Category Archives:

Mysticism&Religion

Here Be Dragons!

2008-11-10

Or: Video of the week (or the month) that can’t wait until Sunday:

“Here Be Dragons – An Introduction to Critical Thinking”

A freee 40-minute video by Brian Dunning – watch it!

Most people fully accept paranormal and pseudoscientific claims without critique as they are promoted by the mass media. Here Be Dragons offers a toolbox for recognizing and understanding the dangers of pseudoscience, and appreciation for the reality-based benefits offered by real science.

Also available on the homepage in higher quality and even as DVD image.

(via GWUP-Blog)

Links of the Week (2008/45)

2008-11-09

In the Lion’s Cellar

2008-11-07

Löwenbräukeller I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to once visit a mysticism trade show like the one currently (until Sunday) open in Munich in the Löwenbräukeller (=“lion brew cellar”), and so set forth this afternoon – and found confirmed that phantasy is basically without limit…

Numerous exhibitors with booths from one to several square meters, coupled with over 100 lectures/workshops (though some are repeated over the weekend) – many of the lecturers are exhibitors, too, of course – should offer something for everybody to get rid of brain cells and money. Now I didn’t attend a lecture, because on the one hand I was afraid to control myself, and on the other hand they are mostly scheduled to last 40 minutes, and that was too long for me, especially since I had to visit the red light district, too.1

So I just eavesdrop on a few booths and have this or that “explained”, or just take a look around, from angel drawings to aura photography, chiromancy (in proper style in a little gypsy tent), cosmetics with living water (including free samples), energy pyramids®, fragrance oils, gemstones, incense sticks, meters of prophecies from a certain Bertha Dudde (free, thanks to donations), rainbow angels, reading the cards, shamanic diagnostics, singing bowls, soul bestsellers, witch accessories and zero-point-energy products from liquidation, to spiritual straightening – everything well-suited for spiritual drilling the customers, if you will.

Löwenbräukeller: Esoterik-Tage = mysticism days

Oh well, the Energy Pyramids® (always with a ® on the flyer) – a framework of gilded(?) brass(?) rods with a small pyramid upside-down inside a larger one, each with a glass floor. “The key to the 3rd millennium” – hey, thanks for unlocking, now that would have been bad in 2000’s new year’s eve if the doors had remained closed! To enhance the spiritual energies, “proven” with three “aura photos” after different times of application. Available in three different models/sizes (smallest is 18cm) for different goals at bargain prices from 400€ to 2300€. Now who won’t pull out the wallet right away!

And preferrably also order right away: A gilded bowl-like framework (called fountain) that’s advertized to complement the pyramid in an optimal way: 1800€, “plus crystal ball (from 300€)”. Super-bargain, really! The Medien-Markt (German) can pack up and go home! ;)

Then when walking through the isles, I nearly ran into a woman who was standing halfway on the isle behind a sitting customer, arms stretched out halfway, palms upwards about at shoulder height – several minutes without saying something or moving much. I don’t want to think about what might have happened had I disturbed the energetic orientation by jostling her, the energy might have annihilated the entire building!

A large gong was standing at one booth – I almost started to sing “Anyway the wind blows” and hit the gong2, but the concentrated powers of the sound mystics barely was able to keep me from doing it. :P

And of course there were large tables with ad flyers which I stocked up on, so I got things to write about for the next months… The program schedule for K-TV, the catholic TV station from Austria, was also available – shock, do mysticism and religion have something in common after all??3

So I’ll end today’s post with this greatly matching drawing from Plognark (via Bad Astronomy):
The stupid, it burns

  1. South of Munich’s central station, there’s an interesting mixture of sex shops/strip bars, gambling places – and computer shops which were my actual destination. [↩]
  2. that’s how “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen ends [↩]
  3. Yes. Quite a lot, actually. [↩]

“Extraterrestrially galactical” or rock-bottom gall?

2008-11-05

I Want To Believe

If you believe, the German TV station ProSieben is content with “Uri Geller live – Ufos & Aliens: The incredible TV experiment“ (about which, as I announced on Sunday, I will report here), you’re mistaken, because Nina Hagen, only by her own description “half human, half angel” and already a guest in Uri’s transgalactical telepathy take-in show, gets a timeslot for a “documentary” afterwards (all quotes my translations):

”Nina Hagen’s ufo hunt – Searching aliens in Roswell”, on Saturday, November 15, 2008, at 22.30 on ProSieben (Germany) (assuming the spoonbender and his aliens finish on time).

In her baggage: A small sunshade, a peace banner and a big load of curiosity.

And an even bigger load of prejudice. Were she really curious, she’d also be interested in the counter-arguments – but that’d be nothing to write home about for the target audience, of course.

Was there really an alien crash in 1947? Did the US Air Force really possess an “unknown flying object”? And was all that covered up by the government afterwards?

The skeptical–sensible reply, of course, is 3x no. But who are the people the shrill Berliner is asking?

Answers to her questions are given by nuclear physicists, ufo authors, visitors of the current ufo festival, and a man who claims he’s half man, half alien.

