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Spirituality, scamming and placebo do go hand in hand. Say a prayer when you're sick, then your system's antibodies kicks the sickness and instead of realizing that it's you giving yourself renewed health, it's seen as the prayer working.
@Thunderpussy, I didn't know Criss Angel was active on that front, but good to see. When it comes to that, it's the same thing as other beliefs, including spiritual ones (including theology and the paranormal): we want the world to be this crazy, magical place, as reality is more boring and lifeless in comparison to fantasy so we indulge in delusion. Though I don't believe this myself, as there are plenty of amazing, unbelievable things in the natural world that are powerful to witness despite them being grounded in reality and science, but others don't seem to think the same. If you can't really make an elephant disappear under a sheet or float yourself over water, life's got no excitement, I guess.
@OBradyMOBondfanatic7 and some physic tried to say that they'd made
"Contact", which enraged Criss.
I see, @Thunderpussy. I think I remember hearing Criss's dad died, and maybe that's who you're speaking of. I can only imagine what it'd be like to be a magician who knows the tricks being told by a medium that their loved one is trying to make contact with them.
I think we've had many discussions about mediums on here, where even the religious people didn't like them despite the opportunity they had to justify their belief in an afterlife by what the mediums do in tapping into the "other side." It really sets me off, to be frank. I'm never a fan of manipulating people just to comfort them, and would much rather mourn healthily over a death than having a medium lie to my face (with a price tag attached) while telling me that the departed individual is at peace and blah, blah, blah. It's obscene to manipulate someone's desire for comfort and peace of mind to make a buck, and I think that's a large part of why so many here have an issue with organized religion and all that is attached to that.
I never said it was, I was making a comparison between the simplicity of what a psychic knows and what a horoscope can tell. I was rambling off topic after someone else mentioned it.
As James Randi was mentiined earlier, here's some of His Research.
Including Bondology™.
"Bondology" is a protected term under the copyright of @Dragonpol, writer and director of The Bondologist Blog- http://www.thebondologistblog.blogspot.co.uk
All usage of "Bondology" must be supplemented with cash payable in European specific currency to the copyright owner, pending their permission.
Religionology: try and wrap your head around that one!
a famous ologist
of Cars. From this, I'll be able to tell the times you had money and the times you
didn't.
Stars are hydrogen gas clouds, contracted into dense, high-pressure, high-temperature balls of whirling plasma streams, which allow single-proton nuclei to fuse into heavier nuclei. Their existence ultimately results from probability distributions which are entirely indeterministic; nothing about those probability distributions "makes sense" from the point of view of our flawed and arrogant human logic. Patterns appear by coincidence; they present no code and allow no readings of any kind other than the ones we want to find.
Like superstition and religion, astrology is another remnant from a primitive past, from the days when people were capable of such incredible acts of self-delusion. And yes, it's true that men like Newton were themselves perfectly willing to believe in the stuff. Old habits die hard. Plus, there's something very appealing about the whole thing. But we stopped worshipping the sun, we stopped praying to the weather gods, we stopped sacrificing virgins... all because now we know better. Well, we know better than to read stuff in the stars that isn't there, or at least, intelligent people know better than that.
Intelligent people learn about the universe through astronomy, which collects empirical evidence, builds theories which it will then challenge and challenge some more and then still more, and then makes more predictions based on these theories which can then, in turn, be tested... Intelligent people pick up a science book and learn about the stars with patience and a fair amount of intellectual labour. Only they learn to appreciate the true beauty of stars and of systems of stars, a beauty which, alas, eludes many, for the one thing said beauty doesn't include, the one thing the entire science of the stars doesn't include in fact, is the human element. And in our arrogance, even today, we so desperately want to believe that we somehow matter in the larger scheme of things. Hence the belief in almighty cosmic deities which for some strange reason should care about us; hence the belief that the stars position themselves in a certain way just for us, or rather just for one of us.
