What people belive is true on these forums

[Jeff]

Well Jeff, according to science, we use 11% of our brain. it is highly likely we are capable of something like telepathy, and even more than we realize can be posable.

Dude... You are wrong yet again. I am starting to feel that your entire life philosophy is based on school yard myths. Do a quick google search and you will realize that we use 100% of our brains - the 10% figure was a misquotation of Albert Einstein.

Here is a quick link: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tenper.html

Regardless, even if we assume that your factoid is correct, how would using more of our brain lead to the corollary that you are able to somehow detect another persons thoughts? Seriously, the notion that having a bigger brain means that you can somehow read another person's thoughts is just science fiction and has no basis in reality.

and to call people who believe in "Magic" as you say, Ignorant Dumbass, shows how closed minded you are and shows how much you are like the Christian cults. and yes there have been recorded history. Constantinople ring a bell? the Great libraries burned to the ground.
some of the literature proved that they were close to developing the atom bomb,

Are you serious? You're claiming that the atom bomb was on the verge of discovery before we had any notion of atoms, electricity, radiation, etc? Play some Civilization dude, before you can make a nuclear weapon you need quite a lot of technology.

Magic as such is a term used by an uneducated man to explain an unexplainable thing, what is a cave man going to think of a toaster? other than that (and I hate to say) the bible has probably had some history involved in it. how ever, I understand that most of the stories were symbolic, and it has been rewritten by the ages. Things are there in the world, all you need to do is look.

The thing is that I could explain how a toaster works to a caveman. I could show him how it's not magic, it's just a complex machine. Magic is something that does not follow the laws of physics, like Jesus allegedly turning water into wine.

oh and Nick, Energy is indestructible, it can only be changed. if you can destroy energy in a lab, filmed and all, I will give you $50NZ, not only that, you will be a famous man.

Light is energy, and heat is energy.
Darkness, and cold are a lack of energy.

If you can prove that psychics or any other supernatural phenomena exist, I will give you $500,000. You claim there is plenty of evidence for this stuff. Where is it? Preferably private message it to me so that I can collect the $1000000 from the Randi foundation.

[Jeff]

If someone brags, they have nothing to brag about

If people actually have something to brag about, they don't

So Psychics are trying to keep secret, and since many people think like Jeff and NickD, no-one would believe them anyway.

No, a psychic could easily prove his ability. Have a random person write down a number between one and a million and put it in a safe. If the psychic can read his mind and figure out what the number is, the proof is undeniable, assuming the person has truly been picked at random, which is not difficult to do.

So the only thing that is left is your conspiracy theory about psychics. Sure, it is possible that psychics walk among us but they decide to perfectly hide their power from the world. My only question is WHY do you believe this? Once you toss Occam's Razor out the window and start believing in anything that has zero evidence (but cannot be disproved), you might as well start believing in the underground zebra colony on Neptune.

[Viking Zippy]

Well Jeff, according to science, we use 11% of our brain. it is highly likely we are capable of something like telepathy, and even more than we realize can be posable.

Dude... You are wrong yet again. I am starting to feel that your entire life philosophy is based on school yard myths. Do a quick google search and you will realize that we use 100% of our brains - the 10% figure was a misquotation of Albert Einstein.

Here is a quick link: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tenper.html

Regardless, even if we assume that your factoid is correct, how would using more of our brain lead to the corollary that you are able to somehow detect another persons thoughts? Seriously, the notion that having a bigger brain means that you can somehow read another person's thoughts is just science fiction and has no basis in reality.

I think the 11% or so he mentioned is the percentage of which is used in daily life on a conscious level, not all the other stuff that's going on 'under the hood.'

[Jeff]

Science is freedom of thought, not freedom of belief.

As for souls, how do we exist? If there was no soul, we couldn't exist as us, our bodies would simply act out on their own, but with nobody to witness it all. I don't think the fact that being alive and seeing through your own eyes every day is part of the body.

I understand what you are thinking, and this is a much more interesting topic than that of psychics et al. However, there is no "soul". You seem to believe that the soul is a supernatural, separate entity from your physiology, and that if this soul could somehow be removed from your body, you would be somehow different, like a zombie.

The thing is, everything you do is a function of measurable chemicals and electrical impulses in your brain. True, the nervous system is extremely complicated and we are only just beginning to reach a deeper understanding of it, but everything that we know about it points to the conclusion that it is not supernatural. We are able to isolate chemical compounds that dramatically change your personality like ritalin or anti-depressants. We have other chemical compounds that completely change your state of consciousness like LSD. We can even supress mental illnesses like schizophrenia.

Now if your personality, perception, and everything we know so far about the brain can be controlled through these physical chemicals, what else is left for a "soul" to control?

As we study the brain more and more, this small slice of possibilities for a soul will get smaller and smaller.

