Like a dummy, I've been watching the news about the Batman shooting, and just shaking my head. Sure, this is tragic, and the guy who did it is something of a mystery at the moment, but you don't have to be afraid to go to the movies because...
BATMAN IS NOT A RELIGION!!!
Only a religion can spur copycats or fund groups of sleeper cells to attack people because for an idea. When a lone individual becomes obsessed with Batman and wants to make a violent splash, that does not in any way indicate that other people will take the same violent actions. It just indicates that one psychotic individual came up with a plan to kill lots of people at one time for his own reasons. It doesn't mean that movie theatres can't open tonight. It doesn't mean you have to wear bullet proof vests to get your popcorn. It will be okay. Really.
4chan is not promising an afterlife peopled with big-busted cartoon whores to mass killers. Comic Con will not give out free tickets to autograph signings to terrorists. Stan Lee isn't pulling strings behind the scenes preparing a cabal of cult followers to do his evil bidding. (that we know of)
It takes a religion to create an army of like-minded murderous terrorists. When the tear gas settles, it will turn out that the shooter is a paranoid schizophrenic who had been unhinged for awhile before concocting his plot. There will not be a spate of movie theatre killings, just as there has not been a spate of shopping mall killings after the few rare shopping mall shootings.
It is safe to eat at Luby's. Or McDonald's. Or at the food court at the local mall.
Crazy people are everywhere and only some of them have a gun and a chip on their shoulder. They are like lightning or tornadoes. They are not organized terrorists looking for "soft targets" just so they can kill YOU.
Now that the cat is out of the bag, there may indeed be another movie theatre shooting. Or maybe someone will decide he can get a bigger body count at a high school football game. Maybe a college graduation ceremony. Anywhere you can find "targets," some nut case with too many bullets may decided to wipe you out. But what are the odds?
So American Media, settle the fuck down.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Today's Viral Facebook Question
"If you were stranded on an island with three celebrities, which three would you choose?"
Predictably, some of my FB pals said Jesus. At first I was just disgusted that they couldn't even play a simple game without invoking the deity, but then I realized...
You wouldn't starve, because he'd rain down loaves and fishes
You would have wine, made from seawater
You could walk on water to get back to civilization when you got tired of fish and wine.
Sounds like a deal. I wouldn't pick him, though. Too preachy and there's nothing in the Bible about him every washing anything but his feet. Stinky crazy preacher, yech.
I think I'd rather pick one of those home improvement dudes and Wolfgang Puck to provide the victuals, and then a (male) porn star for entertainment. One who could hunt and fish would be a bonus.
Predictably, some of my FB pals said Jesus. At first I was just disgusted that they couldn't even play a simple game without invoking the deity, but then I realized...
You wouldn't starve, because he'd rain down loaves and fishes
You would have wine, made from seawater
You could walk on water to get back to civilization when you got tired of fish and wine.
Sounds like a deal. I wouldn't pick him, though. Too preachy and there's nothing in the Bible about him every washing anything but his feet. Stinky crazy preacher, yech.
I think I'd rather pick one of those home improvement dudes and Wolfgang Puck to provide the victuals, and then a (male) porn star for entertainment. One who could hunt and fish would be a bonus.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
The Week in Links
R.I.P. Judith Hayes, a.k.a. The Happy Heretic, 1945-2012. I just discovered her blog today and I'm so sad that I never got to know her work before this. She started blogging before it was called "blogging." Her book is still for sale at amazon.com. They call her the "Erma Bombeck of the secular humanist community.
New Zealand priests have to stop using ipads in the pulpit. I wonder if they use them in the confessional. That has to be the most boring part of their day.
A former nun in India has written a book that I hope gets translated to English. Her advice to young girls: do not go to a priest for counseling or confession. Sounds like she has some tales to tell.
But then what fake priests do in India is also shocking. Child sacrifice to find hidden treasure? Crazy.
Mr. Cranky reviews a film that proves that Christians shouldn't produce films.
A Christian & a Muslim ask hotels to stop selling pay-per-view porn. Apparently they know that religious people are buying this stuff, because they certainly wouldn't care if atheists watched bad porn.
The Washington Post on Elevatorgate Part Deux. My first thought was 'wow we look so bad now,' but then I remembered that some of my friends have been harrassed at professional conferences. Maybe some people just need to be reminded that you should behave at a conference the way you would at home, or better.
As yet another storm passes by my parched Indiana city, I realize we should try performing a frog wedding.
Lutheran church needs a liquor license to serve liquor at weddings (but not for communion?) ... but the law states a license can't be granted within 100 feet of a church. Well, they are the church and no other church happens to be next door, so they get licensed!
New Zealand priests have to stop using ipads in the pulpit. I wonder if they use them in the confessional. That has to be the most boring part of their day.
A former nun in India has written a book that I hope gets translated to English. Her advice to young girls: do not go to a priest for counseling or confession. Sounds like she has some tales to tell.
But then what fake priests do in India is also shocking. Child sacrifice to find hidden treasure? Crazy.
Mr. Cranky reviews a film that proves that Christians shouldn't produce films.
A Christian & a Muslim ask hotels to stop selling pay-per-view porn. Apparently they know that religious people are buying this stuff, because they certainly wouldn't care if atheists watched bad porn.
The Washington Post on Elevatorgate Part Deux. My first thought was 'wow we look so bad now,' but then I remembered that some of my friends have been harrassed at professional conferences. Maybe some people just need to be reminded that you should behave at a conference the way you would at home, or better.
As yet another storm passes by my parched Indiana city, I realize we should try performing a frog wedding.
Lutheran church needs a liquor license to serve liquor at weddings (but not for communion?) ... but the law states a license can't be granted within 100 feet of a church. Well, they are the church and no other church happens to be next door, so they get licensed!
SkepChickCon: Don't Feed the Trolls (video)
I wish I could have attended the conference but I don't have the funds to fly all over to meet skeptics and atheists. Fortunately, internet people put their stuff up on the internet, for example, this panel about harrassment on the internet:
Women and a few men talking about sexist attacks on the internet and especially in the Skeptical & Atheist realms. If you think they're exaggerating, check out the comments people have posted.
Some of my graduate school professors had to deal with a lot of dirty tactics by their male "colleagues" and of course I have known women who have been victimized in a variety of ways. So... I'm a bit shocked but if you are a guy who hasn't been the confidante of a woman who has dealt with abuse, you may be seriously shocked by what these people have to say:
Men who find women threatening want to shut us up, and we who don't shut up have known this for years. We deal with it in ways that most men would never imagine.
Personally, I don't want to deal with that shit so you won't see my picture and real-life name here.
- Women who blog on the internet get rape threats
- Women on the internet get death threats
- Women do indeed get raped in elevators
- Women get stalked by "trolls" who turn out to be dangerous
Personally, I don't want to deal with that shit so you won't see my picture and real-life name here.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Quote of the Day: Lawrence Krauss
"The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance, but to overcome it."
...at about 30:00 here:
He said it in reference to the assertion that biology teachers should "teach the controversy."
His comments on cosmology are also very interesting. I admit, I sometimes don't understand him but this talk is excellent an very understandable.
...at about 30:00 here:
He said it in reference to the assertion that biology teachers should "teach the controversy."
His comments on cosmology are also very interesting. I admit, I sometimes don't understand him but this talk is excellent an very understandable.
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
20/20 "What is Heaven?" videos
The videos are up now! (Flash) Watch the whole 2 hours or the segments:
The whole shebang: http://abc.go.com/watch/2020/SH559026/VD55216980/2020-76-heaven
The whole shebang: http://abc.go.com/watch/2020/SH559026/VD55216980/2020-76-heaven
Betty Bowers on Abortion
Your Sunday School teacher never quoted these Bible passages!
If you're not familiar with Mrs. Bowers or Landover Baptist Church check out the True Christian [tm] site.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Some News of the Week
A few newsworthy items of late:
The Demon Defense doesn't hold holy water but this story does help to explain why there are so many tiny congregations in the crazier denominations
Whites-Only pastors' conference in Alabama. These nutters believe that "Europeans and their descendents" are the chosen people. uhhhh have they read the Bible?
Maybe they were just upset about the Black pastors who disagree with Obama about gay rights.
Then there is a pastor who teaches a funny version of genital hygiene. Apparently you don't have to be Catholic to be a pedophile.
The Catholic Church in Philadelphia continues to clean house
Presbyterians decide against changing the definition of marriage. The proposed new definition would be "between two people," which imho is a bad idea because it doesn't imply the two have to be adults. "Man and woman" indicates adulthood on both parts.
The Village Voice exposes Scientology's marriange "counseling" method. If Katie Holmes didn't know the religion was abusive before trying this, she'd know it afterward.
Circumscision: Something Muslims & Jews can agree on
The Demon Defense doesn't hold holy water but this story does help to explain why there are so many tiny congregations in the crazier denominations
Whites-Only pastors' conference in Alabama. These nutters believe that "Europeans and their descendents" are the chosen people. uhhhh have they read the Bible?
Maybe they were just upset about the Black pastors who disagree with Obama about gay rights.
Then there is a pastor who teaches a funny version of genital hygiene. Apparently you don't have to be Catholic to be a pedophile.
The Catholic Church in Philadelphia continues to clean house
Presbyterians decide against changing the definition of marriage. The proposed new definition would be "between two people," which imho is a bad idea because it doesn't imply the two have to be adults. "Man and woman" indicates adulthood on both parts.
The Village Voice exposes Scientology's marriange "counseling" method. If Katie Holmes didn't know the religion was abusive before trying this, she'd know it afterward.
Circumscision: Something Muslims & Jews can agree on
Barbara Walters on Heaven
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/
The full show will be on the site soon, but meanwhile, enjoy some clips. She traveled the world interviewing people about heaven and hell, and let atheists and skeptics have about two minutes out of a two-hour special.
