Prayer = Telekenesis
Offline Hey, kids! I've actually been doing some research on the beliefs that got me so alienated when first joined. Is anyone interested in having an open mind on the subject, or should I just forget it? I'm not all that interested in conversing with people who have already decided I'm wrong.
Ryan
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Offline Using random number generators and analysing their output for signs of influence is a very bad and insensitive technique, very prone to false positives. Like listening for a whisper in rainstorm.
Far better to look for disturbances in a system simply designed to be very sensitive to disturbance but isolated to as great an extent possible from external physical influence. The 'normal' output from such a system would be a constant signal, with as small a random 'noise' component as possible. It is insane to bury any signal under the output of a noise generator. What kind of noise generator are they using?
Reducing the chance of false results would be done by having multiple such systems, set up with randomised orientations and placement.
Sorry, I should have explained better. There was no white noise. The particle decay would result in some observable mechanical action. The best example is probably a spinning wheel changing its direction from clockwise to counter-clockwise or vice versa. As I said, it was left running non-stop for several weeks or so and the results were recorded to ensure complete randomness. Then the test subjects could focus their attention on the wheel spinning in one direction instead of the other. It was done in other ways as well, using numbers that would light up in a random order, or a sort of meter gauge that would lean to one side or the other.
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I can do it I guess.
Well, I am not sure where you are going from the thread title. Something about prayer being an attempt to change reality with one's mind perhaps?
Honestly, you are going to have to just throw it out for people to work over and hope for the best.
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Well I'll try to be as open minded as possible.
I'm actually pretty open-minded about telepathy, since I witnessed an experiment on it.
Whether or not telekinesis is true, I don't know, but it would be pretty easy to proof, so let's do it! (Or was that not your intention?)
Anyway, whatever you're going to do, I'll be with you (unless I have to travel all the way to the States or something
).
Sure, throw your results at us! I wonder if you overcame any diffculties or got any results. When you try such a research, you find out, that there are no standardized people. Therefore there is no standardized prayer nor attempt for telekinesis. People should also try to start with some minor things, like praying for lab mice or growth of a small field of pea, not for people in hospital.
As for telekinesis, that's not much better. I've had a little success with telekinesis, I mean, a psi-wheel turned in the direction I wanted and when I wanted, but only on lucky days. I still have no idea what should I do, by visualization, wish, or with vital body, and how exactly.
Keep in mind, these are subtle, non-physical (or other-dimensional) forces, they may be strong in their own domain or dimension, but figuring out how to affect our good old matter with them is hell of a problem. The most common is to affect a person, (like telepathic contact) but again, people's sensitivity to such things is various, rare and highly influenced by training. As for training, it means that getting good at something usually requires 10 000 hours of practice. In our economically motivated (ransomed) civilization people are unlikely to have time for that.
Although, there are a few impressive videos online.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
No. Open minds are for sissies and treehuggers.
I guess - maybe...well. If it was like Samantha showed Darrin on their wedding night with the moving ashtray, then yeah.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
prayer = begging... I thought telekinesis required a lot of concentration and constipated facial expressions. I'm quite unconvinced of the ESP claims, but I pride myself to have an open mind, so shoot.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
Sorry, after I posted that I got super busy with work.
The evidence comes from a series of experiments conducted by physicist Helmut Schmidt. His methodology was a random number generator controlled by the decay of particles which is entirely unpredictable. When a particle decayed, it would set off an action in the mechanism. The number generator was run for weeks on end without pause to confirm the complete randomness of its results. When test subjects were brought in, they were asked to concentrate on the results of the generator. They succeeded in influencing the results to a relatively noticeable percentage either positive or negative, but either way, beyond random. An exceedingly high level of standard was used to ensure that no extra-experimental factors were influencing the results.
I don't know any more than when I first joined these forums what the explanation for this is, scientifically. All I know is that so many aspects of religiosity, spirituality, and Belief make so much more sense to me if the human mind, by whatever means, is able to influence the physical world.
