Real or fake? (Magic and stuff)

Everyone have already seen, at least once, a magic show (or not). After the show, you leave and think about how impressive some magics were, but you stay conscient that it's fake and there's always something behind the scenes. Then you see Criss Angel diving in a little puddle, being a whole day submerged in water without air, walking on walls, putting cards inside a glass door, or you see Dynamo doing strange tricks with smartphones and all, or you see David Blane turning coffee into money, etc... etc...

There are things done by them and others that nobody can still explain, even with some tricks being revealed, sometimes we stay on the back foot about this being real or fake. Although I do not believe in these magic tricks, there can be always exists different opinions. Do you think that these tricks are very, very well done, or that there's real magic behind this?

If real magic existed, the people who knew about it would sure find better ways to make money off it than magic tricks. Magic tricks are always "fake" in the sense that nobody uses real magic. The only reason we don't know how they won't is that the performers don't reveal their trick for obvious reasons.

One day I saw a magic trick where a magician created a flame in his wallet.

Eh... no, the real magic is impossible for me. However, we can try to imitate it. I'll say weird things.
For example, hide something by coloring it with "camouflage or mirror" colors, like a chameleon who is hiding.
Or ... it's just "playing with the physical rules of life" !
Water extinguishes fire. Why a pile of leaves does not extinguish a fire ? (forget atoms which compose the leafs and others boring scientific terms ...)
Absurd, about the trick I said above : maybe a flame appears when the wallet is in an environment of 15 degrees celcius and a bird goes exactly to its vertical ... maybe is it a extraordinary physical phenomenon.

Returning to solid . Observe if these magicians are dressed with long sleeve or not. Hiding something behind their sleeves is very useful, probably the best strategy to reveal something in the field of vision without that the person who is watching the magician suspects him.

All "magic" preformed by magicians is just smoke, mirrors, and props combined with cleverly made mind tricks ((emphasis on Mind tricks ))to fool the common man, unless the person or audience is perceptive as hell.

Even back when our ancestors were very spiritualized, there was always some key ingrediant involved for doing the things they did. Prime example would be certain rituals where everyone was spazzing out believing their "god" has reached them when it was actually the chemical effects of certain herbs and plants they used and placed all around their area or on them. This may be somewhat unrelated but still carries out a point.

SpiritCrusher said:

If real magic existed, the people who knew about it would sure find better ways to make money off it than magic tricks. Magic tricks are always "fake" in the sense that nobody uses real magic. The only reason we don't know how they won't is that the performers don't reveal their trick for obvious reasons.

Click to expand...

Oh, yeah, magic tricks are always fake, we all know that (or not everyone). The thing is that people who can't have any idea of how they did it can start believing that is real magic (Surely this doesn't happen with people with a sane mind, or most of them). In my case, I never try to guess what they really did, just because the cool thing is when we don't know the true behind the scenes, and our mind stay confused about what we saw.

Well it depends what kind of magic your talking about.

If its magic tricks then ill tell you. I for one do magic tricks. Sometimes I make my own magic trick and show my friends. I even went on stage with Lance Burton in Las Vegas and did a magic trick with him. it was amazing and fun.

Now true magic is witchcraft. There are such thing call black magic and healing magic. Black magic lets you place a curse on anyone you want. But you have to pay with karma if you do. I seen real healing magic. And this guy who had a cut on his leg was hurting him so bad. Then someone did some healing thing. And the cut was there but the pain was gone.

So magic tricks and witchcraft are 2 things. Magic tricks are not real but witchcraft is very real. You can believe it or not. Its up to you.

Now true magic is witchcraft. There are such thing call black magic and healing magic. Black magic lets you place a curse on anyone you want. But you have to pay with karma if you do. I seen real healing magic. And this guy who had a cut on his leg was hurting him so bad. Then someone did some healing thing. And the cut was there but the pain was gone.

So magic tricks and witchcraft are 2 things. Magic tricks are not real but witchcraft is very real. You can believe it or not. Its up to you.

Click to expand...

I choose not to believe in it because any "effects" of curses and magical healing are reflective of our mind's ability to affect how we physically feel. The source of the subject's relieved/alleviated pain in the case of magical healing isn't from the person performing the rite or whatever. It's from a shifted state of mind in the person suffering from pain.

Let's say you cut your finger on a rather dull blade. I look at it, clean it, wrap it with a band-aid, and tell you that you shouldn't have to worry about the wound any longer. Likely, you'll feel better and, not worrying about the consequences of the cut, will notice the pain from the cut less. Effectively, you feel better due to your more optimistic state of mind.

In a different scenario, I clean and bandage your finger, but then I also say that you've contracted tetanus from the blade, and that we are going to have to cut your finger off to prevent the infection from spreading to the rest of your body. This is bad new for you, and you feel terrible. Worrying and obsessed with your apparently-infected finger, you'll dwell on it more and be more aware of any pain resulting from the wound. You effectively feel worse. In fact, because people who are depressed tend to have less effective immune systems, my making you depressed about your finger could slow its recovery or even make it infected for real. The same could be said about any detrimental effects that happen to "cursed" and superstitious people.