I DVR'd it so I could review it here, but there isn't much to say about it. The various religions all have a different afterlife belief. duh Why she doesn't draw the obvious conclusion from there that heaven is man-made is beyond me. Well, the ratings would tank but still... what an insipid show about an insipid concept.
Sure, we want to live forever, but forever is a long time and even Heaven would get really really boring. And all those people who have near-death experiences never see Hell or their uncle who molested him. Surely at least one person would have a hellish time of it considering how many of us are going there. The explanation offered about the dying brain was immediately countered by the NDE experiencers with "I know what I saw."
*sigh*
The full show will be on the site soon, but meanwhile, enjoy some clips. She traveled the world interviewing people about heaven and hell, and let atheists and skeptics have about two minutes out of a two-hour special.
I DVR'd it so I could review it here, but there isn't much to say about it. The various religions all have a different afterlife belief. duh Why she doesn't draw the obvious conclusion from there that heaven is man-made is beyond me. Well, the ratings would tank but still... what an insipid show about an insipid concept.
Sure, we want to live forever, but forever is a long time and even Heaven would get really really boring. And all those people who have near-death experiences never see Hell or their uncle who molested him. Surely at least one person would have a hellish time of it considering how many of us are going there. The explanation offered about the dying brain was immediately countered by the NDE experiencers with "I know what I saw."
*sigh*
Friday, July 6, 2012
Katie Holmes & Scientology or just another celeb divorce?
Some interesting thoughts here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/07/why-katie-holmes-may-win-custody.html
What I find strange is the hoopla about Suri being brought up in Scientology with its special schools and nutty philosophy, but let someone send their kid to a Catholic, Jewish, or fundy school, well that's okay. Well, no, that's not okay. Brainwashing little kids is a vile, destructive and abusive practice.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/07/why-katie-holmes-may-win-custody.html
Many people have noted that all of Cruise's divorces happened when the wives were 33. Makes me wonder if Scientology has some step-up at that age that makes them go "whoa.... I did *Not* sign on for THIS!" The Daily Beast article is more down-to-earth, referencing child custody practices, and Suri's age, not Katie's as being the trigger.
Katie can probably never tell the whole truth without becoming a Suppressive Person and being stalked for life by henchment for the cause. It's bad enough for her to be stalked by paparazzi.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Book Review: The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer
If I hadn't put this on my Kindle I might have given up in the introduction. (It's really hard to skip around on a Kindle) This book starts out far less readable than Shermer's Scientific American columns, but I persevered, and the going got much easier.
He begins the book with three personal stories: a guy who sponsors research on belief after a supernatural experience or hallucination (depending on your point of view), NIH director Francis Collins' conversion and exploration of faith and science, and Shermer's own conversion and deconversion from evangelical Christianity. He references the people and books that influenced him during that time of his life in great detail. His own deconversion included a period of Ayn Rand fandom and evangelism for it, sad to say. I have to wonder if he had a harder time giving up authoritarianism than he did belief in a supernatural, because it sounds like he was a true fanboy. At this point in his life he hadn't yet become a big fan of the scientific method (or else he would have been persuaded more by evidence than by teachers and authors).
Fortunately the book does finally get to the sciency stuff I bought it for. His main thesis is that people develop a belief first and then find reasons to support it, and he ranges over a lot of territory developing it. The most interesting thing for me was the phenomenon of sensing the presence of another person (usually) when nobody is there. It happened to Shermer on an ultramarathon bike ride. It has happened to other extreme athletes, especially mountain climbers. This may come as a surprise to some Christians, but the brain is part of the body, and when the body is under extreme stress, that includes the brain!
Pattern-seeking is another biggie, especially with the point that a false positive pattern is generally less dangerous than a false negative. His example is a rustle in the grass on the African savannah. Our ancestors are the survivors who assumed the rustle came from a snake or other predator. The dead ends on the evolutionary tree are the ones who thought "m'eh it's just the wind" when it was actually a snake. This is Pascal's Wager!
Another point that's interesting: the ability to find connections between things (pattern-seeking) is related to creativity, which explains why so many brilliant and creative people have fallen for stupid shit like UFOs and "alternative" medicine. The same person who might make a breakthrough in science because he saw a connection nobody else noticed isn't likely to filter out the ones that aren't really there, i.e. false positives. Psychosis is the complete inability to filter out false patterns.
There's a section on political beliefs, which is pretty interesting. There have been studies done on political belief and apparently (hold onto your hats!) people are very reluctant to give up their political leanings! YES!
Sadly, he digresses into his libertarianism again, and as if to support his own thesis, he doesn't have any empirical evidence to back up his opinion. After pages and pages of examples of studies that prove this or that aspect of belief, his own libertarianism seems to demonstrate his argument that people come to their belief first, and then validate it. I really expected him to have at least done a little reading outside of libertarian literature.
His libertarianism doesn't really sound like Ron Paul libertarianism, though. He believes in a flat tax, and Ron Paul wants to have no tax at all, and even abolish the IRS. Some of Shermer's other views are really very moderate also. He's much more nuanced than he gives himself credit for, but there's no word for "practical libertarianism." Of course, since I kind of like the guy I may be giving him a pass in order to keep from changing my mind about him!
So... in the end his thesis that people come to their belief first and then find ways to justify it runs through the book but so do other ideas. He lists the typical biases that a lot of us probably already know about, like confirmation bias. These aren't dealt with in depth, though. I wish they were and there was less about libertarianism!
The last section of the book is a long discussion of the development of astronomy as a science, and the scientific method in general. As we should know (if we had the kind of education we ought to have had), the scientific method includes safeguards against natural biases of the scientists doing the experiments, and of the subjects, if they're human. He states that his thesis is that people decide what to believe and then rationalize them, but I think the book makes sense as a study of why the scientific method is the best way to arrive at a true result.
The best take-aways:
He begins the book with three personal stories: a guy who sponsors research on belief after a supernatural experience or hallucination (depending on your point of view), NIH director Francis Collins' conversion and exploration of faith and science, and Shermer's own conversion and deconversion from evangelical Christianity. He references the people and books that influenced him during that time of his life in great detail. His own deconversion included a period of Ayn Rand fandom and evangelism for it, sad to say. I have to wonder if he had a harder time giving up authoritarianism than he did belief in a supernatural, because it sounds like he was a true fanboy. At this point in his life he hadn't yet become a big fan of the scientific method (or else he would have been persuaded more by evidence than by teachers and authors).
Fortunately the book does finally get to the sciency stuff I bought it for. His main thesis is that people develop a belief first and then find reasons to support it, and he ranges over a lot of territory developing it. The most interesting thing for me was the phenomenon of sensing the presence of another person (usually) when nobody is there. It happened to Shermer on an ultramarathon bike ride. It has happened to other extreme athletes, especially mountain climbers. This may come as a surprise to some Christians, but the brain is part of the body, and when the body is under extreme stress, that includes the brain!
Pattern-seeking is another biggie, especially with the point that a false positive pattern is generally less dangerous than a false negative. His example is a rustle in the grass on the African savannah. Our ancestors are the survivors who assumed the rustle came from a snake or other predator. The dead ends on the evolutionary tree are the ones who thought "m'eh it's just the wind" when it was actually a snake. This is Pascal's Wager!
Another point that's interesting: the ability to find connections between things (pattern-seeking) is related to creativity, which explains why so many brilliant and creative people have fallen for stupid shit like UFOs and "alternative" medicine. The same person who might make a breakthrough in science because he saw a connection nobody else noticed isn't likely to filter out the ones that aren't really there, i.e. false positives. Psychosis is the complete inability to filter out false patterns.
There's a section on political beliefs, which is pretty interesting. There have been studies done on political belief and apparently (hold onto your hats!) people are very reluctant to give up their political leanings! YES!
His libertarianism doesn't really sound like Ron Paul libertarianism, though. He believes in a flat tax, and Ron Paul wants to have no tax at all, and even abolish the IRS. Some of Shermer's other views are really very moderate also. He's much more nuanced than he gives himself credit for, but there's no word for "practical libertarianism." Of course, since I kind of like the guy I may be giving him a pass in order to keep from changing my mind about him!
So... in the end his thesis that people come to their belief first and then find ways to justify it runs through the book but so do other ideas. He lists the typical biases that a lot of us probably already know about, like confirmation bias. These aren't dealt with in depth, though. I wish they were and there was less about libertarianism!
The last section of the book is a long discussion of the development of astronomy as a science, and the scientific method in general. As we should know (if we had the kind of education we ought to have had), the scientific method includes safeguards against natural biases of the scientists doing the experiments, and of the subjects, if they're human. He states that his thesis is that people decide what to believe and then rationalize them, but I think the book makes sense as a study of why the scientific method is the best way to arrive at a true result.
The best take-aways:
- People experience mysterious "others" during periods of stress
- The human brain seeks patterns because of evolution
- The human brain seeks an agent because of evolution
- People with an ability to make more connections than others are "creative" but also prone to conspiracy theories, mental illness, and just plain mistakes
- We are prone to fallacies that protect our beliefs
- The scientific method is designed to mitigate against the human brain's faults
Sunday, July 1, 2012
and in other news...
150 Mormons quit in a mass resignation ceremony. Congratulations to them all!
PTSD victim of priest's molestation strikes back years later
The Devil made him do it? Priest molests woman during "exorcism." uhh yeah
PTSD victim of priest's molestation strikes back years later
The Devil made him do it? Priest molests woman during "exorcism." uhh yeah
Get Yer End-Times Kit Right Hy-ee-ar!
http://www.hisvoicetoday.com/survival-kit.html
That's right. All you need for the End Times! Books, DVDs, CDs, all by the same looney toons apocalyptic nutjob! ...and "5x7 framed four-color picture of Jesus Christ returning on "a white horse" (see Revelation 19:11)." That's right, a 5x7 picture. Who needs 8x10 glossies? 5x7 will dooya. All this, packaged by White Horse Media! ...and if this wasn't enough to prepare you for Armageddon, you have to become a Food Nazi and join the naturalistic fallacy bandwagon! http://www.highwaytohealth.us/. Seriously? If the world is going to end, what would be the point of eating healthy? Why not have ice cream for dinner and gristle dripped with bacon fat for breakfast?
