It seems like I'm going to have to start commenting on comments here, because commenting on them in the original post just doesn't seem to be working, and because some days I just need something to talk about. :) Got a real doozy of one to get us started. It can be found here. This one will take a lot to unravel. So much nonsense in such a small space...

Dear God (aka "all knowing entity" aka inafoxhole),...

I think this commenter was trying for sarcasm, but he just comes across to me as being stupid. Is God an atheist? Or maybe a better question, can god believe in himself and count that as believing in god, or does he have to believe in a higher power than himself? While I am sometimes accused of being all-knowing, I certainly don't profess to be. There are plenty of things that I don't profess to know a lot about. Economics, art appreciation, British sports... And I still don't understand how my concern about my aunt trying to cure her cancer with juice gets translated into "I know everything".

...you appear to be under the impression that science is infallible and that you knowledge of the former is all-encompassing. The models currently favored by the majority of scientists are imperfect, and so, by definition, are the conclusions we derive from them. If the science of medicine was perfect there would not be any side effects for any medicine and all illnesses would be curable. So in a perfect world I would do as my doctor says.

This is where it gets rich. I challenge anyone to read my entire blog and find one place where I said that science knew everything, or that science was perfect, or any of these other absurd claims. Only religion makes such claims. Science never does, and I have certainly not put more faith in science than it deserves.

However imperfect science may be, it is still the best option we have. All the easy answers have been discovered. What is left is found through hard, meticulous, careful work. Randomly making shit up, or following logical fallacies like post hoc, ergo propter hoc (it occurs after it, and therefore because of it) is essentially leaving yourself victim to random chance. The idea that you will randomly stumble upon a solution to your problem, an instant cure-all, while possible, is about as close to zero as you can get short of actually being zero; smaller even than the chance that you will win the PowerBall lottery if you only bought one ticket in your entire life. Science does not have to be perfect to increase those odds considerably. It was not alt med that turned cancer from being an instant death sentence into a condition that many people can treat and recover from. It was not alt med that saves the lives of accident victims everyday. It is science. Science is a vast improvement over what was before, and anything that there is to replace it. I can justifiably say that those who reject all of science in favour of quackery are fools and are far more likely to meet an early grave than I am from lacking health insurance.

I am also a bit astounded by this notion that side effects are generally so terrible that doctors must be avoided because the medicines they give to treat disease contain them. There is a medication I'm on right now that affects my balance. It's not great. Standing on one leg is a problem. Shifting my weight rapidly is another. At least we were able to stop me from walking into doorway frames like I did when I first started it. I certainly don't like it, but the fact is, the alternative would be far worse. The disease treated by this medication is degenerative, and would only get worse over time if left unchecked. So my choices are really balance issues but I might get to live to a ripe old age, and maintain my independence...or I can try reiki or some other fake cure and have to move back in with my parents because I couldn't take care of myself anymore. It's not really a choice. No more a choice than if you have cancer you can choose between drinking juice and hoping that you will be that one in ten million chance that the surgeon didn't leave behind a single cancer cell and maybe you will live, versus putting up with the chemo for a while. Sure it sucks, but your chances of surviving early stage cancer are rather significant for most types of cancer, certainly far better than drinking just juice. To believe otherwise is to deny reality, or to have been deceived by a charlatan.

In one of you previous posts you told us you did not think the pharma industry was corrupt. If you actually believe that, you not only fail at critical thinking, you don't even mange to pay attention. The pharma industry is a $643 billion industry with a 17% return on their revenues. Their income depends on people being sick! Let me repeat that (you need it). Their income depends on people being sick!!! Do you honestly think that our health is their goal? Just take a look at the people calling the shots at the FDA. Not few of them had been working in executive positions at the largest pharmaceutical companies (Pfizer et al.).

