Can The Mind Create Reality?

Question

I'm talking about paranormal stuff here. Does anyone believe, or have evidence, that the human mind can start a fire just by focusing, or that the human mind can cause a lightning strike, for instance? Can the mind bend a spoon (like in the movies) or do other paranormal things?

Answer 1

Yes, the mind can create reality such as the United States, money, laws, and everything else that depends on the agreement of human beings for both it's creation and continued existence. These are known as social constructs  and are extensively examined in philosophy, psychology, and other social sciences.

As far as psi phenomena (paranormal stuff) is concerned I have never heard a single claim that anyone can create anything  (that is mostly attributed to God).

Certainly we can shape things into forms that are useful to us like cars, s***w drivers, chairs, etc. but those were not created but rather crafted from existing materials.

Yes, there is scientific evidence that the mind can have an effect/influence on certain objects like Random Number Generators, Decaying Radioactive Particles, and thrown dice.

(Links below)

No there is no evidence that I know of for someone being able to start a fire or cause a lightening to strike via their mind alone. Uri Geller which is very controversial in part because he is a trained stage magician has been caught cheating by parapsychologist while other maintain the conditions under which he was tested would have made cheating highly improbable. So, his claims remain questionable at best.

Then there is Nina Kulgina (link below) who demonstrated PK in the Soviet Union. Her abilities can be replicated with magic tricks but no magician or skeptic to date has ever duplicated the performance of her abilities under the same laboratory controlled conditions and observations by scientist. So, the skeptical hypothesis of cheating remains untested and unsupported.

Psi

Answer 2

yes.

Answer 3

Think of an orange that isn't there.  Now try eating the orange you've just thought of.  Repeat the experiment with anything else that might appeal.

You can't conjure up bits of reality by just thinking about them.  You could perhaps experience delusions to the contrary, but that's a different matter.

Answer 4

E = mc^2 means that it would take a ridiculous amount of energy to create anything.  21.5 kilotons of TNT equivalent energy per gram.  Say the orange the earlier answer wanted you to create wieghed a third of a pound, so about 151 grams.  To create it you would need the energy of 3,246,175 tons of dynamite.  Unlikely.

Edit: Does anyone know how people type superscript on here?  I have seen it done by others.

Answer 5

Maybe it's not your mind that does it. Maybe it's your eyes!!!

Answer 6

So far nobody has been able to demonstrate the abilities you mention. There has been quite a bit of research into telekinesis (psychokinesis) but the results have been disappointing. Only extraordinarily tiny deviations from expected means are being claimed as evidence of psi and even then the statistics and methods are highly debatable. There has also been remote viewing research but again after many years there is very little to support the idea that the ability exists. See the links below for more information.

EDIT: Sleight-of-hand magicians have been duplicating Kulagina's standard bag of tricks for a long time and under greater scrutiny. Watch a few Kulagina videos on Youtube and ask yourself -- why is she only able to move objects toward her and not away? Why can she only move them in one direct and not back and forth?  What then is more likely -- she's a hack magician or the world's first and only telekinetic? :)

EDIT: For superscripts, you can pull superscripts 2 and 3 from your character map under system tools in Windows. For example, e=mc².  For subscripts there are only ₐ ₑ ₒ that I know of.  ÃƒÂ¢Ã‚˜Âº

Answer 7

A few on here have posted the ability to make street lights turn off when they walk under them.

So would that be their perception or their reality?

Answer 8

Like attracts like

things u think about keep coming

Answer 9

For anyone that finds it necessary to see to believe.The anaswer is no.You can spend the rest of your life searching and never see it.All you ever find is grainy videos and boasting.If people like Penn and Teller,Criss Angel and Massimo Polidiro say it's fake.I'm siding with them not Nina Kulgina or Uri Gellar.