Ah, I just love it when the loonies leave their pearls of wisdom on The Cow. You may remember that some time back as part of our TCA Educational Series ‘Woowoo Beliefs’, we featured a little piece about a personage named Jasmuheen (Queen of the Breatharians). To recap, Jasmuheen claims that she does not need food and water to survive, but lives solely on air. It doesn’t require much intellectual effort to recognize this as an unmitigated barrel of hogwash.

Well, Cow Commenter Tibet23* is evidently not able/unwilling to expend said intellectual effort and has this to say:

The fact that you’ve not experienced anything else than your mcdonald-hungry body, does not exclude that people may be and behave differently.

Tibetan monks have been tested under controlled conditions…and scientist could not explain what they found.

Slowing down their heartbeats to almost stop. Being in a sleeplike state for days with no water no food, melting the snow around them while in meditation.

Is it a miracle? Are Tibetans special and we, poor mortals, can’t make it ?

Man is a machine. Somebody learn how it works and modify it. Others just use it to go to work…

Maybe we’re just scared by what we ignore.

Our intrepid correspondent T23, gives us the most wonderful metaphorical illustration of someone getting their head stuck in the banisters of logic. Significantly, notice how T23 is using science to bolster his/her argument whilst simultaneously treating it with disdain. In other words, T23 is holding up scientists as a benchmark for something that they claim is inherently unquantifiable by science.

Let’s just ignore the fact that the claim is in fact complete hogwash anyway – Tibetan monks don’t do anything that science can’t explain.† And, focally, with Jasmuheen we are not talking about a meditative state of low metabolism whilst sitting still doing nothing (which can quite easily be understood by science), but instead about her assertion that she doesn’t eat or drink anything at all and is somehow able to live a functional life. Actually, not just a functional life, but a better life than anyone else! This, as anyone with half a brain instantly recognizes, is complete rubbish.

Indeed, T23, I completely agree with you that the human body is a machine. And, just like your car, it needs fuel. But no matter how much you tinker with your Datsun, you’ll never get it running exclusively on fresh air. Just pointing at it sitting in the garage doing nothing is not proof of your wacky theory.

And if, by ‘maybe we’re just scared by what we ignore’ you mean maybe we’re scared by ignorance, well, then, yes, it certainly scares me. And, sadly, I doubt you’ll comprehend the true despondency I feel when I read comments like yours.

Now, where did I put my cheeseburger?

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*23! Sometimes I wonder if the Universe is just one big practical joke.

†OK, there is some neuroscience that is on the far edge of explanation, but then that is the case with a lot of neuroscience. Scientists freely admit that they don’t understand a lot of what the brain does. Scientists are really good at pointing out things they don’t understand. This is not, however, a free ticket to an endorsement of your wacky belief, no matter how much you’d like that.

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