[m1n1]

This weekend I spoke with someone who (together with two others) prayed for a woman whose right arm was visibly shorter than her left (around 5 inches) -- so much so that she always had to roll up her right sleeve because otherwise it'd be too long.

The right arm was shorter because she broke it as a child and it healed in a way that interfered with proper growth.

After the prayer the arms were the same length. So no need for x-ray arguments or any concern about any single person being susceptible or gullible since this was a group of 4 individuals.

They knew the "patient" beforehand, and they continued to interact over the next several weeks. She was from Taiwan. Her chosen English nickname was Diane. And this occurred in London.

The anti supernatural supposition is not a moving of the goalposts. It is actually the removal of goalposts. You can't score a field goal if the goalposts are denied entirely.

[scotty79]

> You can't score a field goal if the goalposts are denied entirely.

I'm sorry, but reality doesn't owe you a win in a game you made up.

> The anti supernatural supposition is not a moving of the goalposts. It is actually the removal of goalposts.

I'm sorry, but I'm not in this business. But if you can find a person that can demonstrate a miracle you can take them to James Randi foundation, demonstrate a miracle, recieve 1 mln dollars and split it between yourselves. Maybe it's not a lot of money but providing humanity with the first actual evidence of supernatural in history is reward in itself. You can try score your goals there.

> After the prayer the arms were the same length. So no need for x-ray arguments or any concern about any single person being susceptible or gullible since this was a group of 4 individuals.

I am sorry, but you haven't spoken to 4 people, you spoke to 1 who could (and probably did) make up the other 3 as well as the event itself.

Sometimes you meet honest person that participated in the event staged by dishonest, but I don't suspect it's the case this time since the person you spoken to claims he knew the woman beforehand, unless it was just for a short period that was part of the setup.

You have to pay more attention to your input channels.

You have the same symptoms as the person I knew. Tendency to seriously underestimate propensity of people to lie, cheat and believe in lies. It's as if you can't imagine why a person would lie or cheat you assume that what they say is accurate description of their accurate perceptions.

If you are really about truth seeking there's a ton of materials about how the faith healers do what they do. Maybe you'll see some examples of what you experienced or heard about, for example here:

https://youtu.be/vxR5-2LginE?si=ZF4mbFlfWVsDpaRZ

Please watch the whole thing and read top comments under the video. I know it's gonna be hard but please do try.

[m1n1]

I watched the video. My experience didn't match any of the 4 methods shown. Not sure why he didn't include the 5th "and possibly 6th" ways that he thought of in the video.

Again, I felt my leg moving against my pants while seated _fully_ on the ground and the guy only had his hands lightly touching my shins. I felt the legs moving against the pants against the floor where he couldn't have affected it.

The video's 4 methods show you have to hold both feet/ankles in order to pull off the trick.

Are you an athiest - and believe that existence is limited only to energy and matter?

[scotty79]

I haven't even watched the video, that's how little I'm interested in faith healing. None of the methods shown fitted your experience perfectly, but you can see it's a very common trick, performed under various conditions with willing or unwilling participants for myriad of reasons, some of which might be as plain as just showing off. You can recognize some elements of the trick like sitting on the floor and touching legs. You were extremely receptive to the process and your brain filled a lot of gaps in what was happening with perceptions favorable to the performer. So you have two options how to explain your expeirience. Either you experienced common trick, done in a bit unusual way (there are at least 6 flavors, why not 7?) or an actual real world miracle was performed, on you, by a random human, out of 8 billion who all are as plain as dirt. What's more likely?

Do you watch a lot of magic shows? It can give you perspective of how easy brain is to fool.

> Are you an athiest - and believe that existence is limited only to energy and matter?

I'm as atheistic as they come. I don't believe anything that scientific consensus built on settled peer reviewed research doesn't force me to believe. Personal anecdotes, even my own, have almost no influence on my working model of the world because I know, both from research and repeated experience how terrible human memeory and perception is, how easy it is to make a mistake, to misinterpret something, to fool yourself, to be wrong, to be fooled. I also hate philosophers, including religious ones of course, because I believe they asking useless, hopeless questions and then think up some fragile reasoning about it which is usually a mixture of obvious and wrong. Nature of existence is one of such useless questions.

[m1n1]

> I haven't even watched the video

_Every_ trick in the video relied on the mark sitting in a chair with the illusionist holding their legs _off_ the ground for manipulation.

I was seated completely on the ground, wearing jeans. The only person touching me was the guy and only on my right shin and only with fingers held straight.

Imagine this happened to you, and please explain how he would be able to trick you into feeling your leg move against the jeans which are held in place against the ground, for several seconds, while you are examining the sensation carefully and watching your leg grow longer.

I don't think you can come up with a trick recipe for that.

Anyways my faith existed before this and would exist if it never happened.

  > Nature of existence is one of such useless questions.

Is that because science cannot answer such questions?

Or because it doesn't matter to you what existence really is?

