superstition – Page 2

Burning Books, Burning Bibles

Pastor Marc Grizzard, of Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, NC is back in the news this week, but I’m not really sure if it’s because of something he did or something that was dredged up online from a few years back and has just been regurgitated. This week, a story in The Telegraph about Grizzard resurfaced on Facebook. But it’s from 2009, not dated 2013. I’m unable to find a contemporary reference that doesn’t refer back to the 2009 story. Mayhap it’s a hoax. But it’s fun and informative to revisit, anyway. Back then, the Telegraph reported that Grizzard intended to ……… click below for more ↓

Anti-Intellectualism: The New Elitism

2013-10-27 2013-10-27 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Books & Reviews / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Internet & Social Media / Science & Technology11 Comments

There’s a growing – and disturbing – trend in modern culture: anti-intellectual elitism. The dismissal of art, science, culture, philosophy, of rhetoric and debate, of literature and poetry, and their replacement by entertainment, spectacle, self-righteous self ignorance, and deliberate gullibility. These are usually followed by vituperative ridicule and angry caterwauling when anyone challenges the populist ideals or ideologies. As if having a brain, as if having any aspirations to culture, to art, to learning – or worse, to science – was an evil, malicious thing that must be stomped upon. As if the literati were plotting world domination by quoting ……… click below for more ↓

Why Creationists Don’t Win the Nobel Prize

2013-10-14 2013-10-14 Atheism & Spirituality / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

Looking at the list of Nobel prizes awarded in 2013 for science, we see three prestigious entries: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 François Englert and Peter W. Higgs “For the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.” The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013 Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel “For the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.” The Nobel Prize in ……… click below for more ↓

Why do so few Canadians get a flu shot?

2013-10-10 2013-10-10 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Internet & Social Media / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

That’s the headline for a recent Toronto Star story. It suggests that as few as one third of Canadians get a flu vaccine, and in some place the number may be as low as 20 percent. This despite Ontario having the world’s first universal free flu shot program, introduced in 2000. The 2013-14 vaccine is on its way to doctors’ offices now. It’s also available at pharmacists’ offices. It’s free, easily accessible, it prevents and helps stop the spread of many kinds of influenza, it can save the life of anyone at risk – so why don’t people get one? ……… click below for more ↓

Chemtrails redux: the attack of the tin-foil hat brigade

2013-09-21 2016-11-18 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

My earlier post on the nonsensical chemtrail conspiracy has generated quite a lot of activity recently (more than 1,000 views in a few days – thanks!). So much so that I decided to look online again to see why – had this silliness abated? Were people waking up and laughing at their former craziness? Or was it spreading more among the hard-of-thinking and the anti-science crowd? Sadly, it seems the latter is the case. And after a bit of research, I became deeply distressed that it seems to be spreading rapidly. Or maybe the overall number of gullibles is simply ……… click below for more ↓

Hell 2.3

2013-08-02 2013-08-03 Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Faith / Literary pretensions / Personal ReminiscencesLeave a comment

Before I carry on with my exploration of Miriam Van Scott’s Encyclopedia of Hell, I wanted to note that I just got my copy of her other book – the Encyclopedia of Heaven, from Abebooks. It’s dated 1999, so it’s a year later than her book on Hell. Yet it has many related topics – like Goethe’s second Faust. And it has lots of pop culture – like movie references – but nothing post 1999. Miriam, why not consider a revised, updated “Encyclopedia of the Afterlife” to combine everything in one book? Lots has happened since the last editions. I’d ……… click below for more ↓

Hell 2.0

2013-07-22 2013-07-22 Atheism & Spirituality / Books & Reviews / Faith / Literary pretensions / Religion / Social Order & Disorder / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

I left you last time after finishing the letter D, in Miriam Van Scott’s Encyclopedia of Hell. I’m back in book form to take you through a few more entries in her exploration of the afterlife. But first a couple of additions to your reading material. First on the list is Alice Turner’s 275-page The History of Hell. It’s an illustrated guide to how Westerners have come to think of Hell, It starts with the ancient influences – Egypt, Greece, Rome and Judaism – but its main focus is on the evolving Christian imagination. She has a lot to say ……… click below for more ↓

What if you’re wrong?

