Qi gong

[RobertG]

Gom "Western scientists" did not come up with the flat Earth hypothesis. A bunch of ignorant rednecks did. Contrary to popular belief, no one in Europe really believed the Earth was flat. The Greeks actually calculated the circumferance of the Earth accurately within about a few hundred miles. All civilizations with some maritime experience were pretty certain the world was round.

Why are people so adamant in supporting ki? The scientific method has not proven, nor disproven the existence of the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus either. That is because science is not in the business of testing the existence of fictional beings or imaginary forces. There is no ki. I've already outlined numerous reasons why its impossible. Its not a matter of having an open mind. There is nothing to study. Ki exerts no effects on the observable universe. If someone could actually demonstrate ki having an effect on the universe, then, sure, you could say, here is this effect that science cannot explain, lets investigate it. And you could bet that thousands of scientists would be on it instantly. Proponents of ki have had innumerable opportunities to demonstrate their magical powers and consistently fail in controlled studies, as do psychics. Why? Because their powers are in their imagination. How come other animals don't have ki? Explain that. Humans are pretty bizarre primates as it is. I mean even compared to a chimp we've undergone a ton of novel adaptations. Now you want to throw in the ability to harness mystical energy and project balls of it as one of our adaptations. See the problem of course lies in our biological ancestry. All of our adaptations, while weird for apes, at least exist among the other mammals and evolved from existing structures/systems. Projecting balls of ki is an evolutionary novelty. It means that humans would have to evolve an entirely new organ system to harvest, channel and project this ki. The problem, of course, is that extensive anatomical and physiological study has failed to discover any system of meridians or ki projecting organelles. There are no meridians. Let that sink in. There are no channels for ki to travel through. They aren't there at all. Take an electron microscope and a tissue sample and see for yourself. Furthermore, this energy cannot be detected. So if ki actually existed, it would have to be something other than electromagnetic energy and/or since we can't detect its prescence at all, exist in a parallel universe. Moreover, at will, some humans can project balls of this energy from a parallel universe into this universe. Does that sound at all plausible to you? I thought not.

Oh yeah, and whoever said if you look into the sky the gods will punish you? Where do you get this drivel? Astronomy has been a pre-occupation of nearly every major civilization since the first agricultural societies emerged. All of them kept track of the stars. So I really doubt anyone said the gods would punish you for looking into the sky. Maybe, oh, if you look into the sun the gods would punish you. Like a cautionary tale parents tell dumb little kids so they don't get cataracts or something. But, no one ever said don't look in the sky.

[mr. bond]

you're absolutely right, robertg. we've never detected chi, or had it proven in a scientific setting.

so what?

do you honestly believe that science can explain absolutely everything on the planet/universe? how many times have you heard the phrase "science/doctors are at a loss to explain"? sometimes things just don't happen the way they're supposed to. maybe there are forces at work that we aren't able to detect or even understand, even if the knowledge was imparted to us.

my aforementioned best friend is something of a medical marvel. she has a disease no one has ever heard of, and has as a result been put in situations a few times now where she should have been dead, according to all doctors she's been to. but she's not. one time she was very close, but she sat and simply meditated for three hours, and they couldn't get her to lay back down after that. she was fine, and they had no idea why.

[Lizard]

Robert G I have much respect for you but I've thought of something: If you go back seven hundred years and try to explain electricity to the people living at that time you would have a hard time.

Some would believe in electricity but most would not really understand.

Some might say that it was all nonsense since it can't be properly measured (using equipment from that time).

Some would say you had deluded yourself that a magical, invisible force really did exist and that it could be used to do things.

He's crazy!

Sound familiar?

I still don't believe in ki but it's something to think about.

[Ghost]

Good point i have one argument against it though.
Scientifaccly we are adavanced enough that we should have picked up on something like that a long time ago.

Even if you cant detect Chi with any instrumentation there are experiments you could conduct to see if anything is happening at all, i mean there must be some percievable reaction if not then it might as well not exist.

[Lizard]

Originally posted by Ghost
Good point i have one argument against it though.
Scientifaccly we are adavanced enough that we should have picked up on something like that a long time ago.

Even if you cant detect Chi with any instrumentation there are experiments you could conduct to see if anything is happening at all, i mean there must be some percievable reaction if not then it might as well not exist.

Perhaps we havn't got the right instruments to detect it with or the reaction is beyond our comprehension at this time. Perhaps chi reacts to make water runnier or makes fire slightly heavier, something we havn't thought of. Maybe once we build a chi-machine we will be able to use it to power things and make chi balls.

[Ghost]

You always make me laugh lizard you should be a comedian, chi balls humm.

My point is you can do tests to prove if it exist.

e.g. if i drop a brick it falls down and lands on the floor.
That leads me to believe in the force of gravity. I have no machines to detect it but i can do specific tests to as good as prove it exists.

[Paul Wilson]

Yes it's true

Yes it is true.

You can do test to prove chi exists.

It has been proven that a heat scanner can detect chi and show it you moving around in a rotational movement on a LCD screen.


Answer the question?