I wonder how much dough this charlatan is raking in. The sad thing is, he probably believes this drivel and also believes he deserves to make a pile of money from his delusions.
That's right. All you need for the End Times! Books, DVDs, CDs, all by the same looney toons apocalyptic nutjob! ...and "5x7 framed four-color picture of Jesus Christ returning on "a white horse" (see Revelation 19:11)." That's right, a 5x7 picture. Who needs 8x10 glossies? 5x7 will dooya. All this, packaged by White Horse Media! ...and if this wasn't enough to prepare you for Armageddon, you have to become a Food Nazi and join the naturalistic fallacy bandwagon! http://www.highwaytohealth.us/. Seriously? If the world is going to end, what would be the point of eating healthy? Why not have ice cream for dinner and gristle dripped with bacon fat for breakfast?
I wonder how much dough this charlatan is raking in. The sad thing is, he probably believes this drivel and also believes he deserves to make a pile of money from his delusions.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Let's experiment: Everyone pray for rain in Indiana!
Forget Colorado and Texas and all the other places that have droughts this year. Just pray for Indiana, or if you are lazy about prayer, just pray for Muncie, so I can stop watering my day lilies every day.
C'mon give it a go.
Squeeze your eyes real hard like you're passing a rock hard piece of people-scat. Pray to whatever god you wish. The more the merrier. If more people praying makes things go your way, then you'd think that more gods being prayed to would be even better.
But skip Allah. He seems to be a fan of desertification. And being fucking evil, he'd probably send a flood. I only want enough rain to green up the lawn, keep my day lilies from dying, and if you have some prayer mojo left over, pray for my baby zinnias. They're so tiny. Letting them die now would be like a zinnia abortion.
Monday, June 25, 2012
More Child Abuse by Christian "Parents"
http://www.indystar.com/article/20120625/NEWS/120625033/Muncie-parents-face-neglect-charges-after-not-feeding-children
What the hell is wrong with this picture? Were they just following the example of their wonderful God who allows babies to starve every day?Muncie parents face neglect charges after not feeding children
MUNCIE — Two parents are in jail after admitting to not feeding their young children for days a time, leaving one child hospitalized for severe malnourishment.
Amy J. Doty, 34, and Jason Doty, 40, were jailed Friday, each facing two charges of neglect of a dependent, one a Class B felony and one a Class D felony. Both were being held without bond....
The family moved to Branson, Mo., in March “to follow a church ministry,” both parents told police according to probable cause affidavits. Once their savings were used up, they didn’t have the resources to feed their children or themselves; as a result, the children would go for 2-4 days at a time without anything to eat besides water and maybe a few crackers, Cook said.
...By the time the Dotys returned to Muncie on June 16, both children were visibly underweight — the 19-month-old weighing only 17 pounds, according to cook — and the toddler had been unable to walk for the past few weeks. Amy and Jason Doty also admitted to police that the children would complain of being hungry.
... Both children were visibly underweight, but the younger child’s appearance in particular resembled photos of starving children in a third-world country, Cook said.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Links of Shame: Religion in the News
Finally a criminal conviction for a Catholic official who enabled priests to molest kids: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-crime-churchbre85l138-20120622,0,7600946.story
The Taliban attacks other muslims at a vacation destination WTF? How do they justify this to themselves?
Ex-Mormons helped to convert to Christianity. Out of the fire into the frying pan?
Religious boot camps http://youtu.be/T5U4prBnQss
SBC’s new name. They want everyone to forget they "used to be" racists. I look forward to the day when they want us to forget that they used to be batshit crazy:
Hasidic Jews are child molesters too: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/nyregion/4-ultra-orthodox-men-charged-with-trying-to-silence-accuser-in-abuse-case.html?pagewanted=all
Oh puh-leeze. Do any real scientists really say that because some old bones are old bones that they have identified a fictional character?
Big surprise: Warren Jeffs' cult discriminates against people from other cults:
Only 15% of Americans believe humans evolved without an assist from a supernatural entity:
A lawsuit over an "emergency" baptism by an Orthodox priest. I want to see more details, like how much money they're demanding because this priest prayed for their preemie. As an theist, I'd be offended but I'd LOL. Oh and this happened two years ago. Lemme guess, they have big debts from having to care for a preemie? http://www.timesonline.com/ap/state/aliquippa-couple-sue-hospital-priest-over-baptism/article_0b9270fd-9987-53dc-8c98-2885066621f4.html
Pastor & wife used church's money for gambling: http://blog.chron.com/newswatch/2012/06/former-pastor-wife-accused-of-gambling-with-church-money/ ...lots of it
Apparently God can cure a pastor of his child-pornography habit, but chooses not to despite being prayed to: http://www.news-leader.com/article/20120621/NEWS01/306210096/Southwest-Missouri-pastor-prayed-for-God-to-intervene-in-his-child-porn-problem?odyssey=nav%7Chead&nclick_check=1
Tea party cry baby pastor can dish it out but he can't take it. Oh boo hoo hoo someone made an ad critical of him in a political campaign. Who would do such a thing? http://newsok.com/edmond-pastor-files-lawsuit-over-political-ads/article/3686811
In Ghana: A "Healing camp" pastor's daughter killed by "lunatic" sent there for non-treatment: http://www.dailyguideghana.com/?p=52906 WTH did they expect? God's seers were being confined by chains instead of being treated by healers with training from Bible colleges. *sigh*
Pushback from the Air Force's decision to obey the Constitution and stop prosletyzing. And this pushback comes from people who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution: http://www.stripes.com/blogs/stripes-central/stripes-central-1.8040/republican-lawmakers-charge-air-force-hostile-to-religious-freedom-1.181080
...but there's a little good news in Israel: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-jewish-settlers-say-theyll-leave-illegal-west-bank-enclave-homes-to-be-moved/2012/06/21/gJQAj2EzrV_story.html ... though it would be even better if they'd leave them behind for Palestinians to live in
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
We've Lost One
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/19/12299214-atheist-blogger-leah-libresco-converts-to-christianity
Moral Law is some kind of Person? Huh? And just coincidentally, one the predominant religions of her culture is the true Truth.
I have put in a lot of thought about morality and never came to the same "conclusion." She apparently wants to believe that some supernatural deity made us behave the way we do, not evolution. If she'd even just take a look at the animal world she'd see that "morality" is natural, not supernatural.
I think it's John Loftus who says "You can't reason someone out of faith because they were never reasoned into it." On the surface this seems to be the rare conversion based on reason, because she argued, philosophized, and researched, but in the end her "reason" for converting was the need for agency in the Big Questions of Life. This isn't reason; it's emotion, or at the very least an evolutionary brainfart. The human mind conceptualizes other minds ("Theory of Mind") and extends that conceptualization into the inanimate/supernatural ("Agency").
Would she have come to the same "conclusion" if she'd been reading skeptical literature instead of philosphy?
I have been wondering what neophytes to atheism need to "know," like how much about science or the history of religion. I'm starting to think that combatting our natural inclination to believe in nonsense really does take some work, just as scientists work to take their biases out of their experiments.
I've never heard of her before. *shrug* Anywho, aside from msnbc, all the "news" outets with this story are Christian sites, of course. They're peeing their pants over this conversion, if it is indeed a conversion. I am always dubious of the claim that deconversions are people who "were never true Christians," and likewise whether atheists who embrace a religion were ever true atheists, but in this case I question whether she was ever truly an atheist. From her final post:Atheist blogger Leah Libresco converts to Christianity
By Louis Casiano, msnbc.comA prominent atheist blogger says she has converted to Christianity.
Leah Libresco made the announcement on Monday on her Patheos blog, "Unequally Yoked." The blog post, titled "This is my last post for the Patheos Atheist Portal," details how Libresco came to her decision.
She said she struggled with moral law, exploring where it comes from and what's behind it. As an atheist, she states that friends told her that her philosophy was unsustainable.
I believed that the Moral Law wasn’t just a Platonic truth, abstract and distant. It turns out I actually believed it was some kind of Person, as well as Truth. And there was one religion that seemed like the most promising way to reach back to that living Truth. I asked my friend what he suggest we do now, and we prayed the night office of the Liturgy of the Hours together (I’ve kept up with that since). Then I suggested hugs and playing Mumford and Sons really, really loudly.
Moral Law is some kind of Person? Huh? And just coincidentally, one the predominant religions of her culture is the true Truth.
I have put in a lot of thought about morality and never came to the same "conclusion." She apparently wants to believe that some supernatural deity made us behave the way we do, not evolution. If she'd even just take a look at the animal world she'd see that "morality" is natural, not supernatural.
I think it's John Loftus who says "You can't reason someone out of faith because they were never reasoned into it." On the surface this seems to be the rare conversion based on reason, because she argued, philosophized, and researched, but in the end her "reason" for converting was the need for agency in the Big Questions of Life. This isn't reason; it's emotion, or at the very least an evolutionary brainfart. The human mind conceptualizes other minds ("Theory of Mind") and extends that conceptualization into the inanimate/supernatural ("Agency").
Would she have come to the same "conclusion" if she'd been reading skeptical literature instead of philosphy?
I have been wondering what neophytes to atheism need to "know," like how much about science or the history of religion. I'm starting to think that combatting our natural inclination to believe in nonsense really does take some work, just as scientists work to take their biases out of their experiments.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Ethics of Genetic Testing on Fetuses
One of my facebook "friends," that I really don't know, posts a lot of anti-abortion crap, and even if something isn't anti-abortion she will post it with an anti-abortion twist. The lastest is this news item, introduced with her editorial comment that "Hitler would be proud."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9315265/Babies-could-be-tested-for-3500-genetic-faults.html
Well, duh! That's kind of the point -- to prevent unnecessary suffering by aborting a fetus before it can feel pain or have sentience. If a baby is going to suffer and die, how is it ethical to force it to be born?
