Zhuan Falun (Turning The Law Wheel)

[robvalue]

Welcome to the forums

I appreciate you are passionate about all this. But what you have to understand from a sceptic's point of view is we get hundreds of people all coming up to us saying, "My particular extraordinary beliefs are true. You should believe them."

We can't simply believe everything in this way, no one can. So the filter is evidence. And the evidence needs to be properly scientific. I appreciate everyone thinks they do have evidence for their beliefs, but it generally does not hold up to scrutiny. Imagine the scenario where they all did! Everything that anyone says is true and should be believed. Imagine the tangled mess of contradictory beliefs. The people presenting their extraordinary claims generally discount everyone else's claims due to lack of substance; we go one further, that's all.

So in the case of "healing", it would be proper control groups with double blind testing, or similar. Anything short of this just amounts to anecdotes and wild claims.

[Angrboda]

Hello Starshine!

Welcome to the forum.

I don't know how, but we have got to get you together with 'Little Rik'. He's a tantric yoga practitioner who feels that science is on HIS side. He's currently inhabiting the "Evidence for atheist claims" thread. I think debate between the two of you would be most revealing.

[ignoramus]

[EnergyGem]

Alex mentioned that the 1st scientific experiment I had posted was not scientific. I tend to disagree, everything was done under complete scientific conditions. One qualm Alex had was that he believed meditation energy doesn't exist. Meditation energy has been detected through scientific means:

1)

"Neuroscientist Richard Davidson’s 2004 study on the energy emitted by Tibetan meditating monks is chronicled by Stanford University.

Davidson tested the Dalai Lama’s most advanced monks, each with 15 to 40 years of meditation practice. He measured the gamma waves emitted by their brains with electroencephalograph (EEG) testing and brain scanning. A control group of 10 students with no previous meditation experience was also tested after a week of training.

Gamma waves are described as “some of the highest-frequency and most important electrical brain waves.” The production of gamma waves requires thousands of nerve cells to act at extremely high speeds in unison.

Davidson found some of the monks produced gamma wave activity more powerful and of higher amplitude than any documented case in history. The movement of the waves was also far better organized than the non-meditating test volunteers."

Source: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/461442-s...s-science/

2)

In 1998, Professor Lu Yanfang and dozens of American scientists conducted research on qigong masters in China. Qigong is an ancient practice that involves cultivating energy, not only by doing meditative exercises, but also by improving mind and heart nature, as the mind and body are said to be one. It is known to have healing effects.

In her research, she had found that Qigong masters were able to emit powerful bursts of infrasonic waves, 100 to 1000 times as strong as average individuals.
After even just a few weeks of training, beginners in the practice had five times the infrasonic energy they had produced before the training.
A similar study at the Beijing College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, published in 1988, found the qi emitted by qigong masters could be measured in part as infrasonic waves 100 times stronger than that of an ordinary person. 

Source: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/461442-s...s-science/


Actually in regards to science, many scientists don't truly do science they are emotionally invested in protecting the current paradigm of science and reject new forms of science impulsively. It is a deep ingrained notion of many scientists these days. A true scientist won't be held back by deeply ingrained notions and will boldy search for Truth in any direction it may take him too.


An excerpt from Zhuan Falun that touches on this topic:

"When we mention certain things some people blurt right out, "blind belief." Why do they do that? Their criteria for something being "blind belief" or "quackery" is that it’s whatever science hasn’t grasped, or whatever they haven’t experienced first-hand, or whatever they think can’t possibly exist. That’s their way of thinking. So is that way of thinking correct?

Can you just dismiss something as blind belief or quackery just because science hasn’t grasped it yet, or just because science isn’t far enough along to explain it yet? Aren’t these people themselves full of blind belief? And aren’t they caught up in quackery? If everybody thought that way, could science develop? Could it move forward? Society wouldn’t be able to make progress. The things that our scientific and technological community has invented are all things that people didn’t have at one time. If those things were all thought of as blind belief, then there’d be no point in talking about progress, right? 

Qigong isn’t quackery. But there are always a lot of people who think it is, since they don’t understand it. But with the use of scientific instruments people have now detected on the bodies of qigong masters things like infrasonic waves, ultrasonic waves, electromagnetic waves, infrared, ultraviolet, gamma rays, neutrons, atoms, and trace metal elements. Aren’t those all concrete things? They’re matter. Aren’t all things made of matter? Aren’t other space-times made of matter? Could you call them blind belief? Qigong is for cultivating Buddhahood, so of course there are going to be a lot of profound things involved. And we’re going to explain all of them."



Here is a scientific experiment performed on Qi Gong practitioners backing up the excerpt above:

Emitted Qi Training Increases Low Frequency Sound Emission - http://www.chi.us/researchemitedchi.htm

[Alex K]

Let me address the things stated in the last link as an example

http://www.chi.us/researchemitedchi.htm

The things stated there do not satisfy the necessary standards for reporting research. It is full of subjective and irrelevant statements about who was surprised by what, making clear that we are not really dealing with objective research report. It is simply stated that "waves were measured", but there needs to be more detailed specification how this was done. Possibilities of (subconscious) Manipulation must be evaluated and excluded. Some p-values are given for measurements with no indication how they were obtained or what they mean. There is no discussion as to the physical origin of these waves (if the effect is, in fact, real, what physiological effect is it), the values "ordinary people" can reach are simply stated. There should be a "sham" control group going through a comparable regimen, but not practising qi gong. The statement "After several tries, the best he could do was 67 dB, which was 100 times what an average adult could produce, and still in the range of powerful healers, but not nearly as good as he had done in the past." reveals that the people conducting the test were apparently not properly guarding against trials factors and similar biases.

Even if the measured increase in infrasound is real (which is hard to tell given the lacklustre protocol), it is completely unclear given this setup, whether it has anything to do with qigong practise in particular, let alone with qi "energy" and similar unproven concepts.

And on and on and on.

[robvalue]

If it was real, it would be science. No one is suppressing real science.

It's not possible to suppress it without some sort of global big brother conspiracy.

[ignoramus]

Rob, the fact that he doesn't know exactly how the scientific method works by now tells me that he's not interested in objective analysis. Only confirmation bias.
Once you swallow this type of koolaid, then auras, astral projection, nde's, etc all become the logical next scientific miracle.

[LastPoet]

Anyone is interested in a bridge I have for sale? Its in new york and its a bit old, so Ill sell it cheap.

[robvalue]

Anyone is interested in a bridge I have for sale? Its in new york and its a bit old, so Ill sell it cheap.

I'm still waiting on the last one you sold me, so no!

[Pat Mustard]

In his well-known book The Holographic Universe (1991, Harper Collins, publisher), Michael Talbot discusses the work of Valerie Hunt on energy fields. He writes:

Quoting a well known woo artist who knows shit all about the areas in which he talks about isn't strengthening your case you know. In fact quoting such charlatanism approvingly just shows the charlatanism at the heart of your pet "theory".