I never said that Big Pharma was to be trusted, but it is not corrupt in the way that the original poster (to whom the comment this guy refers to was made) intended it. Big Pharma does not make a profit on making people sick. Indeed, they make a profit on making people well. The more effective their drugs are at doing that, the more of the market share they gather. Problems with the drug industry relate to that it is a business (albeit, a regulated one). Business wants to make a profit; their goal is not to harm people because there is no profit in it. All you did is one company decide to actually cure people, and everyone will have to make a try at it. Our health is not their primary goal, no; their primary goal is short-term profit. That is why they would not be so corrupt as to conceal cures from the public once they find them, because there is no profit in doing so. They will not be able to conceal them for long, so they will try to get them to market as quickly as they can to gobble up the market for that product, lest some employee decide to give it away for free, or set up their own company to profit from it. Yes, one can argue about the business model, and why they are allowed to make so much profit, and the ethics of the market factors that drive which diseases they will research, and their pricing structure... but all of these are the same issues that effect any for-profit business. They are predictable, and as such, can be largely regulated into the same kind of semi-innocuous and occasionally beneficial entity as most other enterprises. Occasionally, they will lie and abuse the system to rush a drug to market that is not sufficiently tested, has serious side effects, etc., but that can't be done often, or they will get sued into oblivion. And the current speed with which drugs come to the market in the US is still slower than in most countries around the world, and was speeded up in the light of the AIDS crisis. Adjusting the regulations can again make them more effective, and prevent some of those issues, but at the same cost of a slower pace that we saw before the 80's.

I should also point out, since this commenter obviously needs it spelled out for him, that people will get sick regardless of whether Big Pharma exists or not. Even if they released drugs without side effects, people would still get sick. It is up to other industries, like fitness centers (and frankly, ourselves), to steal market share from Big Pharma and keeping people from getting so sick, so often, in the first place. Unless he is suggesting that their research budget goes to creating illnesses that they can later try to cure...which is nothing short of paranoid.

As for the FDA, under Bush, most of the government was snatched from industry to regulate industry. This was a systemic problem across the entire government, but the scale of it one that was new to our just-past President. No one before had ever been so blatant about it. And yet still under Bush, good people resigned from the FDA and other organizations to protest the over-politicization, and pro-business stances of the other board members to draw attention to the problem. Under most Presidents, not so much in the pocket of business, the FDA is run by scientists who are looking out more for effectiveness and safety, for us, rather than for "Big Pharma masters". And if Congress wishes to make this even more true, they can add additional regulation, or, as before, increase the requirements necessary for drugs to go to market.

But without the FDA, there would be no regulation at all, and they would be essentially in the hands of the alt med crowd, whose treatments are not regulated by the FDA for safety or effectivess. Juice is a food, so no one needs to prove it cures cancer in order to market it that way. The drug companies really would be our enemies, even more so than now, if they could peddle every elixir under the sun as a cure-all as those outside the medical establishment do now. They are doing no one any favours. He thinks Big Pharma is bad? He just doesn't want to admit that they are actually a shade of grey, and that alt med is the really feel-good guy well and truly on the dark side populated by crackpots who will let us die on false hope and still our money while they do it.


I'm gonna stop spelling it out for you at this point, since your mind is made up, and you seem to be too scared to even consider anything outside of your current view of the world (aka dogmatism).

I find it amazing how I'm the one always being accused of being "dogmatic". Show me the proof this alt med stuff works in a controlled clinic trial and I will be happy to embrace it (although, it would become part of the medical establishment then and h'd probably reject it). Until then, I see no reason to come to any other conclusion. Scared? I am scared for my aunt drinking herself to death on juice while cancer spreads through her body until it's too late. Scared? Amazing. Why do some many people project their own fears on me?

My blog has seen a bit of a spike in activity recently. Apparently, it is coming up with Google searches. I suppose this is gratifying, but of course, the majority of people who comment are idiots. It has, however, made it even clearer to me why nonsense and abuse of science must be attacked on every possible front, even when it appears innocent, well-intentioned, or committed by those with legitimate (or legitmate-sounding) degrees. This article from the Chicago Tribune further underscores the need with respect to the treatment of autism.

I have nothing but the deepest sympathies for families facing this kind of illness in a family member, but that does not excuse the con-men who prey on the desperation of these families by using their autistic children in essentially uncontrolled experiments. Even if one of these miracle treatments really worked, the way they are going about it is both unscientific and highly unethical.

