Spiritual Manifestations Of The Gloorraayyy!

[PK!]

I really want to be an athiest, however i find the leap from agnostism to athiesm more difficult then christian to agnostic has been. This is mostly due to the seemingly unexplainable phenomena in our world. This may seem like a rant but i just can't seem to wrap my head around the theory that all these so called "experiences" are bogus. I have very honest friends who have experienced gold dust(yeah you guessed it, Toronto blessing FTW!), oil on hands, and other so called manifestations of the spirit. These so-called manifestations have taken place around hundrers of others who have witnessed this first hand. Are we suppose to believe all these people are lying? How the hell do you debunk shit with physical "evidence"? There are videos of this shit online for fuck sake!

[Mutate]

I have the same worries. I dont go to Pente services but my parents have seen the gold dust and the like - I trust them not to lie, if maybe not be un-gullible.

[florduh]

Are there any video links?

[Shyone]

I really want to be an athiest, however i find the leap from agnostism to athiesm more difficult then christian to agnostic has been. This is mostly due to the seemingly unexplainable phenomena in our world. This may seem like a rant but i just can't seem to wrap my head around the theory that all these so called "experiences" are bogus. I have very honest friends who have experienced gold dust(yeah you guessed it, Toronto blessing FTW!), oil on hands, and other so called manifestations of the spirit. These so-called manifestations have taken place around hundrers of others who have witnessed this first hand. Are we suppose to believe all these people are lying? How the hell do you debunk shit with physical "evidence"? There are videos of this shit online for fuck sake!

Skepticism is appropriate when things happen that are claimed to have "unexplainable" causes that are "explained" by the supernatural.

 

"Unexplainable" is a term I rarely use - if ever. I assume that everything has an explanation, but we may not know it. It doesn't mean we will never know it, or that it cannot be known.

 

Say something is on a counter. You look away, you look back - it's gone. Which is more likely? Did a spirit whisk it away into another dimension, or did someone "borrow" it? Or maybe you were mistaken that it was there in the first place?

 

Could the "oil" have come from something on the person? Hmmm? That is what I would assume. It could be wrong... Perhaps it was dropped from above the person. Perhaps it was squirted from elsewhere, or planted before the person was to show their hands. Think about other possibilities. Watch a few magic shows and realize that it's not magic. It's trickery.

 

Same for gold dust.

 

"When a person says he saw a miracle that falls outside the laws of nature, it raises a question in our minds. Which is more likely... that something happened outside the laws of nature, or that a man might tell a lie? We have never in our life seen nature break its own laws. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told. There is at least a million to one odds that the reporter of the miracle told a lie."

Thomas Paine

[PK!]

Are there any video links?

 

My link No idea if this is going to work, first time i've posted a link actually.

[PK!]

Another one.

[PK!]

These links are from a facebook group so if you don't have facebook(gasp!) it shall not work. These videos are by no means proof but i have a hard time tossing it up to lies.

[PK!]

I really want to be an athiest, however i find the leap from agnostism to athiesm more difficult then christian to agnostic has been. This is mostly due to the seemingly unexplainable phenomena in our world. This may seem like a rant but i just can't seem to wrap my head around the theory that all these so called "experiences" are bogus. I have very honest friends who have experienced gold dust(yeah you guessed it, Toronto blessing FTW!), oil on hands, and other so called manifestations of the spirit. These so-called manifestations have taken place around hundrers of others who have witnessed this first hand. Are we suppose to believe all these people are lying? How the hell do you debunk shit with physical "evidence"? There are videos of this shit online for fuck sake!

Skepticism is appropriate when things happen that are claimed to have "unexplainable" causes that are "explained" by the supernatural.

 

"Unexplainable" is a term I rarely use - if ever. I assume that everything has an explanation, but we may not know it. It doesn't mean we will never know it, or that it cannot be known.

