Have you ever had a real experience you consider to be supernatural?

[Sanguinarious]

Well I meant any experience you'd say had no discernible rational, mundane explanation.

Oddly enough I notice some people who seem to decry 'faith' seeming to say there must be a rational, mundane explanation for everything even if no trace of one can be found. Isn't thst a bit like...... Faith?

 

[beancounter]

The closest I ever came to supernatural was when I was about 9 years old. I went up to the attic in my house (That was an old converted farmhouse from the 1800's) looking for a toy I hadn't played with in a while.

As I walked further into the area, I noticed (what appeared to be) a disembodied arm crawling on a box at back of the room. I ran from the attic in a panic, and a few minutes later, my courage returned, and with a baseball bat, went back in. Nothing was there, of course.

I figure it was either my step brother playing a trick on me, or my over active imagination seeing something move (probably a mouse?)

One other time, I thought I saw a ghostly figure in the corner of my eye, but it was gone so fast, I didn't really think about it for long.

 

[Janx]

Well I meant any experience you'd say had no discernible rational, mundane explanation.

Oddly enough I notice some people who seem to decry 'faith' seeming to say there must be a rational, mundane explanation for everything even if no trace of one can be found. Isn't thst a bit like...... Faith?

little f, big F.

Having faith that iteative research and experimentation will figure out the reason isn't a leap of faith.

Attributing something you can't explain to your Faith ends that discovery. Thor did it. Let's go get pancakes!

 

[Hex08]

Well I meant any experience you'd say had no discernible rational, mundane explanation.

Oddly enough I notice some people who seem to decry 'faith' seeming to say there must be a rational, mundane explanation for everything even if no trace of one can be found. Isn't thst a bit like...... Faith?

Not really. Science is all about a process of observations and experimentation to determine how things work. Faith has no such process. Faith just inserts a reason why something happens if the answer is unknown. We may not have all of the answers yet but so far science has a pretty good track record of determining the way the universe works so until that method falls apart and stops being able to provide answers it's reasonable to assume it will continue to do so.

 

[Umbran]

Sometimes real treatments take time to be effective and someone can become impatient while on a legitimate treatment and try something that has no real efficacy (Reiki, homeopathy, acupuncture or whatever)

The National Institute of Health recognizes acupuncture is effective for a number of forms of pain relief, and may be a useful part of treatment for some other conditions, like seasonal allergies.

So, while acupuncture won't cure breast cancer, if your cancer treatment drugs are giving you joint pain, acupuncture may be an effective part of your pain management plan.

Acupuncture: What You Need To Know

Information about acupuncture, including its safety and effectiveness in treating pain and other conditions.

www.nccih.nih.gov

 

[Hex08]

The National Institute of Health recognizes acupuncture is effective for a number of forms of pain relief, and may be a useful part of treatment for some other conditions, like seasonal allergies.

So, while acupuncture won't cure breast cancer, if your cancer treatment drugs are giving you joint pain, acupuncture may be an effective part of your pain management plan.

Acupuncture: What You Need To Know

Information about acupuncture, including its safety and effectiveness in treating pain and other conditions.

www.nccih.nih.gov

Acupuncture is problematic. If someone is looking for traditional Chinese medicine where needles are used to target the energy flows of the human body, or chi, it's pure pseudoscience. There are modern practitioners who don't use it that way and it does show some efficacy in pain relief, but it is most likely the placebo effect. Sham acupuncture has a similar effect. Belief is powerful but if it's reducing pain in the subject then that's fine as long as the patient is also addressing the cause of the pain (if possible).

Acupuncture - PubMed

Acupuncture is a nonpharmacological treatment option for multiple different diseases and symptoms. Although numerous studies have been done regarding the efficacy of acupuncture, there only been a few landmark high-quality randomized controlled trials. The article mainly focuses on the evidence...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Umbran]

Acupuncture is problematic. If someone is looking for traditional Chinese medicine where needles are used to target the energy flows of the human body, or chi, it's pure pseudoscience.

We should not confuse "we know how the treatment works" with "we recognize that the treatment works." After all, we don't yet know the exact mechanism for the operation of Tylenol, but it is still widely recognized as an effective analgesic.

There are modern practitioners who don't use it that way and it does show some efficacy in pain relief, but it is most likely the placebo effect.

With respect, the article you linked to says, "It is questionable if acupuncture is clinically superior when compared to sham acupuncture." That does not equate to, "it is most likely a placebo effect."

Especially because, in the realm of pain management, effect is the primary concern - if the patient's pain is reduced, that's awesome. Reducing it substantially via placebo effect, which has minimal chances of side effects or significant interaction with medication or other treatment, is actually a feature, not a flaw.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The National Institute of Health recognizes acupuncture is effective for a number of forms of pain relief, and may be a useful part of treatment for some other conditions, like seasonal allergies.

So, while acupuncture won't cure breast cancer, if your cancer treatment drugs are giving you joint pain, acupuncture may be an effective part of your pain management plan.

Acupuncture: What You Need To Know

Information about acupuncture, including its safety and effectiveness in treating pain and other conditions.

www.nccih.nih.gov

I have been to acupuncture and found it effective. At least where I went, and the person was trained in China, they also prescribed traditional chinese medicine too. I've also found massage that is based on concepts of Qi flow helpful. Mostly I have used these things to treat Crohns Disease and peripheral neuropathy related to my Crohns (I'm also on two antibiotics, so I am doing both approaches). Meditation was another very helpful method for dealing with symptoms. I have found a lot of improvement of symptoms from both these methods. The crohns itself is not going to be cured by these things, but stuff like pain, sensation in my hands and feet, and my overall immune function do seem better. I am not in a position to say why they work for me, whether the principles underlying them are real, but I find them effective, and to me that is the important thing (obviously there are non-supernatural explanations for why something like massage would be beneficial health wise, but I have also found greater results from people who subscribe to methods that are based around Qi flow).

I will say I was in a more skeptical phase when I first got sick (which was amplified by being sick). But being more open minded about these kinds of treatments has led to results for me. I had a very radical improvement of health after trying this stuff.

And when I did martial arts Qi was a pretty important concept in some of the styles I was involved in (and I found if you followed the principles the instructors gave it was helpful). You don't have to subscribe to a mystical notion of Qi to employ it. But I am also not persuaded that it isn't real either. And I am not talking about people who claim they can knock out others at a range through Qi, I am talking more about breathing technique, visualization techniques (one of my favorites is imagining golden light entering your body as you breath in and exhaling black smoke with each breath out).

Personally I wouldn't knock Qi as a concept, but I also wouldn't necessarily file it under supernatural, as its something I've seen people talk about in lots of different ways. Maybe all it is is a useful way to visualize things like breathing so you engage your diaphragm in a better way, or maybe it's something more. To me what matters is it has yielded results.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I think there's a difference between facts and meaning. If someone says they saw a ghost, they're attributing a particular meaning to the experience. You can try to convince them otherwise with facts, and they might appreciate the science, but they won't like being told that the experience, and the meaning that they find in it, has no value.

"You can't logic someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves into", in other words.

 

[Bedrockgames]

"You can't logic someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves into", in other words.

I have seen a lot of people reverse theological belief or non-belief in a philosophy class by being exposed to all the arguments for an against something. People who believed in God, no longer doing so, people who didn't believe in God, believing in God (or becoming more theistic). I think people are a lot more likely to change their mind if the arguments are simply presented in that way (what I think people resist is the sense that someone is asking them to join in their way of thinking).