That’s it? Well, paint my face red…that sure puts Mother Theresa to shame. :rolleyes:
Calling All Aura Readers (Real or Whooshers -Yes, you **Polemic **, or Der, or QED or anyone who wants to try to give this a shot :D)
Can you guys read my aura and then PM your thoughts to me?
Just PM your reading on what my aura is to me, and whatever methods you may have used to determine this (ie: if you just read my old posts to guess, or you used some logical trick, or cold-read me, or if you did straight up read my aura). I will try my best not to shield- as I’m not an overconfident person, and so hopefully that won’t be a factor.
Then I’ll just then post up all the results I received via PM on here simultaneously, and we can compare and contrast and see if there’s anything nifty to discern!
Sound like a good idea?
Btw: I fully believe you **KGS **that you experience some synesthesia-sorts of visual colors or something, and that’s always fascinated me, but that’s all I can really believe at this point.
So I hope you and some other dopers take up this offer, as it sounds like fun, and what’s the harm that could come from it, no?
Good deal?
If you read Mother Theresa’s aura you’d know she wasn’t all that.
Even ignoring the completely arbitrary assumptions that pretty much make a mockery of mathematical analysis, you can’t multiply a rate by a population size to get a probability, though it is a common error. Consider a die toss: there’s a 1/6 rate of landing 4, but it is not true that a population of 6 tosses will have a 100% chance of containing a 4, because there’s no guarantee that that probability will exactly hold in every sample (indeed, it’s mathematically impossible if you consider a sample size that’s not a multiple of 6). To arrive at the probability that a population of 2000 people contains at least one suicide, it’s easier to consider the opposite: the probability that each one of those 2000 people is a nonsuicide, multiplied together, which would be ( 1 - (10.8/100000) ) ^ 2000, or about an 80.6% chance of all nonsuicides; thus the chance of at least one suicide is 19.4%. And, similarly, the chance of no 4s in six die tosses is ( 1 - (1/6) )^6 = 33.4%, or 66.6% chance of at least one 4.
Not that any of this is really particularly germane to the current discussion, due to the aforementioned massive assumptions. Just doing my part to fight ignorance. 
Why don’t you try proving the thing I asked you to prove? You know, the thing I quoted? Since you completely missed it last time, I’ll quote it again:
So prove it. Prove that Randi is a sadist. Oh and just to let you know ahead of time, things like ‘I can see it but no one else can’ isn’t going to fly. You made a big statement, not a conjecture, not a guess. So here’s your chance, show us you’re not completely and totally full of crap.
The fact that you don’t know means you know nothing about him. Randi has spent a lot of his life exposing fraud and scam masquerading as psychics & healers. He has helped people see the truth, and not waste money on those preying on the weak and vulnerable.
How about the work he’s done exposing faith healing scammer Peter Popov? Or complete nutball Uri Gellar? I could give examples all night. How about his own words?
I’ll bet you one hundred dollars I can get you a test with Randi in which he permits you to read something typed by the person whose aura you will claim to read. You’ve said that is sufficient.
If you can get something typed by them, such as through a monitor, what is it you claim you can do?
In fact, I’LL give you a thousand dollars if you can pass an independently judged test, and I will say right now the test will permit you to see something typed, in real time, by the subjects whose auras you can read - we’ll have them type something like “Hello, my name is Firstname Lastname.” If that is sufficient, what is your claim with regards to your abiliites?
Stop the thread, I want to get off.
On second thought, scratch that. I’m having too much fun asking questions.
KGS, I believe you mentioned somewhere that souls can be eaten by other spiritual beings? What happens to these devoured souls? Are they annihilated? I ask this because I am a big Bleach fan. It’s an anime, and in it is a concept that’s somewhat similar to this. I don’t really have a point, more like I’m just curious.
What’s there to prove? It’s patently evident to anyone who watched his TV show and understand how “psychic” abilities actually work. (Not to mention traditional Eastern philosophies, which is where chakras and auras come from.) Naturally, his “cult” ignores his sadism, because they are all brainwashed and frankly, they are a lot like him. That’s why they like him.
People who are just trying to make a living. Look – do you even understand WHY psychics & fortune tellers still exist, and why they’re so successful? Because people WANT to believe in this stuff! People WANT to believe that there’s some underlying order in what appears to be a random, chaotic universe. That’s why ALL religions exist, and the people who believe them don’t mind paying a few bucks for someone to tell them exactly what they want to here. People will always believe the comfortable lie over the hard, cold truth – it’s part of being human, not ignorant.
Besides, at least New Agers aren’t demanding they teach meditation & chakra healings in school…even though they should. Meditation alone could cut way down on childhood obesity and issues like ADHD.
Pretty much, but it’s more akin to leeches sucking your blood dry while administering an anesthetic which renders the devouring process painless and even sort of pleasant. Sometimes the mind & body persist after the soul is sucked dry – this would apply to the most vicious psychopaths & serial killers, the ones with that blank-eyed stare who seem like they’ll rip the throat out of a cat if it sneezed on them. The lights are on, but nobody’s home.