 

Say something is on a counter. You look away, you look back - it's gone. Which is more likely? Did a spirit whisk it away into another dimension, or did someone "borrow" it? Or maybe you were mistaken that it was there in the first place?

 

Could the "oil" have come from something on the person? Hmmm? That is what I would assume. It could be wrong... Perhaps it was dropped from above the person. Perhaps it was squirted from elsewhere, or planted before the person was to show their hands. Think about other possibilities. Watch a few magic shows and realize that it's not magic. It's trickery.

 

Same for gold dust.

 

"When a person says he saw a miracle that falls outside the laws of nature, it raises a question in our minds. Which is more likely... that something happened outside the laws of nature, or that a man might tell a lie? We have never in our life seen nature break its own laws. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told. There is at least a million to one odds that the reporter of the miracle told a lie."

Thomas Paine

 

 

 

Good points Shyone. I think my pentecostal upbringing has made it quite difficult to be skeptical of such things, but i'm learning.

[Shyone]

These links are from a facebook group so if you don't have facebook(gasp!) it shall not work. These videos are by no means proof but i have a hard time tossing it up to lies.

1. Is it gold? (doesn't really matter)

2. Could it be that some one snorted it and sneezed? Or that they took a handful of glitter and blew or sprinkled it? Or that it was there before she ever went to the place but no one noticed?

 

Don't be so gullible. It is unbecoming. There are too many explanations that make sense to jump onto the magical bandwagan.

 

You've just witness another liar for Christ.

 

Maybe you need to learn something about skepticism AND Magic.

[PK!]

These links are from a facebook group so if you don't have facebook(gasp!) it shall not work. These videos are by no means proof but i have a hard time tossing it up to lies.

1. Is it gold? (doesn't really matter)

2. Could it be that some one snorted it and sneezed? Or that they took a handful of glitter and blew or sprinkled it? Or that it was there before she ever went to the place but no one noticed?

 

Don't be so gullible. It is unbecoming. There are too many explanations that make sense to jump onto the magical bandwagan.

 

You've just witness another liar for Christ.

 

Maybe you need to learn something about skepticism AND Magic.

 

 

Thanks for the link. Unfortunally having spent 21 years of my life believing everything had a spiritual basis it becomes overwhelmingly difficult to rationalize when need be. I'm glad i'm finally freeing myself from this mind frame although it's quite difficult at times.

[Shyone]

These links are from a facebook group so if you don't have facebook(gasp!) it shall not work. These videos are by no means proof but i have a hard time tossing it up to lies.

1. Is it gold? (doesn't really matter)

2. Could it be that some one snorted it and sneezed? Or that they took a handful of glitter and blew or sprinkled it? Or that it was there before she ever went to the place but no one noticed?

 

Don't be so gullible. It is unbecoming. There are too many explanations that make sense to jump onto the magical bandwagan.

 

You've just witness another liar for Christ.

 

Maybe you need to learn something about skepticism AND Magic.

 

 

Thanks for the link. Unfortunally having spent 21 years of my life believing everything had a spiritual basis it becomes overwhelmingly difficult to rationalize when need be. I'm glad i'm finally freeing myself from this mind frame although it's quite difficult at times.

Seriously, Magic is fun! It really opens your mind to the possibilities, and shows that even when you are skeptical you can still be fooled. The great thing is that the magician does this knowing that you and he both know that he's fooling you.

 

The flip side, those who use slight of hand and trickery to convince someone that they have special powers or that they have had contact with the supernatural, is disgraceful, shameful and dishonest beyond measure.

[Snakefoot]

These "manifestations of the spirit" run in fad cycles. At one time it was people getting their dental cavities supernaturally filled--with gold fillings. If there was a gawd and it filled my cavities with gold instead of restoring the original dentin and enamel, I'd be pissed because it would be a third-rate gawd doing what any dentist can do.

 

Do a Google search on "ectoplasm." This gold and oil business is the same thing--trickery to fool the credulous, just like mediums and other soothsayers. And don't buy into the bullshit that "the debil has a fake version of everything gawd has." It is just more lies and bullshit.