Belief in prayer makes so much more sense. Belief that one can influence another person's decisions makes a lot more sense. And the idea that focusing on an Idol, be that the Venus of Willendorf or Jesus or Mohammed or a Spaghetti Monster, can legitimately yield concrete results makes a lot more sense. "Belief" itself is what makes these things possible, because it releases the brain from its restrictions.
As a post-script, I'll add a personal anecdote, which I know full well is not sufficient or applicable to any scientific inquiry. Nevertheless:
My roommate at the time was someone I lived with on and off for many years. Whether you choose to believe it or not is immaterial to me--we had numerous telepathic conversations. She was the nanny for this boy of about eight or nine, who also had the gift. At the boy's apartment one time, I had brought a Lego spaceship with me and was showing it to him. For some odd reason, the thought popped randomly into my head "I should give it to him." Immediately he asked me, out loud, "I can keep it?" My roommate said, out loud, "no, you just heard that in your mind, not for real."
I'm sure you all will be able to come up with all kinds of cockamamie excuses and explanations for this that appeal to your denial of the less-than-rational. That's fine. Personally, I know exactly what happened there, my roommate knew, and the kid knew. Frankly, I think if you accept that it would be silly for me to make up a story like that just for the purposes of this forum, that you realize something real and unusual happened there, also.
My point is not to prove ghosts and goblins and space aliens. All I'm saying is that there's some power of the human mind that we don't yet understand. My guess, the first time around, was the electrical energy generated by the brain and the waves that it might set off, noting the abilities sharks and other creatures have to detect magnetic waves and similar. That doesn't make it supernatural, it just makes it unknown. And if I'm right, it helps all these religious freaks and their belief in their prayers make a lot more sense.
Ryan
This is something very peculiar. It does not involve exertion of any force, or trying to believe, overcoming disbelief, or anything. This is not like belief or moving a pencil on the table with concentration... It is rather like some external force would do the trick.
(a piece of esoteric trivia says, that until about 7 years of age the child's Ego or superconsciousness dwells on astral plane, which is next to ours and probably it contributes to increased amount strange phenomena happening with young children, like this)
Anyway, I don't think that mechanistic or materialistic explanations will do any good here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but influencing them with electric or magnetic fields on distance requires a damn strong intensity, stronger than the brains naturally produce. Brains aren't bluetooth broadcasters, neither they are electromagnetic coils of wire, which move (only metallic) objects around. You know my guess.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Okay, well perhaps Belief acts as a sort of conduit for other processes, or at least that it greases the wheels for those processes. In other words, just because you grease the wheels on a pickup truck does not mean that everyone will have the strength to push it up a hill. The other thing is that whether everyone at those Evangelical masses does truly believe is definitely debatable. And all those who do have true belief might not have the gift or might concurrently believe without question that they have no power to influence the physical world.
On the contrary, I've heard stories of telekinetic events that left the agent of them physically and mentally exhausted. Subjects of the trials in these tests also performed more poorly as time went on. Perhaps it was more that the single action you initiated was not a terribly taxing one.
Which is why I provided the anecdote that I did. People who live together might often begin to think along the same lines (and still not with the precision of ideas with which she and I were able to communicate). I barely knew that kid; I think I only met him two or three times. The common denominator of my roommate does not convince me of anything. The fact that it was three people, all sharing the same consciousness of some state of mind, and so specifically concerning the Lego ship, is not something I will ever be able to chalk up to random coincidence, no matter what anyone says.
I won't say "wrong," but I'm not sure that distance has been established as a deciding factor. For one thing, none of my own personal experiences have required great distances. For another, we have no evidence that these waves or whatever they are will degrade through physical space. Light travels very well through space without much to slow it down. And finally, we have no idea how sensitive we are as receptors of these signals. Certainly the communication I've received from people, strangers mostly, has been as a result of our close proximity to each other, but I'm not convinced that makes any difference.
Just as an aside, I've never known where you were from, or what your native language is (I suspected Spanish), but your English has gotten really good since I first joined here.