[RobertG]

Re: Yes it's true

Originally posted by Paul Wilson
Yes it is true.

You can do test to prove chi exists.

It has been proven that a heat scanner can detect chi and show it you moving around in a rotational movement on a LCD screen.


Answer the question?

A) What is your source? Can you direct me to a peer reviewed publication?

B) Duh. A heat scanner will detect heat on the body. The body generates heat. Heat will vary across the body. It will appear to "rotate" because of something called the circulatory system.

C) There is no chi. Go to school. Take some science classes.

[Paul Wilson]

Re: Re: Yes it's true

Originally posted by RobertG



A) What is your source? Can you direct me to a peer reviewed publication?

B) Duh. A heat scanner will detect heat on the body. The body generates heat. Heat will vary across the body. It will appear to "rotate" because of something called the circulatory system.

C) There is no chi. Go to school. Take some science classes.

Yes dic.
But when you have got an even hotter source flying around in a circular movement you can tell that ain't no natural body heat.

Duh

Oh yeah. By the way I am in school dum dum.

P.S. Please forgive me moderators and viewers for my foul language. It was used to shut up that willy RobertG

[RobertG]

Originally posted by mr. bond
you're absolutely right, robertg. we've never detected chi, or had it proven in a scientific setting.

so what?

do you honestly believe that science can explain absolutely everything on the planet/universe? how many times have you heard the phrase "science/doctors are at a loss to explain"? sometimes things just don't happen the way they're supposed to. maybe there are forces at work that we aren't able to detect or even understand, even if the knowledge was imparted to us.

my aforementioned best friend is something of a medical marvel. she has a disease no one has ever heard of, and has as a result been put in situations a few times now where she should have been dead, according to all doctors she's been to. but she's not. one time she was very close, but she sat and simply meditated for three hours, and they couldn't get her to lay back down after that. she was fine, and they had no idea why.

I teach pre-meds. Pre-meds tend to not pay much attention in their science courses. I presume the same holds true for them in medical school. They retain material to pass tests without a deep understanding. This is not true of all doctors, but many; doctors are technicians, not experimental scientists. Therefore, because a doctor is does not understand something does not necessarily lead me to believe that scientists are unable to detect chi/ki. Also anecdotal evidence does not hold up so well. You're friend has a disease NO ONE has heard of. So you're telling me you're friend has seen every specialist in the world? No, I didn't think so. There are lots of doctors without a clue out there in the world (because of their aforementioned concern with grades over knowledge). People with rare conditions often have to seek out the few doctors who actually have the analytical skills to figure things out.

But what does this all have to do with chi?? I've already pointed out, if someone had chi power, they'd have gone in and knocked the crap out of Lennox Lewis, making millions of dollars and proving to the world that they were a superhero with magical powers. That hasn't happened. When some little flabby chi power boy knocks out the world heavy weight champion, then you can talk about chi. When the US military decides to teach the special forces to fire balls of chi at people, then you can talk about chi. When someone is able to concretely use chi to manipulate the world, then you can talk about chi. If there was chi, the Chinese would have used chi ball firing kung fu monks to fight off the British. They didn't. Technologically weaker civilizations would have never fallen to the West because they would have used their chi to deflect bullets and knock out Europeans from a distance. None of this happened. Technologically weaker civilizations invariabley fall to bullets.

[mr. bond]

Originally posted by RobertG

I've already pointed out, if someone had chi power, they'd have gone in and knocked the crap out of Lennox Lewis, making millions of dollars and proving to the world that they were a superhero with magical powers.

i think this is where you veered far off from my point, at least. who says that chi is an all-powerful, Dragon Ball Z-style force that can be used to win any fight? i personally think it would be more of a health-promoting and healing force.

as for your points about doctors, i fail to see what that had anything to do with what i said. there's nothing new about a 104-degree fever(brought on by the mentioned disease). she should have died, but she didn't. no one knows why. this is simply an example of an event that defies the understood nature of what should be. i'm sure there are countless examples of things that defy science, and not simply the reasoning of medical doctors. weird, often inexplicable things do happen, which is my point. science is not infallible.

take as an example for the road, the debate over the equation e=mc2 (imagine the superscript 2.) there is a new school of thought emerging that defies this scientific theory, that hypothesizes that the speed of light is actually slowing down, and that it has been since the beginning of the universe. theories are constantly being disproven, which is arguably the purpose of science. chi just may eventually show its face to some sort of detection, and until that day, i guess i'll just remain 3/4 convinced that it exists in some form.

[RobertG]

Bond--You don't die from a 104 fever. 105, 106 you'd probably get protein denaturation for the AVERAGE human. 104 is a bad fever, don't get me wrong, but you're not necessarily going to die from it. Certainly people out there mutant heat shock proteins and can withstand higher fevers than others. You didn't mention your friend's disease involved high fever. Probably viral or bacterial. All the doctors had to do was have the lab do some PCR reactions to identify the culprit. The HMO probably doesn't pay for that, so some poor medical pathologist is sitting around twidling his thumbs while people spike fevers from Staph or whatnot and the doctors are going to throw antibiotics at it anyway....but I digress.

