Moontanman

Wasn't one guy cured of hiv by whole body irradiation and replacement of his bone marrow with non infected donor cells? I do remember reading about one guy who had his blood recirculated through a machine that for all intents and purposes "pasteurized" his blood and it was cooled and circulated back into his body but it was not completely successful, it did how ever drop the levels of active viral particles in his blood stream.

Kepler or what we see as patterns from it's data, has an observational bias, just like previous planet hunters found lots of large planets near their stars this is because those planets were easier to find, low hanging fruit if you will. We used to have many ideas around why our solar system is arranged in the way it is but like most problems in statistics one data point does not a curve make so as we see and confirm new planetary systems we are getting more data points but so far they are skewed toward the easiest data at hand as we get more data points a more reliable model can be made of planetary systems formation and structure.

Try this forum, they might allow turd polishing there... http://forum.davidicke.com/forumdisplay.php?f=51

I suggest you invest in a good psychiatrist, until it was clearly demonstrated that astrology was bunkum it was indeed included in the horse feathers that include mysticism, things like alchemy, tarot, all religions, pretty much everything supernatural is indeed considered mysticism by some one and since you cannot define or provide any evidence to the contrary you are going to have to suck up astrology along with all the other arcane knowledge claimed by the term mysticism. You sound like the guy who claimed there are no Christians in jail because a true Christian would never commit a crime. The entire premise of knowledge that cannot be defined or demonstrated to have any effect on reality is well... not to put too fine a point on it.. meaningless, nonsensical, MBE... nothing more nothing less. I can (and have) construct realities of amazing complexity in my own brain, i could, if I was mentally unbalenced, assign real meaning and even reality to these imaginings but that wouldn't make them real in any way. Once I had a condition that caused me to hallucinate what appeared to be symbols floating in the air around me, the symbols were red and held (i felt very strongly) superior meaning, so superior that nothing else could have possible been as important as those symbols. I was smart enough to know they could not be real because only i could see them, a few pills and the condition was gone never to return, but I can still remember how real and universally important those symbols were, they were of absolute importance, they held the meaning of life and death, but my feelings of their importance did not assign any reality to them or to me, they were false as is mysticism... If I had met someone else who also saw the same symbols imagine how crazy that would have been but the symbols would have still been meaningless drivel made up by a blood curculation problem in my brain. people with similar circulation problems have similar hallucinations.... Just because you don't agree something is mysticism doesn't make it so, in fact so far you have not demostrated that mysticism has any meaning what so ever other than the practitioners of mysticism rely on gullible people to continue on it's traditions, in that way mysticism is nothing less than religion with even less basis in reality... Nothing unreal exists, simple as that....

] You thought wrong, I can name an entire discipline of mystical knowledge that is nothing but horse feathers..... astrology You keep making a positive claim, mysticism and or mystics have real knowledge, back it up, or stop making the claim that mysticism has real knowledge, mysticism is nothing but people making baseless claims, people who lie to impress the yokals, in our modern society they end up as multilevel marketing schemers or religious fundamentalists, they make outrageous claims but never back them up, proof is always just ahead but like the gold at the end of the rainbow it is never quite with in your grasp, mysticism is bullshit, wrapped in a candy coating.... come on peterj haul out that philosophers stone, show me you can remote view the surface of Pluto, hell tell me what is sitting on top of my monitor and I'll be impressed but don't piss on me and tell me it's raining. mystics are fakers, ju ju men, they are all flash and no substance. Now it's your turn to back up your positive claim of mystic knowledge, and that would have to mean backing it up with someone or something that is not promoting the mystical view point, much like the point that you can't use the bible to prove the bible you can't use what someone claims as proof of mystical knowledge... I showed you mine.... now show me yours... You do realize that is a positive assertion, you say that humans can have cognition of the physical world with no sensory input? Like the existence of god that is impossible to disprove, it is on your head to provide evidence this can happen not demand proof it cannot....

Again I'll say "The claims of so called mystics have been tested, many times and none have been shown to have any merit what so ever. Nothing real lies outside science... This sounds suspiciously like the idea that the truths of creationism can only be known if you use biblical glasses, do i have to use mystical glasses to to see the truths of mysticism? I would suggest that a mystic should show he can acquire such knowledge before he can claim to do so... Horse feathers... totally false comparison You would first have to show mysticism is or has access to knowledge, so far no one has shown that to be true. As I have said before, mysticism has been tested over the centuries and it has produced nothing. Again, an example of such knowledge would be required. This is nonsensical, mysticism stands on it's own? It has no place to stand and nothing to stand on, mysticism has produced no results what so ever. Yes, and if frogs had wings they wouldn't bust their little slimy asses every time they jump... Religion has not added to man kinds storehouse of knowledge either, that's why we don't have faith healers in hospitals... or mystics for that matter... Sounds much like my spaceship.... Nothing will prevent mystics from showing you the truth other than their claims to that knowledge are totally false....

