When antiscience kills: dowsing edition

It’s arrogance and blind faith like that which has and will get people killed. And the people we’re talking about in many cases are our fighting men and women, people who have to put their own trust in the leaders in Iraq. This is not a game, not some lark. It’s real. And in this case, antiscience kills.

I won't bring up yet again all the children murdered by Christian faith healing these days. What's the point? The people killing the kids don't care and the other Christians say you're persecuting their religion when you bring it up.

Oh and on the lines of hypocrisy, the official spokesman for anti-woman Christians everywhere, Carrie Prejean, that paragon of Christian virtue held up as an example to us all because of her anti-gay hatred - has gone down (literally) ... dropping her lawsuit after the showing of a graphic sex tape she made: Carrie Prejean Goes Down. But you know, it's OKAY because it wasn't a homosexual sex tape.

With the latest doomsday prediction being turned into a movie and tons of gullible people lining up to swallow whatever made-up crap hucksters can come up with, it's a good time to look at a few failed prophesies... 10 Failed Doomsday Predictions.

These are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, of course. There is always going to be someone else ready to try to scare the crap out of people and make a buck at it, and there is no penalty for such fraud.

Of course bad things DO happen from time to time, and then there are always those lining up to claim that they predicted the event. Jean Dickson and others built whole careers by claiming predictions after the fact. In so doing, they are just following the most successful model there is for phony prophesies: The Bible.

Yes, like Dickson and others, Bible writers always had the advantage of writing about "fulfilled prophesy" after the supposed events. Most people don't know that, of course. They think that a story set in - say - 475 BC was actually written at that time. A Bible scholar would tell you otherwise. And again, writing after the fact makes it pretty easy to have prophesies fulfilled.

The other lesson one learns from the Bible is to write vague, inscrutible "prophecies" that can be twisted to mean just about anything. Nostradamus learned this lesson from the Bible, and look where it got him! He made a living as seer by writing bullshit and still today people find new ways to twist his nonsense rhymes into fulfilled prophesies.

And will there be any apologies from the hucksters when the world doesn't end in 2012? Don't hold your breath but please don't be gullible enough to believe them, either.

Every show has to have a Halloween episode - this is mine. Mine isn't funny and it is only scary if you think that human stupidity will kill us all. It might be more informative, however, Ghosts stories are a popular form of entertainment and Halloween is the official day for such stuff, so we might as well talk about it. If you look at things from a rational, analytical point of view, there's nothing to any of the stories of the supernatural that people like to tell. Ghost stories, UFO abductions, angels, fairies and Jesus - it's all the same: Stories that help people feel like there is something bigger to life than just our brief moments of existence here on earth - but completely lacking in reality. - Scientifically Haunted House Suggests You’re a Sucker.

To test whether it’s possible to artificially induce paranormal experiences — or, from a different perspective, to technologically summon a spirit — researchers at London’s Goldsmith College and architect Usman Haque designed a scientifically haunted room.

I enjoy a good story but I'm disgusted by the wide-eyed credulity with which alleged NEWS programs report on hauntings and spooky stuff at this time of year. Come on, people, at the very least I would say that lying to your audience makes calling yourself "news" a bit of false advertising.

Let's make this clear - how you feel about things is not evidence for those things. Feelings are generated internally and can be triggered my many things including your expectations. From the article, "People tend to think about what they’re told to. Asked to track strange feelings, they started noticing them. And the participants' response rates indeed followed what's predicted by models of suggestible behavior."

If you missed that, I will reiterate; people experience hauntings at the rate predicted by scientific models of behavior. Which means, there's nothing to it - it really IS just you.

It reminds me of the boredom of my youth... I remember as a young teen picking up a random ceramic jar with a cracked lid. It was a recent acquisition from my aunt Marcella. Nothing to it, but I just started telling a story how it was supposed to be cursed so you really couldn't open it without bad things happening to you. That was how my aunt died, I said. ...Well, I guess I told the story well because I couldn't talk any of my friends into opening it.

We need to grow up. Remember Kiri-it-tha's first law of metaphysics: That which is unreal does not exist.