I deleted most of my reply, and decided just to post just this much, because curiously this anti-abortion nutter never seems to post anything about taking care of living people:
Waiting... So far there's been no spate of posts on these topics. Apparently the anti-abortion network that sends links around to scare the Christian saps who are "pro-life" for fetuses doesn't send around links that deal with quality of life for the living. One of the other responders to this post has a child with Down Syndrome. She wrote:
Oh boo hoo. How is Down Syndrome comparable to the other diseases a family would want to know about? So I replied:
I wonder what kind of Reality Show it would be if the Duggars had that gene. Wouldn't that be a hoot? Instead of Stepford children traveling the world we'd have a funeral a year and instead of nail-biting ultrasounds we'd have parents getting the bad news that their latest cooing baby is doomed to die. Now that would be some good TV!
At the end of the article they mention schizophrenia & autism as being de novo DNA boo-boos, but they are also genetic disorders. I've been reading up on schizophrenia & DNA lately (this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Origins-Schizophrenia-Alan-Brown/dp/0231151241). The promise of whoever is touting this test is highly overblown. It's as if they tried to whip up panic in the anti-abortion camp. "In the [near?] future we'll be able to tell ifyour baby has the wrong color eyes! Eugenics to the rescue!"
One of the posters at the original article claims that Stephen Hawking's accomplishments are proof that this test should never be done and abortions should never be done for any disorder. We atheists now should genuflect... [go ahead, I'll wait] ... and think about how all of his findings in science would never have happened if he'd never have been born.
Think....
Think...
Think...
*sniff* Pretend you don't know that every scientific discovery has had its genius and its also-rans who came to the same conclusions or virtually the same conclusions at about the same time because all of them read and studied the same things at the same time.... Just pretend... Now imagine that of all the 7 billion people on the planet, nobody, NOT ONE ... is a genius scientist.
Now, imagine a family finding out that their baby would have a dread disease that would strike when that baby is in his 30s.... and imagine the family having an abortion because of that.
Uh oh my brain just exploded. How many people who want children would really do that? Wouldn't most bet on science coming up with a cure or better treatment by the time the disease hits?
Now imagine a family that finds out their fetus won't survive to tern and their choice is between having an easy abortion now or digging out the stillborn fetus some way later (because a normal labor would be impossible) and that family actually choosing to wait until the fetus dies on its own.
Well, I believe in choice so I think it would be okay to allow them to make the more painful choice especially because they can be such great martyrs. I bet it would be a real tear jerker to waddle up to the podium to tell people how their big belly is harboring a dying baby. Hallelujah. *sniff*
*sigh* Fascists. They only believe in choice when it's their choice.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9315265/Babies-could-be-tested-for-3500-genetic-faults.html
Babies could be tested for 3,500 genetic faults Scientists could soon be able to routinely screen unborn babies for thousands of genetic conditions, raising concerns the breakthrough could lead to more abortions.
A team has been able to predict the whole genetic code of a foetus by taking a blood sample from a woman who was 18 weeks pregnant, and a swab of saliva from the father.
They believe that, in time, the test will become widely available, enabling doctors to screen unborn babies for some 3,500 genetic disorders.
At the moment the only genetic disorder routinely tested for on the NHS is Down’s syndrome.
This is a large-scale genetic defect caused by having an extra copy of a bundle of DNA, called a chromosome.
Other such faults are sometimes tested for, but usually only when there is a risk of inheriting them from a parent
By contrast, the scientists say their new test would identify far more conditions, caused by genetic errors.
However, they warned it raised “many ethical questions” because the results could be used as a basis for abortion.
These concerns were last night amplified by pro-life campaigners, who said widespread use of such a test would “inevitably lead to more abortions”.
Well, duh! That's kind of the point -- to prevent unnecessary suffering by aborting a fetus before it can feel pain or have sentience. If a baby is going to suffer and die, how is it ethical to force it to be born?
I deleted most of my reply, and decided just to post just this much, because curiously this anti-abortion nutter never seems to post anything about taking care of living people:
Let's see some posts about orphan drugs, adoption agencies that specialize in disabled children & crack babies, charity hospitals, and programs that help families with non-medical expenses of caring for disabled children, and programs to help the older children of families with disabled children who have been basically abandonned by their parents' attention to a severely ill baby
Waiting... So far there's been no spate of posts on these topics. Apparently the anti-abortion network that sends links around to scare the Christian saps who are "pro-life" for fetuses doesn't send around links that deal with quality of life for the living. One of the other responders to this post has a child with Down Syndrome. She wrote:
We have a daughter born with Down Syndrome. Now read this part very very carefully.......I WOULD NOT CHANGE AN SINGLE SOLITARY THING...
Oh boo hoo. How is Down Syndrome comparable to the other diseases a family would want to know about? So I replied:
Nobody would force you to change a thing. But, you would force a family that had lost 4 children to Tay-Sachs disease to lose more children to it rather than aborting a child that's doomed to die. How ethical is that? Seems rather Fascist actually, since it doesn't leave the decision to the individual & family
I wonder what kind of Reality Show it would be if the Duggars had that gene. Wouldn't that be a hoot? Instead of Stepford children traveling the world we'd have a funeral a year and instead of nail-biting ultrasounds we'd have parents getting the bad news that their latest cooing baby is doomed to die. Now that would be some good TV!
At the end of the article they mention schizophrenia & autism as being de novo DNA boo-boos, but they are also genetic disorders. I've been reading up on schizophrenia & DNA lately (this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Origins-Schizophrenia-Alan-Brown/dp/0231151241). The promise of whoever is touting this test is highly overblown. It's as if they tried to whip up panic in the anti-abortion camp. "In the [near?] future we'll be able to tell ifyour baby has the wrong color eyes! Eugenics to the rescue!"
One of the posters at the original article claims that Stephen Hawking's accomplishments are proof that this test should never be done and abortions should never be done for any disorder. We atheists now should genuflect... [go ahead, I'll wait] ... and think about how all of his findings in science would never have happened if he'd never have been born.
Think....
Think...
Think...
*sniff* Pretend you don't know that every scientific discovery has had its genius and its also-rans who came to the same conclusions or virtually the same conclusions at about the same time because all of them read and studied the same things at the same time.... Just pretend... Now imagine that of all the 7 billion people on the planet, nobody, NOT ONE ... is a genius scientist.
Now, imagine a family finding out that their baby would have a dread disease that would strike when that baby is in his 30s.... and imagine the family having an abortion because of that.
Uh oh my brain just exploded. How many people who want children would really do that? Wouldn't most bet on science coming up with a cure or better treatment by the time the disease hits?
Now imagine a family that finds out their fetus won't survive to tern and their choice is between having an easy abortion now or digging out the stillborn fetus some way later (because a normal labor would be impossible) and that family actually choosing to wait until the fetus dies on its own.
Well, I believe in choice so I think it would be okay to allow them to make the more painful choice especially because they can be such great martyrs. I bet it would be a real tear jerker to waddle up to the podium to tell people how their big belly is harboring a dying baby. Hallelujah. *sniff*
*sigh* Fascists. They only believe in choice when it's their choice.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Magical People Amongst Us
A big reason for my atheism is that I've been around psychotic people enough to view the revelations of holy books as symptoms of mental illnesses. As I continue to read Michael Shermer's The Believing Brain, all this comes back to me. He goes into the neurology of mystical experiences, and how the brain is supposed to sort out fact from fiction. Of course the big problem is that the brain itself is not qualified to discern when the brain itself is the source of false information. This is why my step-dad clung to his delusions until his death and why my brother doesn't believe he has schizophrenia and my mom can't tell the difference between footprints in the snow that indicate the meter reader's been to the house from footprints in the snow that indicate she's being watched by the FBI.
But beyond the individual's psychotic symptoms is the wish within society for someone with magical powers to give the rest of us all the answers. After all, in a large group there will be someone who is better than everyone else at tracking game, and someone who is better at starting fires, and someone who always comes up with the solution to a logical problem, so why wouldn't there be someone who has access to another dimension the rest of us can't perceive?
Shermer has a long discussion of sensed presences, which coincidentally tend to happen under periods of great stress. Not just cramming for your algebra exam stress, but life-threatening stress like hypoxia on a mountaintop, Many religions incorporate rituals that create just enough stress to bring about other-worldly experiences, and then there's peyote... So for some reason not only do we experience these things, we seek it out and normalize the experiences.
When you grow up in a household where these experiences are normal, I guarantee you won't seek them out! The last thing I want to do is ingest peyote in order to experience a visit from my ancestors. And with a paranoid mother who went through my stuff looking for evidence of who-knows-what, I have a heightened sense of privacy and in no way would I welcome the "spirit" entering my body during a voudon ceremony, pentacostal hoe-down, or any other religious ceremony. I also know that people who believe they can hear actual voices in their heads don't really hear other people, because if they did my mom would have heard loud and clear, "STAY THE FUCK OUT OF MY ROOM!"
But despite these experiences and attitudes, I really did try to be "open" to spirituality for many years. It seemed to be the thing to do, a way to meet people, have community, dispel fears, and in general be a wholesome person. I really wanted to believe that Moses saw a burning bush and that Jesus appeared to his disciples, but I couldn't. It seemed so ridiculous, well no, it seemed CRAZY. Why didn't everyone else see it that way?
And why did I try so hard?
