‘Breatharian’ couple survives on ‘the universe’s energy’ instead of food
 I do not even know where to begin to analyze if this is true, fake, mystic or what. I know there are a lot of things I do not understand about how the universe works, but this just seems so off the track as to be something one would think would be a scientific goldmine. The claims are a bit off the wall, but I do not want to be closed minded to new data. 
 

 
 
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Taking such claims seriously in the name of an open mind is no different than having an "open mind" towards any faith healers, miracle mongers, psychics, purveyors of the paranormal, and run of the mill mystics and supernaturalists.
If some "breatharian" making vague claims about "energy from the universe" preventing him from starving, or any other such mental cases, want to be taken seriously then let them submit their practices to objective observation and experiment, if they can find anyone willing to waste the time -- instead of publicizing fantasies to the gullible and the credulous drawn to mystery. Meanwhile, any publicizing of these absurdities as something to be taken seriously wastes everyone's time other than for "here is another example of a hoax being circulated".
The original post in this thread was a serious question. For an Ayn Rand forum, the importance is the principle at stake: http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/ope...
He who has an "open mind" quickly has it filled with garbage. Objectivity rejects the arbitrary as cognitively worthless, and rejects arbitrary variations on what you already know to be false and worthless as worse. An objective person has an active mind, not a mind open to anything.
As for "breatharians" it doesn't take much to find the history, including "breatharians" who have starved themselves to death: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/201...
"In any case, people have died trying to follow Breatharian belief systems. Just Google “Breatharian” and “starve” and it won’t take you long to find examples, including people in Switzerland, Australia, and Scotland, among others. Castello and her husband might be looking just fine and appearing healthy, but real people starve themselves to death in pursuit of the supposed spiritual and health benefits of existing on 'prana'...
"Breatharianism would be very easy to prove. All a Breatharian would have to do would be to submit to 24 hour observation for however many days it would take scientists to be convinced that they were thriving without food and water. Given that human beings can only survive around a week without water and start to show signs of dehydration after only a day or two, it wouldn’t necessarily have to be that long a period of time. If the claim is that the Breatharian can exist on water alone, the time would have to be extended to weeks, but the principle remains the same. No such successful test has ever been carried out
"This all brings us back to newspapers that credulously print such utter bollocks, to borrow a term from my British friends, given that it was a UK tabloid that appears to have originated this story. We lament the problem of 'fake news' now, and it is a problem. However, it is not a new problem. I remember like this about Breatharians thriving without food coming to my attention periodically every so often since my days on Usenet, which means going back nearly 20 years. The only difference is that now such stories can travel faster than ever, thanks to social media. I know to some extent why tabloids print pseudoscientific misinformation like this: clicks and eyeballs. That doesn’t make it any less irresponsible. At least 25 years ago, Weekly World News was so obviously fake that few people who read it weren’t in on the joke. As for Bretharianism, like spoon bending, it’s utterly ridiculous but never seems to disappear."
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