So the speed of light is slowing down. Big deal. There is still light, is there not? There is still gravity. Cosmological constants may vary (although then its hard to call them constants is it not?), but the forces are still there. For the n-th time, there is no chi. At all. None. You know why there is no chi? Besides all the obvious reasons I've already explained; quantum mechanics, last I checked, is pretty damn accurate at describing just about every physical process in the universe. So if there is some undescribed force out there then you need to add another term into every single physics equation. But the equations are already accurate. So the force you are describing has no actual affect on anything in the universe. So sure, there is chi. It just doesn't actually manifest in this universe. But then how do you know about it? Hmmmm.

If you people want to keep arguing the absurd, I'll keep going. Its so far removed from sanity that I can't believe anyone actually wants to continue to champion chi. Where is it? You people cannot even answer that. If it exists it can be measured. It will exert a force, it will do something. But it does nothing because it is nothing. Fine, don't use it to knock out Lennox Lewis. So we had the example with the guy waving his hand over someone's ankle and it got all healed. Well if you can do that, then why can't you cure cancer with chi? Why can't you cure AIDS? Why can't you actually heal anyone with a serious disease? See where I'm going? If there was actually chi someone would have actually used it for something. But since no one actually uses chi for anything except to convince people ignorant of the last several thousand years of technological advances that chi exists, well, we can conclude it does not exist.

How hard is it really to prove it exists? Show me cases where people have used chi to do something. And I mean besides supposedly breaking bricks or having spears poked into them. I want to hear about serious telekenetics here, X-man stuff. Hell, I want Yoda. See that's just it, it doesn't work one way. You can't say, oh, well chi only works for health, not for the Yoda lightning bolts. But, I say, well, if this force is causing trasmutation of matter, well, certainly it can make lightning bolts and fireballs and what not. You can't say chi can transform tissue in the body, but cannot transform, oh, ions in the air into big badass bolts of energy to strike down your enemies. And the health thing is even beyond ridiculous. I mean you chi people read a lot of comics. I stopped reading them myself like two decades ago. But, back in the day I remember Molecule Man was one of the most powerful guys. Why? Because he could rearrange matter. So the claim that chi can rearrange damaged tissue into healthy tissue IN THE ABSCENCE of molecular building blocks for tissue repair (e.g. pounding protein shakes before the chi healing session....) is basically saying people that use chi are like Molecule Man. And they'd be turning water into wine, water into petroleum, water into gold, water into supermodels, their flabby bodies into hardbodies. And since no one actually does that stuff, again, we can conclude, there is no chi. So give it up. When you become a superhero then I'll believe you've got the chi power.

It has nothing to do with science re-evaluating its current paradigms. It can only do that on the basis of evidence. There is no evidence for chi. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Its not there. Stop the madness already.

[Ghost]

The biggest argument against chi is not even the scientific test one. Its this, if chi exsists how come we havent accepted it yet. I mean if we can do it or could its not something we would be likely to forget in a hurry, no well humans forgot how to use it rubbish. that would not happen. Why would it, it would be so useful that in fact it would be one of our most developed skills.
This is the real world and i cant see any place for chi now if science cant prove it exists no one else can then it probably does not exist. I havent closed my mind to it completely, i am just a rational person that believes that if you cant in anyway prove something then i dont believe it.

I see no eveidence for chi. Alot of my MA friends from chinese systems believe in chio but have been unable to demonstrate it. "we are not good enough yet but our instructor can" Ok so after 5 years you cant do even the simplest demonstration.

Met the instructor, still no luck. I cant believe in it with out some evidence.

[Lizard]

Originally posted by Ghost
The biggest argument against chi is not even the scientific test one. Its this, if chi exsists how come we havent accepted it yet. I mean if we can do it or could its not something we would be likely to forget in a hurry, no well humans forgot how to use it rubbish. that would not happen. Why would it, it would be so useful that in fact it would be one of our most developed skills.
This is the real world and i cant see any place for chi now if science cant prove it exists no one else can then it probably does not exist. I havent closed my mind to it completely, i am just a rational person that believes that if you cant in anyway prove something then i dont believe it.

I see no eveidence for chi. Alot of my MA friends from chinese systems believe in chio but have been unable to demonstrate it. "we are not good enough yet but our instructor can" Ok so after 5 years you cant do even the simplest demonstration.

Met the instructor, still no luck. I cant believe in it with out some evidence.

If chi existed and we could use it then we would all be using it all the time. We aren't. Chimpanzees are very similar to us geneticaly and the don't have chi either.

PS I quoted you because I agreed with you.

[Great Sage]

Okay everyone... THERE IS NO CHI! RobertG is absolutely correct – Chi cannot be identified by any means, and therefore thrives in delusional ideologies. Think about it... What constitutes as "Chi Power?" Energy, force, heat, etc...?

There isn't an argument for Chi, because it has no substance. All we know of Chi is through myths... In other words, no one has confronted us and said, "here, feel my chi now."