Race is not what we all seem to think it is. One of my fav youtubers on race.

I'm a bit disappointed, it seemed like a good speculation thread to me, could have generated some interesting posts, I honestly didn't realize he was positively asserting the idea was real...

I agree, while i don't know your grandma it's unlikely she was evil simply because she was religious, evil is an emergent property of religion and unlikely to be participated in voluntarily and knowingly as evil by the general membership of that religion. I've had to utilize religion based food banks before but I also give to those organizations, food banks especially, I feel do a good job of helping people, their religious nature would not keep me from helping them do this.

The default position is the logical choice in matters of no supporting evidence. Now here I think lies a disconnect, you seem (correct me if I am wrong) you seem to be assuming such claims have not been tested, when in reality they have been tested, over and over since even before scientific methodology was invented and so far all we get is a null result at best. Creationists often whine the mantra of "If you would only look, really investigate, the reality of creationism would become obvious. But this is a strawman, creationist writings have indeed been put to the test and they have failed in all cases. Mysticism, if it can be separated from religion and I do not think it really can, but mysticism is no better than religion and it's reveled truths, I have no doubt many people believe them with all their heart but such does not equal knowledge. This is another strawman, "science can not claim to know what space time is?" so the default position is that the mental masturbation of mysticism can know what space time is simply because it claims to know??? On top of that who claims science cannot know what space time is? Again i am going to compare this to creationism, they consistently make such claims about science, science cannot know what caused the universe to come into existence but reveled truth to some slap happy televangelist snorting meth off the tight ass of a male prostitute can, the default position is not mysticism for the win, it's "we do not know" I claim to be an alien in disguise, my cloaked space craft is orbit as i type, none of the physical laws of the universe prohibit me from being an alien and having a space ship in orbit, can you see how lacking in substance both claims are? Again, you would accept such an assertion with no evidence? My space craft can travel faster than light and I have used it to observe the dinosaurs and the extinction event that killed them all off.... unless you hold mystics to the same level of proof that you would hold me and my claims of a space ship in orbit they can claim anything and never have to back it up, never.... Again like the creationists you are indeed asking not only for something that has already been done many many times and your requests for respect of mysticism will be just as never ending as the creationist whine about science not being fair.... Are you suggesting that a "way" is valid simply because you believe it?

So in other words mysticism has no added no more or less than religion or any other supernatural superstition to our first world civilization. Mysticism is just a way to pretend to know something important and use that pretense to demand respect it does not deserve. I prefer to live in our science based first world civilization, if you want to go back to the times of charlatans and fakers getting adulation for nothing be my guest but think of how low our level of civilization was when we allowed such people real power and respect. They contribute nothing to humanities store house of knowledge, they contribute no technology, no medicine, no wisdom, nothing but baseless claims about things that cannot be tested and serve no purpose, no better than or different from snake oil salesmen, multi-level marketing, preachers, pastors, or ju ju men. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, mystics have the claims but no evidence, nothing positive at all. Mystics are no better than any other witch doctor, in fact that is exactly what they are, ju ju men desperately trying to remain relevant in a modern world by false promises, mysterious claims, and out right fabrications. Skeptic? One of you claimed I was not a skeptic because I could not allow for the absolute truth of the mystic, much like the revealed truth of religion, their horse feathers are still difficult to choke down with out a huge chaser of blind faith. Really really really believing something is not knowledge and neither is endless open ended speculations.

No problem, let me put on my tin foil hat so the aliens can't read my thoughts first....

Why is that wrong, we have visited the moon and sent robot probes to every planet but Pluto, why is this wrong?

I know I can't describe this mathematically but I'll try to do it with mere words. Black holes have or do in some theories a singularity at the center, I have given this some thought and what if this singularity is connected with the singularity of the beginning of the universe and all matter that falls into a black hole is shuffled back to the big bang as it happened. So the universe is indeed a steady state as matter is drawn into a black hole it is immediately shuffled back to the instant of the big bang. This would make black holes recyclers of the universe. The reason I thought of this is due to time having no meaning (so I've read) beyond the event horizon and the idea of black holes being connected to white holes but we do not see any white holes in our universe but what if the white hole all black holes are connected to is the ultimate white hole, The Big Bang...?

I would genuinely like to know why anyone would give more credence to mysticism than religion or superstition or the supernatural? I'll leave it that simple, why?

Yesterday, the media said I think that is the key to this, do you have a link to the original science paper?

I think I might have to agree, power does not corrupt and I think power does attract the corrupt. I honestly do not think that power or money would corrupt me.... at least not any more than i already am and there lies the rub. How corrupt are you or me? What behaviors would you draw that line at if you knew you couldn't be held accountable, do you know, can any of us really know what parts of our behaviors are restricted by our own inner moral compass and what behaviors are restrained due to lack of money/power to act out those behaviors. If I woke up in the morning with the power of god I can think of a short list of people who might just vanish... maybe... I do have an inner moral compass and if i stopped to think of the consequences of my actions and their effect on others I would probably not go to that list. But to be honest do to a lack of any real temptation I can't say if power would corrupt me any further than i am already corrupted.