That said, it is not our job to judge the condition of another human’s soul. NO human being can do that – however, there is no moral law against preaching dire warnings. 
Yeah, and a lot of people find it comforting to believe that their problems are all the fault of some outside group. They WANT to believe that stuff. It’s part of being human, not racist/anti-Semetic/homophobic/etc.
I realize this is a very difficult concept for you - but relying on evidence to buttress claims instead of fantasy and wishful thinking does not comprise a cult.
The pretense among woo-meisters and fuzzy thinkers that science and rational thought are a “cult” or “religion” is no doubt comforting to them, as well as a lame attempt at insulting the opposition. It’s used most prominently by creationists, who liken evolution to a cult of “Darwinism”, ignoring the fact that evolutionary theory and the huge amount of evidence supporting it have gone way beyond Darwin.
Consider this your nightly scheduled dose of cold, hard truth. 
If I may plagiarize and modify a quote by Samuel Clemens:
“A couple of years ago I thought Der Trihs was an idiot. I can’t believe how much I’ve learned in two years.”
Well done DT.
Taking advantage of the grief of people in pain. You defend those people, who are actively deceiving people out of greed, but denigrate James Randi, who is trying to protect people from scam artists? Wow. You have absolutely no perspective and will make any excuse for those who agree with you, even if they are liars, criminals, and con men, but attack anyone who disagrees with you, accusing them of the most heinous motivations. I felt sorry for you a few pages ago, but now I’m back to thinking you’re just a hypocritical asshole who’s not worth talking to. I repeat: do unto others. But I don’t think you’re capable of anything so noble.
The only thing patently evident here is you know squat about Randi. You watched a few TV shows, big deal. And did you bother to read the sentence where I asked for evidence? ‘Well its obvious’ is not evidence. If it’s so obvious, show us. Give us one clip, anything. Did you even bother to read the links? Are you even going to try?
People who make a living exploiting their fellow man. There’s a reason many countries are passing laws calling for truth in advertising. Or just plain outlawing frauds like psychics.
Holy shit, you just fucking said it. Look I’ll quote it again:
People who make a living taking money in exchange for lies are thieves. Psychics make money using ‘the comfortable lie’, you said it, and so they are thieves. So has this whole thing been just a joke or something? I mean, you knew all along that this psychic stuff was just bullshit right? The comfortable lie? Right?
Hey look at that, another opportunity for you! You can provide evidence for this claim and be full of crap. You disappointed us before, but maybe this time you won’t just be pulling things out of your ass and posting them.
WHAT greed??? Okay, people like Sylvia Browne & John Edward I can understand, but they are selfish celebrities and only represent 1% of the psychic industry. Most “psychics” just eek out a living, working from small shops or booths on Venice Beach. They don’t knock on people’s doors and try to convert you, like Jehovah’s Witnesses. They don’t fund bullshit anti-gay initiatives, like the Mormons. They don’t molest children, invade Islamic nations, threaten to torture scientists like Galileo, burn witches at the stake…well, I could go on and on forever about the Catholic Church.
My point is, if you wanna hunt down “scam artists”, there are a lot more worthy targets. Yeah, it’s tough to battle monotheistic religions, since monotheism has become status quo the world 'round. But that’s exactly what makes James Randi a slimy, spineless coward – he picks easy targets, and he doesn’t care about the feelings of his so-called test subjects – indeed, he mocks and publicly humiliates them. He probably doesn’t care about the feelings of his fans, either, although he’s clearly aggrandized by them.
You don’t have to make piles of money to be greedy, just exploitative, which they are. I’m not OK with vulnerable people being exploited. Seems that you are. Nice.
Randi doesn’t pick targets. THEY approach HIM because they are greedy, and he proves that they are liars and con artists. They are trying to make a million dollars off him, and he wants them to earn it. If they can’t, they don’t get it. There’s no targeting, no victimizing, and these people offer themselves freely for this. Stop demonizing James Randi. He’s trying to help people by exposing frauds, unlike the fake faith healers and communicators with the dead, who are deceiving innocent people for the sake of their own enrichment.
Exploitation is the basis of capitalism, especially in the entertainment industry. That’s what people pay money for – entertainment. Indeed, even obvious vultures like Miss Cleo have advertisements containing the banner, “FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY.” Or did you blink and miss that part?
Hey, I’m not saying his subjects are totally innocent here. Yes, they are ignorant and blinded by the promise of easy money. But that’s just human nature – and that’s how the gullible get tricked. I don’t see any psychic waving $1M in anyone’s face…do you?
No, they just wave the possibility of talking with your long dead mother, to reconcile with her at last… They are cruel, sick people, who exploit people’s ignorance and hopes. They are worse than thieves.
Oh, but it’s OK according to you if these people are parted from their money by these so-called psychics… because of the fine print saying its “for entertainment purposes only”. That makes it OK. I’m sure the victims are “entertained”.
::enters thread, considering coming to the defense of KGS::
::doesn’t::