[dawgXdenta]

If you are one person who believes in the fairy god mother, twisting your ponytail counterclockwise twice every four hours to score a date, green thumb men in space suites who interview cockroaches


Then this thread is for you! We will post interesting superstition destroyers here.
Don't worry we are not party poopers however we do poop on occasion
(in the privacy of; well you get the point)

So here goes our own myth busters thread!!

[dawgXdenta]

Back when I was in first year I read an intriguing book written by a physicist dealing with superstitions,
He basically destroyed them and I as a religious man and a scientist I believe we should take it upon ourselves to remove useless superstitions because they are quite simply a waste of time and money.
Many people are robbed and whole industries steal millions from people based on well baseless unproven rituals and traditions

CHAPTER ONE:

PALM READING:

[dawgXdenta]

Palm reading otherwise known as chiromancy is basically telling someones future by reading the lines on the palm of their hands.

I'm going to keep it real simple, not enough studies have been done relating genes lines in the palms and character/behavior but studies have been done about these lines mostly relating to health disorders.Chiromancy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My advice: Don't waste your limited time and well earned money on something that has never been proven. Unless something has scientific and statistical(I did statistics as a minor) relevance most likely it cant/wont help you especially if we don't understand it.

[Judas]

My father had a palm reading.

and interestingly enough... it was beyond accurate (for predicting his future)..... he still has the recording...

quite intriguing...

[Zelig]

Originally Posted by Judas

My father had a palm reading.

and interestingly enough... it was beyond accurate (for predicting his future)..... he still has the recording...

quite intriguing...

Personal anecdotes are not relevant to establishing facts, which I assume is what this thread is concerned with.

[Cow_160483]

ya palm reading is a farce and so is talking to the dead,it was even on this south park episode.

[dawgXdenta]

Palm reading is an early attempt by ancient people at trying to understand themselves without the necessary tools and understanding about the laws of nature, hence the result : a myriad of knowledge that isn't knowledge.
It was very difficult for them without science to try to put things into perspective so they ended up making things up from observation and concluding erroneously at some of these observations.
There is a natural tendency in people to accept explanations... well... so long as the explanation is there its okay right?
People will believe in things just coz auntie Murathamy believed in it and so do all the priests and relatives.
The external perceptions become borrowed without question and are passed on from generation to generation.

I am not stating that no information about an individual can be attained from the palm. I am saying there is just no evidence to support its wild claims at reading the future,

here is what would be required to without question prove palm readings accuracy and credibility

a sizeable sample people guess 50000 people or more since we are estimating for planet earth)
taking into account
gender
race
genes
place of birth
family earnings
physical appearance
behavioral tendencies

and many other qualitative and quantitative statistics about an individuals
only then will we be able to discern if there is a connection between who we are the future and the lines in our hands.

[dawgXdenta]

chapter two

astrology

[Judas]

Originally Posted by Zelig

Personal anecdotes are not relevant to establishing facts, which I assume is what this thread is concerned with.

the facts are that there are an incredible number of things that we don't or may not ever understand scientifically.


Just because current science cannot explain such things doesn't mean that they don't have any scientific factual backing of any kind.

Want to take a stellar leap back to the flat earth conundrum?

[dawgXdenta]

Doesn't mean we have to blindly hang onto things without at least a little provable evidence.
Instead of just believing wouldn't it be better to concentrate on improving our science so that we can bridge those gaps.
We cant always use the absence of evidence statement to avoid not looking into things. And just following these various theories

Belief in something that is absent is not helpful as it cannot be proven, however building from what is present we will understand what is absent and why it is absent?

Currently this is not possible as people are being confused by differing theories that support either science or myth.
So people either go the scholarly route or the way of belief. A greater majority to the latter.

This means less people are available to help us find answers but they just build on traditional unproven knowledge and conclude whatever they like for themselves.

The sad thing is this means the confusion will persist from generation to generation even in this so called scientific age.

[Judas]

Oh i'm not suggesting blindly beleiving or anything of the sort... BUT i am suggesting that you shouldn't just pass it off like there is no chance in hell that it's possible.

Nothing is impossible...... presented with the most unlikely circumstances

[Zelig]

Originally Posted by Judas

the facts are that there are an incredible number of things that we don't or may not ever understand scientifically.

No, I'd would classify that as unequivocally wrong.

Anything that falls into the category of things we'll never be able to understand scientifically also fall into the category of things that don't actually exist.

edit: Actually, I'm being too flippant, there are problems which may be too complex to ever solve generally, but these mostly have to do with extremely complicated things which would theoretically require more computational power than could potentially exist in the universe to solve, or they have to do with human behaviour that can't be well modelled.

Originally Posted by Judas

Oh i'm not suggesting blindly beleiving or anything of the sort... BUT i am suggesting that you shouldn't just pass it off like there is no chance in hell that it's possible.

