, and so they stop addressing your points. They don't want to argue with someone who will ignore their points, and then fling mud back at them.

Well said, guy.

And just so you know Animew, there is still $1 000 000 on the table (courtesy of Ryall) that can be yours if you are able to recreate this 'copper mist' and provide irrefutable proof of its existence/occurrence and perhaps make another attempt to capture a sample.

P.S. Don't forget the tupperware

[Animew]

Well said, guy.

i dono man, the post seemed a bit off topic as it has little to do with the supernatural or the paranormal.
if this was a "nitpick animew" thread, 10 out of 10 for him.

And just so you know Animew, there is still $1 000 000 on the table (courtesy of Ryall) that can be yours if you are able to recreate this 'copper mist' and provide irrefutable proof of its existence/occurrence and perhaps make another attempt to capture a sample.

really!? holy crap! where did ryall get all that money!? that’s like R12581250! i can almost afford my own presidential house security upgrades with that!

[Dredge]

^^man that was fast D:

I actually meant to withdraw part about the reward, as i don't think it was originally him who offered it (plus I don't think he has that sort of cash anyway xD)

But alas, I ran out of time to edit u_u

[Ryall]

Well said, guy.

i dono man, the post seemed a bit off topic as it has little to do with the supernatural or the paranormal.
if this was a "nitpick animew" thread, 10 out of 10 for him.

No, not nitpicking. The first part was a discussion of your conspiracy theories, with the example of homeopathy. Didn't you say your conspiracy theories are relevant? Oh yes, you did:

a conspiracy to suppress the study of the supernatural IS relevant to the supernatural don't you think?

Maybe you don't consider homeopathy "supernatural," but I discussed it because you were talking about it as part of the conspiracy, and it was useful for making a point.

The other stuff I said was addressing your point about the world being worse off. How is that nitpicking?

The reason I don't address your other points is because Vox has already done a great job of that.

And just so you know Animew, there is still $1 000 000 on the table (courtesy of Ryall) that can be yours if you are able to recreate this 'copper mist' and provide irrefutable proof of its existence/occurrence and perhaps make another attempt to capture a sample.

really!? holy crap! where did ryall get all that money!? that’s like R12581250! i can almost afford my own presidential house security upgrades with that!

There seems to be some confusion here. When I said there was a $1 000 000 reward with Animew's name on it, I was referring to the prize being offered by James Randi.

[Animew]

^^man that was fast D:

I actually meant to withdraw part about the reward, as i don't think it was originally him who offered it (plus I don't think he has that sort of cash anyway xD)

But alas, I ran out of time to edit u_u

lool, yea i thought him having inkandla much money was a bit impossible.

[VoxLupus]

so you had experience with both acupuncture and crystal healing too? O_o i could never understand the concept behind crystal healing tough. when used in conjunction with something like reiki perhaps... <_< but just putting rocks on someone?

I don't think that reiki was one of the treatments I went to a practitioner for, but my mom did a course in reiki and for a time she and I practiced it on each other. It really felt like it worked at one point, but now I know it is nothing more than a pretty potent placebo. The loving embrace of a loved one and attention and care are surprisingly effective treatments by themselves.

now you see, therein lay the misconception and the word twisting. something like Mercurius corrosivus does not claim to be used to cure intestinal lesions.

in homeopathy Merc. cor. is used to cure intestinal lesions caused by fungi like Candida and Aspergillus.

You seem to be twisting your own words. Homeopathy makes claims about curing ailments all the time, and there is never any evidence behind it working other than personal anecdotes. If you recover from an illness there is really no way of telling exactly what made you better, well, unless you had surgery, so if someone gets better after taking a homeopathic remedy, especially after it not ever being proven effective, I am not likely to believe that the remedy was the cause of the recovery. There are things such as 'regression to the mean' and 'observer bias' as well as the placebo effect, which are well documented and can almost always account for these things. The purpose of clinical trials is to eliminate as much bias as possible, that is the only way of getting anywhere close to objective truth.

O_O amen to that! but let’s face it. today people are being burned for being foreign. iv'e personally seen some horrible things done to people by other people, no real progress have been made as a species... we have shiny new stuff but we still just use it to clobber each other. i'm not saying science is bad, it's definitely the best thing to come out of humanity but the way people misuse it will only get worse as it advances. if we neglect our own spiritual development and even deny it's existence while we continuously place more power in a single hand we will only exacerbate an already dangerous predicament.

