{"id":462666,"date":"2010-03-23T13:56:41","date_gmt":"2010-03-23T17:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/?p=13067"},"modified":"2010-03-23T13:56:41","modified_gmt":"2010-03-23T17:56:41","slug":"tantric-guru-in-india-fails-to-kill-skeptic-bad-astronomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/462666","title":{"rendered":"Tantric guru in India fails to kill skeptic | Bad Astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With all the religious nutbaggery going on in the US of A, it&#8217;s sometime easy to forget that there&#8217;s a whole planet of wackiness out there. <\/p>\n<p>The outspoken and hard-working Indian rationalist <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sanal_Edamaruku\">Sanal Edamaruku<\/a> had enough. When the &#8220;guru&#8221; Pandit Surender Sharma claimed he could kill a man using nothing but magic powers, <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/tol\/news\/world\/asia\/article7067989.ece\">Edamaruku challenged Sharma to kill him on live TV in India<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>For some reason, Sharma eventually agreed, and what played out on the air <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NpwCuv_izn4\">is pretty funny to watch<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"embeddedvideo\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/NpwCuv_izn4&#038;hl=en_US&#038;fs=1&#038;hd=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"><\/iframe><\/center><br clear=\"all\"><\/p>\n<p>Gee, this would&#8217;ve looked silly without the dramatic music. If any BABloggees in India would post a transcript in the comments, I&#8217;d be grateful!<\/p>\n<p>My favorite part is Edamaruku constantly smiling and shaking his head, giving Sharma exactly what he deserves: derision. Still, millions of people in India follow gurus like this purveyor of nonsense, so it&#8217;s serious business. I imagine that Sharma will lose exactly zero followers after this, given people&#8217;s ability to rationalize failure (not to be confused over <em>being rational<\/em> about failure).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m very glad that this guy was exposed on national TV in India, but I have to think that Mr. Edamaruku could&#8217;ve saved quite a bit of time and effort had he pointed out one simple thing:<\/p>\n<p>If this guy is so powerful, <strong>why does he wear glasses?<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p><em>Tip o&#8217; the turban to Mike Wagner.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/DiscoverMag\/~4\/NDL8Lk1JVBI\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With all the religious nutbaggery going on in the US of A, it&#8217;s sometime easy to forget that there&#8217;s a whole planet of wackiness out there. The outspoken and hard-working Indian rationalist Sanal Edamaruku had enough. When the &#8220;guru&#8221; Pandit Surender Sharma claimed he could kill a man using nothing but magic powers, Edamaruku challenged [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-462666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}