As long as people maintain the illusion that the cosmos cares or even knows that we exist, such idiotic notions, extracted from the most primitive of minds that roamed the Earth thousands of years ago, will continue to exist. And to some of the more illuminated minds among us, this perverse view of the cosmos regrettably serves but one purpose: to perpetuate the negative stereotype of the human race as a collection of sharp eyes which are kept in the dark and bright minds which are never put to full use. Astrology is simply another excuse for future generations to make fun of us. "Remember when people had put men on the Moon, built atom bombs and performed quantum teleportations of photons; but also prayed to imaginary deities and predicted their future from stellar patterns? How sadly primitive those man-apes still were..."
So please, grow up, step out of the darkness. Read a serious book, go to school, talk to some scientists, use your mind. Astrology makes about as much sense as Santa or the Toothfairy. Sweet dreams.
(Which is in part how I think you're sensibly coming at it, @bondjames when you say it has a certain basis in mathematics?)
Just to throw out another name of someone doing Houdini-like work to debunk frauds: Derren Brown. This extensively runs through his work, the following clip being perhaps most relevant to this discussion of astrology:
I'd also recommend his special Messiah, in which he tries to convince five different prominent 'authorities' in their fields (psychics, evangelism, New Age woo-woo, UFO abduction, and contacting the dead) to endorse him as the real deal.
Other special focus on debunking and raising awareness include Seance, Derren Brown Investigates, The System, Miracles for Sale, and Fear and Faith. I quite enjoy his stuff in general. His 'stunt' specials and magic shows are a good time. Most of them are probably on the Youtubes, if anyone's interested.
On another note, the documentary about Randi (AN HONEST LIAR) is entertaining. Recommend that as well.
I questioned its deterministic approach, and some who believe in it have argued to me that it's not meant to be seen that way at all - rather, it's meant as a guide. That the future is not set. Other believers however have told me the opposite. That everything is in fact set. So there's all kinds of interpretations out there and I believe it's mostly misunderstood by those who believe in it leading to further confusion.
I've encountered confirmation bias from some when espousing how it has benefited them and in that respect it reminds me of how some defend religion based on anecdotal observations.
Still, it's fascinating how it is revered by many and how it has impacted people through history. A sort of pseudo scientific philosophy.
Much like religion. There's belief in many "best" Bonds, just as there are in multiple gods. Who's right, really, though?
Well, on the Bondology™ side it's easy: whoever seeks salvation in Connery's Bond and films. For the other side, however...none of them.
Well, actually it was the late author and Bond academic Umberto Eco who came up with the term first of all. I simply stole it for the name of my blog.
You told the truth when you could've lied to reap the benefits? You're absolutely bonk-
You know what, I respect that. ;)
Not Elvis? Oh no, of course.
But we need our tripe and enjoy it, to be honest I prefer it over the likes of Facebook.
But it seems that nowadays we do not get to enjoy anything that a certain group considers tripe or rubbish. Why can one not leave people to enjoy their own things without pulling the superiority card.
Of course I understand that the majority of people who find the thing amusing refrain from any abuse whatsoever.
Honesty is the best policy.
I suppose though that if you wanted to be generous you could say that I helped to disseminate the term further and make it common parlance for an expert on Bond. Or to put it more simply, that I finished what Umberto Eco started. ;)
What's that I hear you cry? Has the Wizard gone completely mental?
Don't worry like anyone sane I don't believe in astrology any more than I do quaint rubbish like the tooth fairy or god but I think this one is the only one that could possibly fall within the realm of physics.
Let me explain my thinking: astrology as I understand it is based on the study of the positions of the various celestial bodies and how they might influence us.
Now given the moon has the gravitational power to pull the sea from side to side it doesn't seem inconceivable to me that planets with the mass of Jupiter could gravitationally affect the electrons inside the atoms that make up our tissue and thus have some effect on our brains and the decisions we make. Of course there is no real evidence but it at least seems a viable hypothesis in theory.
That said, the notion that the best person to decipher such infinitesimal subatomic changes is a camp, fat bloke like Russell Grant is a line I'm not willing to cross.
The likes of Mystic Meg and astrology in the newspaper is clearly a large pile of bollocks covered with lashings of utter drivel gravy.
But the notion that humans could be affected in some way by gravitational fields like every other entity in the universe is something I cannot completely ignore, even if at present we have no way to detect or measure such effects and, even if we are affected, there is nothing to prove that this would change our fate or destiny anymore than it might give us cancer.