I want to know whether you think matter and energy cover all of existence. Or is there anything outside that Venn diagram.

[scotty79]

Ok, so you acknowledge that thousands of people perform this trick on thousands of people all the time and it's all trick, but yours was somehow uniquely real because it was the similar thing just done on the floor?

It's as if somebody knew no Nigerian princes are sending emails to shower you with money, but your experience is real because the message arrived on WhatsApp and was uncannily personal and honest.

> Imagine this happened to you, and please explain how he would be able to trick you into feeling your leg move against the jeans which are held in place against the ground, for several seconds, while you are examining the sensation carefully and watching your leg grow longer.

My brain is perfectly capable of tricking me into feeling that an insect crawls on my skin, especially in the area that is abundant with insects, like on a forest walk. But when I reach to check there's no insect there. How's that not a miracle of vanishing insects?

You were in context where your brain expected faith healing, miracles and elation. So that's what your brain delivered. The lead role in every scam is played by the victim.

How can you trust your own perceptions so much? Doesn't even your own religion warn you about this? Why instead of trusting your God and only your God you trust some random dude? Just because he self-appointedly associates himself with your God?

> I don't think you can come up with a trick recipe for that.

I can't because I never was a proper "magic" nerd. Maybe visit some tents. You'll see that creativity of people when it comes to tricks is not far from endless.

Alternatively contact people who debunk that kind of stuff. They might offer some ideas.

> Anyways my faith existed before this and would exist if it never happened.

I absolutely believe that because I think deepness of your faith comes from peculiarities of your brain's anatomy and biology. Regardless of when and where you'd been born your brain would adopt local supernatural narrative because it wouldn't be able to reject it. What's more I think it's physically impossible for you to become atheist. There's simply too little time of your life left (unless somehow medicine makes a great progress when it comes to senescence) to try to develop that part of your brain if that's even possible. Similarly I probably wouldn't be able to train myself out of ADHD or schizoid personality, or lower my intelligence, or lower my atheism (without damaging my brain wholesale of course).

> > Nature of existence is one of such useless questions. > Is that because science cannot answer such questions?

Can't answer then yet. Mostly because of that. Also because any imaginable answer has no utility because our tech level is that low. It's as if caveman trying to rub two sticks together somehow got answer to Fermat's last theorem.

There were many questions in the past that science couldn't answer that the religion or philosophy provided "answers" for. Then our tech level rose and science firmly settled them. Every question that we ever managed to properly answer turned out to be technical.

Science is hinting at the nature of existence. So far it duly notes that there's no indication that our existence is anything else than just being, with no particular reason, intent or purpose. It's not an answer, just a hint for now, but based on the only mechanism for acquiring actual knowledge that human race found out so far.

> I want to know whether you think matter and energy cover all of existence.

Obviously. Especially if we narrow down our interests to the part of existence that's conceivably accessible to us in any way in, let's say, next billion years.

> Or is there anything outside that Venn diagram.

Fun fact, the part outside is also the part of Venn diagram. It just contains no objects of interest.

[m1n1]

The charge is Stranger tricked me. The Prosecutor (you) repeatedly rely on an unproven universal negative claim that miracles never happen, a claim that would require watching all of history and show every event has a natural physical explanation.

Defense submitted evidence which the prosecution refuses to consider closely because of the universal negative (unproven) claim.

Prosecution submitted evidence (youtube video) which the defense examined (demonstrating better involvement in the case than the prosecution) and found to be irrelevant: _all_ tricks required holding the mark's ankles/feet off the ground and required dexterity. Stranger's fingers were straight and I was on the ground.

It's as if Stranger was charged with murder using a blade and Prosecution submitted examples involving only firearms! What!

Prosecution refers to the prevalence of many other tricksters. But the defense points out simply the guilt of others implies nothing about the guilt or innocence of the Stranger.

Prosecution argues the mind can trick itself into feeling sensations that are easily checked and verified as imagined. But I ___did___ check by sight and touch over several seconds (not to mention X-ray).

So prosecution's argument contradicts itself --giving himself the benefit of the doubt when dispelling the sensation of an imaginary bug on his skin, but ___denying___ the same benefit to the defense without reason. This argument is tossed out of court with prejudice.

Prosecution refuses to put in the work of building a theory of the case: ___what___ is the recipe for tricking someone who is wearing jeans, seated fully on the ground, using only your fingers fully extended (no pinching of fabric, moving the mark's body in any way disallowed) ... Followed by an X-ray that shows the result (and proceeded by an X-ray that shows the contrary)?

Prosecution has high IQ but wants the defense to do his job. What? Try to figure out a recipe. Or __you__ go do the prosecution's research and see if they can explain it. You said watching the video would be hard but I did it. Now it's your turn.

By the way, if nothing exists outside matter and energy then you are deeply at odds with reality: your reactions to any violation of human dignity are all just chemicals bouncing around. There's no such real thing as human dignity either. Squashing a tomato or a human -- it's just a rearrangement of matter and energy.