What qualifies a nuclear physicist for an alien answer? That he, Stanton Friedman, wrote a book about it and…

… frankly admits:

“I’m jealous of Nina, because I never met a ufo. For 50 years I’m examining evidence for flying saucers. Because there is overwhelming evidence that Earth is being visited by extraterrestrial spaceships.”

Nina Hagen “Evidence”? I doubt that. “Evidence” only for those who desperately want to believe and almost obsessively ignore real evidence and critical, more plausible explanations. Which surely also applies to the other people mentioned above who were asked, including the “documentary” author herself who says about her own “ufo encounter”:

“Back then I was living in Malibu when I saw a ufo in the middle of the night. I was totally flashed.

Before or after?

Beautiful lights were beaming at me, I had not the slightest feat, magnificent energy overwhelmed me. Three beings were standing in the ufo, but none of them was moving. It was an overwhelming experience.”

Other people call things like that either (drug) intoxication – now I don’t want to allege something illegal here, but from an impartial point of view, you couldn’t rule it out –, dream or hypnagogic/hypnopompic halluzinations. Quote from SkepDic:

These states may be associated with sleep paralysis or other forms of sleep disturbances, including mild brain seizures. Sleep paralysis occurs in the hypnagogic state or the hypnopompic state. The description abductees give of their experience–being unable to move or speak, feeling some sort of presence, feeling fear and an inability to cry out–is a list of the symptoms of sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is thought by some to account for not only many alien abduction delusions, but also other delusions involving paranormal or supernatural experiences.

So what will be the essence of this show? Surely not an objective documentary. In the style of Nina’s comment on the half-man-half-alien guy, I’d say: The viewer is absolutely manipulated. Totally nasty story.

Link tips:

Hagen photo © Tomasz Sienicki / Wikipedia

Uri Geller live, three “Aliens” and no UFOs

2008-11-02

Dies ist nur der Vorbericht zur Sendung.
» Zum Live-Bericht hier klicken!

This is just the preliminary report for the show.
» To go to the live report, click here!

At least that’s what I expect from the show “Uri Geller live – Ufos & Aliens: The incredible TV experiment” on Saturday Nov 15, 2008 at 20:15 on ProSieben (Germany). For the guests can be labeled “aliens” in a way:

  • mysticism eccentric and (as ProSieben calls her) “world star” Nina Hagen – who really can be called “not of this world”;
  • Ancient astronaut dreamer and “Swiss success author” Erich von Däniken – in his “theories” also floating a little too high above reality (and also, being Swiss, an alien in Germany);
  • and “The Next Uri Geller” winner Vincent Raven – with his really alien performances.

Well then, as I did for the magic shows with Geller’s gibberish called “The Next Uri Geller” I will have a look at this concoction (and hopefully survive it) and report live or at least shortly after the end of the show, maybe with an intermediate update or two. (Though the English version will probably take a little more time.)

ProSieben writes about this show (all quotes my translations):

Uri Geller doesn’t doubt the existence of extraterrestrials:
“All my life I believed in ufos and aliens. Everyone should look up to the sky in a cloudless night and ask himself: Is it really possible that we’re alone? I think nobody can tell.”

The chief spoon bender, however, forgets to distinguish between life somewhere in space and actual visits here on earth – he probably thinks that everything is “just around the corner” and can be reached easily.

See also: » Proof and faith issues and the strange thoughts of Uri Geller.

In a unique experiment, he wants to try to establish contact

That’d better be null-ique – certainly it won’t be an experiment that deserves this name, but instead the next of Geller’s dumbing of the masses. With an audience in the millions. Where “The Next Uri Geller” still had the somewhat entertaining magic tricks from the contestants, this show can only become some kind of “freak show”…

Together with the audience, the world-famous mystifier will send messages over a radio telescope into space. What will be the replies?

None. At any rate, not in the next few years. Anything else can only be tricks. The TV DIGITAL magazine writes about this teensy-weensy problem (emphasis mine, translation too):

In 1974, the astrophysicist Frank Drake in Arecibo sent a message towards the star cluster M 13. However it will only arrive there in 20000 lightyears[sic!]. Since Uri Geller doesn’t want to wait that long, he will rely not only on radio waves in the show, but also other means: “I need the viewers’ assistance”, the mentalist living in England says. “With the collective power of our thoughts, we will be able to establish contact. This has never been tried before.”

Never tried before? Geller indeed came up with a new trick after all those years?? A miracle! But probably all that’s new is that it’s pretended aliens instead of people who are the pretended telepathy transceivers.

But no matter how they will stage that, I had received the true greetings from the aliens back in September – thanks to spacetime loops. ;)

Let’s have Erich von Däniken give the last word (from an interview in the TV DIGITAL):

You believe, like Uri Geller, that aliens exist. When will we be able to meet the aliens?
“The Maya in Central America have given a date for the return of their gods, i.e. the extraterrestrials. If you believe in this calendar, then it’s December 21, 2012. But you have to convert their date to our calendar. A very insecure thing.”
What a luck for you, for you could be nailed down to it otherwise, couldn’t you?
“Yes, and then everybody says: Neener-neener! [Ätschbätsch!]”

Which is also what all these guys can say whenever they find more people who believe their balderdash…

This is just the preliminary report for the show.
» To go to the live report, click here!

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