Perhaps there should be a special body for issuing warnings on the rare occasions when scares aren’t bogus.
Author: Ophelia Benson
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Mediums Protest New EU Directive
Shouldn’t they have started protesting years ago? Since they knew it would happen?
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Psychic Magic Woo People Are Too Funny to Ban
The greater threat are the morons who present themselves as superficially plausible and sciencey.
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Michael Shermer on ‘Expelled!’
Anyone who thinks scientists do not question Darwinism has never been to an evolutionary conference.
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Chatting with clerics
I can’t help noticing that clerics say odd things sometimes. I suppose it’s their job, but it surprises me anyway. I suppose it surprises me that they don’t try to cover up more.
The Bishop of Oxford (again), for instance. He said something very droll.
I am sure the Roman Catholic bishops are intelligent, rational people, but their starting point on embryo research is mistaken. They believe that the newly fertilised egg, the tiny bundle of multiplying cells smaller than a pin head, has the same right to life as an adult. But more than two-thirds of fertilised eggs are lost in nature anyway. If each of these really is a person, that is, an eternal soul, it would lead to the absurd conclusion that heaven is mainly populated by people who have never been born.
Ah yes, how absurd – but is it any more absurd than the conclusion that heaven exists and that it is mainly populated by people who have been born? Not a lot. The whole idea of a heaven populated by dead people is absurd, yet here is this grown man treating it as a matter of fact.
The other day Gene Robinson, the gay bishop of New Hampshire (the one who has made life so difficult for the archbishop and his friends) was on Fresh Air. Terri Gross asked for his views on abortion, and he gave a both-and reply, the first part of which was that ‘all life is sacred’ and the second of which is that it’s for the woman to decide. It’s odd that churchy people keep saying that, and that no one takes them up for it. They don’t believe all life is sacred! Nobody does, and they’re no exception. Bacteria, viruses, mosquitoes, weeds, parasites, vegetables, fruits, grains – churchy people don’t think those kinds of life are sacred. It’s pompous rhetoric, and they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it, because it can’t possibly be true. Yet get away with it they do.
The other other day Desmond Tutu was on the local public radio station. I admire Tutu, as most people do; from what I know he’s a sterling fella. But he did say this one thing…that the universe is a moral place, and that truth and justice always ultimately prevail. No – it isn’t and they don’t. Especially the universe is not a moral place – I think that’s such a mistake. The universe is a bunch of gas and rock; it’s no more moral than my kettle is when I put it on to boil water. We’re here and the universe is there and the universe couldn’t possibly care less about us or about morality. If there’s going to be any morality it has to come from us. That’s sad, because we’re not much good at it, but we’re all there is. And, alas, truth and justice don’t ultimately prevail, not least because there is no ulitmately, there’s only a series of nows, all of which are shot through with truth and justice not prevailing.
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9/11 Conspiracy Theory and Anti-Semitism
Edmund Standing reports ‘Scriptures for America’ teaches anti-Semitism and advocates the execution of gays.
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Eric Alterman on Samantha Power
Hacks sneer about ‘university elitism’ in the Obama campaign. Because ignorance is preferable?
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Rise of Conspiratorial Thinking About Science
In its extreme and ideological form, this contrarian approach to science can turn into a form of paranoia.
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Time for Chuck to grow up
Speaking of stupid stuff, the struggle continues to persuade the future king to act like a responsible adult and not endanger the health of his ‘subjects.’
The Prince of Wales is being challenged today to withdraw two guides promoting alternative medicine…The documents, published by the Prince and his Foundation for Integrated Health, misrepresent scientific evidence about therapies such as homoeopathy, acupuncture and reflexology…Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, and Simon Singh, a science writer and broadcaster, call on the Prince to recall the publications, one of which was produced with a £900,000 grant from the Department of Health…Professor Ernst and Dr Singh say the Prince accepted the importance of “rigorous scientific evidence” to alternative medicine, in an article he wrote for The Times in 2000, and point out that more than 4,000 research studies have since been published…The first document is a pamphlet, part-funded by the taxpayer, that gives advice on finding practitioners of alternative therapies. It is misleading, Professor Ernst said, because it includes disorders for which alternative remedies have been shown to be ineffective. It states, for example, that chiropractic is used to treat asthma, digestive disorders and migraine, when it has been shown by rigorous trials only to be useful for back pain. The guide also promotes acupuncture for addiction, when studies suggest that it has no benefit, and homoeopathy, which a major review for The Lancet has indicated works only as a placebo.
That’s a good wheeze, isn’t it – to describe worthless treatments as being ‘used to treat’ diseases it can’t treat. It’ll be true, because there are people who ‘use’ them that way, but it’s misleading, because ‘using’ them that way is like me using a hammer to paint the wall blue. It doesn’t work.