O_o i'm not blaming science for anything. i'm blaming human beings that misuse science to lord over others. ancient slaves were actually treated a lot better than slaves today. O_o in fact there are more people in slavery today that there ever was. i fear our cold interpretation of our fellow human beings could see this being more mainstream one day. but that’s a topic for a different thread indeed.

If you look at where all the slaves are located, it seems like they are most prevalent in central and western Africa, as well as India. both of these countries have widespread belief systems which could be considered as spiritual. I am not blaming their belief systems on slavery, but the most technologically advanced countries, the ones that have embraced and promoted modern science, are the ones with virtually no slaves. This may just be a coincidence, but I think it is clear that your worries are pretty ill-founded. The statement that there are more slaves today than there ever have been, is a little misleading, since the global population has exploded in the last couple thousand years. I suspect that slavery as a percentage of the population is the lowest it has been in almost all of recorded history.

[Leeward]

You guys continue to argue with this guy but I have to shut up and take it when he attacks my values and common sense? Oh well, I guess there'd no need to defend oneself against unfounded accusations anyway. This has gotten way off-topic by now as well.

My 2c on the matter is that as long as this stuff remains unproven (in the scientific sense), I'm not buying it, and no amount of speculation will convince me, because it has repeatedly been shown not to exist. That does not mean that I am not willing to believe in it should it be convincingly proven. I like to keep an open mind despite being a sceptic.

[Animew]

I don't think that reiki was one of the treatments I went to a practitioner for, but my mom did a course in reiki and for a time she and I practiced it on each other. It really felt like it worked at one point, but now I know it is nothing more than a pretty potent placebo. The loving embrace of a loved one and attention and care are surprisingly effective treatments by themselves.

i don’t really know a lot about reiki myself. there is a girl at work doing a course on it so i only know about what i've asked her about. <_< the fact that the course costs like three grand put me off though. lol, but studying any academic thing costs a lot of money too so i suppose the cost can have some validity.
lol, i know even less about the efficacy of the loving embrace of a loved one though.
we really need the perspectives of someone who has witnessed these specific things working first hand. i doubt we can draw any conclusions just based on our own experiences with the subject.

You seem to be twisting your own words.

O_o i know rite. words complicate things so much, especially english words. they rely so heavily on context and tone that you (well, i at least) can’t really convey any complex ideas textually. in the case of the claims (seems to be something i commonly get wrong) i'm actually giving my personal opinions and observations. in the homeopathic texts i read, they mentioned nothing about the correlation between the substance and bacteria or it causing lesion. <_< the book just mentioned something about spirit energy and the cosmic something or another. i speculated that if there is a psychological/emotional means to make yourself susceptible to specific kinds of fungi, perhaps diagnosis via the personal situation of a patient does hold some credence in order to narrow down on what is causing the lesions, rather that selecting something like an antibiotic based on just the symptoms of nausea diarrhea and abdominal pains with the slight fever. (not saying all GPs would just prescribe antibiotics but some do) if it’s fungal, the antibiotics can actually worsen the problem.
we have the means to diagnose an ailment better but it’s not cost effective. O_o sending a sample for analysis can be costly and labor intensive as there are many pathogens to test for when faced with something as simple as abdominal pains.

Homeopathy makes claims about curing ailments all the time, and there is never any evidence behind it working other than personal anecdotes. If you recover from an illness there is really no way of telling exactly what made you better, well, unless you had surgery, so if someone gets better after taking a homeopathic remedy, especially after it not ever being proven effective, I am not likely to believe that the remedy was the cause of the recovery. There are things such as 'regression to the mean' and 'observer bias' as well as the placebo effect, which are well documented and can almost always account for these things. The purpose of clinical trials is to eliminate as much bias as possible, that is the only way of getting anywhere close to objective truth.

look vox you make perfect sense and i tend to agree with what you say but you make claims too.
i don’t base my belief off any claims homeopathy has made, and neither should anyone else. but just the same, so should no one base their belief in any claims that it’s bogus. there seems to be this misconception that i actually believe in homeopathy in its entirety. in fact this probably accounts for the astonishment and hostility that some show against me. but just to clarify, i believe in nothing in its entirety as there is always motives worked into even the best concepts and ideas. i merely look at parts that make sense to me personally and i look into those till they either make more sense and i can continue finding more useful aspects or i'm satisfied that it holds nothing useful anymore.

