They are all at it. The following youtube videos are an interview by Richard Dawkins with Derren Brown.

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Derren Brown rules!! Good videos too, straight from a pro.

Derren is following in the footsteps of the great J. Randi.

YouTube Video

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Fate decides who walks into your life, you decide who you let stay, who you let walk away, and who you refuse to let walk out.

Cheers for that mate. Had an argument a while back about Geller being a fraud. They said that because I didn't know how he did it then it proves he can bend spoons with his mind. The only argument I had at the time was that if someone could bend steel with their minds then surely they would be doing something more interesting like warping the Eiffel Tower rather than bending a spoon.

Time to destroy the cutlery.

My pleasure.
I hate people being duped by these people.

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Fate decides who walks into your life, you decide who you let stay, who you let walk away, and who you refuse to let walk out.

They make good points. Showmanship and charaltens are not real or if they did have real experiences, they can not reproduce them. That much is clear. However, this does not disprove psychic abilities.




YouTube - Qigong Demo with John Chang

Skip to two minutes in. Watch the whole thing if you want it's good stuff, but what I want to show you all is two minutes in. There are other examples in the video further up as well.

YouTube - PK Wheel Under Glass Part 1

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"Look hard in the mirror. Look at that ghost that stares back at you. Look at that faded spirit that longs to act in this world but cannot because the mind is fearful and holds it back. Placing limits on things, and boundaries everywhere." -Rev

I might have posted this vid before or on another board. A video doesn't prove he has these powers no more than a video showing UFOs proves that there are spaceships zooming around our planet. The lure of something amazing happening often shuts down peoples reasoning abilities.

Again this is not proof of anything other than it is a video on youtube... there is a moving hand... there is something moving etc. Here is a link to a torrent of a show by Derren Brown. It was aired quite recently in the UK on Channel Four. Some of the tricks are astounding and could lead some people to derive that he has indeed some supernatural powers. He hasn't. It's a trick.

Derren.Brown.Evening.Of.Wonder.WS.PDTV.XVID-FTP.avi (download torrent) - TPB

While it is true that those videos are not definitive proof, it still raises questions.

Regarding UFO's, there is more evidence to suggest they are real then are not. I could show you youtube videos of high ranking officials admitting they are real, but someone would just say they are actors or something. Eh, what are you going to do? Best not to argue.

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"Look hard in the mirror. Look at that ghost that stares back at you. Look at that faded spirit that longs to act in this world but cannot because the mind is fearful and holds it back. Placing limits on things, and boundaries everywhere." -Rev

I'm agnostic. I deal in probabilities. Now there may be more positive proof than negative. I don't know. I've not seen much of it. I may say they are actors and I may say they are not but they are telling you what you want to hear or they are telling the truth or they may have not looked at all the evidence or they may be a collective hallucination or my be something else. I don't know.

The probability of life on other planets has a good chance of being right given the size of the observable universe. A vastly more intelligent race of beings may be with us right now and the odds of that are more vague. The probability of winning the UK lotto jackpot is around 13 million to one. People still win it but not many. There are weeks when no one wins it.

Beliefs are all the same in one respect that they require evidence to maintain them. However with beliefs the evidence is not always full or is simply an illusion and at times new information is disregarded so that their illusions aren't shattered. Maggie Fox started the spiritualist movement by conning people. She finally confessed but by then the movement was a creating a lot of money. She was shouted down by her peers. Did the hard core believers stop believing? Well I know you know the answer to that.

Here you go.


YouTube - U.F.O DISCLOSURE PROJECT U.FO MEETING

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"Look hard in the mirror. Look at that ghost that stares back at you. Look at that faded spirit that longs to act in this world but cannot because the mind is fearful and holds it back. Placing limits on things, and boundaries everywhere." -Rev

what we know is a fraction of a fraction of what we don't know... we can all have opinions but whoever says they hold "THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH" speaks out of ignorance... that is my thought

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"Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die? And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know you realize that life goes fast. It's hard to make the good things last. You realize the sun doesn't go down, it's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round." ~Flaming Lips

My thoughts are that some beliefs are worth having. I like to believe that the map is not the territory or the menu is not the meal in respect to what we know about the world. Our map of reality is not reality itself. We can read a menu and we will get an idea of what we are getting. The more specific the detail the menu has the more information. Sometimes we have had the meal before and have a rich representation in our minds. But still there are bits missing from the full array of tastes and smells... colours and textures. Even sounds for some food.

That reminds me of a story...

There once was a map making company. They created the finest most accurate maps in the region. One day they decided to create a map of the region so detailed and accurate that everyone would want to have one. They started right away but shortly found that they needed more space. Eventually it was so big that they needed to knock down the walls of their building. More and more detail was added and the map grew and grew until it covered the entire region.

Which also brings me to another useful belief. People respond to their map of reality and not reality itself.

You've read "language in thought and action" by H. R. Hayakawa havent you.


I agree compleately though. It's interesting how sceptics of any particular subject will site lack of evidence as proof of absence, and on the other side of the coin the believers will say "Absence of proof is not proof of absence."
Each side has their own map of the territory, but the two maps are vastly different.
I wonder if everything is more mundane than the true believers would say it is, but more fantastic than the sceptics believe.
Makes me wonder, especially when baked.

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Still today, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can just make out the high water mark, that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back.

- Hunter S. Tompson

Hi Esoteric. I totally forgot about this thread until today. I've not read the book you site but will look into it.

I've really got into Quantum Physics recently and the bizarreness of the atomic world has got my spidey senses tingling. It's like a partially solved mystery and the more we dig the deeper the hole gets.

^^^^ All psychics are fraudsters and charlatans, and no amount of Quantum Mechanics can change this. So, dont let yourself be fooled!

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"Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we have enough of it, one word uttered to us might be sufficient to change the course of our lives. But if we don't have enough personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation won't make a damn bit of difference." Don Juan Matus - Tales of Power

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Last video was removed so here it is again...

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