[NickD]

Wow. This is making my brain (or as BunnyWithStick would say, "soul") hurt when reding it first thing in the morning. And yes, I did JUST wake up at 1:30.... But your definition of a "soul" is (like jeff said) chemical mixtures/electric impulses read by the brain and cells in your body and reacted upon in different ways for different chemical mixtures/electric impulses. We think "reality", you think, "gods, magic and unicorns and (my favorite of all) Zebras in an under ground city in Neptune" . Yes, even simple religion makes me crack up it's such BS.

[Colicedus]

Ugh... only thing so far I am agreeing with you on is brain pain NickD.
at the moment you guys are showing your insensitivity and narrow mindedness, mind you... this is not a place to preach, if i have, my apologies. its not my job to tell you what is and is not. I Will state that I believe in souls, ghosts, Demons or vampiric Spirits, and that everything is energy do to my experiences, and that I am my own Deity. I can not be bothered carrying this debate further than that.

[zatoichi]

I mainly agree with you NickD.
But I do not agree with your concept of death, I know you are all mainly closed minded and will dismiss my thoughts, but I will say them because i like to read my owen words... We have all heard of ch'i? according to what i heard on a national geographics program, science have proved the existence of it. It is an energy that can be used to harden the body to an extent that punches are hard as sledge hammer strikes, and the body can resist killing damage.

Well if there is the existence of that, what is to say that ones spirit dose not exist? despite what we believe, is true to us, but at the same time, what if we are wrong, people once believed the world was flat ?

Just 'cause we don't agree doesn't mean we're close minded...

people who have "chi" have just learned to control their bodies to an amazing extent. if you can't do it, don't assume it's supernatural. besides, wouldn't anything able to be explained or proved by science be, by definition, not supernatural?

EDIT: damnit, i did it again. Why do I keep hinking this thread ends pages back?

[BunnyWithStick]

…what else is left for a "soul" to control?

15% or so of those physical chemicals. And still, you do not see my point.

You know how some people wonder what it'd be like to be someone else?

What if that concept did not exist, what if there was no "Being someone"? What if nobody in the universe was themselves, what if everyone in the universe was just "Someone else"? What if there was no concept of being yourself, what if even yourself was just like watching someone else?

That's all that the body is. Someone else.

[David]

When I just started taking college psych courses three and half years ago, I learned about split-brain experiments. When patients have severe, life-threatening epileptic seizures, they were sometimes treated with a callosectomy (aka callosotomy); essentially their brain is cut in half. I found these cases fascinating because the patients could function normally except in a few subtle ways. For example, if you ask them to raise their hands whenever you show a certain slide on the projector, they can do it. However, if you ask them to close their left eye, they will only raise their right hand. Only half of their brain knows what is being projected.

I do not see how experiments like this can be reconciled with the idea of any kind of unified "soul". There is a lot of data from the fields of psychology and cognitive science which can only be explained by an emergent mind theory; in the same way that an ant colony is much "smarter" than any individual ant, the entire brain is much smarter than each individual neuron.

[rudel_ic]

Wow, I got a few good old favorites of mine that I'll post here randomly for some reason:

Everything is rhythm.

Reality is what you think & not think. Nothing else.

And about psychics: Put a guy in a situation where his thoughts are archetypically formed and you immediately know what he thinks (well, unless he's a savant, I guess). Same for women.

A random thing is ultimately described by describing the whole world around it, skipping just the random thing. It doesn't work the other way around. So, nothing can be ultimately described.

And this other one about Goedel's first incompleteness theorem (thanks, Rudy Rucker):
The UTM (Universal Truth Machine) takes any question as input and always gives the correct answer to it as output.
Let G be "The UTM will never say G is true".
Input for the UTM: "Is G true?"
The UTM will not be able to answer (boohoo).

Since God is almighty, He can turn Himself into a being that is not and will never be almighty. But after doing that, He won't be able to become almighty again. So... Is He really almighty God?
Yes -> He can turn himself almighty again anyway -> He is not almighty God for not being able to make Himself un-almighty for eternity.
No -> There is no almighty God.

Edit: Okay, The last one has a probably false assumption: God is bound to time. If he isn't, it's just a bunch of crap, obviously.

[NickD]

But god is just a bunck of crap. That's what you guys need to understand .

[tallyl.iii]

I think it would be hard to shatter anyone's lifelong faith in God with a single unbacked statement and angry emoticon.

[rudel_ic]

"That's what you guys need to understand"? As if you knew for sure.. Heh.

[Colicedus]

I am not a Christian, or nothing, but Nick, That is the most arrogant statement I have heard all of today. What makes you more knowing than anyone else? some things Can not be explained by science. science is important yes, It helps people understand things on this side of the vail.

[Crill3]

But god is just a bunck of crap. That's what you guys need to understand .

Define god.