If you look at where all the slaves are located, it seems like they are most prevalent in central and western Africa, as well as India. both of these countries have widespread belief systems which could be considered as spiritual. I am not blaming their belief systems on slavery, but the most technologically advanced countries, the ones that have embraced and promoted modern science, are the ones with virtually no slaves. This may just be a coincidence, but I think it is clear that your worries are pretty ill-founded. The statement that there are more slaves today than there ever have been, is a little misleading, since the global population has exploded in the last couple thousand years. I suspect that slavery as a percentage of the population is the lowest it has been in almost all of recorded history.

that does seem likely. but if we factor in the prevalence of organized crime in the "virtually no slaves" areas we may find that the statistics shown are just "the known prevalence of slavery". in the statistics the proportion also seem to correlate with law enforcement on the subject, so it's hard to say. we should make a thread about it.

but on the subject of the belief systems. i specifically mean personal spiritual advancement. it doesn’t really help if one dude just tells other people what to believe, that’s not spiritual advancement. spiritual advancement would be to seek a state where you are at peace with yourself and become happy as a person. at the moment all the wonderful new technology is being used for is to make people constantly want more stuff and just live for the material and the present.
but like you said, we have more food than ever now. we have enough to feed everyone (despite our ridiculous population even)... it’s just a pity there is not enough money to pay for it all.

[Adagio]

I write a FEW exams, and this is what happens... Guys! Seriously?

Hahaha! TBH, My parent's use homeopathic remedies all the time...
My granddad had was sick and the doctor prescribed some antibiotics. These antibiotics completely ruined his eye's, and he now can't read anything anymore, or do much of anything, because his eye's hurt all the time. He went to many doctors, and eye specialists, and finally, he went to see a homeopath. And that actually worked. He is feeling way better now.

I'm not arguing. It could very well be mind over matter. After all. The brain is still a mystery to us. I mean. We probably use ~10% of it's capacity. it is very likely that it has the capacity to self heal...

[Leeward]

The 10% thing is a compete myth.

[Helios_phi]

[quote="Adagio" I mean. We probably use ~10% of it's capacity. it is very likely that it has the capacity to self heal...[/quote]

Ha ha ha ha. No.

[Adagio]

Could you explain something to me than, How is it that some people have photographic memories, other have super math skills, while others don't? There must be some form of untapped potential that some posses while others don't?

[Fluke]

Could you explain something to me than, How is it that some people have photographic memories, other have super math skills, while others don't? There must be some form of untapped potential that some posses while others don't?

We're all different. It's not like every single human being shares the same brain with different parts turned on and off for different results. We're all born differently, and this results in differences in emotions, speech, feelings, preferences, tastes, intellect, etc.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percen ... brain_myth

[Animew]

I'm not arguing. It could very well be mind over matter. After all. The brain is still a mystery to us. I mean. We probably use ~10% of it's capacity. it is very likely that it has the capacity to self heal...

a human being produces various chemical messengers in response to outside stimuli causing emotions and moods right?... this can affects various hormone levels. so your state of mind (your spiritual health) thus directly controls your endocrine system (and vice versa)... and your endocrine system directly controls your body's health.
So i dono man, that makes it seem pretty possible that you can use spiritual means to heal yourself. seeing as the human body (and most other living organisms) comes equipped with regenerative abilities it stands to reason that as long as you keep the repair system working that it will keep fixing the rest of you. in fact, it is highly likely that the cure for aids will naturally start occurring LONG before human science can ever cure it (or admit to being able to)

i'm not saying that we all need to stop taking disprins & panado and start drinking willow water instead. but considering that disprins can cause liver problems, internal bleeding and all sorts of other things... if willow water can make people stop having pains, we really should stop shouting placebo and start figuring this stuff out wouldn't you say?

