superstition – Scripturient

The ignorati rise

Chapman University recently published the results of a depressing, but hardly surprising, survey that shows American believe in codswallop continue to rise. Not political codswallop – this is the supernatural, paranormal, wingnut type. And the numbers are huge. Or yuge as the ignorati-in-chief would say. The article notes, “nearly three-fourths of Americans do believe in something paranormal.” While we expect that sort of muddle-headed, superstitious thinking to be widespread in the 13th century, that’s truly sad in the 21st century. And we don’t expect it … click below for more ↓

Ghostly claptrap

2017-02-27 2017-02-27 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Faith / New Age Codswallop

Does the Large Hadron Collider Actually Disprove Ghosts? That’s the question asked in a recent article posted on Gizmodo. Well, of course it doesn’t. The LHC doesn’t disprove invisible pink unicorns, either. It can’t disprove what doesn’t exist. No matter how many wingnut websites promise to reunite you with your long lost loved ones (for a fee, of course), ghosts are all in your imagination. Along with goblins,orcs, vampires, werewolves, dragons, angels, fairies, demons, and, yes, invisible pink unicorns. Nothing the LHC does will change … click below for more ↓

Modern Credulity Sucks

2015-08-18 2015-08-18 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking

People believe a lot of crazy things. I’m talking about really seriously bat-shit crazy stuff that somehow people you thought were normal believe and now you look at them like they have grown extra heads. It’s like discovering a whole family of cousins you’ve been inviting for Xmas dinner all those years are actually Scientologists. Or Westboro Baptists. Islamic Jihadists. Harperites. That sort of crazy. The sort of crazy that makes saner folks frightened enough to hide in the basement and hope for the apocalypse to … click below for more ↓

Jade Helm 15 and the Madness of America

2015-05-19 2015-05-19 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Politics / US Politics

For a guy who gets great entertainment from reading the wild and wacky conspiracy theories that sprout like mushrooms online, I was surprised that I missed the rapid growth of the Jade Helm 15 conspiracy. I only noticed it as a surface ripple until this past weekend, when I realized it had blossomed into a full-blown madness. Jade Helm 15 goes beyond the usual tinfoil-hat conspiracies: it’s full tinfoil body armour stuff. And it’s been raised to the level of a hundred voices in an … click below for more ↓

Extraordinary Claims

2015-03-25 2015-03-25 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Creationism / Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery

As the poster for the Centre for Inquiry notes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It’s a popular catchphrase for the skeptical movement, but should be an intellectual policy for everyone. Regardless of what is being claimed, it requires evidence at the same level of the claim. Anecdote is not evidence, please note, especially personal anecdote even with the corroboration of other witnesses. People often “see” what they choose to see, and interpret events and objects according to preconceived ideas. Seeing UFOs instead of ordinary aircraft, or … click below for more ↓

Camping’s madness carries on

2014-11-10 2014-11-10 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Faith

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6zEUCiyFqg&feature=youtu.be] Harold Camping has been dead for almost a year, but his legacy lives on. Not just in the broken dreams of his deluded followers, but in the many lives he destroyed through his madness. You would have thought that, having predicted the end of the world several times, and been wrong each one, because of the general embarrassment of anyone who gave him even the slightest credence, he would be buried and forgotten, except as a caricature of religious nuttiness. And a scam artist. But no, … click below for more ↓

Debunking Homeopathy. Again.

2014-11-02 2014-11-02 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Health & Medicine / Pseudoscience & QuackeryOne Comment

Homeopathy. It’s absolute bunk. But you already know that. All those forms of ‘magic medicine‘* are bunk, of course, but homeopathy has a special place reserved for it in the kingdom of codswallop. Codswallop is dangerous to the mind, and often to your wallet, but homeopathy compounds that by being dangerous to your health, too, even fatal, as Penelope Dingle discovered. Yes, homeopathy can kill you, if you take it’s fake cures instead of actual medicine or treatment.** But, you ask, if a placebo works … click below for more ↓