One part of the answer may be that I grew up in the 1960s, and I watched a lot of TV. My favorite genre was comedy, though I did watch some of the spooky anthlogy shows like One Step Beyond and The Outer Limits. Here are some of the comedies my family watched, including my now-psychotic brother:
Worse yet, these paranormal comedies were on prime time TV for adults (presumably) so this trope wasn't invented for the consumption of baby boomer children. There had been some famous movies with the theme of a person who has a paranormal experience (think, "Harvey" and "It's a Wonderful Life"), but not comedies like this. We certainly seemed to be set up for serious gullibility beyond what our parents would have recognized. Is it a concidence that we became the "Age of Aquarius" and wound up being "open" to "new" experiences? Would people have found LSD so appealing if they hadn't been primed by popular culture to think that hallucinations could be real? (or at least entertaining)
The subliminal message isn't just that we should be open to these experiences ourselves, but that we should respect others who "society" would call "crazy." This is a major theme of Scientology, concidentally. The anti-medication movement is also trying to make the case that normal people are being unnecessarily medicated -- that what I would consider "suffering" that should be relieved is considered by them to be normal and to be endured by these people. Is it a coincidence that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was an iconic film of the time?
At the same time, incredible realities were on our consciousness, like space travel and nuclear bombs (yeah it was twenty years earlier but we were very aware of it!) and war. We saw nature shows and variety acts and dramas about law and medicine too. That was the "normal" within which the "paranormal" could hide. Scary times inspire ridiculous fantasies.
In the 2000s and 2010s there has been a spate of "reality" shows about the "paranormal," though it was never a dead topic. The X-Files validated the spooky in the 1990s after all, and George Burns as God spoke to John Denver in "Oh God." Things do seem to be tipping away from respect for psychosis, though.
Recently I've seen commercials for a new show about a doctor who practices out-of-body medicine while in a coma. (Nope, not making that up either). There's currently an idiot-savant show about an autistic child with the ANSWERS if only people would interpret his mathematical ramblings correctly. I haven't seen these shows but they don't seem to validate psychosis. I sure hope they don't.
In the 1960s anti-psychotic medication was still very new. My mom's generation was the first not to be forced to spend the rest of her life in a "home." Although she remained reality-impaired in many ways, she was functional enough to participate in society. Ditto, my step-dad. My bro however, believes his hallucinations are real and we're all just bigass downers.
It seems ironic to me that mental illness is still stigmatized and feared, yet we want crazy shit to be real. We can't have it both ways. If someone believes his horse is talking but only to him, he probably needs meds. If you believe your blond-haired blue-eyed live-in lovers is actually a 2,000-year-old Arab genie, you both need meds. Trust me on this.
But if your car talks to you, it's OnStar and you should probably do what it says.
But beyond the individual's psychotic symptoms is the wish within society for someone with magical powers to give the rest of us all the answers. After all, in a large group there will be someone who is better than everyone else at tracking game, and someone who is better at starting fires, and someone who always comes up with the solution to a logical problem, so why wouldn't there be someone who has access to another dimension the rest of us can't perceive?
Shermer has a long discussion of sensed presences, which coincidentally tend to happen under periods of great stress. Not just cramming for your algebra exam stress, but life-threatening stress like hypoxia on a mountaintop, Many religions incorporate rituals that create just enough stress to bring about other-worldly experiences, and then there's peyote... So for some reason not only do we experience these things, we seek it out and normalize the experiences.
When you grow up in a household where these experiences are normal, I guarantee you won't seek them out! The last thing I want to do is ingest peyote in order to experience a visit from my ancestors. And with a paranoid mother who went through my stuff looking for evidence of who-knows-what, I have a heightened sense of privacy and in no way would I welcome the "spirit" entering my body during a voudon ceremony, pentacostal hoe-down, or any other religious ceremony. I also know that people who believe they can hear actual voices in their heads don't really hear other people, because if they did my mom would have heard loud and clear, "STAY THE FUCK OUT OF MY ROOM!"
But despite these experiences and attitudes, I really did try to be "open" to spirituality for many years. It seemed to be the thing to do, a way to meet people, have community, dispel fears, and in general be a wholesome person. I really wanted to believe that Moses saw a burning bush and that Jesus appeared to his disciples, but I couldn't. It seemed so ridiculous, well no, it seemed CRAZY. Why didn't everyone else see it that way?
And why did I try so hard?
One part of the answer may be that I grew up in the 1960s, and I watched a lot of TV. My favorite genre was comedy, though I did watch some of the spooky anthlogy shows like One Step Beyond and The Outer Limits. Here are some of the comedies my family watched, including my now-psychotic brother:
- Mr. Ed, about a talking horse that only his owner can hear
- Betwitched, about a witch that only her husband knows about (aside from her witchy family)
- My Favorite Martian, about a martian whose origin is known only to his housemate
- I Dream of Jeannie, about a magic woman who seems normal to all but her boyfriend (and later, his friend)
- The Addams Family, about a spooky family in the neighborhood
- My Mother the Car, about a woman reincarnated as her son's car (No, I'm not making that up!)
Worse yet, these paranormal comedies were on prime time TV for adults (presumably) so this trope wasn't invented for the consumption of baby boomer children. There had been some famous movies with the theme of a person who has a paranormal experience (think, "Harvey" and "It's a Wonderful Life"), but not comedies like this. We certainly seemed to be set up for serious gullibility beyond what our parents would have recognized. Is it a concidence that we became the "Age of Aquarius" and wound up being "open" to "new" experiences? Would people have found LSD so appealing if they hadn't been primed by popular culture to think that hallucinations could be real? (or at least entertaining)
The subliminal message isn't just that we should be open to these experiences ourselves, but that we should respect others who "society" would call "crazy." This is a major theme of Scientology, concidentally. The anti-medication movement is also trying to make the case that normal people are being unnecessarily medicated -- that what I would consider "suffering" that should be relieved is considered by them to be normal and to be endured by these people. Is it a coincidence that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was an iconic film of the time?
At the same time, incredible realities were on our consciousness, like space travel and nuclear bombs (yeah it was twenty years earlier but we were very aware of it!) and war. We saw nature shows and variety acts and dramas about law and medicine too. That was the "normal" within which the "paranormal" could hide. Scary times inspire ridiculous fantasies.
In the 2000s and 2010s there has been a spate of "reality" shows about the "paranormal," though it was never a dead topic. The X-Files validated the spooky in the 1990s after all, and George Burns as God spoke to John Denver in "Oh God." Things do seem to be tipping away from respect for psychosis, though.
Recently I've seen commercials for a new show about a doctor who practices out-of-body medicine while in a coma. (Nope, not making that up either). There's currently an idiot-savant show about an autistic child with the ANSWERS if only people would interpret his mathematical ramblings correctly. I haven't seen these shows but they don't seem to validate psychosis. I sure hope they don't.
In the 1960s anti-psychotic medication was still very new. My mom's generation was the first not to be forced to spend the rest of her life in a "home." Although she remained reality-impaired in many ways, she was functional enough to participate in society. Ditto, my step-dad. My bro however, believes his hallucinations are real and we're all just bigass downers.
It seems ironic to me that mental illness is still stigmatized and feared, yet we want crazy shit to be real. We can't have it both ways. If someone believes his horse is talking but only to him, he probably needs meds. If you believe your blond-haired blue-eyed live-in lovers is actually a 2,000-year-old Arab genie, you both need meds. Trust me on this.
But if your car talks to you, it's OnStar and you should probably do what it says.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
20 Questions
I found these questions and some excellent answer on Bud's Dead-Logic blog. Bud tore the logic to shreds in a few deft blows, so I'll refer y'all to his excellent post. Still, since Christians so arrogantly think these questions are unanswerable, I'll attempt to answer them. One of my earlier posts was questions for Christians, so I think turnabout is fair play.
One of those explanations is supernatural. Five of them are ordinary and fairly prosaic explanations. Why choose to believe the one supernatural one?
Resurrection appearances: You mean how Elvis appeared to his fans for years after his death? Dunno. I never got that one.
Growth of Christianity: prosletyzing, forced conversions, and making up stories that would appeal to the people being prosletyzed to. Other religions have grown too. Believing in agency, the supernatural, authority figures, etc. predispose us to believe in the fairy tales of our elders and to be converted when we are vulnerable. Add to this the tendency of kings and emperors to dictate which religion the people have to follow, and you get mass conversions like crazy. The Africans who came to the U.S. as slaves were pantheists who believed that they were captured because their god wasn't as strong as their captors' god, so they switched to the team with the better pitcher. Now there are millions of African-American Christians who are their descendents. So the spread of Christianity is pretty easily explainable by anyone who has bothered to read a basic world history textbook.
Well, that was fun. Some Christian really thought these questions were unanswerable? Makes you wonder if they have ever tried to find out alternate answers on their own. Most of them aren't even aware of the ways that other religions answer their deep questions. Certainly the spread of Christianity has been documented well enough that they could learn about their own religion. For someone to add that last question shows an appalling level of ignorance.
Today I was talking to a coworker who went to a fundy university but is actually rather liberal. She complained that so few Christians know much about their religion. I pointed out that the more you know the more you question, and they are afraid to go there. I'm living proof of that. I'm still waiting for her answer to the question of why Jesus refers to God in the third person if Jesus is God.
1. What caused the universe to exist?This presumes an agency, which is a natural way our mind works, but not necessarily true. Our assumption that something causes something else is also due to our pattern-seeking mind. I am currently reading Michael Shermer's The Believing Brain and he addresses the question of why we ask these questions and come up with the answers we do. Basically, we are programmed by evolution to seek patterns even if those patterns are wrong because the cost of not finding a true pattern (e.g., being bit by a predator rustling in the grass) is much greater than the cost of having a false positive (running when we hear a rabbit rustling in the grass).
2. What explains the fine tuning of the universe?There is no fine tuning of the universe. It is a figment of some believers' imagination. We are the center of our own little universes, and when we contemplate the greater universe we want to extend that sense of specialness, even though it's totally wrong. If a Christian really wants to know how people counter that silly argument, they don't have to look far.
3. Why is the universe rational?It's not. Nothing is rational without a prefrontal cortex.
4. How did DNA and amino acids arise?From smaller pieces of matter that got stuck together in bigger and bigger bundles as time went on.
