For the complete debate with materialists see this list

Truthspeaker responds to Sina's 2004/3/22 message

I may be wrong but the purpose of some media outlets are not to disseminate accurate information.
I would not cite National Enquirer as a very reliable source of real information. They do carry a lot of very amusing stories that are fun to read but I do not think I would want to include them in my research proposal.

I also considered many a shows on TV as amusing and entertaining but not as reliable sources for accurate information. I am very sceptical of the "Unsolved mystries", and have seen a couple of segments of it a few times. Its sensational tenor has always left me with the same feeling when someone offers me a fanatastic offer on diamonds outside a grocery store. The issue is do I want to spend time and money to find out whether the offer for fantastic deal diamonds is real or not. So far I have decided that the chances of a payoff is very slim and it is smarter to walk away. That is judgement we all have to make when faced with which 'unknown' or 'not understood' phenomanon to study and research.

There is no doubt that there are many many many things that we cannot explain and predict. In attempting to understand and explain these 'things', what framework should be employed. If the framework is within the present scientific ambit then the issue is quite narrow: does one believe the phenomanon being considered real or not? As far as I can understand, the explanations being suggested by Ali (particles and 'vibrations') are all within the ambit of science. So are the phenomanon real or not? Apparently there are many many people who consider them to be real and that is the reason why there is such a large market for them. Last time I checked the psychic, astrology, etc. was still a very large business.

I think there are many many Indians who will tell you that they really did see the marble statues of Ganesha (the elephant headed God) all over India did drink milk about couple of year ago. Was that real? I doubt it, but I do know that many Indians absolutely swear that it is true and they saw it with their own eyes. However, I do not know of a single India who is studying the phenomanon to explain how that could be really possible. The rationalists of India ofcourse came out with some hypothesis debunking the whole phenomanon, but again no real proof one way or the other.

As far as 'energy healing' goes, I thing the Alternative Medicine (see Harvard Medical School institute on that) is actually studying quite intensively the Chinese chi healing techniques. It is apparently bound up quite intricately with the placebo effect. Apparently a placebo produces a higher effect if it is offered by someone the patient accepts as a credible authority figure. Chi healing is more 'effective' when the master is chinese even if he utterly untrained and the patient was an american chinese. Apparently american chinese have zero faith in the non-chinese knowing anything about chi energy and its healing powers.

There is now some literature on the correlation on accupuncture field points and pressure on nerves. I have not looked at the development in that field for a long time. The issue was the 'reliability' of accupuncture. It used to work on some and not on others, and the reasons for the difference were not clear. I have not looked into what the current level of understanding is about the field.