awesome

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Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit” is excellent and is about the only reason to pay for Showtime!

The Vatican deserves criticism more than ever!

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I saw penn and teller do an investigation of a group of people that were claming they could levitate a table and they can make it move sideways and up and down without using their physical bodies. It was a very heavy table so it would have taken many people to have their hands underneath it to lift it.

Well they had cameras under the table with a red light night-light and on top of the table watching the people and the location of their hands. Well one person it looked like moved his hand to the side of the table to make it move sideways but the table was already in the air a foot or two off the ground.

Penn and teller and indeed the home circle should have reviewed their video and removed that person from the room. Indeed that person should never be allowed to participate with that group again. Ever. Now penn and teller did not explain how this group got that table to lift off the floor they just walked out of the house and stated that is the oldest bar trick in the world.

Really than explain to the audience how it was done or why you cannot explain for professional reasons how it was done or whatever. When it comes to this type of phenomena fraud is everywhere especially when money is involved but these people made no money from this.

Just saying it was a bar trick without exposing the fraud if it was fraud is not investigation but opinion.

They were just a home circle doing this one night a week. No money no fame just curious. If it was fraud expose it to the world. They allowed cameras everywhere. Not exactly very smart if they were doing fraud but possible. Ignorance knows no boundaries.

Of course penn and teller don’t need to, as most of the world has not done their research into table lifting so they accept penn and teller’s as authority’s and do not question their statements.

It came off not as investigative research but opinions or belief. Table lifting was a huge phenomenon back in the days before TV and hundreds of thousands of people participated in home circles. Penn and teller did not come through for me that night.

Authority or opinion is no substitute for doing the scientific method. The scientific method only works if beliefs and opinions are held at a distance.

As far as their comments to the catholic church it needs to be said and changes need to be made. The Catholic Church has paid out billions in claims. But that does not help the emotional scars of those abused. I would trust the very least a priest to be alone with my grandchildren.

I think only the surface has been exposed of this priest abuse. I suspect in the world most priest abuse never gets reported.

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While I don’t always agree with Penn & Teller.  I’m always entertained.  Bullshit rocks!

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why can’t your articles be social booked marked for easier distribution? 

its too bad. You guys have great content and should let your readers share it.

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I agree with Mike.  I loved this and wanted to share it but linking is more complicated than it needs to be.  One of the best ways to support your cause is be an aggressive voice and distribute content to other potential “reasoned” folks.  Help us help you.

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That is the very reason why government and religion must always be kept apart (My opinion completely phased out). When ever religion holds power then chaos is sure to follow and the sect in power can and will do what ever it wishes cause that is the bases of most religion, that its acceptable that the power that is, is allowed to kill or do whatever it wants.

Look at god. In virtually all his stories he kills or intentionally makes his believers suffer just to prove a point. Surly this great being that created heaven and earth could some how be smart enough to teach a lesson other than using violence?

Yes, the vatican realizes that raping children is wrong but only because it has become ILLEGAL todo so.

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Mike & Jason,

Great idea guys!  I have passed it on to the web guys at TRP.

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researcher, you provide a lot of rhetoric, but no evidence. I attempted to find the Penn & Teller episode you spoke of but a search for penn, teller, table and levitate turned up nothing. I also looked on Wikipedia through the list of of Bullshit episodes and again found nothing. Can you at least provide an episode number, so that I can see it for myself?

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The religious have a great problem with freedom of speech and what it means. If they found the program offensive, they didn’t need to watch. Obviously, some watched so that they could be shocked. That’s what one would expect from a group of hypocrites

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Penn & Teller are hilarious. I think this raucous sending up while practising skeptical enquiry adds a note of not having to take it all so seriously all the time.

Of course to take the matter seriously is devastating. The leadership of the catholic church is one of the most immoral destructive greedy institutions, of Western society that consistently fails to provide a true moral conscience on society and actively promotes hatred of innocent groups of society. It has this extensive history of this immorality yet continues to be protected by governments and other institutions as a moral and necessary conscience in our society. The church intrudes on health and science where it has absolutely no positive contribution.

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“Can you at least provide an episode number, so that I can see it for myself?”

When I am wrong I am wrong it just came to me that it was not penn and teller it was the myth busters. I deeply apologize to penn and teller. My mistake completely. I don’t usually watch either of those shows but tuned in one night to this one because table levitation was big in the 19th century during home circles. I am impressed you did the research. I am very impressed. A great example, do your own research trust no one.

Hope you can find it on myth busters. I was very disappointed in the way they conducted the research. The same applies to the ultra skeptic group that did so-called research on the Russian girl. That research was a farce. Actually she performed well, enough to warrant further research. This organization no longer does research as the two they have done they screwed up so bad they got too much heat.

Or the guy in az that did research on mediums and had them all in the same room to talk before they were taken in to be tested and then after tested the mediums returned to the same room with the other mediums. In the same room. Repeat in the same room. What was he thinking? And there was a crack in the curtain so the medium might have been able to see the sitter. He did correct that in future experiments and the results showed a significant probability. Of course as always further research is needed even with significant probability.

The ultra skeptics do not know how to do   research and many of these professors also fail. A design of experiments to be valid is no easy task. Lots of variables. We tend to find what we think we should find.

Back to myth busters I did see what looked like one of the participants hands not lift the table but put his hands on the side of the table to make it rock more side to side as it was in the air. That person should have been removed from the group on national TV. Now that would have been reality TV that people would like.