5. Where did the genetic code come from?See the answer to #4
6. How do irreducibly complex enzyme chains evolve?Irreducibly complex anything is a figment of the Christian imagination. Even if there were such a thing, that would not imply a God or any kind of agent or rational entity tinkering with the chemicals. Notice that anti-science Christians never argue that crystals form according to God's plan, only chemicals that happen to be inside the human body. I have windows that have very poor insulation. In the winter crystals form on them every night. They are beautiful even though they are a sign that my landlord is a cheapskate. How does water form crystals on windows in such beautiful patterns? Because of the chemical structure and nature of water. Ditto, everything else.
7. How do we account for the origin of 116 distinct language families?By the spread of humans all across the globe into separate cultural groups. Having one core language group would have been much more of an argument for a God. Language families have family trees that linguists have deduced by studying the relationships amongst the languages. I have never heard this idiotic question before. Kind of makes me wonder if Christians are giving up on trying to out-science everyone with their ignorant arguments.
8. Why did cities suddenly appear all over the world between 3,000 and 1,000BC?This is not true. Mohenjo Daro appeared in India in ca. 5,000 BC and Chinese cities als predate the earliest Middle Eastern Cities. But... the human race is about the same age everywhere, so if we learn from our elders and experiment and adapt our behaviors to various environments, it's kind of inevitable that the same species will do the same behaviors at about the same time in different places.
9. How is independent thought possible in a world ruled by chance and necessity?Ahhh the questions get stupider by the number. Thinking is possible because our brains are adapted for thinking. Not all of use do it very well, as evidenced by this list of questions.
10. How do we account for self-awareness?Neurologists are answering more and more of these things all the time. We have brains that recognize ourselves, but amazingly don't recognize that the brain is what makes it possibe for us to do it. Did Teri Schiavo have self awareness after her brain turned to slush? No. There's your answer.
11. How is free will possible in a material universe?Check out the debate between Jerry Coyne and Richard Carrier (and possibly a few others) on this matter. Our "will" is only as free as our brain allows it to be. And since your "will" is a function of your brain, which is a material object, I think the question is kind of stupid. (Bud, what's the word for this kind of stupidity?)
12. How do we account for conscience?Brains.
13. On what basis can we make moral judgements?On the basis of the moral code that we get from our culture, or that we make up ourselves. Richard Dawkins makes this point very clearly in The God Delusion. Throughout the history of the Judeo-Christian "law" there has been very little relationship between the written word and the morality of the peoples who professed to believe in it.
14. Why does suffering matter?It matters to the being that's suffering because suffering hurts. Owie. We are programmed by evolution to want to live, and to avoid things that hurt. Duh. In a group of beings that are attached by a social bond, the suffering of others matters to us because 1) we have mirror neurons that give us the ability to empathize and 2) the survival of the group depends on the survival of individuals.
15. Why do human beings matter?We don't, except to ourselves and our pets.
16. Why care about justice?Because we live in a social group, and social groups work better when there's a system of justice to punish selfish individuals. Even non-human primates believe in justice, and I swear my smarter cocker spaniel keeps track of how many treats she gets compared to my other dogs.
17. How do we account for the almost universal belief in the supernatural?Michael Shermer to the rescue again. We see patterns because of our neurology, and we also attribute agency to things because not to do so when there's actually an agent would put us at an evolutionary disadvantage. Even Christians know this at heart. It's the basis for Pascal's Wager: being wrong about the supernatural is harmless if we believe in something false, but not believing in it if it's real could be dangerous. It's the snake vs. bunny in the grass wager again.
18. How do we know the supernatural does not exist?You can't absolutely 100% prove a negative in this case, because there could be a supernatural agent on some other planet we can't ever observe. But... so far on this planet things that seem to be supernatural because of some trick of our minds have 100% turned out to be explainable in natural terms, or have not been proved not to be natural.
19. How can we know if there is conscious existence after death?We can't, but it's a safe bet there isn't. If we can be "brain dead," then we're already not conscious. There also isn't conscious existence when we're asleep or under anesthesia. Babies The fact that it can be suspended pretty much points to it being a natural, 100% worldly, phenomenon attributable to the way our brains work. When the brain dies, we die. When others' brains die, they die, but our brains still hold their images and can play tricks on us.
20. What accounts for the empty tomb, resurrection appearances and growth of the church?Empty tomb: here are a few possible explanations. 1) Christ cheated death, 2) it's a made-up story to make Christ seem more supernatural in order to persuade bronze age people who would have expected a story like that of a godlike being, 3) his body was stolen, 4) he wasn't really dead and his pals helped him out of there, 5) he didn't exist, 6) his death was faked and he was never in the tomb.
One of those explanations is supernatural. Five of them are ordinary and fairly prosaic explanations. Why choose to believe the one supernatural one?
Resurrection appearances: You mean how Elvis appeared to his fans for years after his death? Dunno. I never got that one.
Growth of Christianity: prosletyzing, forced conversions, and making up stories that would appeal to the people being prosletyzed to. Other religions have grown too. Believing in agency, the supernatural, authority figures, etc. predispose us to believe in the fairy tales of our elders and to be converted when we are vulnerable. Add to this the tendency of kings and emperors to dictate which religion the people have to follow, and you get mass conversions like crazy. The Africans who came to the U.S. as slaves were pantheists who believed that they were captured because their god wasn't as strong as their captors' god, so they switched to the team with the better pitcher. Now there are millions of African-American Christians who are their descendents. So the spread of Christianity is pretty easily explainable by anyone who has bothered to read a basic world history textbook.
Well, that was fun. Some Christian really thought these questions were unanswerable? Makes you wonder if they have ever tried to find out alternate answers on their own. Most of them aren't even aware of the ways that other religions answer their deep questions. Certainly the spread of Christianity has been documented well enough that they could learn about their own religion. For someone to add that last question shows an appalling level of ignorance.
Today I was talking to a coworker who went to a fundy university but is actually rather liberal. She complained that so few Christians know much about their religion. I pointed out that the more you know the more you question, and they are afraid to go there. I'm living proof of that. I'm still waiting for her answer to the question of why Jesus refers to God in the third person if Jesus is God.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Get God or Get Out!
On this Memorial Day, when we honor the sacrifice made for our First Amendment rights (among others), I encountered this lovely graphic on Facebook.
It's an obvious photoshop, but the person who posted it loved it and so did his friends. It really rankled me because:
1) The obvious misunderstanding of the country's history & values
2) The bigotry of it
3) Posting it on Memorial Day sends the message that Memorial Day is about saving the Country for GAWD.
4) I've encountered the message far too often, usually from people whose religion wouldn't have been approved of in the 1780s. If we had adopted Christianity as our national religion, it would be Episcopalianism / Anglicanism, which has its crazies but they are few and far between. They would have to believe what the bishop tells them to believe, instead of making shit up like evangelicals do.
...but I digress.
This bigotry reminds me of the line I heard many times in the 1960s as the adults around me (not my family) debated the civil rights movement. "If the blacks (not always their choice of word) don't like it here, they can go back to Africa." Or they skipped the first part and just said the blacks should go back where they came from.
Atheists being "in the closet," and drawing parallels to the civil rights movement isn't too far off the mark. My friend who posted the cartoon is an otherwise rather enlightened person. In the 1960s some of the nicest people (otherwise) were rabidly racist under the surface.
So, somber Memorial Day everyone. I hope you exercised your right not to believe in God even though some of your neighbors don't think you should have that right.
...but I digress.
This bigotry reminds me of the line I heard many times in the 1960s as the adults around me (not my family) debated the civil rights movement. "If the blacks (not always their choice of word) don't like it here, they can go back to Africa." Or they skipped the first part and just said the blacks should go back where they came from.
Atheists being "in the closet," and drawing parallels to the civil rights movement isn't too far off the mark. My friend who posted the cartoon is an otherwise rather enlightened person. In the 1960s some of the nicest people (otherwise) were rabidly racist under the surface.
So, somber Memorial Day everyone. I hope you exercised your right not to believe in God even though some of your neighbors don't think you should have that right.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Religion Clause: Court Rejects Compelled Religious Speech Challenge To Oklahoma License Plates
Religion Clause: Court Rejects Compelled Religious Speech Challenge To Oklahoma License Plates
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If atheists have to tolerate "In God We Trust" on our money, then Christians should have to put up with this.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If atheists have to tolerate "In God We Trust" on our money, then Christians should have to put up with this.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Stupid creationist crap
http://www.waynesvilledailyguide.com/community/blogs/designer_blog/x373013832/evolution-a-religion-in-school-3
You'd think they could find something more Christian to argue about, like ways to feed the hungry, or ending wars. Sheesh
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Penn Jillette on Piers Morgan's show
Jillette gets grilled on atheism by a devout Catholic. I admire him for not busting out laughing and actually answering the stupid questions. "How does an atheist fix the economy?" What the heck? Do Christians run the economy through prayer? Well, actually that would explain a few things.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Humans can be Fucking Awesome!
An eaglet in Minnesota with a nestcam on it got stuck in his nesting, and a brave human scaled the 80-100 foot tree to check on it then brought it down to earth for TLC & vet care, and give him a chance to survive. Unnatural? Yes. But so was the eagles' near extinction due to our use of DDT, so I think we are obligated to help them recover. Instead of getting punished in Hell, rational people realize the error of their ways and then do what they can to correct and address the damage they've done. That's what makes atheists morally superior to Christians. We take responsibility for ourselves.
Go to 15:10 to see it all as it was recorded on the nestcam:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/22353672
Go to 15:10 to see it all as it was recorded on the nestcam:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/22353672
Monday, April 30, 2012
Another Crazyass Christian Cult that Abuses Children
http://www.wfaa.com/news/investigates/Waco-religious-commune-accused-of-masking-abuse-149134605.html
WACO, Texas - Homestead Heritage, just outside of Waco, has been revered as a model of Christian values. But is it a Utopian commune, or as some suggest, a extreme group of believers putting children at risk?
