Martial Arts and Atheism

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really cool article I came across over at The Atlantic, the videos are priceless.

There's a good deal of spirituality involved in Eastern martial arts, that's one thing that's sure.

some people cannot be hypnotised

The first video looks fake to me however I used to attend the Bujinkan and I've seen this sort of technique used before. Its nothing to do with hypnotism. What you are doing is using psychological trickery to encourage the attacker to lose balance and fall over. For example, if you place your hand over the intended target (your face) the attacker gets confused so if you move it at the last moment the attacker will try and hit your hand which can cause him to be diverted allowing you to make a counter attack.

You can apply the same principle to make the opponent fall without touching them.

I haven't watched the above but I did a while back buy a Systema series by Vadim Starov just because I was hearing excellent things about it, and it looked fascinating until I saw them doing them 'empty-force' throws and I realized about that point that I'd been had. The ballistics striking, ie. the weird figure-eight flail punches *could* work but wow - talk about broadcast.

I'm clearly not an atheist but I do see a lot of quackery and 'magick' in certain styles, especially the belt-factory stuff. Needless to say you're either in it for the practicality of the martial arts or... you're an AD&D nerd looking for more AD&D. Seems like the later siphons off a certain group of people where the practical, as I consider myself incredibly blessed to have found, tends to draw FBI and law enforcement which we have a fairly strong contingent of in our class.

I'll add something - again as a non-atheist. If you're practicing a martial art that can use empty force; warning - you're practicing sorcery. Repent of it in Jesus name.

"Empty Force" in this case is most likely to mean "Staged Performance", as there is no evidence of "magick" being involved, even if "magick" existed in the first place - the concept of "magick" is, at best, mythical...

accumulating chi in the tantian is an art, I have done it a few times to good success
the pelvic and abdomen area developements gives you guts
jesus would approve I think

Fwiw, Daito-ryu isn't quite the same thing as aikido (not that some aikido dojos don't have *exactly* the same issues).

There was one part of the original article which I disagreed with, which was when a bullet is described as basically making a little bullet-sized tunnel through the body and nothing else. That's more akin to what a lazer might do that a bullet; the latter can basically liquify the tissue around and in front of its passage, depending on the size and speed of the projectile.