Ironically, one of the best arguements for these state of mind effects comes from a study on the effects of prayer for those who had undergone heart surgury. This study of 1,800 heart bypass patients concluded that prayer has no effect on recovery if the patient prayed for has no knowledge of such prayer, and that those who were aware that others were praying for them had more complications through their recover. Why is this? Because people tend to pray for those that are in bad shape. If you heard that people started praying for your safe recovery after surgery, you might think that your condition is worse than it actually is, become depressed and inadvertantly weaken your immune system. That demonstrates the effects that directly-powerless practices, such as curses, magical healing, and prayer, can have on our actual health via changing our moods and outlooks.

Doesn't this belong in the Colosseum?

WELL IF IT DOESN'T NOW, IT WILL SOON, HAHA AM I RIGHT?

Wombatwarlord777 said:

Ironically, one of the best arguements for these state of mind effects comes from a study on the effects of prayer for those who had undergone heart surgury. This study of 1,800 heart bypass patients concluded that prayer has no effect on recovery if the patient prayed for has no knowledge of such prayer, and that those who were aware that others were praying for them had more complications through their recover. Why is this? Because people tend to pray for those that are in bad shape. If you heard that people started praying for your safe recovery after surgery, you might think that your condition is worse than it actually is, become depressed and inadvertantly weaken your immune system. That demonstrates the effects that directly-powerless practices, such as curses, magical healing, and prayer, can have on our actual health via changing our moods and outlooks.

Click to expand...

I think you chose a bad study to prove your point. The media just jumped on that one when it took place, but if you look at the way it was carried out, it gets kind of sketchy. I've read up a bit on this study (and some other studies about the same subject) and there is one major flaw with it. That very flaw is even hinted at in the article you linked.

"According to Dr. Charles Bethea, Integris Baptist Medical Center, Oklahoma City, one of the co-authors of the study, "Intercessory prayer under our restricted format had a neutral effect." "

What exactly was this restricted format? A little research shows me this: The groups doing the praying weren't doing their own praying. Instead, the coordinators running the study gave them scripted prayers. Literally. The people doing the "praying" were simply reciting lines written on a piece of paper for them. Now, from a Christian viewpoint, at least, that is total bullshit. Christian prayer is not reciting lines, it is opening up your heart and mind to God. That is very hard to do through a bunch of pre-written words. Even in the Bible, the only place where a pattern was given for prayer was the Lord's Prayer, and that was not a word for word thing, but just an example of the things we should pray about.

tl;dr, that study had a serious flaw if they're talking about Christian prayer. I'm not just making excuses to fight science for the sake of justifying my beliefs, either. I know of two other studies that got surprising results when they did it right in the first place.

The first one was done with a group of Cardiac Patient residing at the San Francisco General Medical Center. Being aided by computer generated lists, they divided the patients into two groups, neither of which knew they were being prayed for. One group was prayed for, and one group wasn't. As for the people doing the intercessory prayer, they were chosen because of their confession to be born again Christians, their regular fellowship with other Christians, and daily prayer. In addition, the doctors and nurses didn't know which patients belonged to which group. A double blind study, in every sense of the term.
These patients were monitored before and after the prayer was started. At that point in time, there was no statistical difference between them. After a period of time, when prayer was introduced, the results started to get dramatic. I'll give the exact statistics too, but in the words of the coordinators, the patients who had unknowingly recieved prayer suffered "less congestive heart failure, required less diuretic and antibiotic therapy, had fewer episodes of pneumonia, had fewer cardiac arrests, and were less frequently intubated and ventilated."

Here are the results on their own:



In total, the significance of this study is way beyond what is considered significant in the scientific community. To put it in simple terms, if the results of a study had merely a 20% chance of turning out the way they did, it is considered significant. In the case of this study, it had a 1 in 10,000 chance of happening, and that is incredible precision. Even still, to be fair, we have to consider the fact that many of the control group may have actually had people praying for them in the first place, which would skew the results to a more minor significance.

That's not all, though. There was also another study done at the Mid America Heart institute, with patients in the Coronary Care Unit. Again, it was a double blind study. The patients weren't aware of the study, and the doctors had no hint of which patients belonged in which group. One group recieved prayer, and the other one didn't. It's also interesting to mention that the intercessors, a mix of non-denominational, catholics, episcopalians, and other protestant denominations, knew nothing about the patients except solely their first name.
The results:



Although not as incredible as the last one, the conclusion is still significant, having a 1 in 25 chance of coming out that way. However, that is most likely do to the much smaller sample size in this test.

I actually know of one other study also, involving bloodstream infection patients, but I hesitate to mention it here, simply because I don't know the specifics of it enough. Oh well, I might as well mention it, there's no harm in it.

The third study involved a few thousand patients (3993 to be exact) dealing with bloodstream infections. Again, one group received prayer, and the other didn't. Judging from the differing mortality rates, the length of hospital stays, and the rate of fevers, they came to these results: The group that was unknowingly prayed for had a significant difference from the placebos, and it came out in the end to be a 1 in 25 possibility, significant enough for science.

Of course, these are pretty much the results I would expect. I fully believe in a God who receives Christian prayer and blesses us through it. And from what I see, he doesn't appreciate scripted prayer too much. XD
So yes, if you would consider prayer magic, I do believe in it, in that regard. And science seems to be with me.

PHCC said:

Do you think that these tricks are very, very well done, or that there's real magic behind this?

Click to expand...

It's all in the beautiful assistant. The magician can dance like a monkey and you wouldn't notice, because you're busy drooling...