Videos posted on the Homestead Heritage web site present to the public the wholesome image, bolstering its perception as a beloved staple of the community for two decades. The estimated 1,000 members, crafting a pristine portrait of communal bliss.
But many who have left the church and its 500-acre, gated compound, paint a much different picture. One of a secretive and tightly-controlled religious environment...
According to Homestead’s membership contract, the aspiring members agree "to never bring before the public outside our church... any accusations or wrongdoing or any charge, lawsuit or court action." Agreeing "that all disputes be settled within the confines of the church."... and in return... "the church agrees to never expose a member's shortcomings and sins to any outside it's covenant."
The greatest sins, some former members say, are committed against children and teens. From emotional to physical, even sexual abuse.
News 8 has learned that in the past seven years, five individuals, either members of, or with close ties to Homestead, have been convicted of sexually abusing a child within the Homestead community...
Becky Crow, a former pastor's wife who left the church ten years ago, tells News 8 the abuse was common.
“Many heartbreaking stories of broken lives have been shared with me,” Crow said. “Some have not only been raped, they have been sold for other's sexual perversion by the ones who should have protected them."
Attorney Greg Love has represented abuse victims across the country, and said the stories of abuse at Homestead fit a pattern.
“When you get these closed communities and part of the fabric of that community is, information stays on the inside, behavior stays on the inside, how we do things stays on the inside,” Love said. “Even if those behaviors are injurious to a child, and you are discouraged from bringing in the outside, you really find children at risk."
WACO, Texas - Homestead Heritage, just outside of Waco, has been revered as a model of Christian values. But is it a Utopian commune, or as some suggest, a extreme group of believers putting children at risk?
Videos posted on the Homestead Heritage web site present to the public the wholesome image, bolstering its perception as a beloved staple of the community for two decades. The estimated 1,000 members, crafting a pristine portrait of communal bliss.
But many who have left the church and its 500-acre, gated compound, paint a much different picture. One of a secretive and tightly-controlled religious environment...
According to Homestead’s membership contract, the aspiring members agree "to never bring before the public outside our church... any accusations or wrongdoing or any charge, lawsuit or court action." Agreeing "that all disputes be settled within the confines of the church."... and in return... "the church agrees to never expose a member's shortcomings and sins to any outside it's covenant."
The greatest sins, some former members say, are committed against children and teens. From emotional to physical, even sexual abuse.
News 8 has learned that in the past seven years, five individuals, either members of, or with close ties to Homestead, have been convicted of sexually abusing a child within the Homestead community...
Becky Crow, a former pastor's wife who left the church ten years ago, tells News 8 the abuse was common.
“Many heartbreaking stories of broken lives have been shared with me,” Crow said. “Some have not only been raped, they have been sold for other's sexual perversion by the ones who should have protected them."
Attorney Greg Love has represented abuse victims across the country, and said the stories of abuse at Homestead fit a pattern.
“When you get these closed communities and part of the fabric of that community is, information stays on the inside, behavior stays on the inside, how we do things stays on the inside,” Love said. “Even if those behaviors are injurious to a child, and you are discouraged from bringing in the outside, you really find children at risk."
Death Threats from a "Christian"
Well, I assume it's a Christian:
http://jesusfetusfajitafishsticks.blogspot.com/2012/04/voicemail-death-threats-dear-persecuted.html
Apparently the commandment about not killing doesn't apply to atheists in this demented worldview.
Sick. Sick. Sick.
http://jesusfetusfajitafishsticks.blogspot.com/2012/04/voicemail-death-threats-dear-persecuted.html
Apparently the commandment about not killing doesn't apply to atheists in this demented worldview.
Sick. Sick. Sick.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
Anatomy of Pseudoscience Bunk
A Facebook friend posted this link, which infuriated me so much I decided it was worth a blog post. Right off the bat it smelled like blatant irresponsible pseudoscience to me, but as I read more of it (despite myself) I realized it is just so classic that it deserves to be taken apart piece by piece and the author, Gary Kohls, hung out to dry for all his googly fans to find.
This guy is or was a general practitioner who decided to specialize in mental illness without bothering to do all the bothersome training that the stupid "experts" do. You know, three years post-medical school, training afterward, and for many of them studying for that "board certification" that we stupid people think means they know what they're talking about. No.... this guy made up his own type of therapy which of course works just fine because he encounters his "patients" (i.e. suckers) in general practice rather than psych wards and emergency rooms. So right there we have:
This is classic doublespeak: the thing that hundreds or thousands of people have used valid scientific methodology to develop is not only ineffective, it's detrimental. You'd think all those brilliant people would have seen that they were harming patients instead of helping them.
In case you aren't suitably alarmed by the hyperbolic title, the subtitle gives you a punch in the gut: Many casually prescribed drugs are fully capable of disabling – often permanently – bodies, brains and spirits.
Dateline: April 22, 2012
This is the date that the article is published to this site, but it's not the date most of it was written earlier. It doesn't really matter, as the "science" of this seems stuck in the 1950s, or perhaps 1960s since the audience wouldn't buy any of this without first having seen Cuckoo's Nest.
Now let's scare you half to death:
Who would do such a thing to "innocents"? Perhaps your kindly doctor is a victim, too. He's been seduced by BigPharma & the FDA
And here comes:
That's right, don't just take my say-so, little ole' crackpot practitioner. There are professional crackpots who are selling books claiming that things have gotten worse since we started locking up crazy people in "asylums" and throwing away the key. Now I think this might be equivocation or perhapst it's straight-up bullshit, but how can there be an increase in disabilities of drug-takers from the beginning of drug-taking, when there were zero permanent disabilities due to drugs because.... read this part slowly: 600% of zero is zero!
The book's author is now portrayed the heroic John the Baptist character that every good pseudoscience needs:
Next we characterize the good guys as "open-minded" and essentialize the "problem:"
Why be wary of chemicals that have been tested and described in peer-review literature? And this "long-term medication use" has to be weighed as a cost-benefit analysis. Bi-polar disease usually results in suicide or incarceration without medication, and the side-effects are minimal. Even if someone has some side-effect in their 70s, aren't the 50 years of living a relatively normal life before that worth that risk? A 20-year-old taking his first dose this year would benefit from an additional 50 years of research by his 70s anyway so today's 70-year-olds aren't any window to his future. What these "open-minded" physicians are open to is pseudo-science. Yes, some of them are gullible too.
The circumstantial ad hominem raises its ugly head:
Rocket science is also a relatively new field, and it does have its share-holders, admittedly, but we did go to the Moon (or did we?). Sure, there's potential for big industry to abuse its power, but that isn't proof that it's happened. The author (according to our author) documents the business end, but apparently isn't interested in actual data about patients. That's a pity.
Next there's an issue that is valid: off-label use for patients whose brain has not yet developed. I will grant this, but what does that have to do with whether medications given to adults are safe and effective? It's passed on briefly without any statistics or neurobiological grounding. Just thrown out there.
The next authority figure is brought out:
Okay, so now our esteemed author has cited four books by two alarmist authors. That first book is cited without any specific information backing it up, just a string of Latin-Greek words to make it seem authoritative. The one I find funny is : "clinical evidence of brain shrinkage and other signs of brain damage, especially when used long-term" What? How could I snigger at that? Well, you have to know that old people's brains shrink because they're OLD! You could look at a "long-term" patient on holistic woo drugs and find those brains had shrunk too, assuming the marks who took the snake oil 1) lived long enough to get an old brain and 2) didn't have a shrunken brain to begin with!
The second "book" seems like it could be subtitled "read the inserts that come with your medication." ... and then when the rare possible side effects scare the shit out of you, take this totally unstudied elixir that has no documented side effects because there have never been any actual studies!
I'm not going to copy the rest. You get the picture. I'll summarize though so you don't have to:
Three paragraphs about Thorazine ... with an actual mention of Cuckoo's Nest. The final statement reverts to the genetic fallacy, saying that Thorazine was originally developed as a dye. uhhhh (if true) so what?
.
By the way, Thorazine and 1950s psychiatry in general are targets of Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard apparently didn't enjoy his stay in the Cuckoo's Nest so he made it his mission to attack psychiatry after he invented his religion.
Next, a few swipes at Depakote, which I'd never heard of, winding up with a case of a non-epileptic having a seizure after coming off of this epilepsy drug. I think we can all agree that medications (including some woo forumulations) can have side-effects, and anything put into the brain can have withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal may indicate physical dependency technically, but it takes more than that to make something "addictive." If you've ever known an addict you know they want an immediate high. They don't get addicted simply by having something in their system that doesn't feel good on the way out. They get addicted because they like the feeling they get going in. Depakote would be all over the streets if it delivered a high.
The reason these things are being overprescribed is that people have been brainwashed by TV commercials. It's a good thing you can't be brainwashed by pseudo-scientific nonsense splattered all over the interwebs! People might think "safe and effective" is the same as "proven." *whew* Otherwise passages like the following might actually convince people:
From there the article devolves into more and more psychotic ramblings about conspiracies, "normals" being told they are "mentally ill for life" and that psychiatric drugs are the major cause (or one of) dementia. ...and then we come full-circle to a reference to the 1950s:
Why scare the "innocents?" What's in it for him/them? Buying the books for one thing. Suckering them into Scientology for another. That, I believe is the source of this baloney. The ending is the "tell." L. Ron Hubbard's 1950s experience is the basis for their twisted view of psychiatry. I will give them credit, though. Their tactics are getting more devious. Having debated Scientologists before, when I saw the name "Breggin" in the references, I knew I was right. He used to be their hero before they came up with this new tactic.
The really sad thing is that they're the ones who are conspiring to hook "innocents" and convince them to do something against their own best interest. If anyone has ever known a true schizophrenic or someone who has committed suicide, this kind of tripe is more than outrageous. It's dangerous, which is why I decided to offer my debunking to the blogosphere. I hope someone who is contemplating talking a loved one out of taking life-saving medication will listen to the real experts who have met their loved one and assessed his/her condition.