Natasha Finlayson, of the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health, said: “We entirely reject the accusation that our online publication Complementary Healthcare: A Guide contains any misleading or inaccurate claims about the benefits of complementary therapies. On the contrary, it treats people as adults and takes a responsible approach by encouraging people to look at reliable sources of information . . . so that they can make informed decisions.”
That’s rather disgusting. It’s manipulative bullshit to talk about ‘treating people as adults’ by giving them misleading pseudo-information. It’s not treating people as children to give them information that is careful not to mislead, especially when it comes to medical treatments. It’s disgusting that Chuck abuses his unearned power and influence to do this kind of thing. He’s not a doctor, he’s not a medical researcher, he’s not a physiologist, he’s not even a competent journalist, but here he is pushing quack medicine on people who will take him seriously because of who he is. Bad, very bad.
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Good journalism
Chris Hedges has a new book out, a really terrible book on the putative ‘new’ atheists. It’s so stupid it’s unreadable. This is a little surprising, since he was a foreign correspondent for the NY Times for several years, and even though the Times is not nearly as clever as it thinks it is, I would expect it to be above the kind of counter-factual drivel Hedges perpetrates in I Don’t Believe in Atheists. Or would I. No on second thought maybe I wouldn’t. Anyway the book is the kind of stupid that makes your jaw drop as you read. You don’t have to wait long, either – only five pages in you find
[The liberal church] accepts along with the atheists and the fundamentalists, Pangloss’s rosy vision in Voltaire’s Candide that we live in ‘the best of all possible worlds’ and that if we have faith and trust in the forces around us, ‘all is for the best. It is this naive belief in our goodness and decency – this inability to face the dark reality of human nature, our capacity for evil and the morally neutral universe we inhabit – that is the most disturbing aspect of all these belief systems.
He’s including atheism in that – specifically the atheism of what he calls ‘the new atheists.’ (He claims they call themselves that, which is typical of his respect for accuracy.) Really?! Dawkins and Hitchens and Dennett think we live in the best of all possible worlds? Which Dawkins and Hitchens and Dennett has he been reading?
And he enlists this kind of wildly inaccurate characterization in a stupidly belligerent attack on people and ideas and books that don’t exist. It’s cheap stuff. (I’ve heard him on the radio, too, out pushing his book – he works himself into an unpleasant lather of rage at these non-existent atheists. I felt dirty after hearing him.)
He’s on form in this piece.
The “new” atheists, in the name of reason, science and progress, endow themselves with the moral right to abuse others in the name of their particular version of goodness…These atheists, like religious fundamentalists, live in the illusion of a binary world of us and them, of reason versus irrationality, of the forces of light battling the forces of darkness. And once you set up this world, you are permitted to view as justified military intervention, occupation and even torture – anything, in short, that will subdue what is defined as irrational and dangerous.
Nice. Temperate, judicious, careful, precise, accurate, thoughtful, reasoned. Journalism at its best.
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Khadim Hussain on Special Laws in Tribal Areas
Colonial masters and indigenous elites, have convinced the tribal elite of their ‘distinctive culture’.
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‘Moderate’ South Asian Imams to be Invited to UK
‘To ensure imams are firmly rooted in the communities they serve.’ Eh?
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Prince’s Guide to Alternative Medicine Inaccurate
‘The nation cannot be served by promoting ineffective and sometimes dangerous alternative treatments.’
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Apologetics and the Surrender of the Fourth Estate
It has been debated whether the term “the Fourth Estate” which refers to journalism or a “free press” was originated by Edmund Burke, who once pointed to the gallery of reporters in the British Parliament and declared them to be the fourth, and most important, element overseeing a triumvirate of governmental power. In my opinion, this was one of the most perceptive descriptions of democracy and its processes, applying equally well to the British Parliament and the Estates General of France (from which the term was derived); the constituents were supposed to be representatives of the society’s main elements— the nobility, the middle class and the clergy. Burke was saying that the influence of a free press was, and should be, greater than any of the other three because the “word,” written and spoken, was the key to power.
(Incidentally, the “debate” arises because a guy named Thomas Carlyle is the one who actually put the following statement in writing: “Burke said that there were three Estates in Parliament but in the reporter’s gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.”)
Who said it first? Was it Burke? Was it Carlyle? Does it matter?
What does matter is that the uncertainty of Burke vs. Carlyle symbolizes the dilemma of whom or what we believe. In this country today, if we substitute the terms “United States Senate” for the “nobility” (makes you want to vomit doesn’t it?) the “House of Representatives” for the “middle class” (not very appetizing either) and “fundamentalist Christians” for the “clergy,” (Well, that’s not too bad) it is apparent that little has changed, with one glaring exception. The Fourth Estate has sold out to the combined forces of its previous antagonists and we now have the deplorable situation where the people have lost the protection of the “more important far than they all.”