 

And if you are ever present at one of these "gold dustings," pick up a sample with a piece of tape and take it to a chemist or assayer. What do you think an analysis will reveal?

 

I so hate these fucking xtian charlatans. Yes, I said hate, and I do, the same way and for the same reasons I hate any huckster that lies and cheats money out of people who can ill afford it. People like that make me wish there was a hell.

[Antlerman]

It's a damn shame that these charlatans take parlor tricks to play on the hopes and desires of humans. I see great value in the pursuit of spirituality in the human experience, but superstitions about some supernatural realm of strange cosmic entities penetrating the space-time fabric into our reality is not that. That's just fear glossed up with a sense of mystery for entertainment's sakes.

 

Make no mistake, it's not anything ultimately fulfilling. Not what I would consider the spiritual. It has nothing to do with that. It's a dressed up magic show exploiting people's ignorance, leaving them just as ignorant and unfilled in the end, believing that is reality.

[LivingLife]

I remember watching a vid here in SA where one your snake-oil salesmen was doing the gold teeth bit. Up comes a dude with no teeth whatsoever, just gums, guess what, just like amputees, seems this gawd is unable to miraculously create a third full set of teeth, now that would have been convincing.

 

Of course folk were amazed by the apparent gold teeth.

 

Seeing that jeebus was not really into wealth and decidedly was more into giving to the poor how come back then he did not turn rocks into gold, why wait 2000 odd years to dish it out. Yeah these folk infer the streets are paved with gold hence the manifiestation, yet a simple real miracles that would be irrefutable is always absent.

[TedGresham]

Hmmmm.... the gold dust/oil thing seems just weird. What's the purpose? How does it "further the Kingdom?"

 

In the past I was a pentecostal A/G, one of those "spirit filled" people who prayed with oil and etc... I've had and seen all kinds of weird things. Once I was being a bit of a rebel, I was around 19 at the time, and the pastor called me up, put his hand on my forehead, prayed for me to be healed or some such, and I fell right on my ass. In 1985 I sang in a choir behind Howard and Vestal Goodman at their Corpus Crusade and dozens were "slain" in the spirit. I've seen it many times. What's up with that?

 

On the flip side I was involved with a group called the Agape Force when a "possessed" girl came to their house. She was really freaky. We took her to a pastor/exorcist who tried to cast that ol' devil out. I can tell you I don't know what the hell (pun intended) was going on but she was a scrawny little girl of about sixteen but threw several very large men around that church.

 

There's all kinds of weird stuff in this world. None of it validates Christianity as it's taught and practiced. All it proves is that there's "more to heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies." (Hamlet, my favorite!) In fact, some of the bizarre stuff in pentecostal circles and so forth pretty much make fools of Christians and make God look like a freak show deity.

 

I'm atheist, I do not believe there is a "creator." That there could be and probably is something else, be it another dimension, a "spirit" world, whatever, is a possibility. But then a little spirit with a God complex who is faking all this Christian stuff and claiming power he does not have is a worse thing than if there is nothing.

 

Magic and weirdness is fun. I do not want to become a magician and I certainly won't put my life in his hands!

[NotBlinded]

These "manifestations of the spirit" run in fad cycles. At one time it was people getting their dental cavities supernaturally filled--with gold fillings. If there was a gawd and it filled my cavities with gold instead of restoring the original dentin and enamel, I'd be pissed because it would be a third-rate gawd doing what any dentist can do.

Why gold? I would think that god would at least use platinum.

[Ouroboros]

It's so friggin' unfair!

 

I spent 30 years wanting to see a miracle, pray for it, waiting for it, searching for it, but never saw one. I went to the right churches, the right meetings, the right preachers, the right Christian denominations, yet nothing. I would have been happy with a little gold sprinkle or someone floating in the air. Or perhaps experience stigmata myself. But noooo. Nothing. Nada. Nil.