Science is slow, and this is unfortunate. Would that in a perfect world it could be done more quickly. But anything worth knowing is acquired methodically and with precision in science so that the claims of science are provably true. The wild claims of those who would abuse science, who would reject its careful methodology, also inevitably end up rejecting its truth claims. If there is one possible correct treatment for autism in the universe (or even half a dozen), there are so many millions or billions of other things one could try in its place, quacks and snake-oil salesmen peddling miracle cures, they are essentially playing the lottery, in the thin and fragile hope that they will maybe find something that helps their child... but they ignore the greater likelihood that they will actually harm the child rather than help him.

"You have a duty to make sure there is good reason to believe it might work and not hurt your child," said Douglas Diekema, a bioethicist at Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics at Seattle Children's Research Institute.

It is difficult to be patient while science does its work, Zimmerman said. But, he added: "Above all, do no harm."


Via pharyngula.

Jack Jones of Downtown told the TV station he thinks the sign should not be put up.

"It's atheist," he said.

Yes, as if that explains it all.

A pro-atheist billboard posted in Cincinnati, OH has been moved due to death threats issued to the landowner where the billboard is sitting.

The contents of the billboard?

"Don't Believe In God? You are not alone."

Yeah, that's all it takes.

This has been a bad couple of weeks for gay rights in this country, particularly in the Northeast where most of the movement is. This is, sadly, part of a larger problem with preserving inequality, with the clerical class on top.

I described the problem with abortion rights in the health care bill here, but I want to focus in this post about the same-sex marriage battles going on in New England.

The most egregious example of all of them comes from Rhode Island where the governor has vetoed legislation that did nothing more than allow same-sex couples to retrieve bodies of their dead partners from the morgue. He claimed that this was part of an incremental erosion of traditional heterosexual marriage... even though the legislation has nothing to do with people in traditional marriages.

In New York, where a same-sex marriage bill is being debated in the legislature, the Senate has hit a bit of a roadblock in the process and is seeing delays. Some are concerned that religious conservatives could still derail the bill, even Democrats, who have vowed to vote against it.

In Maine a same-sex bill passed by the legislature was narrowly rejected by the public on last week's ballot. The original debate over the law was deeply religious in nature.

On MSNBC this afternoon, Contessa Brewer and her guest were discussing the topic and mentioned that it was a "moral issue" for some people. But like Contessa, I don't get this.

It is not moral to treat gays differently than straights are treated, no more than it is moral to treat blacks differently than whites. This idea of heterosexual privilege is almost entirely about religious privilege. It lets people claim to be "moral" while still defending their superiour positions in society; it gives them the cover to look down on those gays because they are evil. The same book of the Bible that seems to say that gay sex is bad, also says, in the very next breath, that eating shellfish is bad... and yet you don't see that Rhode Island governor getting bent out of shape over the state's biggest industry, do you? He's not living in Wyoming where he won't have to be exposed to the consumption of shellfish so readily.

The whole moral authority of the Bible must be put into question because it is essentially a litany of reasons to look down on other people. It is merely a means of saying I am better than you because I don't do XXXX. Most of it is insane. Even the justification for producing children in a society struggling to crack 100,000 citizens (in the good days) and constantly on the brink of extinction, no longer applies because the planet is facing a major overpopulation crisis. When the circumstances of a rule/law cease to exist, it must be tossed out. That's why you don't find many laws on the books about hitching horses within 20 feet of an ATM.

Religious believers must be challenged when they make moral claims. Defending traditional marriage by punishing same-sex couples is, in fact, not moral. Nor is forcing gays into unhappy traditional marriages. It is immoral for the individual just from the perspective of the individual. And it is immoral from the standpoint of being bad for society. And there is nothing American about enshrining in law immoral obligations of some religion. The government's job is not support religious principles.

I am confident that in 20 years, this will be an old argument; I am confident, because we are having this debate at all. But in the meantime, I am impatient for that day to come. Injustices are being done every day in the name of religion. Every time a couple is turned away from a marriage license or discriminated against in any way, we are all wounded by it.

Hello, to all my half-dozen or so readers. :)

It's been a little while since I created this blog, so I thought I would clarify a few things again about it.

This blog is for me to write about atheism, critical thinking, pro-science, anti-pseudoscience type things. The core of most of it is my atheism, and this topic has a tendency to touch nearly every topic, but occasionally I will wander into these others without referencing religion or anti-religion.