There are none that were not translated to be such after the fact. In short there are no prophecies in any religious text that has predicted anything to happen that did indeed happen before it happened.. none...

I think it's quite apparent from this thread that religion=mysticism=supernatural=superstition, you can add as many zeros as you want but you will still get zero. Anything that occurs only in your mind and is not demonstrable to anyone else in any way is not knowledge. My little dinosaur story shows this quite well, no matter how real we think something is, no matter how smart we are or think we are knowledge requires evidence, I would think that absolute knowledge requires absolute evidence, appeals to someone who is famous for coughing up horse feathers does not make your argument any more believable. Mysticism can be dressed up in any way you want but it is still the dinosaur only you can see feel and touch, no one else can experience your dinosaur. All through this thread I see positive assertions of rmss but nothing to back up those assertions other than more horse feathers coughed up by rmss. At some point evidence is going to be needed to back up these positive assertions. I think it's also pertinent to point out the lack of knowledge produced by rmss, never has rmss produced tangible results, no cures, no technology, nothing but unsupportable claims about that which we do not know. If I get sick I'm going to a doctor, not a mystic, if I want to build a house I'll go to an architect not a mystic, if I want to build a space ship I'll go to scientists and engineers not a mystic in fact I do not know of any circumstance that would lead me to go to a mystic... well maybe for entertainment, Penn and Teller are fun to watch.... More to the point of this OT, I believe empirical evidence, i can only know what you tell me about what you believe and I have no idea what they believe....

Life is the poetry of the universe Love is the poetry of life.

Little yellow triangle at the left hand bottom of the screen.... I don't "know" there are no absolute truths, i am simply going to the default stance in the total lack of evidence. It's the lack of a belief in god or gods, nothing more or less. i am always willing to change my stance in the face of empirical evidence, you have not provided anything even close to evidence That is what you appear to be asserting. I go with the evidence, if some one were to tell me that I would require positive evidence of his assertion. Both god and mysticism lack evidence of their reality You can state you are anything you want. So we won't let you change the rules to your benefit so you'll take you ball and go home.

I think we should stop financial speculating, the buying up of something to try and drive up the price or in the hope the price will go up is wrong. Buying influence in our government is wrong, or possibly it should be wrong to be able to do so, both. Make religion report it's income and tax it. For once and all separate religion from government. Pursue space exploration the same way we pursue weapons superiority. Pursue alternative energy, oil should be an industrial feedstock not the source of the worlds energy. All industry, banks, farms, power companies, manufacturing, anything financial not covered by banks, should be regulated...

While I think eugenics is probably a bad idea if for no other reason than humans aren't wise enough to make such decisions for the most part at least. About 50,000 years ago we were genetically purged some say we could have been reduced to a population of less than a few thousand people, those few survived some natural disaster, a super volcano i think, there also seems to be a rise in art at about the same time and weapons started being more and more complex but the 'explosion was around 50,000 years ago when a super volcano blew up and wiped out much of the humans of the time. Creativity could have been the trait that helped those few survive but it also resulted in a genetic bottleneck we still see today, humans are not as diverse genetically as chimps for instance. Not hard to see those few of our African forefathers, the ones who had better skills of some sort and creativity does seem to jump around that time as well. There is also some evidence of flowering of human creativity in some earlier humans but they didn't widely catch on until that super volcano. Oh oh oh maybe the nuclear war will create a race of supermen with mental powers, no really, this disaster did seem to shape human evolution or at least culture to a significant extent.

Are you serious? If not you got me.... While I acknowledge that religion does good the percentage of money that religion gives to the poor in some way or another is small compared to the amount of money that goes into mega churches, lavish life styles of the clergy not to mention the money that goes into promoting the church it's self, have to keep filling those pews and talking non believers into thinking they are going to burn in hell... now I'm baiting you a little on this, religion helps people deal with life, there is no doubt that a great many people require belief in their lives but to me religions second biggest sin is how it sections off people, divides the population between us and them, them being anyone who believes a little different than you do, the disconnect gets bigger as the beliefs diverge in the past often degenerating into violence well before the divergence went to belief in another god. Now on the other hand there is what are called fundamentalist religions, often synonymous with Evangelicals but many others are involved. They are also parts of various religions known as Creationists, Creationists are always fundamentalists but fundamentalists are sometimes not Creationists. It should be noted that there are more non Christian Creationists than Christian Creationists. Fundamentalism, especially the Creationist kind, is religions biggest sin, they don't just insist there view on religion is Absolute Truth they want it taught in schools as well so everyone's children are indoctrinated into their religion. Of course in their eyes I am a satanic evolutionist to begin with and everything I say is lies lies lies..... If all religions promoted the ideals this short article asked for religion would be a much greater thing than it is now....