This is closely related to the atheism page.
Believers in astrology and the paranormal
also believe in extraordinary things without evidence.
They use the same type of
logical errors,
unverifiable anecdotes,
lack of predictive ability, and post hoc interpretations of unrepeatable events,
as are often used in support of religious claims.
And it is not just that the tools of scepticism
are the only way of finding out what is true.
They are also good for society.
Scepticism is opposed to all totalitarianism,
and is a far better defence against such than religion,
which has a long history of
collaboration with totalitarianism
and
killing on its own behalf.
To teach our children to question authority,
to read forbidden books,
to distrust political and religious movements and leaders,
and to regard faith
(belief without evidence) as an intellectual failing,
is the best thing we can do to ensure the future of human civilization.
The values of atheism and scepticism
are the values of science, freedom and liberal democracy.
"If You Open Your Mind Too Much, Your Brains Will Fall Out (Take My Wife)"
by Tim Minchin.
From here.
See lyrics.
Something needs to be said about the depressing modern interest in superstitious hokum like UFO's and the X-Files,
and it is this:
These things are only popular because they are not accepted by science.
That is, they are only popular because there is no good evidence that they are true.
If the existence of Atlantis was proved, it would become part of serious science and archaeology,
and it would not be interesting any more.
"Mysteries" are an attempt by the ordinary person to reclaim some area from the professionals.
Unfortunately, because the professionals are so diverse and numerous and are interested in so many things,
the only things left for you to claim are by definition rubbish.
That is why, for example,
cryptozoology
is not science.
If there was any decent evidence (even fragmentary evidence),
it would be zoology
not cryptozoology.
After all, zoologists are discovering new species all the time.
Given that every religion
and billions of people since the dawn of history
have claimed that such things exist,
and thousands
of psychics and astrologers operate for money
in the world today,
you would think someone would be able to prove it
and collect this
easy money.
The Skeptic's Dictionary
- "Traditional Chinese medicine is not based upon
knowledge of modern physiology, biochemistry, nutrition, anatomy or any
of the known mechanisms of healing. Nor is it based on knowledge of cell
chemistry, blood circulation, nerve function, or the existence of hormones
or other biochemical substances."
Outrage:
Simon Singh
sued by the British Chiropractic Association
for saying their treatments are bogus.
One of the great responses to this has been an organised campaign of
formal complaints of false advertising against hundreds of chiropractors.
Shut them all down!
"herbal" medicine
- sums up what is wrong with the idea that traditional medicine
has many potent herbs that are ignored by western medicine:
"When potent natural substances are discovered, drug companies try to isolate and synthesize the active chemical in order to provide a
reliable supply."
- Why wouldn't they?
Why would any drug company ignore a source of easy money?
Similarly, why would any medical researcher ignore a source of
easy publications, doctorates, fame and tenure?
Comedian
Dara Ó Briain
on alternative medicine.
"I'm sorry, "herbal medicine":
"Oh herbal medicine has been around for thousands of years."
Indeed it has.
And then we tested it all,
and the stuff that worked became "medicine"."
"Homeopathic A & E"
from
That Mitchell and Webb Look.
One doctor consoles the other after a patient dies
because his serious injuries did not respond to their nonsense treatment:
"OK, so you kill the odd patient with cancer or heart disease
... or bronchitis, flu, chickenpox or measles.
But when someone comes in with a vague sense of unease,
or a touch of the nerves,
or even just more money than sense,
you'll be there for them."
Astrology is based on the concept of
constellations,
such as Aquarius, Capricorn, Taurus, etc.
It's important to note
that constellations don't exist.
If you have to ask why, you have obviously never thought about it.
Astrology
was disproved by the discovery of
Uranus
by
William Herschel
in England in 1781.
If you have to ask why, you have obviously never thought about it.
"On a moonless night when the only clouds to be seen are
the Magellanic Clouds of the Milky Way, go out to a place far from street light pollution,
lie on the grass and gaze out at the stars.
