Tags for this video have been changed from 'cartoon, funny, superman, monk, viking' to 'cartoon, funny, superman, monk, viking, blood, violence' - edited by AdrianBlack

Who'da thought monks could make such creepy sounds? That half-step glissando stuff gives me goosebumps.

Congratulations! Your comment has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

This achievement has earned you your "Silver Tongue" Level 1 Badge!

Congratulations! Your comment has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

>> ^kceaton1:

All I can say is if there ever was a video that needed 1080p, this might be it.


I was kind of wishing they had shown it in real time first.... Do you think baseball teams are scouting him now?

The title" Very fast handed monk throws a large nail through a unusually thin piece of glass, while standing closer then you would think, yet still makes you wonder if he can stand up to Kwai Chang Caine's abilities, but , you will be happy he's not molesting catholic children, while you wish this video just skipped the first minute". Might not climb up the ranks very fast.

>> ^JAPR:

That was about five times longer than necessary.


Yeah, I let it spool up and then started at 1:10 and that was about right.

Your video, Shaolin Monk throws needle through piece of glass, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'martial arts, kung fu, throwing, weapons, self defence, focus' to 'martial arts, kung fu, throwing, weapons, self defence, focus, qi, chi, shaolin, monk' - edited by lucky760

Some of them appear to be rather large breasted for monks.

@SDGundamX

Haha, your editing is moot since I received your original post by e-mail!

Anyway, as far as I know not much research has been done on this, maybe because American researchers fear they will not get grants for possibly "debunking" religion. In any case, I do not put much weight on psychological studies. Neurological studies are another matter though, and concerning the Buddhist monks (and other yogis) research has been done that demonstrates neuronal patterns similar to being high on drugs while meditating. Nothing concrete on the placebo effect (we don't even know how it works on a neuronal level), but I would bet money that what I said will be found true at least in some cases.

Now, the rest is conjecture based on accounts of religious experiences by religious people and on my own lifelong feelings and introspection as an atheist that never believed in the christian god even though my grandmother was a pastoral teacher and fervent catholic; and comparing those thoughts and feelings with those of other prominent atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins, while also reading much of the science behind human behavior in general. I am also a philosophy major, for what it's worth (not much if we're talking strictly about scientific evidence, but can be worth lots if we are talking about science or religion in themselves). And really, its not that only religious people get angry when their worldview is challenged, it's that most people that set hard limits on what is real and what isn't will get angry when you present evidence that they cannot refute against your beliefs. That's why most religious scientists don't get angry, but try to find flaws in theories instead: they compartmentalize well, mostly because they are more intelligent that the general population. Still, I think that compartmentalization is a dead end on all levels.

On a closing note, it is not wrong to have opinions on subjects based on conjecture, etc. as long as they are in line with what has been demonstrated so far in science. Physicists don't have any proof about string theory yet many believe that it is "true", meaning that they believe the basic approach is sound and will ultimately give the best answer to today's unsolved problems in physics. The problem with religious thinking is that none of the basic and necessary premises of religion have any empirical evidence, i.e. it's all metaphysics. This is what I meant by non-rational beliefs: they are not irrational, but they are based on indemonstrable premises, fallacies or faith.

@Gallowflak

I would argue that it does require at least a greater intellectual maturity to stay an atheist and live with the conviction that there is no big brother in the sky to help you or alleviate your suffering. For example, Jesus said the suffering will be alleviated only when you die, but most Christians ignore that part and think that prayer acts in this world, hence the strong placebo effect seen in some. Now I am much more impressed by the Buddhists monk who, after years of training, can use this placebo effect almost on demand, but you have to wonder if at that point religion is necessary at all. It seems more like mental discipline. Religious belief may help to persevere in your attaining this mental discipline, but I very well doubt that it is beyond science's grasp.

Also, you seem to have missed a crucial part: the atheist says that his understanding of that experience must change, not that it will (automatically) change. Herein lies the shortcomings of the human mind. But the potential for change, the openness, is there. Of course, if you think that I mean that "openness" also means openness to religious ideas, then you are sadly mistaken. Religious ideas have been rejected by the atheist because they do not adhere to the basic premise of trusting only experience (I could broaden this to accommodate the odd rationalist atheist but they are so rare in my experience that the effort would not be consistent with the Pareto principle to do so).

Now, you may think that compartmentalization can give you the best of both worlds: I use religious ideas in some domains (like morals and ethics) and science in others (basically everything else). But that is wanting to eat your cake and have it too. Religious ideas presuppose some weird metaphysics that will creep in your science sometime or another. Plus, counting on religion to guide your morals blinds you to the actual psychological underpinnings of those judgements. And really, if you change some of your religion's moral teachings because they do not agree with you, can you still say you are of this religion, nay that you are even religious at all? If you do compromise your religion's teachings in a kind of modern pragmatism, then you are misguided about religion: you do not need it. What I think is that many prominent religious figures come to this conclusion, that they do not need religion since they are "beyond" those kinds of petty worldly matters. But since they think they are special and that everyone else is below them, they think the masses still need religion. But really how they come to this conclusion, by falsely believing themselves superior, is ultimately irrelevant, and in fact many lay religious persons reason the same way with regards to their fellow citizens: others need religion, not me, so I need religion to protect me from them, etc. They do not see that a rational discourse about morals/ethics is possible, so they stick to religion as a default answer because they were educated that way.

Now, if we were perfect reasoning machines it would not matter whether we were "religious" or not, "theist" or not: we would never base our reasoning on false or unproven assumptions except as a way to partake in thought experiments, i.e. we would not base our actions on those thought experiments, except to verify the validity of their conclusions. That is the kind of perfect reasoning the atheists want. Of course, a perfect reasoning machine that has religious beliefs would suffer quite rapidly from extreme, possibly debilitating, cognitive dissonance. That is why I think religion must be erased if we want our reasoning to evolve towards something like perfection. You may not like the prospect of becoming a Vulcan now, but will you even be able to mind when you will have become one? No. Of course, those who will become Vulcan-like will be our descendants, not us, so they will care even less.

Fixed your spelling errors, monk. He said cyclothymia, not psychothymia(but psychothymia definitely sounds cooler).

When I was studying during my Psychiatry rotation I spent some time with depressed and bipolar patients. Their lows are not like a low you and I can imagine, and their highs make them feel like they're the kings of the world.

You can have depression, bipolar, but unfortunately there is no disease that makes you feel happy all the time

Wow. He's got the patience of a Buddhist monk.
There's no way I could have resisted at least an eye roll at "Oh okay, I'm not a racist."

Can't do animated gifs for channel avatars, since they're not allowed and the backend converts all types to jpeg anyway.

Or I'm pretty sure it does, like it does with member avatars.

For sidebar content, I suggest you search youtube or vimeo for awesome slowmotion fire. Maybe a picture of that monk that put himself on fire in the vietnam war.

Oooh, and Tobias Fünke auditioning for that one part: "OMG, IT'S A FIRE... sale"

For the icon I suggest something simple and telling, like
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/4415674/2/istockphoto_4415674-flame-symbols.jpg
or
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2191/2417164282_3cedc64029.jpg
or
http://theoffutts.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/flame.jpg

If you want CSS stuff done, let me know, I'll help ya out. I never did it for talks, since I wanted to keep it nice and neat.