The Food Babe and other nonsense

2014-06-19 2014-06-20 Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery18 Comments

She’s been called the “Jenny McCarthy of food.” That’s not a compliment and should warn anyone with half a brain to beware of her. She’s a New Age wingnut helping turn the public from science to superstition. She’s also been described as the “latest quack making a name for herself on the Internet by peddling pseudoscience” and a “meme terrorist.” Meet “Food babe” Vani Hari. The latest darling of an increasingly lame and ill-educated national media that focuses on spectacle and controversy. She’s an attention-seeker who … click below for more ↓

The dangerous idiocy of the anti-vax movement

2014-04-08 2014-04-08 Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & Technology2 Comments

Measles is on the rise in Canada. There have already been many cases in 2014: in PEI, London, Ottawa, southern Alberta, Regina, Qu’Apelle, Calgary, Fraser Valley (320 cases), Hamilton, Halton, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Waterloo, Nanaimo and other locations. Eleven cases in Ontario this year alone. Nine in Alberta. That ancient, deadly foe we recently believed we had conquered, is coming back. And it’s going to kill children again, this time with the complicity of their parents. Fifty years ago, science found the cure and made a … click below for more ↓

Debunking the Adam Bridge

2014-02-01 2014-02-01 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery6 Comments

A story popped up on the internet in late 2013, recycled in early 2014, claiming “NASA Images Find 1.7 Million Year Old Man-Made Bridge.” Claptrap. It’s not a bridge. It’s simply a natural tombolo: “a deposition landform in which an island is attached to the mainland by a narrow piece of land such as a spit or bar.” The conspiracy theorists and some religious fundamentalists disagree. It’s been called the Adam bridge, the Rama, Sethu (also Rama Setu – setu is Sanskrit for … click below for more ↓

2014 predictions always good for a giggle

2014-01-10 2014-01-10 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking

I had barely finished writing my post on the failed 2013 predictions of the self-described “psychics” and “clairvoyants” who are the media darlings du jour, when the sorry lot of charlatans published their latest lot of flim-flammery and codswallop: predictions for 2014. These will, of course, prove as wrong as the predictions for 2013. And 2012. And 2011, And 2010, And 2009. And on and on and on. As usual, the list of “predictions” contains a lot of vague or general statements in which an … click below for more ↓

Psychics 2013: the silly, the scams, the failed predictions

2013-12-28 2013-12-28 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Media Issues / Pets & Animal Behaviour / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

Action News, an ABC affiliate, ran a late-year story with the headline “Psychics interpret pets’ thoughts.” No, it’s not April Fools’ Day: this was December 26. Yet the reporter treated it seriously; just like it was a real story; actual news, rather than a steaming heap of superstitious dung. That reporters for any media outlet treat would such codswallop as “news” calls into question their ability, their competence and their education. Lorrie The Pet Psychic has been tuning into the thoughts of animals for 18 … click below for more ↓

American belief in evolution is growing: poll

2013-12-19 2024-07-12 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Evolution & Paleontology / Faith / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Religion / Science & Technology / Social Order & Disorder

A new Harris poll released this month shows that Americans apparently are losing their belief in miracles and gaining it in science. The recent poll showed that American belief in evolution had risen to 47% from its previous poll level of 42%, in 2005. True, it’s not an overwhelming increase, and it’s still less than half the population, but it is an improvement. Belief in creationism dropped 3% during that time, to 36%. Good news, of course, but don’t break out the champagne yet. There’s other … click below for more ↓

Pyramids in the Ice: Hoax

2013-12-04 2013-12-04 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Memes; Internet & Social / Pseudoscience & QuackeryOne Comment

What is it about pyramids that excites the imagination? Their shape? Their size? Height? Age? The complexities and difficulties in their building? Or the sheer grandeur of them? And what is it about them that get the cranks and conspiracy theorists so fired up? What is it about these constructions that convince some folks they’re made by – or for – aliens? Or that there’s some bizarre coverup by governments to keep people from knowing the “truth” about them? This week I noticed some odd … click below for more ↓