bil

Anyone see that prog by Derren Brown on Faith healing? Nicely exposing the tricks of the trade used by so called healers to delude the weak and the stupid.

I couldn't for the life of me decide which was worse, that people would be so foolish, or that the 'healers' would be so evil as to prey on them.

jimenato

We seem to be reverting to the dark ages. People are starting to believe in all sorts of implausible crap. The belief that some people have now in reflexology, homeopathy and reiki is akin to the ancient beliefs in voodoo, witchcraft and the like.

bil

There was one sorry story there. A young girl went to a faith healer and was told that she needed to make a 'prayer donation ' of a thousand dollars to be healed of her MS.

(First clue, - we are apparantly dealing with a god so venal that he charges for this....)

She saved, borrowed some from her grandmother and was 'healed'.

When she got no better, and the disease was getting worse, she went back to the faith healer, and he told her that the reason she wasn't getting better was that she didn't have enough faith, and was a sinner.

She went home in despair, poured petrol over herself and lit a match.

HBG

Faith healing? The whole world believes in it, and there's no need to quote the obvious idiocies.

You can pay a fortune for a highly qualified physician to tell you that positive thinking will cure all your ills, or you can read book on Yoga from the local library that will give you the same advice for free.

Faith healing works, if you crawl along to your doctor with all sorts of complaints, mostly in the mind, he will subscribe some silly pills which won't cure you; faith healing is the answer.

Positive thinking, along a single malt, is the answer.

bil

Doesn't it depress you tho that so few people are capable of applying a bit of critical reasoning?

marqueemoon

Sadly, anti-scientific industries and thoughts are booming! Crystals, homeopathy, raiki, creationism, kabala, etc etc etc and many millions of people are being duped, and some are not only losing their money.

Great list of dubious practises here: http://www.quackwatch.com/

bil

My old headmaster used to tell the whole scool to learn some science at least. He used to say that if you had basic science, conmen find it harder to fool you.

A lot of people don't like science because you have to learn a lot of stuff, and work at it.

Compare that to the classic pap about crystals. 'It's such a pretty blue. That means it will cure cancer.'

In one TV prog, there was one daft bitch with a collection of crystals, and she pointed out one that 'kept the room warm'.

Sad, deeply sad.

Rotor

A high percentage of the population are so detached from reality and believe in all sorts of crap because its more comforting initialy , when reality hits they just move on to next BS craze.

I`d pay good money for some of those ,I could save a fortune on logs and butano

bil

That's another thing. People lose faith with one religion or fad, and then they move onto the next con man who's happy to fleece them.

Being a shaman, priest, con man, call it what you will is a nice easy job with suckers keeping you in a life of comfort.

As for having a crystal like that to keep the house warm. It'd make you rich or dead, because the only thing that warms up like that is hard radiation.

So, wearing your best lead suit, you run a geiger counter over it, and if it is warm and not registering on the counter either you have a nobel Prize in the offing, or else the geiger is knackered.

If tho as I suspect, the geiger went off the scale, run, don't walk to the exit.

There were a bunch of Russian hunters out in the wilderness who came across some dumped scrap, and they noticed that the snow was melted all around one item. Sure enough it was warm to the touch, so they dragged it back to the campsite and slept with their backs against it to keep warm.

Before long the hunting trip was cut short by fatal levels of radiation poisoning (it was part of a body scanner they found with a serious radiation source).

DaveyD

Sadly, it seems that the majority of these charlatans move to Spain to retire >> http://www.tumbit.com/blogs/886-why-...-to-spain.html

marqueemoon

What is even more ridiculous is that those taken in by all these absurd claims inflict their gullibility on their pets! You can even visit a pet medium down here! Or take your dog to a reiki session.

jackytoo

So true, I have heard everything in marbella. Remember the patches on the feet to detoxify your body. Daftest was the stop smoking one where they had smokers spitting in a beaker then wiring it up to a computer which then took all your addiciton away. I know one silly bugger who paid for a second treatment because it didn't work the first time...she told him some people were super resistant

I agree with Bil, don't know wether to feel sorry for them for being conned or not!

bil

Yeah. There are moments when I think to myself, 'If god didn't want them shorn, he wouldn't have made them sheep.'

JLFS

Another con.......

A midget medium who was being tired for fraud has escaped from custody.

Police have put out a notice.

There is a small medium at large.



Yes I know it is an old joke, but I like it and I am sort of fissed as a part.......

HBG

It's very difficult to go through life without believing in something. I talked to a plant in my garden and it is now two metres high. I talk to a higher power that can give me an answer to anything, it might just be common sense, but I don't care what it is, it serves a purpose.

Crossing the border from one country to a certain other country, I always try and kneel to the ground if there's no one looking (I'm not going to admit to kissing the ground now, am I?). Not on this forum anyway.

I got hypnotised to stop smoking once, it lasted for three years. I stopped again when I got a sore throat.

I'm totally unsure about the subject of religion, but fail to see how different people can have different Gods, and if there was only one God I might go to church more often.

I also believe that my little dog can smell bad people, he's never been wrong.