That being said, I get the last word on this blog, what goes in it, and what doesn't. I will turn off comments when I choose (though after teaching for ten years to people who experience massive anxiety about my subject, I have a lot more patience now than I did in high school). I will block people when they are sufficiently annoying. I will block people instantly if they are off topic, spam or are just here to pontificate. Debates will take longer because I like debating, but it can happen eventually.

I do this blog by myself, and I'm a busy person. I have work (and work and work), and school, and writing more substantially-sized things like books, Twitter, and occasionally even a social life. I don't post here as much as I'd like. I try not to let it go for months, though it does sometimes happen. Sometimes there is a lot to talk about, and I post more frequently. But it's just me. I don't have co-bloggers, and I don't make money from the site. If no one reads this but the six-or-so people I know that do, well, that's life. Surprisingly, it was never my ambition in life to have a verb in the urban dictionary named after me like PZ Myers does. And frankly, I don't have the kind of time he does.

Why am I reminding you all of this? Because recently, as in currently on-going over the last three days, one of my old posts has suddenly generated 4 dozen new comments (okay, half of them are my responses) from at least one person, possibly two or more: it's actually hard to tell since half of the posts are Anonymous--boy don't I wish I had to time to tweak the code so all the Anonymous posts say "Unnamed Coward" like they do on my other blog! But I digress...

I have been accused of being irresponsible and arrogant for expressing my opinion and defending it, and for not Googling, even though, before the events described in the post, I'd never even heard of the guy in question before, and I referenced (though didn't link to) a quote from his own site. The post was from nine months ago! But I give atheists a bad name, such a bad name that no one noticed it until now.

I will give all future commenters here fair warning... I'm really a basically nice person, passionate though, hardworking and sometimes too honest. I say what I think, I say it bluntly, and I'm used to disagreeing with the majority of people most of the time. I will not be cowed by people coming in here throwing around their scientific "authority" unless it is on topic, and even then if you say something I think is nonsense, I will not be afraid to say so. I told my second grade teacher I thought one of her assignments was stupid; it's far too late to stop now.

I also won't react well to people coming onto this blog and getting started with phrases like "you people". I certainly can be arrogant, and this is one fast way into that particular personality trait.

I won't react particularly well, either, to accusing me of making a particular fallacy, and then making it yourself. You don't like me calling someone a quack? Fine. But then turning around and calling me arrogant isn't a good idea. If you want to convince me to change my mind--and it does happen--you need both relevant facts and good logic.

There are consequences to the claims people make. If you are promoting alternative medicine, I believe that you are contributing to the deaths of real people. Homeopathy is drinking water to cure disease. Chiropractors got started staying that by adjusting the spine they could cure deafness. Drmercola.com thinks that drinking juice will cure you of cancer. People die from these "treatments". It is a moral question to combat them. And when combined with real medicine, it's the alternative treatment that gets the credit. You want to play music to a comatose patient? Be my guest. But don't then tell me later that it wasn't the doctors and nurses and the hospital that made you well, because someone will take that testimony and decide they don't need doctors, just music.

I expect that some people will disagree with some of what gets said in this blog. And given the views of most of the nation in which I live, most people will disagree with basically everything I say. But if you agree with most of what I say, try not to get hung up on the points on which we disagree. I escaped religion through applying logic to myself and the religion I was raised in. I have been trained in math and science, and stay on top of current scientific literature as much as possible. You disagree? You want to debate? Fine. Come armed with your facts (I won't look them up for you), and don't get so bent out of shape if I insist your argument doesn't meet the threshold of proof. I've debated Republicans, and climate change deniers, and creationists and theists... I've heard all the bad arguments, and if I think you are following in their footsteps, I will say so. If you are going to get upset when I call one of your statements irrational, then the "debate" will be more like shouting at a wall. And for that, rant on your own blog.

Thank you.

So now I am going to get back to my busy life, and do grading and read the news, and maybe doing something relaxing with my Veteran's Day off. And speaking of Veteran's Day, remember all the atheists, too, who served in the armed forces, silently in those foxholes, and some who, like Pat Tillman, lost their lives protecting a country with problems, but which is still fighting the good fight for social justice.