Happy Blasphemy Day Ya Goddamn Atheist

Perhaps you don't know, it's International Blasphemy Day.
I thought I'd take a moment to reflect upon why it is I blaspheme.
In one sense, the words are meaningless to me. I don't believe in Jesus, I don't believe his book and I don't believe in his alleged patrilineage.

Unleash the Hounds

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Bum-ble Beginnings

I really had planned to get around to this on my TAM Diary, but I haven't... yet. I swear I will, I just haven't yet.

In the time leading up to TAM I found myself thinking about the ideas that would eventually coalesce into what I would, by the time I landed in Vegas be calling Asshole Skepticism.

Pony Up for Science

The pockets of skepticism, despite the optics of things like the Million Dollar Challenge and the Australian Skeptics' benefactor, are quite shallow. Unlike organizations like the Discovery Institute which are funded by a variety of creationist organizations (I.E. Churches.).
One of our best avenues for public outreach has proven to be podcasts. There is a metric fuckton of skeptical podcasts out there. Some are fantastic like the mighty Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, some are extremely niche like Monster Talk, some are dubiously skeptical (at best) like Skeptiko. But even the best and mightiest of them are done on shoe-string budgets, because the money just isn't there. Do any skeptical podcast hosts or producers get paid for their efforts? No. (At least I don't think so, and in any case the vast majority don't.) The shows themselves barely get along with the meagre support of the proverbial 'people like you.'

This is Homeopathy

Kudos to Jesse Brydle for uncovering this.

I mean I knew homeopathy was nutty, but I didn't realize just how nutty the homeopaths themselves could be.

My favourite homeopath, Sonya McLeod has on her company (Little Mountain Homeopathy) website her graduate project on the homeopathic effects of...

RACCOON FUR!!!

As far as scientific testing goes, it would be generous to call it 'preliminary.' McLeod and her accomplice... er, partner, Kathleen Taylor had a sample size of eight, self-reporting subjects, each receiving from one to six doses of either 12c or 30c potencies. One of the eight was labelled a 'placebo' – and the number of placebo doses were undisclosed... leading me to suspect that they have absolutely no fucking clue what a placebo control is. Okay to be fair, the dogged adherence to a discipline that has neither mechanistic plausibility nor a molecule worth of evidence in an ocean of negative results is what leads me to believe they have no idea how science and by extension a placebo control is. Which is to say nothing about the fact that there is no difference between a 12c solution, a 30c solution or a placebo solution except for the amount of effort put into preparing it.

Amongst the effects that they observed – most of which were single occurrences and many of them subjective symptoms – are:

• A whole variety of animalistic feelings.
  
• A spectrum of menstrual symptoms, anything you can imagine for example; one subject had more flow, another has less. I am going to suggest that if you test a group of women over the course of a month one of the things that is going to happen is that they are all going to have menstrual symptoms... just going out on a limb here.
  
• Fear of snakes. Honestly. Top of page nine.
  
• Some victims subjects were more restless than usual. Others were more tired. Raccoon fur, consistent? NOT!
  
• One subject wore black. (Ya know, I go all 'Johnny Cash' almost half the time, and I have never drank raccoon fur.)
  
• The subjects and supervisors "often had difficulty getting hold of each other." That's a symptom? Geez that's some powerful magic!
  
• "At the extraction meeting, the master prover's internet stopped working, making it impossible for the group in Edmonton to communicate with the group in Vancouver via Skype." Burn the witch!!!
  
• One subject lost her voice and another – I am not making this up – found that her "voice became much louder than usual."
  
• "There were lots of dreams about committing crimes, stealing, criminals, and police. One of the provers had her proving journal stolen during the proving. The raccoon's reputation as a sneaky bandit and thief comes through very strongly in this proving." What are we to do with this amazing information? Raccoons fur looks like a bandit mask around the eyes, so in the homeopathic tradition of treating like with like we can fight crime by dosing the water supply with it? Or is it the other way around and we can fight crime by NOT drinking it? I'm already doing that! I don't understand!!!
  
• Various digestive issues included "emotions felt in the stomach" and "constipation with urging."
  
• One participant's parking lot flooded. What can I possibly add to that?
  
• On top of all that there was a wide variety of dreams reported, which naturally were mined for any kind of tenuously relevant meaning that could be imagined.
  

There you go. Raccoon fur. It's amazing stuff.

How to Look Like a Fool...

Does the following fictional discussion seem like a satisfying argument to you?

A: Did you know that the Garden of Eden is on the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver?

Z: Uh... I'm pretty sure that's not true.

A: Sure it is. There's a really nice garden there.

Z: Are you sure you don't mean Sun Yat Sen Garden?

A: Well, that's what they call it now.

Z: That's not the Garden of Eden.