^_^" but on the brain usage thing Adagio: it may be because, just like a computer chip... brain processes cause heat and if we use all 100% of our brain all at once... it will likely cook itself... much like a CPU over clocked without adequate cooling.
there are stimuli that enhance brain performance, but they usually place strain on your nervous system and cause long term problems... again, over clocking analogy works well here.

Adagio, any chance you will share some more details about what your granddad had? if the doctor prescribed antibiotics for it i'd assume it's some sort of infection or inflammation? also what kind of remedies did he use for it and what was the recovery rate after he had taken them?

[Fluke]

^_^" but on the brain usage thing Adagio: it may be because, just like a computer chip... brain processes cause heat and if we use all 100% of our brain all at once... it will likely cook itself... much like a CPU over clocked without adequate cooling.
there are stimuli that enhance brain performance, but they usually place strain on your nervous system and cause long term problems... again, over clocking analogy works well here.

No.

[Adagio]

I didn't ask... I just know, they later discovered that he had a serious negative reaction to the medication, and it started attacking his eye's...

Most of the medication they give you does nothing but boosts the immune system anyway, so I see no reason why natural things won't work?

Agreed, we shouldn't just turn our back on western medicine... That would be blatantly stupid... But I personally believe that our bodies weren't meant to take concentrated bursts of anything... The only medication I take is a deworming pill once a year, and n penado when I get a serious headache....

[Animew]

i see, dang.
the problem i have with antibiotics is that it kills bacteria nonspecifically... and we actually need a lot of the bacteria that get killed and it can thus weaken our immunity against other things.

and i tend to agree. over exposing yourself to a concentrated compound can't be a good idea either. for one thing, your body starts building a resistance to the compounds so if it was something your body naturally produced you become dependent on it else you fall into a crippling down because your body doesn’t produce enough to have an effect anymore.

lol, i'm actually starting to have my doubts about western medicine, not because of anything that it's suppose to do but because of how it’s going wrong, especially in this country. i can make all the medicine i need from plants and if i need surgery i'd rather do it myself than go to some place that charges me a fortune to screw up and damage something permanently...(though i'd probably fail if i try something like an appendectomy on myself lol!) <_< and the place you are most likely to catch something serious is in hospitals and clinics... all those sick people crammed together in reception with their little UV aircon thingies hardly ever working... bleh, almost as bad as being in a bank.
to be fair, that is mostly because health care has fallen by the way side in this country and even at private hospitals you are lucky to find people who give a damn anymore.
Loool! Same with me for the de worming pills, they have gotten expensive though, 60 bux for one freaking tablet the last time I had one. Still looking for alternative means to do de worming, all I really need to kill is Trichinella spiralis.

[Leeward]

the problem i have with antibiotics is that it kills bacteria nonspecifically... and we actually need a lot of the bacteria that get killed and it can thus weaken our immunity against other things.

That's why probiotics are often prescribed along with antibiotics, because those specifically promote the proliferation of our intestinal bacteria.

[Sev]

I don't even need to delve too deeply to realize that this is another of those threads where Animew spouts his colloquial garbage. Good points from Vox, though.

[Raven Song]

I don't even need to delve too deeply to realize that this is another of those threads where Animew spouts his colloquial garbage. Good points from Vox, though.

thats rather uncalled for. you know you could just be better and not comment on it...

anyway I got to see a traditional zimbabwean burial... it was eerie

[Leeward]

I don't even need to delve too deeply to realize that this is another of those threads where Animew spouts his colloquial garbage. Good points from Vox, though.

thats rather uncalled for. you know you could just be better and not comment on it...

It's on everyone's mind but everyone is too polite. Alex is the only one forward enough to say it. All Animew does in these discussions is dump his verbal diarrhoea of patently false statements, conspiracy theories, and idiotic assertions. Then he rages when they're picked apart and harps on some more, until eventually one of three things happen: he says he agrees, he says he was joking, or he continues beating the dead horse until the topic gets locked. It accomplishes nothing but irritate everybody who reads his walls of gibberish and/or bothers to write a response because he can't admit that he might be wrong, even when supplied with undeniable proof that he is. Opinions are by definition neither true nor false, but his are so speculative and unsubstantiated that they don't even make sense. His participation is not constructive in any sense of the word, and being nice about it doesn't help.