Whatever we choose to call "the supernatural" is nothing more than cognitive dissonance as far as anyone can tell and by its own definition, the supernatural does not exist. Yes, I know we'd all like to feel that there is something more out there. Living in a universe that is just a physical realm where things exist for a while and then cease to exist doesn't seem like much fun or particularly edifying but it is reality.

That which is unreal does not exist.

Back in the good old world of pareidolia, we have a minister who wins the award for seeing something in nothing: Minister sees Jesus in her curtains | 10connects.com | Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater. I mean, I talked about MANY stupid stories with Jesus on toast, Mary in a driveway stain. You name it. It's all about the same but at least in most of them you can sort of see where there is an optical illusion of a face. In this case, though, I can't even vouch for that much!

As I've also said, though, we know it must be true because 25,000 children starve to death every single day, and hundreds just got killed by a tsunami in the very-Christian Samoa ...clearly God must be extremely busy doing something other than helping people in desperate need of a miracle.

Making vague faces on curtains may be the only viable explanation as to why God doesn't really give a shit about all the suffering in the world - Not even devout believers with dying kids for that matter, as yet another child is sacrificed on the altar of Christian faith healing: Faith-healing parents charged in death of infant son | Philadelphia Daily News | 10/08/2009

On the last day of Kent Schaible's life, his parents and pastor intensely prayed over his 32-pound body, which, unbeknown to them, was ravaged by bacterial pneumonia.

When the 2-year-old boy finally died at 9:30 p.m. Jan. 24 inside the family's Northeast Philadelphia home, the pastor called a funeral director to take the boy's remains to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office.

Yep, that Jesus, what a comedian! You think he's going to heal your kid but he's really going to kill him. Oh what a sense of humor. After all, you're just doing what HE told you to do, right? But haha, the joke is on you.

You've got to think that God and Jesus are just fucking with you when they have you pray for your child to live. They are God, after all, so they already know they aren't going to do jack shit - they just didn't bother to tell you about it!

Or you know, maybe that stuff is all just stories people like to tell each other to try to make sense of the world and there is no objective reality involved.... that works really well, too. Otherwise it's just a big ol carnival of beliefs where everything is illusion and nothing is real. But of course, carnivals are meant for entertainment purposes only.

REAL FERAL CATS 2010 Raw...Gritty...Real. The REAL FERAL CATS & KITTENS calendar by Oregon photo-documentarian Chriss Haight Pagani. Collectible!

Before I start hearing all those, "it's a sign of the end" hysterics, or any of the self-righteous holy folk confidently telling us that some earthquake happened because God hates Samoans or something - I thought I'd pass this along: Two Deadly Quakes: Is Earth Unusually Active?

Between the earthquakes that struck the Samoas and Indonesia yesterday and the temblor that devastated L'Aquila, Italy earlier this year, it might seem like Earth has been particularly shaky this year.
But that's not the case: "This is not out of the ordinary as far as the year goes," said John Bellini, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

I know, we'll get that bullshit anyway, but I have to do what I can!

I've mostly given up on doing these stories because they are so depressing. If you really want to read about innocent kids killed for Christ, though, you don't have to look that hard: On a very regular basis you'll find some story about a poor kid who died of a treatable illness because his/her religious fanatic parents believed that Jesus would heal their child. And of course, they were wrong as usual.

Hey you know, there's a reason medicine was invented. Before the modern age of antibiotics and vaccinations, people didn't have much better than a 50/50 chance of making it from birth to adulthood. What, you think they were just all heathens or God would have healed them?? My, you ARE delusional. Religious fanatics have always been a dime a dozen.

Back the good old bad old days when all you had was religion, kids were dying like flies. And all the prayers in the world didn't change that. What changed it was modern medicine.

Well, we had a similar case to this one in my home state. They convicted one of the parents of a lesser charge but then jurors complained they were misled into thinking this would teach them a lesson so they'd never do it again (it didn't).

In the case cite here, the parents probably don't have anything to worry about because they live in one of many states where there is a religious exemption to homicide laws: You're allowed to kill your kids as long as you say Jesus told you to do it. Questions still linger over Carlton boy's death.