A: Sure it is. It's beautiful.

Z: Riiight... That is a statement of opinion, not one of fact.

A: It says in the bible that the Garden of Eden was the most beautiful place on earth. Sun Yat Sen Garden is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

Z: Wow, your standards are low... but just because you haven't seen something more beautiful doesn't mean that it's the MOST beautiful...

A: Yah okay - nice talking - gotta go now – bye.

Two weeks later, Z runs into A at a coffee shop, talking to their mutual friend Y:

A: Oh hi! I was just telling Y about what we were saying about the Garden of Eden being just down in Chinatown, over there...

Z: Actually, I thought I shot that argument down pretty conclusively.

A: So, as I was saying Y, the Garden of Eden the bible says Eden is the most beautiful place on earth and everyone who has ever been to Sun Yat Sen Garden agrees that it's totally serenely gorgeous...

Z: ...I beg to differ...

A: So there you go. The bible says the Garden of Eden is in downtown Vancouver.

Z: Seriously? That is the most ridiculous non-sequitur cum argument ad populi I may have ever heard. That's a patently absurd argument and you know it.

A: Yah okay - nice talking - gotta go now – bye.

Another two weeks pass and Z gets a phone call from X, another mutual friend of Z's 'friend' A:

X: Hey... I'm just sitting here with A...

Z: Sigh... uh-huh...

X: And he told me about how Sun Yat Sen Garden is actually the Garden of Eden...

Z: He told you that did he?

X: Amazing, huh? He said it says' so, right in the bible.

Z: Can you put him on the phone please?

X: Sure thing. ...Hey A!...

A: ...Hey, buddy...

Z: Alright... let me be clear. I am just about positive that the bible – let alone Genesis – does not say that the Garden of Eden is the most beautiful place on earth. If you know I am wrong, then by all means, show me chapter and verse, and I'll move on to different refutations of your bullshit theory – and trust me, I'm full of them – but you are still using the same argument that I have debunked using nothing more than the power of my awesome mind. Now if you can find me a legitimate translation of the bible that says that the Garden of Eden was the most beautiful place on earth, then I will deal with that evidence on its own terms, but as of now you have done nothing to refute my argument except to restate your fucking stupid premise about what the bible says.

A: Well it strongly implies it.

Z: That is moving the goal posts.

A: Yah okay - nice talking - gotta go now – bye.

Two weeks further down the road, Z runs into B – a friend of Z's acquaintance, A:

B: Hey Z! I just had lunch with A...

Z: Ahhh - shit.

B: He told me how you said –

Z: He said.

B: - that according to the bible, down near Main and Hastings is –

Z: The god damn Garden of Eden.

B: Yeah! Amazing theory...

Z: Yah okay - nice talking - gotta go now – bye.

One of the most pernicious and intellectually bankrupt tactics used by all walks of the credulous is to simply ignore the arguments put forth by critical thinkers.

Creationists do it. Anti-vaxers do it. Even educated theorists of conspiracies do it.

In many cases I think they honestly don't know how totally fucking asinine it is. Perhaps I'm selling their intellect short, but the alternative is that they are doing it wilfully – and that is reprehensible.

I am perfectly willing to have an argument with you if you are willing to actually address what I say directly. I'm willing to be proven wrong. Being proven wrong doesn't make me look like a fool, it makes me stronger, 'cause now I have better knowledge. Perhaps I'll go away and staircase wisdom will illuminate a flaw in your argument that I hadn't previously noticed – but I shall address that directly next time we discuss the matter. What I won't do is go back to my previous line of argument unless the flaw has undermined your refutation – but even then I won't do it without stating the reasoning that your argument was invalid. This could potentially get extremely recursive, but sooner or later we will come to a point where one side or the other will have distilled their position to a point where it cannot be effectively argued against further with any intellectual integrity.

The collective efforts of scientists and critical thinkers have argued many issues to a point where the opposition has two choices:

1. Back down and admit they are wrong.
   
2. Plug their ears, metaphorically shot "nyah nyah nyah I'm not listening to you!" and keep on using some old thoroughly debunked argument
   

Now, I may jokingly call myself an 'asshole' – but really, who in the second example is the asshole?

The opponents of skeptics regularly turn to this. They have to, 'cause logic, facts and apparently decorum are not on their side.

It's intellectually dishonest; it's lazy; and it makes them look like fools.

Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll

I really should be working, so this will be brief - I've procrastinated enough just finding this.

I think that this You Tube post about Kirk Cameron distributing Darwin's "Origin of Species" (WHAAAAAT!!???!) is an excellent example of Asshole Skepticism. Top marks.

It pretty much speaks for itself, and I don't really think there's much to be gained by going to look at the source, but to be intellectually honest, '>here it is.