Do you believe in any of the following...?

The idea of racism is not rational. Why should one person be superior to another just because of their skin color? Or even coming from another culture? Yet there will always be racism.

Skin colour isn't actually relevant to the argument, it's just a litmus test, as it were. If skin colour was the only option, then the Irish wouldn't ever have been discriminated against.

Racists tend to have what they believe is a logical reason behind their argument.

For example, in the original IQ tests, blacks did poorly, thus, it was surmised they were less intelligent.
That appears to be logical.

However, they didnt take into account the education gap, nor did they take into account the fact that many of the questions were culturally based, questions that people did better on the longer they were in the country for.

It is logic on false foundations.

You need to look at the deeper question here: Why does Racism survive?

There is a need for racism, because people need to feel superior to one another. Nobody wants to believe they are the bottom of the rung. Plus, most people start from the position that THEY are the norm, therefore any outsiders, doing things differently, are wrong. If they do not agree, it because they are not clever enough to agree.

Misguided assumptions derive from both personal experience, "information" handed down from generations, and a need to place oneself as high up the ladder as possible. Racism grows from these things, and thus, it's existence is actually quite rational.

So, is half the board Black Dove duals?

I'm really surprised so many people believe in ghosts/spirits etc!

I've never come across any kind of evidence that shows there is life after death.

Well I'm from Mississippi and I've seen lots of spooks.

Some of them are grey areas.

I believe in spirits and ghosts to an extent, because I've seen a few strange things. I've been ghost hunting and such, but I've only seen orbs. So, to an extent, I believe there's something left over from the departure of soul from body.

From the pictures I've taken, and we've caught in orb directly less then three feet next to us on camera, I'd say it's probably some kind of left over energy, which forms it's most effecient form, a sphere. I dont know if it's sentient or not, but I know they're there.

As far as faith healing, I've never seen it personally, but I believe in it's possibility.

Of course I believe in intelligent life elsewhere, it would make little sense to have a universe so large and only one planet capable of sustaining life. However, I dont believe they've visited our planet.

I do believe that time travel may be possible, and if it is, then it's curious that things have panned out the way they have thus far on Earth. Whatever was changed through time travel has already been changed. This is how the world is even with people coming back to alter events. This, right now, is the result of it.

I believe greatly in the possibility of precognition, because I've had bouts of deja vous so powerful that I've been able to express a statement that another was about to express beforehand, and have been able to guess as high as four television commercial consecutively, accurately.

I used to get deja vous three or four times a day, but now it's one really really strong one every two or three weeks.

Other than that, Im open to most concepts, other than astrology, reincarnation, transmutation, pyramid power, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Scientology, and the Time Cube.

"Orbs" are almost invariably the result of using a less than exemplary camera.

Watch enough TV, and even if you dont know conciously, you'll recognise subconiously, the patterns.

Adverts are extremely NOT random. You don't get erectile dysfunction adverts during cartoons.

I thought they were dust motes in the air or on the lens . . . ?

They can also show up because of steam getting on the lens and forming small water droplets.

I picked four choices: Telepathy, precognition, time travel, and teleportation. I suppose I could have chosen "ancient astronauts/extraterrestrials", but I dislike its Daniken-like association.

The reasons I picked "telepathy" and "precognition" are similar. In the simplest senses, telepathy and precognition are both reducible to the processing of information by the mind. In the first instance, telepathy is that processing that coincides in large measure with the processing of another. We know that the locus of the mind produces electrical signals, and that these brain signals are decipherable by machine. If they're decipherable by machine, then they could possibly be decipherable by another mind, as well, in several sense.

Certain forms of precognition are also suggested by the existence of idiot savants, whose minds process reality differently from other people. It is possible that the same broad kind of accelerated processing demonstrated by idiot savants exists so as to permit processing of probabilities by prophets.

As for teleportation, it's already been demonstrated on a lab bench, and time travel remains theoretically possible provided that there are sufficient quantities of exotic matter.

You should see the pictures we took.

Im not talking about faint white balls scattered like water stains on a photograph.

Im talking about having no lights, and a greenish orb floating so close it could've been reached out and touched from where we were standing. Bright and clear as day. Im talking about a solitary orb directly over damn near every headstone in a graveyard.

I was very, very surprised at how clear and curious their placements were. I never really believed they were of any serious nature, because I'd never seen them very clear in pictures others had taken.

Point taken, that's a good possibility. I dont remember them being all that connected, because I had just awoke less than a half an hour before hand.

Theoretically? We're traveling through time right now.

Another possibility for the orbs is they could be earth lights.

Earth lights are lights that are seen that look like orbs. They generally occur around areas of geological stresses, such as fault lines and volcanoes.

True, dat. But you know what I mean.

Yeah, moving backwards is the hard part.

We were just on a gravel road in the middle of an indiana forest. Very small one. Not even really a forest so much as a gathering of a hundred or so trees.

If I can get ahold of the friend that took them, I may be able to show you guys just how clear these damn things are. Especially the one right next to us. It was like standing next to a tiny planet.

^Maybe they were angels, sent down by God to tell you guys to pay attention to the road.

That's also true, but it's less true if there are certain conditions in the universe which may or may not apply.

We werent driving, jackass.

*trails off in inaudible cursing*

Bump!

This was an interesting thread. Lots of folks in this thread that don't post here anymore. Storm's post is amusing. Wish he was still around.

For the folks who originally voted in this poll, have any of your opinions changed since then?

Lot of people here seemed to believe in out of body experiences. I wonder if these supposed out of body experiences are just tricks the brain plays with you while you are unconscious or near death?

If you believe in actual out of body experiences, then that must mean you also believe that we have incorporeal souls which can exist away from our physical bodies. And if such a thing is possible, then that leads to any number of other supernatural possibilities.

I personally don't have a belief in any of those things and I've yet to see anything that would make me believe in such things. I suppose some of those things are possible, but they seem highly unlikely...

Well here's something not on your list I do believe in:

I'll believe anything if there is a steady paycheck involved.

- Winston Zedimore

How am I not on this thread?

Oh, right, I got burnt out, and went over to Richard Dawkins.
Then I built Shmegalamonga in '08.

Anyhoo, I voted teleportation.
They've done it with photons, then atoms, then a molecule.
So it exists, in principle.

^If only they'd do it with humans so we didn't have to deal with the TSA...

I have direct experience with what could easily be seen as precognition just 10 years ago. Although it could also possibly have a more conventional explanation.

True for a lot of these things IMO.

I voted spontaneous human combustion back in the day, I'm sticking with it, as a band I follow has experienced this issue with their drummers.

Related to original topic, last night I watched a hysterical (only to me probably) national Geographic special about Bigfoot evidence and a geneticist who had taken the task of testing every bit he could get his hands on including some famous cases like the Russian Wildwoman and the American hunter who claimed he'd shot a baby sasquatch.
They all told their horrifying encounter stories and the host did the standard historical data stuff, then at the end the geneticist and host told each person the truth. None of it was bigfoot. Bear mostly, couple that were human, one supposed bloody boot with no blood on it. The hilarious part is the reactions of people when they get caught in their lie or hoax. Even the Russian woman was simply an an African woman probably leftover from the brief slave trade that was in that part of Russia for a bit.
Good show though. Had a lot of interesting side info about recently sequenced neanderthal DNA. Turns out most of us have about 3% neanderthal in us. Our ancestors were indiscriminate fuckers.