- Appeal to Fear
- Fallacy of "hasty generalization" and sampling bias or error : drawing conclusions from a small and skewed sample
This is the date that the article is published to this site, but it's not the date most of it was written earlier. It doesn't really matter, as the "science" of this seems stuck in the 1950s, or perhaps 1960s since the audience wouldn't buy any of this without first having seen Cuckoo's Nest.
Since the introduction of major tranquilizers like Thorazine and Haldol, “minor” tranquilizers like Miltown, Librium and Valium and the dozens of so-called “antidepressants” like Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil, tens of millions of unsuspecting Americans have become mired deeply, to the point of permanent disability, in the American mental “health” system.
Many of these innocents have actually been made “crazy” and often disabled by the use of – or the withdrawal from – these commonly prescribed, brain-altering and, for many, brain-damaging psychiatric drugs that have been, for many decades, cavalierly handed out like candy – often in untested and therefore unapproved combinations of two or more.Remember Cuckoo's Nest? Doesn't matter if you do, really because this article will scare the shit out of you. Your doctor is just waiting for his chance to suck you into an evil "system" and knock your brains out of your head with meds. These "innocents" have done nothing wrong, and neither have you. After all, the mental health "system" is a form of punishment, not a system dedicated to making sick people well. None of the people who are receiving multiple drugs could be drug addicts gaming the system, oh no no no. Forget Anna Nicole and Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, and anyway people who aren't famous can't become addicted to prescription drugs.
Trusting and unaware patients have been treated with potentially dangerous drugs by equally unaware but well-intentioned physicians who have been likewise trusting of the slick and obscenely profitable psychopharmaceutical drug companies aka, BigPharma, not to mention the Food and Drug Administration, an agency that is all-too-often in bed with the drug industry that they are supposed to be monitoring and regulating. The foxes of BigPharma have a close ally inside the henhouse.Ding ding ding ding! We have a
- Conspiracy Theory, de rigeur for bunk "science" because first before they can sell you on their "truth" they have to shake your trust in people who actually know what they're doing.
And here comes:
- Appeal to authority (their authority figures)
- Genetic fallacy
That is the conclusion of two books by a courageous investigative journalist and health science writer named Robert Whitaker. His first book, entitled Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, noted that there has been a 600 percent increase (since Thorazine was introduced in the U.S. in the mid-1950s) in the total and permanent disabilities of millions of psychiatric drug-takers.
That's right, don't just take my say-so, little ole' crackpot practitioner. There are professional crackpots who are selling books claiming that things have gotten worse since we started locking up crazy people in "asylums" and throwing away the key. Now I think this might be equivocation or perhapst it's straight-up bullshit, but how can there be an increase in disabilities of drug-takers from the beginning of drug-taking, when there were zero permanent disabilities due to drugs because.... read this part slowly: 600% of zero is zero!
This uniquely First World mental health epidemic has resulted in the taxpayer-supported, life-long disabilities of large numbers of psychiatric patients who are now unable to be happy, productive, taxpaying members of society.
Whitaker has done a powerful service to humanity, albeit an unwelcome one for various healthcare-related industries, by presenting previously hidden, but very convincing evidence from the scientific literature to support his thesis: that it is the drugs and not the so-called “mental illnesses” that are causing the epidemic of “mental illness” disability.
Whattaguy! He's taking on the case of "large numbers" (doesn't have exact numbers, conveniently) of people who can't be happy, despite supposedly being quite happy, productive and tax-paying citizens before taking thorazine or whatever. First, millions of people have been helped by medications. I am one and I know many others personally including my own mother. My mother and I are relatively happy, productive and I pay taxes. My mother paid taxes before she retired from her job. If not for medications, my mom would not have been a productive member of society. She was literally a blithering idiot, incapable of carrying on a conversation and an unmitigated complete mess. My disease is depression, and unlike mom I have never been hospitalized, but I've been helped for sure by the psychiatric profession.
- So... we have the biased sample again. If there really is a problem they should be able to present percentages and hard numbers, comparing institutionalized people in 1950 vs. 2000. I can provide contradictory evidence from my even more limited sample, so how trustworthy can this be?
Next we characterize the good guys as "open-minded" and essentialize the "problem:"
Many open-minded physicians and many aware psychiatric patients are now motivated to be wary of any and all synthetic chemicals that can cross the blood/brain barrier because all of them are capable of altering the brain in ways totally unknown to medical science, especially with long-term medication use
Why be wary of chemicals that have been tested and described in peer-review literature? And this "long-term medication use" has to be weighed as a cost-benefit analysis. Bi-polar disease usually results in suicide or incarceration without medication, and the side-effects are minimal. Even if someone has some side-effect in their 70s, aren't the 50 years of living a relatively normal life before that worth that risk? A 20-year-old taking his first dose this year would benefit from an additional 50 years of research by his 70s anyway so today's 70-year-olds aren't any window to his future. What these "open-minded" physicians are open to is pseudo-science. Yes, some of them are gullible too.
Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness
In Whitaker’s second book, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, the author provides overwhelming proof regarding this sobering assertion.
He documents the history of the powerful forces behind the relatively new field of psychopharmacology and its major shapers, promoters and beneficiaries, namely BigPharma and those groups and individuals who benefit financially
Rocket science is also a relatively new field, and it does have its share-holders, admittedly, but we did go to the Moon (or did we?). Sure, there's potential for big industry to abuse its power, but that isn't proof that it's happened. The author (according to our author) documents the business end, but apparently isn't interested in actual data about patients. That's a pity.
More evidence to support Whitaker’s well-documented claims are laid out in two other important new books written by practicing psychiatrist and scholar Grace E. Jackson, MD. Jackson has done yeoman’s work in researching and documenting, from the voluminous basic neuroscience literature (which is often ignored by mental health clinicians), the unintended and often disastrous consequences of the chronic ingestion of any of the major classes of psychiatric drugs.
Jackson’s most powerful book, in my opinion, is her second one, Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime, which proves that any of the five classes of psychotropic drugs that are commonly used to alter the brains of psychiatric patients (antidepressants, antipsychotics, psychostimulants, tranquilizers and anti-seizure/”mood-stabilizer” drugs) have shown microscopic, macroscopic, radiologic, biochemical, immunologic and clinical evidence of brain shrinkage and other signs of brain damage, especially when used long-term.
Long-term use can result in clinically diagnosable, probably irreversible dementia, premature death and a variety of other related brain disorders that can mimic mental illnesses “of unknown cause.”
Dr. Jackson’s first book, Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent, was an equally sobering warning about the many hidden dangers of psychiatric drugs, dangers that are commonly not mentioned to patients when they get their first prescriptions.
Okay, so now our esteemed author has cited four books by two alarmist authors. That first book is cited without any specific information backing it up, just a string of Latin-Greek words to make it seem authoritative. The one I find funny is : "clinical evidence of brain shrinkage and other signs of brain damage, especially when used long-term" What? How could I snigger at that? Well, you have to know that old people's brains shrink because they're OLD! You could look at a "long-term" patient on holistic woo drugs and find those brains had shrunk too, assuming the marks who took the snake oil 1) lived long enough to get an old brain and 2) didn't have a shrunken brain to begin with!
The second "book" seems like it could be subtitled "read the inserts that come with your medication." ... and then when the rare possible side effects scare the shit out of you, take this totally unstudied elixir that has no documented side effects because there have never been any actual studies!
I'm not going to copy the rest. You get the picture. I'll summarize though so you don't have to:
.
By the way, Thorazine and 1950s psychiatry in general are targets of Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard apparently didn't enjoy his stay in the Cuckoo's Nest so he made it his mission to attack psychiatry after he invented his religion.
After reading and studying all these inconvenient truths, mental health practitioners must consider the medicolegal implications for them, especially if the information is ignored by practitioners who are often tempted to dismiss out of hand new, clinically-important information that challenges or disproves their old belief systems.
Those who are hearing about new data for the first time need to pass the word on to others, especially their healthcare practitioners. This is important because the opinion leaders in the highly influential psychiatric and medical industries have often been bribed or marketed into submission, without considering all the facts that might some day reveal that they are guilty of malpractice
From there the article devolves into more and more psychotic ramblings about conspiracies, "normals" being told they are "mentally ill for life" and that psychiatric drugs are the major cause (or one of) dementia. ...and then we come full-circle to a reference to the 1950s:
Long-term, high dosage or combination psychotropic drug usage could be regarded as a chemically traumatic brain injury (cTBI) or, as “antipsychotic” drugs were known in the 1950s and 1960s, a “chemical lobotomy.”
TBI or chemical lobotomy can be a useful way to conceptualize this serious issue of drug-induced toxicity, because such neurologically brain-altered patients can be indistinguishable from those who have suffered physically traumatic brain injuries or been subjected to ice-pick lobotomies which were popular before psych drugs came on the market in the 1950s – and before the huge epidemic of mental illness that America is experiencing
America’s health epidemic in mental illness is grossly misunderstood. And the epidemic is worsening, not because of a supposed disease progression, but because of the chronic use of neurotoxic, non-curative drugs that are, in America, erroneously regarded as first-line “therapy.”So... other than his two authors and their five books, there are NO references to any authority, no references to studies, or to peer-reviewed articles, or even to any data. The whole thing is pure bunk, based on faulty reasoning and intended to scare people.
The really sad thing is that they're the ones who are conspiring to hook "innocents" and convince them to do something against their own best interest. If anyone has ever known a true schizophrenic or someone who has committed suicide, this kind of tripe is more than outrageous. It's dangerous, which is why I decided to offer my debunking to the blogosphere. I hope someone who is contemplating talking a loved one out of taking life-saving medication will listen to the real experts who have met their loved one and assessed his/her condition.
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