This MSNBC article (via Fark; original Reuters article here) is so full of head-exploding irony it should come with a warning.
Proceed at your own risk.
Synopsis: a group calling itself Invincible America Assembly has claimed responsibility for the record high Dow Jones of last week (and say they will guarantee it’ll hit 17,000 this year thanks to them, too) and for North Korea shutting down their nuclear reactor projects.
How do they do this? Why, by meditation, of course!
Now, we know through about a billion studies that things like this have absolutely no affect whatsoever on the outside world, and that these people are deluding themselves. If you disagree, then I suggest you take a moment and educate yourself on these things (try the Skeptic Dictionary, for example, specifically here and here) before complaining in the comments.
Back now? Good. Now listen to the irony-gland-detonating comments by John Hagelin, the head meditating guy:
“This is not praying for peace, this is not sending out positive thoughts for peace,” Roth said. “This is diving deep into one’s own consciousness.”
It’s not prayer, see? We’re sitting around, thinking about stuff, and doing nothing positive, pro-active, or actually physical, but it’s not prayer.
Yeah.
Then he says this, which is the keeper, the biggie, the one that will melt your brain:
“We have control over things we didn’t have control over before. That’s the progress of science,” Hagelin said.
AIIIIEEEEE! AIIIIEEEEEE! PFFFSSSSSTTTT! BANG!!
Yup. I couldn’t even type that quotation out, and now I need yet another irony gland transplant. You’d think I’d have learned by now.
Well, I’m glad they’ve taken credit for those two good things since June 2006, when they started praying meditating. But they may have forgotten about the roughly 1500 soldiers who have died in Iraq since then (the number of whom per month, curiously, seems to have risen steadily since June 2006), the firing of 30,000 people from Ford factories in January, the 1000 people killed by earthquakes around the world, the stock market setback in March (and the recent 500 point tumble – the worst in 5 years – at the same time this article on meditation was released), and, oh, a few other things that have gone sour since last June. I’m sure you can think of others.
That people would make such ridiculous and patently false claims is not surprising; what’s sad is that Reuters would choose to write it up (and MSNBC print it) with absolutely no skeptical information.
Feh.
And the final proof that these guys are full of it? The fact that I’m so angry at them!
Need I say it?
Irony!