 

So why, oh why, is it that some people get to see these miracles while people like me never can? Is it because I'm not gullible enough, or is it because I don't have faith (well, I used to have it, but it didn't help), or is because it's only for the selected few? If I had seen a miracle, perhaps I would still cling to my faith. So why is this? Why does the supposed Macro/Super/Fabulous/Amazing Glob in the sky divide people like this?

[Shyone]

It's so friggin' unfair!

 

I spent 30 years wanting to see a miracle, pray for it, waiting for it, searching for it, but never saw one. I went to the right churches, the right meetings, the right preachers, the right Christian denominations, yet nothing. I would have been happy with a little gold sprinkle or someone floating in the air. Or perhaps experience stigmata myself. But noooo. Nothing. Nada. Nil.

 

So why, oh why, is it that some people get to see these miracles while people like me never can? Is it because I'm not gullible enough, or is it because I don't have faith (well, I used to have it, but it didn't help), or is because it's only for the selected few? If I had seen a miracle, perhaps I would still cling to my faith. So why is this? Why does the supposed Macro/Super/Fabulous/Amazing Glob in the sky divide people like this?

Maybe your fingernails are not long enough?

[sciencemike]

These "manifestations of the spirit" run in fad cycles. At one time it was people getting their dental cavities supernaturally filled--with gold fillings. If there was a gawd and it filled my cavities with gold instead of restoring the original dentin and enamel, I'd be pissed because it would be a third-rate gawd doing what any dentist can do.

Why gold? I would think that god would at least use platinum.

 

Or antimatter, that stuff's expensive ($62.5 trillion dollars per gram of anti-hydrogen). Of course, pointing out the obvious here that the filling's antimatter-matter reaction will create a much larger cavity than the original cavity itself...

[Franko47]

Unfortunately, even a miracle does not prove a point. It only does if the individual were inclined that way in the first place.

 

 

1. If you saw a guy on a sled on Christmas eve going through the air pulled by reindeer, would you forever after believe in Santa Claus, and all the "lore" sorrounding that myth ? Not likely. You would chalk it up to some kind of bizarre hallucination; maybe even a sense of how powerful the human imagination is. But you would not as a grown adult reduce yourself back to a starry-eyed five year old system of Santa Claus belief.

 

 

2. If a glowing woman in robes grabbed you from being run over by a bus you didn't see, then before running off explained that she was Hera and that all the Olympian Gods are real and still watching over us, would you buy it ? Of course not, even if the mystery woman got onto a dragon-drawn chariot and disappeared into the sky. Again, you would have quite the mystery on your hands, but you wouldn't start sacrificing animals or starting any Sybillian cults. Again, it's just too fucking out there.

 

3. If a bunch of people saved you from a burning car crash on a lonely country road, and they were all wearing Star Trek officer uniforms, and then seemed to "beam away" in a glowing mist, would you start believing that Star Trek was secretly all real ? No, you wouldn't. Again, it would be quite an experience, but you would find other ways to rationalize it.

 

 

These three brief examples are just a reminder that most "miracles" are always contingent on the popular or personal beliefs of the culture, or the specific person. Because we connect religion with miracles, such events will usually always have that kind of context. Or so it would seem.

[NotBlinded]

These "manifestations of the spirit" run in fad cycles. At one time it was people getting their dental cavities supernaturally filled--with gold fillings. If there was a gawd and it filled my cavities with gold instead of restoring the original dentin and enamel, I'd be pissed because it would be a third-rate gawd doing what any dentist can do.

Why gold? I would think that god would at least use platinum.

 

Or antimatter, that stuff's expensive ($62.5 trillion dollars per gram of anti-hydrogen). Of course, pointing out the obvious here that the filling's antimatter-matter reaction will create a much larger cavity than the original cavity itself...

HA! Oh well...no teeth, no worries!