I know, like this is news? Intelligent Design aka creationism has always functioned at the edge of knowledge. It exists to say... "Oh, you don't understand how this particular thing works. Well then, it must be GOD!!!" It's a simple formula, really; one answer for every question. Its only problem is that those questions tend to get answered eventually. So now ID/creationism retreats yet again.... More ‘Evidence’ of Intelligent Design Shot Down by Science.

Intelligent design mavens once cited flagella as evidence of their theory. Scientific fact dispelled that illusion. The mitochondria study does the same for protein transport. "This analysis of protein transport provides a blueprint for the evolution of cellular machinery in general," write the researchers, led by molecular biologist Trevor Lithgow at Australia’s Monash University. "The complexity of these machines is not irreducible."

I've talked before - it's been a long time - about the myths of irreducible complexity; basically telling you that there's no such thing. It's just something made up by creationists so they can have an argument. This is just another example. Yes, I realize that facts never get in the way of a good creationist story but we have to keep repeating the facts ANYWAY in hopes that they will sink-in with those who value truth over creative fiction.

It's the answer to the question, where have you been? Or something...

The other answer would be, not feeling like blogging, I guess. On the other hand, if you followed me on Twitter or Facebook at least you'd know I'm not dead.   But then again, that stuff is all kind of lame when you come right down to it.

Today I was just following along with the Twitter meme, #lameclaimtofame - oh, I have a few!  Not much but when you condense an entire lifetime down to a few 140 character  tweets, it looks more impressive (paraphrasing George Costanza).

Like...

#lameclaimtofame - I got my first Bible College diploma at age 11, which may be  some kind of record?

#lameclaimtofame The Washington Post put me on the front page of the Lifestyle section once.

#lameclaimtofame My wedding was broadcast live on radio station WEEX and also got front page style section coverage in the Easton Express

#lameclaimtofame I have never had a painting or drawing fail to win a ribbon when entered into a competition. #art

Taking the entrance exam at Western Medical College (coupla decades ago), I got the highest score in the history of the school. #lameclaimtofame

My latest #lameclaimtofame is that I have an essay in the book, Art Is Dead, due out in September.

And there might be a few more equally lame things that look good in small bits.

In the future, I will go back to talking about my favorite subjects here... well, if you really work at talking me into it. heh....

Not by direct process, but by some unknown osmosis it seems that there is a potential for war crimes with church attendance.

Don't ask me how, I haven't figured it out yet. Pew Research just did a survey of Americans' views on war crimes, particularly torture. Savvy readers probably already know that a slight majority of Americans think that war crimes can be okay under some circumstances, as long as WE are the ones committing them, of course!

What's new here is the relationship between church attendance and ones approving of war crimes. According to the answers of those surveyed, the more religious the person the more they liked torturing people. Who knew?

The exact reason for the marriage of religion and horrendous war crimes may remain elusive but you can read about it here: Church Attendance Dictates View On Torture.

..in the form of art... The Great Mel Gibson...
Yes, Mel Gibson isn't just another pretty face, although he certainly IS  pretty! Women just love Mel. And obviously - since he is so pretty - he must have important things to say. And he DOES!



Mel Gibson Family Values

Here it is: Mel Gibson wants you to know that he's an ultra-conservative, super-duper mega Christian! In fact, it's pretty much all he talks about.

Yes indeed, he's a family values guy all the way. You just can't argue with Mel when it comes to those family values (or Jews).

But like many people who choose to wear their faith on their sleeves, Mel has another side too - that he doesn't really want you to know about. It seems that besides being a belligerent bigot (which always seems to be okay with the family values folk) he also is probably a serial adulterer - which sort of isn't okay with them... well, you can just say you're sorry and all is forgiven, I guess.

For super-duper Christians, there is no requirement to try to be a better person, you just have to spout the right doctrines in everyone's collective faces.
Mel's wife has finally gotten tired of his version of family values, and has filed for divorce. (In this divorce matter, as the article indicates, Mel Gibson demands a right he would never grant to a gay person, a non-believer, or a woman who thinks she has rights equal to those of a man; absolute privacy).

So here we have an important lesson we must all learn from the super-Christians: What you do doesn't matter, it's only what you say that counts. Let's all try to remember that, shall we?

Here's to YOU, Mel! You keep telling others how to live good conservative Christian lives while you keep porking the hot chicks in the back room. Nobody in your crowd will ever hold it against you.
 