What are you seeing? Superficially you notice constellations, but
a constellation is of no more significance
than a patch of curiously shaped damp on the bathroom ceiling.
Note, accordingly, how little it means to say something like "Uranus moves into Aquarius".
Aquarius is a miscellaneous set of stars all at different distances from us,
which have no connection with each other except that they constitute a (meaningless) pattern
when seen from a certain (not particularly special) place in the galaxy (here).
A constellation is not an entity at all, not the kind of thing that Uranus,
or anything else, can sensibly be said to "move into".
The shape of a constellation, moreover, is ephemeral. A million years ago
our Homo erectus ancestors gazed out nightly
... at a set of very different constellations.
A million years hence, our descendants will see yet other shapes in the sky,
and their astrologer ... will be fabricating their oracles on the basis of a different zodiac."
A poor understanding of probability leads many people to put forward supernatural
or paranormal explanations
where none are required.
I love the section on dreams!
From QualiaSoup.
Because we have no
proper models of how the brain works yet,
psychology lends itself
(and will continue to lend itself
for decades to come) to
mythology and pseudoscience like Freudian theory
and "ritual abuse".
Pseudo-scientific psychologists, backed by a callous state,
have caused untold misery in the modern age.
Satanic ritual abuse is fiction,
the modern equivalent of
the ancient witch hysteria.
Hysterical social workers and public servants,
no different from their witch-burning predecessors,
have destroyed families, imprisoned innocents,
and ruined children's lives.
Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy
- Your child dies, and pseudo-scientists get you imprisoned
and your other children taken away forever.
And you and the media are forbidden from even talking about it.
Lives ruined in secret
by Nick Cohen
- "Thousands of children may have been snatched from families
because of evidence given in camera
...
the greatest miscarriage of justice of our times
...
The grotesque snatching of thousands of children
was an operation conducted under conditions of the strictest secrecy.
Anyone who blew the whistle on the proceedings of the family courts faced
prosecution for contempt.
...
During the years of Meadow's ascendancy, the family courts resembled a
secret society.
...
Secrecy allowed incompetence and mania to flourish, as it has done for 20
years. It is not too great an exaggeration to say that families have been forced
into a legal world whose practices and assumptions are closer to those of a
tyranny than a democracy."
But we may have even over-compensated,
to the extent that our response to these crimes
is sometimes based on hysteria rather than reason.
As a result we are susceptible (and will remain susceptible) to periodic
hysterical witchhunts like the "ritual abuse" and "Munchausen Syndrome" witchhunts above.
Consider the following:
It sometimes seems in a world
confused about morals
as if child sexual abuse is the one thing we can agree on
as the ultimate evil.
We sometimes seem to have lost sight of the fact that
killing or permanently disabling someone is worse.
For example, paedophiles get burnt out of their homes, and attacked and killed in prison, and so on,
in a way that murderers don't.
And yet surely the murderer has committed an even worse crime.
Don't get me wrong.
I don't have a problem with long prison sentences for
child abuse and rape.
I just think the sentences for murder and disabling should be even longer.
To be a murderer should be a stigma even worse than being a paedophile.
All sexual crimes, by their nature,
lend themselves easily to miscarriage of justice.
If someone says
they were sexually assaulted, how can you prove them wrong?
Historical claims of child abuse and rape
years after the fact
will have no forensic support.
They may of course be true,
but clearly there is a higher risk of miscarriage of justice
than in other crimes.
As a result of our somewhat over-the-top
reaction to child abuse,
we cast suspicion on all interactions of men with children
(even though hardly any men are paedophiles),
and we are driving away men (other than their fathers) from childrens' lives
(and this at a time when more and more children do not even have their father around).
Due to paranoia about child abuse,
there is a steady drop in
male primary school teachers, boy scout leaders, etc.
And all research shows that this is really bad for boys in particular.
We complain that boys have no steady male role models in their life.
And yet we look with suspicion on any adult male who interacts with them.
