The Problems Of Blind Faith

Well the 'Rapture' is over.

Oops, wrong Rapture.

There we go. As we all knew it would be, it was a non-event. Camping has predicted the rapture 2 other times before this, and neither came true. We all have a had a good, well deserved laugh at all of this, but there is an issue I want to bring up. For many of the believers of this, their lives have been ruined.

Here is one believer's attempt to murder her 2 daughters to spare them the pain of the world ending. (Follow the link if the video won't play). Or this story of a family torn apart by the fanatical parents. How about this man's suicide? This is the price people pay for blind faith in religious leaders. It does real world harm, it's not just the joke we all think it is.

Blind faith in anything will always bring tragedies like this. It will always do harm. It will always set us, as a species, back. We need to teach our children to think critically, we need to think critically. Question everything. Don't fall for these kinds of things.

My heart goes out to all the victims of Harold Campings lies. These people are not stupid, they just did one stupid thing. Like American Atheists said in their post on it,

You believed without thinking.

But that doesn’t mean you’re stupid. Smart people sometimes do stupid things. A truly stupid person would NOT learn from this mistake. 

 What I am hoping is that we all learn from this mistake. We may not have made the same mistake, but there is a lesson we all can take from this. Don't just accept what another tells you, especially if they are asking for money. Do some research, think critically. We won't always succeed, we are all human, but we can do a hell of a lot better than we have been. And don't fall for this kind of thing again.

Homeopathy Is Bullshit

Those are sugar pills. Nothing too special about them, unless you are in to homeopathy. If you are, then those are 'medicine'. Supposedly they contain medicine that has been diluted down to incredibly low amounts in water, then added to the pills. Or just in vials. The problem is that they are diluting it to ridiculously small amounts.

Usually they have labels that measure the dilution to 6x through 30x. That is not 6 times diluted, it's 10 to the sixth. That 30x, it means one molecule of the active ingredient to an amount of molecules that would take up 50 Earths. They also have a 'c' measurement. So 30c is 100 to the 30th power. That means one molecule active ingredient to all the molecules in our galaxy. Those are unreal amounts of dilution.

To explain that away they tell you that water has a memory, and by agitating it while the active ingredient is in it they can make it 'remember' the medicine. My natural response to that is, "So, why doesn't it have the same effects as eating waste? All water has had poo in it at some point." I have never gotten a satisfactory answer for this.

Homeopathy has been tested many times, and it's not been shown to have any other effect than a placebo. The studies that have shown that it does something have always been criticized for poor technique, lack of sample size, and inability to recreate results. So they say that homeopathy can't be tested because it won't show up on tests. Seems like a 'get out of reality' card to me.

What really gets me about homeopathy though is that people are making huge bucks off of it. People are lying to you, telling you they can cure you with their diluted crap. They are scammers. They can make these sugar pills for next to nothing, send them to stores, and sell them for amazing amounts of profit. These pills are sold in health stores next to real medicine without any signs saying they are fake. They don't even have to label their packaging like herbal supplements, you know the 'These pills have not been evaluated by the FDA' . Ya, they get out of that because of a law passed over 70 years ago.

Homeopathy won't hurt you, but it should never be used in place of actual medicine. It needs to have labels stating that it does not adhere to the regulations of the FDA. Retailers need to let customers know that it is not real medicine. It can not heal you. It is a scam. It is a way for dishonest people to fleece you. They tell you it's for your health, it's 'natural', it's cheaper than real medicine, doctors are lying to you, etc. They are the liars, they are the cheats, and their products are complete bullshit.

Poorly Handled

I recently got linked this article. Please read it, since the rest of this post won't make any sense if you don't. Read it? Good.

First, a disclaimer: I hate the Westboro Baptist Church.
that said, here we go.

First, I found the abuses of police power to be appalling. Rounding up what few protesters did make it to be questioned about a crime they may have committed, and holding them just long enough for the funeral to commence. Or the fact that their wreckers were 'behind' and couldn't tow the illegally parked trucks until after the funeral was over, and by then the owners had moved them.

Secondly, the town engaged in bullying behavior. They beat the crap out of one of the protesters, then sat around being 'unable to remember' what happened when the police showed up. They intimidated the guy, then the police questioned him in front of the culprits. Of course he wasn't going to point out who did it. Then they think it's OK to abuse the law and illegally park their trucks in the way, and use the police to round up any protesters that did show up. It wasn't bravery they showed or respect they deserve. They were malicious bullies who should be shown contempt for their actions.

The Westboro Baptist Church is a hateful group of people, and I dislike them very much, but they have every right to protest on public property. This kind of bullshit effectively stripped them of their 1st amendment rights, and yet the people of Brandon, Mississippi are being hailed as heroes. Why? What they did was reprehensible. There is appropriate and inappropriate ways to deal with these kinds of things, and they were more than inappropriate. If you want to handle the situation well, counter protest. Protest the Westboro Baptist Church by their churches, places of business, schools, etc. It's entirely legal and appropriate to protest anything you want on public land. Go out and do that! It's more effective and better than being a bunch of dumb hick bullies who abuse the system to get their way.

"I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."-Ewelyn Beatrice Hall