Nothing is impossible...... presented with the most unlikely circumstances

See, this is just wrong.

Our universe has a number of fundamental laws which disallow many things, such as faster than light travel, and enforce others, such as conservation of energy.

Similar to the possibility of me leaping over skyscrapers, today.

[Judas]

Or that we simply don't have a equation that's simple enough to understand "yet"

[Zelig]

Originally Posted by Judas

Or that we simply don't have a equation that's simple enough to understand "yet"

In reference to what?

[Neshi]

I have to agree with Judas here.

The way you state it, you would be one of the people who would have made fun of or denied the idea of a ball-formed Earth, in the day the flat earth was presumed true.
There was no scientific evidence to prove it, back then.

if we go even further back in the day, rain was produced from angels peeing down on us through holes in the sky...

If you just deny everything you either can't comprehend or don't have black-white evidence for or can't entirely be proven, you won't make any progress...

There is more in this universe then meets the eye.


edit: Getting my point across the way I thought it out in my head is pretty hard..

[Judas]

it's hard to explain when you try to think outside the box we've been religiously trained to remain inside....

[Tyrsonswood]

Science is just a stab at trying to figure out "what it's all about" just like myth, and belief were (are) but it's not perfect either. Humans (or aliens if they are out there) wil never figure out "what it's all about"....... that is the true impossiblity... knowing all.

Can't be done.

True science has shown us how many of our past beliefs were wrong, but it can't disprove all of them, in every circumstance, and it never will.

[Neshi]

exactly, and that means that things we are to belief are true now, can also be false...

[Judas]

Science is an attempt at quantifing everything and anything.... if it can't be explained in that sense.. therefore it claims that it is therefore not real or possible.

[Zelig]

I'm not saying that everything we currently hold to be true actually is.

However, the universe has certain fundamental laws, and we are never going to be able to alter those. At this point, we have a pretty good understanding of a fair number of these fundamental laws.

Sure, you can say that "we can't really know" that it's only "to the best of our knowledge", but that's how everything works, you don't jump off bridges because you're only going to get hurt "as far as you know".

Originally Posted by Judas

it's hard to explain when you try to think outside the box we've been religiously trained to remain inside....

This is a superflous argument, if you'd had any actual training in science, you'd know that that is exactly how you don't get trained.

Originally Posted by Neshi

The way you state it, you would be one of the people who would have made fun of or denied the idea of a ball-formed Earth, in the day the flat earth was presumed true.
There was no scientific evidence to prove it, back then.

if we go even further back in the day, rain was produced from angels peeing down on us through holes in the sky...

If you just deny everything you either can't comprehend or don't have black-white evidence for or can't entirely be proven, you won't make any progress...

No, you need some sort of system for classifying data, you can't just assume anything may or may not be true. That's not a system, you might as well never get out of bed in the morning if you actually believe that.

[Judas]

our fundemental laws are still tightly realized only within our own world... and while visual evidence suggests some of the basic rules apply outside of our own solar system.... it's mostly all theory from there on.

[Zelig]

Originally Posted by Judas

our fundemental laws are still tightly realized only within our own world... and while visual evidence suggests some of the basic rules apply outside of our own solar system.... it's mostly all theory from there on.

I suggest you read up on what a theory actually refers to.

[Judas]

I know what theory refers to.

But it's widely excersised and formulated as a near guaranteed set of rules which are quite frequently "bent" which leaves alot of room for improvement. Some of which simply don't work at all under some circumstances which leaves for alot of major questions. This even applies to the basic fundementals which have been sometimes ignored or outright agreed that they don't apply or work in some senarios.


I'm not saying they are wrong... i'm saying they are left far to wide open for interpretation and far to easily molded to suit the circumstances that occur.

It's kinda like having say a scope on a gun with a target ridicule.

looking through the scope.. and fireing and seeing how accurate the scope actually is about how good these theories work out.. some are more accurate then others, some need "compensation", others don't even work at all.

[dawgXdenta]

Originally Posted by Judas

Oh i'm not suggesting blindly beleiving or anything of the sort... BUT i am suggesting that you shouldn't just pass it off like there is no chance in hell that it's possible.

Nothing is impossible...... presented with the most unlikely circumstances

agreed, i'm only advocating proof and further investigation using science . people and that is many people tend to believe without investigating at all

[Cow_160483]

Just to add my two cents to the discussion ,consensus does not always occur even within the scientific community for example how a terminally ill person can all of a sudden be cured because of his belief in a higher power (God), even if there is no scientific explanation as of yet. I personally think its all the power of the brain since we only use a fraction of it ...... could say more but have to go......

[Cow_160483]

Sorry double post

[Judas]

most of everything pivots on choice