Due to fear of paedophiles,
we also prevent our children playing outdoors, walking to school, etc.,
in a way we never did before.
Yes, there is a risk. But the risk is actually small.
While the negative impact on children's health is definite and large.
Peter Medawar
on Teilhard:
"How have people come to be taken in by
The Phenomenon of Man? We must not underestimate the size of the market for works of
this kind, for philosophy-fiction. Just as compulsory primary education created a market catered for by cheap dailies and weeklies, so
the spread of secondary and latterly tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and
scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought. It is through their eyes that we
must attempt to see the attractions of Teilhard"
On the claim that crashed planes did not cause the 9/11 destruction,
he asks well what happened to the passengers then?"What do Sheen and Griffin have to say to the family members of
those who were on those flights?
Were they herded away by airline officials and CIA agents to Afghanistan
where they were killed or now live as slaves?"
On the generic conspiracy:
"Do they really believe that thousands of government agents
could work in secrecy to accomplish the faking of hijacked planes,
the faking of plane crashes into buildings or fields,
and all the other fakery that must have occurred to pull off this hoax?"
And then not one of those thousands of government agents has opened his mouth?
Then there is the fact that the evil, all-powerful government
is powerless to stop ordinary people uncovering the conspiracy.
Cracking comments:
"And somehow, the devious, scheming masterminds behind the attacks can't do a thing about some ageing guy exposing their entire plot in front of a Senator's office in a major city. Ah, how easy the mighty fall!"
"if he REALLY thought about it, he'd realize that the amount of time needed to plan and execute 9/11 would mean that the CLINTON administration would have had to have been the ones to do it."
"Here is an interesting fact about the Bush Cabal. They are evil masterminds willing and able to coordinate the most complex mass murder of American citizens in the most treasonous act in history. They are the most prolific killers in this nation has ever known, ready to kill thousands to promote their evil scheme. Yet the Bush Cabal still show great respect for the First Amendment, free speech rights of those who are writing books, producing films and hosting websites detailing their crimes for all the world to see. Not a single Truther has ever "disappeared." What an interesting dichotomy is this administration willing to kill thousands but unwilling to even shut down Truther websites."
Another point:
"we know the Bush Cabal invented the so-called "terrorist pilots" who supposedly flew passenger planes into the WTC and Pentagon so that they could justify invading Afghanistan. Here is the real genius of the foul Bush fascists: they didn't create fictional Taliban or Afghan terrorists. No, they created fictional terrorists from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt to justify attacking Afghanistan.
We should redouble our efforts to find out why the Bush Cabal thought fictional Arab pilots attacking the US was better justification for invading Afghanistan than if fictional Afghani pilots attacked the US. Frankly, the fact that it doesn't seem to makes sense is just more evidence that it had to be an inside job."
"or, more likely, Iraqi terrorists. It would have been so simple to justify the invasion of Iraq if they'd been Iraqi terrorists. According to the libs, GWB wanted to oust Hussein since forever, so why weren't they Iraqi terrorists?"
9/11 Conspiracy Theories 'Ridiculous,' Al Qaeda Says
(and here)
- The Onion
on 9/11 Truthers.
Al Qaeda spokesman:
"I can assure you, we did not use
thermite bombs.
I did the research myself.
It would not have worked.
We flew an enormous airplane into a building, ok.
I think it is obvious what caused the building to crumble."
9/11 truther:
"Why are you being so closed minded to this, sir?"
Al Qaeda spokesman:
"Bush's administration, they are a den of jackals.
We certainly have common ground there.
What does not follow is
why would they kill 3,000 of their own infidels?"
The Al Qaeda guy starts producing papers about the operation.
"The voucher for the flight lessons."
9/11 truther:
"Oh come on, did President Bush give you these himself?"
"In Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-six
build houses light of straw and sticks.
For then shall mighty wars be planned
and fire and swords shall sweep the land."
"The World then to an end shall come
In Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-one."
(Actually this used to read "In Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-one."
Her believers modified it after that year passed uneventfully.)
Since 1995.