Ryan
First of all, I think we have much more control/power over our own perception more so than anything else. I'll give you that we don't fully understand the workings of the human brain, but if you could successfully reproduce telepathy or any ESP, why are you not one million dollars richer via Randi's challenge?
What I think may have happened, and what I use on regular basis, is a form of conscious self deception. It may have been unconscious in your case, but I willfully force myself to forget about a stressful deadline, in order to concentrate on the work. Or regarding some emotional issue, or quitting smoking... not giving in to a craving, you get the point.
It is much more likely that you perceived your communication as telepathy, when it could have been any number of body language cues that could be used to communicate. My wife and I usually communicate with our eyes, stares, or eyebrow movements. It's quite common for people that spend a lot of time together. It may look like telepathy to an outsider, but we're just reverting to a primitive form of communication. You could also use pheromones, and a number of other ways that may seem mystical or what have you.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
By verbalising and mentally picturing your goals in the future usually helps a lot to come up with new ideas how to fulfill them and makes u more focused on the task, like Khtulu said. It's a mental process were we justify our needs. If u're trying to convince a person about a topic, u can by verbalizing it find new ways and further arguments.
Prayer in the christian religion is kinda meaningless. It's a one-way communication form no matter if u are theist or atheist. If he doesn't exist he can't hear you. But let's play with the thought that God do exist as written in the bible. He's all knowing and allmighty, so he already know what u are going to tell him/ask from him rendering the conversation kinda meaningless. Prayers makes the prayer feel good by some degree i guess, a bottle of whiskey for believers =)
Well, for me that's just not how it works. I've never been able to call it up at will, it happens more unexpectedly. It's also not a matter of intense concentration, but the very opposite. I find I'm most receptive when involved in some menial task or just falling asleep/ waking up, whatever. I could see the possibility of achieving above random results with that former roommate, but she turned out to be a major asshole and I don't have contact with her anymore. On top of it, the very reason it might have worked with her might have disqualified us from testing: we knew each other well.
Just, no. There was nothing to deceive myself of. There were many occasions where she would answer me aloud to thoughts I'd not verbalized.
I completely agree with you that tangible, physical factors may contribute in some subtle, unconscious way. But they are not at all sufficient to explain the complex ideas that have been communicated. We're not talking about basic concepts like "I'm hungry" or "that smells bad." We're talking about ideas that would require a much more sophisticated symbolic system like sign language to be communicated.
That's the whole point. After a lot of experiences that were confirmed with friends I knew fairly well, I began to recognize the same sensation with perfect strangers, people who I never did communicate with verbally. And not just everyone, either. Some people are stronger "senders" than others. Some so strong that I'll sit next to them on the subway and immediately sense their presence. Most people I get nothing at all.
Using random number generators and analysing their output for signs of influence is a very bad and insensitive technique, very prone to false positives. Like listening for a whisper in rainstorm.
Far better to look for disturbances in a system simply designed to be very sensitive to disturbance but isolated to as great an extent possible from external physical influence. The 'normal' output from such a system would be a constant signal, with as small a random 'noise' component as possible. It is insane to bury any signal under the output of a noise generator. What kind of noise generator are they using?
Reducing the chance of false results would be done by having multiple such systems, set up with randomised orientations and placement.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I'm actually more trying to work out an explanation as to why prayer would appear to work for some people that doesn't depend on the existence of god, but in this case innate abilities I know this forum doesn't agree with, but which I suspect might eventually be testable.
I haven't yet got to read the esoteric textbook on telepathy by Alice A. Bailey, her books are many, big and complex. But maybe I should, it also describes etheric body, which is of prime interest to me. It might also give you some insight from a different perspective.
I'm from Czech Republic, the land where political power is held by thieves, not by religious people. But still, there are numerous groups of deluded people led by mediums. The mediums rip people off with fairy tales and vague claims. They reputedly bless them with energies from n-th dimension, which is way too high frequency forany evil forces to tamper with. Little they know, that dimension is a variable of space, not frequency. And that angels on billboards, long guru's names and bright, warm colors are bad signs. And little they know, that these mediums themselves tend to have problems with sanity.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.