The myth busters did not even bring that to the attention of the group or the TV audience. Sloppy research methodology. One must expose the fraud if it is fraud not just state opinion. That is what I find when ultra skeptics are asked to explain some paranormal event they just state an opinion on one aspect of the phenomena. The night-lights in phoenix are a classic example; the skeptics said it was wart hogs airplanes (A-20?) dropping flares. These craft made no noise were as large as football fields and flew right over hundreds of people even the governor of the state of az.

During these home circles all hands must be kept on the top of the table. They had night red lights so the vision was pretty good under the table, side of table, and on top of the table. Some times some groups would claim to lift a table in the light. Was not there so cannot confirm that.

Because one person screwed up does not mean all is fraud. But the fraud should have been revealed on national TV instead of walking out of the house and stating that is the oldest bar trick in the world. Have not watched the show since. My bias.

I have never read in my research that table lifting was a bar trick, maybe a house trick but bar? Thank you for doing the research and finding out my story about table lifting was not a Penn and Teller story.

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Great episode.  I wonder how many know it was the current pope that led the coverup of sexual abuse.  It makes you wonder what the voting cardinals considered good pope-like qualifications, when they unanimously elected him.  “Can lead an effective cover-up, check.  Will allow me to continue to abuse children, check.”  They are all culpable.

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From my point of view create a system where your priests have to be single and the followers treat them as almost gods or at least closer to god and it appears you will have created a system that will have many of those priests that will take advantage of children and adults. Their sexual desires will overwhelm their religions beliefs.

I highly suspect but no proof that this is occurring all over the world but most abuse is never revealed out of fear.

Religion serves a purpose or the masses would never fund it. Create guilt and fear and the money will come rolling in.

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Thus is seriously messed up —- the video’s been taken off of vimeo and even the torrents for the show are missing from piratebay.org (hardly a bastion of censorship!): search there by “bullshit s07e10” and follow the links to see what it looks like when pirates become censors (just bad links to missing files, not very exciting, but chilling nonetheless).  The episode has even been excised from Showtime’s official list of Bullshit episodes.

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Muslims don’t like cartoons, Fred Phelps hates gays, Catholics hate P&T. Religion is just plain nuts!

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“Catholics hate P&T”

I doubt if all Catholics hate P&T. Many years ago I was at a party with a group of Catholics that attended mass every Sunday and really involved in their churches. The pope was giving one of his speeches on TV. What I noticed was interesting, as not one catholic including the priest that was were not listening to one word the pope was saying. They preferred to socialize and party. These were not young Catholics but middle age adults.

I believe Italy has one of the lowest if not thee lowest birth rate in Europe if not the world and you can bet that low birth rate is not due to having less sex or the rhythm method. I doubt that Catholics hate Penn and Teller but those in authority within the church live in fear of losing their authority based on an obsolete system of beliefs that has its roots in paganism and a deity made in man’s image.

We see but we do not see. We know but we do not know. Many quantum physicists have been telling us that for years as have many sages or so called enlightened ones.  The Buddhist say there is a knowing and a knowing beyond knowing and most of us in this world are in the knowing phase of our lives.

Now science to its eternal shame goes into its research not with an open mind but a mind that has a materialistic paradigm. Religion to its eternal shame bases its knowledge on a book that was written thousands of years ago and authority from those that seek to control others by influence (fear) not being influential (love).

Now Muslims their religion is Islam. That is an interesting religion as their prophet led armies to force people to believe his brand of religion or die. It has appeared to work, as there are over one billion Muslims. But appearances are deceiving.

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I only wish more Catholics would actually watch this. Sadly, most of them I know - and I know more than a few - are insulating themselves against the reality of their church, getting their news and worldview almost strictly from atholic controlled publications and TV.

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Wow, Catholicism is one creepy religion.  It gives me the shivers. Those props, which are still recognizable from when I was indoctrinated into that particular religious brand as a child,  belong in a medieval setting.  What a backward, pathetic, criminal setup the Catholic Church is.  Get RICO after them.

Oh, to preempt Catholics afflicted with fatwa envy, yes, all the religions, including Islam, in fact especially Islam, are taken to the critical thinking/skeptical wood house and shot down with rationality and realism and not just the ‘gentler’ brands like yours who apparently only indirectly kill people nowadays like those Catholic bishops in Africa lying about how to prevent AIDS.

You religious types want respect?  Then earn it and not demand it.  Embrace ethics shaped by evidence and reality instead of drowning in the polluted waters of archaic and useless feelings and hunches represented by religious beliefs.  Many rationalists would fight for your right to hold religious beliefs, but we will not give up freedom of speech.  Criticism, no matter how harsh, is not hatred.

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My view is that when a young man is full of idealism and takes the vow of celibacy required to become a priest he does not realise what he’s done. As time progresses every cell in his body wants to have sex. If he didn’t want to he wouldn’t be alive. So as time passes, in some priests, the urge is far to strong and they then look for someone to engage with sexually. Let’s say the priest is 50yrs old. Who is of the same age as him sexually? He is still a virgin so his sexually maturity is equal to that of a 12 year old. That’s who he is drawn to. And since most priests live and deal with children he finds himself in the right place. I don’t place all the blame on these priests. As young men they were hoodwinked into the priesthood and its the leaders imposing these conditions on them who should be held accountable. Governments should not allow any institution to prohibit a man or woman from engaging in sex. It only leads to an unstable member of society who potentially is a danger to it. it’s inhumane and should be addressed.

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Cont from 20.    four billion years of instruction are encoded in this man’s genes. day and night they scream - Mate! Perhaps one day a Pope will be able to view his own birth. See himself covered in blood, attached to a cord that belongs to a woman.

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It’s a pity to think of all the great men who became priests and did some great things for mankind and yet those qualities ended with them. It’s almost genocidal. Men who helped the world become a better place were prevented from pro-creating. Shameful.

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