Where is today’s Fourth Estate? Nowhere to be found, because sadly, with the exception of only a small minority of courageous and perceptive people, whom the other three estates have managed to portray as unpatriotic troublemakers, the American press has surrendered its role in the “reporter’s gallery,” and is no longer fulfilling Burke’s/Carlyle’s indispensable obligation. This is a devastating loss. It is devastating because access to the truth about governmental matters, of which the press has been the guardian, has been abandoned.
It is a loss similar to the one suffered when science capitulates to religion in the presentation of ideas, and is apparently unwilling to say exactly what its research has found because it comes into conflict with the clergy’s view of the world. The issue of stem-cell research is a notable example, because the only reason this is considered to be an “issue” is the Christian view that a “soul” is created at the moment of conception, and research involving embryos therefore, destroys that soul.
Mortimer Adler’s definition of truth is, “ideas that are in accord with reality.” Here we find the parallel I refer to between science and journalism . . . ideally, both are committed to Adler’s definition of truth; both science and journalism search for (or should search for) hidden facts, evidence, and information. And most important, they are obligated to bring these ideas to the attention of the rest of the people.
Journalism and science should be the leading proponents of ideas that “are in accord with reality,” but scientists have become reticent about espousing ideas that may get them fired (or jeopardize their research grants), in the same way that the Fourth Estate is rapidly abandoning its responsibility to keep the other three estates honest.
Both religion and politics frequently seek ways to distort facts, evidence and information. Both have always relied upon a misrepresentation of the truth. In fact, they go further and frequently try to pass off ideas that are not in accord with reality as truth, and when they are unable to do so (because the ideas are too preposterous) they make it illegal (or heretical) to investigate those ideas. This is why we have Christian apologists making statement such as, “when the Bible says the world was created in six days, it may mean that at the creation, each of god’s days was two billion years old.” It also explains why politicians are able to say “This pastor has been my spiritual advisor for twenty years, but I had no idea that he said, ‘God damn America.’” In theology it’s called “apologetics.” In politics they call it “spinning.” Both are systematic and planned attempts to deceive.
Is it an accident that the power structure of the last seven years has been formed from neo-conservative god-fearing religious “intellectuals” who are educated and intelligent enough to know better but apparently feel they can employ their mental skills to manipulate a gullible public into following them into the Armageddon they so ardently seem to desire?
Due to the exponential expansion of the media, radio, television and, especially, the Internet, the importance of the written and spoken word, and hence the Fourth Estate, has been magnified a thousand-fold. As a result of this growth, Burke’s (or Carlyle’s) words have never been more critical for the healthy functioning of free societies, yet they are becoming increasingly irrelevant, because the “free press” has apparently lost its will to fight. Information, or “truth,” of which the Fourth Estate has been the guardian, has become virtually under the control of a corrupt nexus of the clergy and the nobility, (Judeo-Christian leaders and the United States Congress) at the expense of the middle class and everyone else. And in a clever quid pro quo, the clergy has conferred a dubious morality and virtue onto a corrupt government while the government has reciprocated with laws giving preferential treatment to religion. This is a clever arrangement in which the congress has protected the clergy with a network of tax laws, regulations and immunities, while in return the clergy adorns the congress in an aura of sainthood because of their acceptance of the false morality acquired through opening prayers, swearing on the Bible, and pious allegations that they are the guardians of a Christian Constitution.
In this manner, these “estates” can play the role of martyrs by claiming to be besieged. Besieged by whom? Why, of course, the forces of science, reason, logic, words, journalism, “secular humanists”—in short—information. They say, “Our religion is true but it is attacked by evil scientists, Atheists, secularists and other spawn of the Devil; and our politics are a noble enterprise—our leaders courageous patriots who have to suffer the indignity of being attacked by unpatriotic, ungrateful whiners and dissidents, rabble rousers with no other purpose than to destroy our most cherished ideals.”
The war in Iraq is the quintessential example of the convergence of the two frauds—the religious and the political—whereby all of the most insidious qualities of both institutions, deception, self-aggrandizement, greed, power, and most important, the debasement and castration of the truth, have intimidated a once fearless press. And this fact may conceal the real reasons behind the timid behavior of investigative reporters and the surrender of the Fourth Estate.
Is it reasonable to hope that the Internet can fill the gap? Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! into cyberspace. Woodward and Bernstein, where are you now that we need you?
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The Pseudoscience of Brain Gym
Coochy-coo exercises may be fun, but they’re definitely good at increasing the flow of bullshit into children’s heads.