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ABOUT THE ART: Basically just a marker sketch straight-up, no pencil or preliminaries. Just go for it! 9x12 recycled paper (Canson).. Markers are Letraset Tria. The original sketch took maybe 2 minutes, tops. You can find the original sketch here on my Facebook collection - I decided to color it this morning just for fun.
Pagani/Toonz.me

Had a notice that someone else updated their blog - who hadn't updated in a long time - and that called me here to myspace. So since I'm here, I looked at my OWN blog to discover I last updated on January 24. What, that's all? It seems like  much longer ago than that. Which doesn't mean that I haven't thought about you....

I've mostly just been working - happy to find that I still have a job (and wondering how long THAT will last). Thanks a lot, George W. It's the worst economy since Herbert Hoover - which was the last time that Republicans were able to run wild for several years in a row. I've tried so hard to avoid being political too ..but this is what we all get for trying to play it down the middle.

Whatever. I'm still doing some updates about religion and reality at realityhackers.net, while trying to amp up my t-shirt business. Yeah.. great time for that, eh?

In any case, I wanted you to know that I'm still around and I still totally don't hate religion but continue to have zero respect for the American Pharisee version of same (which is only about 90 percent of it).

All the news seems to be politics, lately, Well... that and the crappy economy. I hope we all get through this in one piece.

Under the radar, the Antichrists of religion keep plugging away, though, in their never ending quest to return to the 12th century.

Item: All over the country, evangelical Christians continue hard at work, trying to promote ignorance and superstition wherever they can. The already sub-standard Mississippi school system may be getting ready to further ensure that their young citizens will never be fit for anything more than slinging fries at McDonald's:  Schools Try to Stamp Out Scientific Literacy

Item: Guess who is back? Our old friend and pillar of the evangelical Christian community, Ted Haggard. Yeah, he's been making noise for a few months now but this time The Empire Strikes back - perhaps fearing his power and charisma, the new Rev of his church reveals more sex scandals. And you know he would never lie...

Item: Less in the "Religion" department and more in the vein of "Superstition" (like there is a difference?) we have the mysterious case of The Magic Cheese caper. I mean...sure, why not? If you can believe that a cracker is really Jesus or that a super space alien named Xenu made the earth what it is today - why NOT?

Oh the world just keeps getting weirder. It's hard to know where to begin but before I do I need to mention that the subscription system on my new web site MAY finally be working... I hope.  The only way to find out is for you to TEST it?!?

Anyway....

 - A previously mentioned Christ is now getting a divorce. Huh? Well, everyone else does it so why not? Now there's that matter of the church's assets (which are considerable)  - Read the rest at Reality Hackers

 - Then we go overseas for some witch hunting -  but if James Dobson had his way, we would be killing witches for God on every street corner in America.

 - And The Pope agrees with him. His Holiness knows fake Virgins from 'real' ones and he doesn't mean Marie from The Block, either. He's declaring holy war  - complete with a fleet of exorcists. He's not joking around; your ass is grass, my friend.

And there's probably more stuff I missed - or more likely YOU missed, but you'll have to hunt for it. :)

Well, we all lived through another one, eh? Congratulations.  Did we make the world any smarter? Probably not, but I still think that trying to bring reality into fashion is better than leaving the world to be run by scamsters who are out to hurt people.

Just my opinion.

I think I'm going to keep trying to make things better. At least, I will make an effort to avoid discouragement. And I hope you'll hang in there with me!

In my news:

I realized that lying is the new truth. Look at advertising. Look at government. And maybe we don't care?  More...

Someone created a cute graphical representation of  the nature of the old "science versus religion battle. It's right on the money.  More...

I can't remember who said that when fascism comes to America, it will be draped in the American flag and carrying the cross .. do you? It seems appropriate, though, as we see now even more clearly the connection between  fascism and religion. More...

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Oh, and guess what? I've figured out how to add a "Subscribe" option on my Reality Hackers blog ... so now you can just get news excerpts directly in your inbox. Convenient, yes? Check it out: Reality Hackers Truth Squad.

Once again, thank you sticking with me! And Happy New Year!! :)