2013-06-09 2013-06-12 Atheism & Spirituality / Critical Thinking / Faith / Religion / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

[youtube=www.youtube.com/watch?v=beYYZRN1sEs] Great visualization of the now-famous response from evolutionary biologist, author, and well-known atheist, Richard Dawkins, when asked in 2006 about his argument that there is no god, “What if you’re wrong?” “Anybody could be wrong, ” he replies. “We could all be wrong about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Pink Unicorn and the Flying Teapot.” All of these refer to various arguments used to illustrate the weakness in faith-based statements and arguments. The Flying Spaghetti Monster (aka Pastafarianism) was, according to Wikipedia, created as a satire against creationists (a group notoriously shy of a sense of humour…): The “Flying Spaghetti ……… click below for more ↓

Creationism’s stench still lingers in American education

2013-06-08 2013-06-08 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Religion / Science & Technology / US PoliticsLeave a comment

Creationism (and it’s dressed-up-in-drag younger brother, “intelligent” design) is the black mold of education. It’s an insidious infection of the mind, an intellectual parasite. And like real-life black mold, it creates a toxic environment – for learning and critical thinking. This week, creationism again came up in American school board discussions. According to the HuffPost, the American Taliban* – the Tea Party – is behind the debate at a Springboro, Ohio, school board, to add the pseudoscience of creationist claptrap to the curriculum. The school board president, Kelly Kohls, is also head of the local Tea Party. Hardly any surprises ……… click below for more ↓

Religion, Logic, and Tornadoes

2013-05-24 2013-05-24 Atheism & Spirituality / Religion / Social Order & Disorder / US PoliticsOne Comment

What has a tornado in common with prayer in schools and US President Barack Obama? Rhonda Crosswhite. Yes, the Oklahoma teacher praised as a hero for saving several children when a massive tornado ripped through her town of Moore, earlier this week. And no doubt she was. But there were many other teachers who were heroes that day, none of whom have become a rallying point for the religious right, as far as I can tell. Crosswhite was, from all accounts I’ve read, the only one to mention praying during the tornado. That comment made her a different sort of hero ……… click below for more ↓

Quackery and Big Bucks Infect Health Canada

2013-05-14 2013-05-14 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Canadian Politics / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

Health Canada has allowed an increasing number of useless “alternative” healthcare (alternative TO healthcare in most cases) products to be sold in Canada over the last decade, despite the lack of proper (or in some cases, any) research data to prove their claims, effectiveness or safety. Most recently, however, Health Canada went further into pseudoscience and licensed homeopathic vaccines, proving that the agency has bowed to corporate pressure and given up trying to protect Canadian health. According to the BC Medical Journal, “…Health Canada has licensed 10 products with a homeopathic preparation called “influenzinum.”[8] According to providers, influenzinum is for ……… click below for more ↓

The Dreamtime

2013-03-29 2013-03-29 Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Personal Reminiscences / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

I don’t dream very much, Susan once said to me. We were having a talk about some crazy dream I was recalling. They’re always crazy, of course. But the conversation was about whether we dream – all of us – whenever we sleep. I argued yes, we all do. We just don’t always remember them. I remember a lot of mine, at least for a few minutes after I awake. It helps if I talk about them right away, otherwise they evaporate pretty quickly. That’s the nature of dreaming: it’s just the random firing of neurons that activate memory, but ……… click below for more ↓

Speaking with the dead

2013-03-26 2013-03-26 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Memes; Internet & Social / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

Can the dead speak to us from beyond the grave? No, of course not. But that doesn’t stop literally millions of superstitious people from believing they do. And some think they can use technology to facilitate the conversation. Of course, when you put technology into the mix, it simply cements the belief in place, no matter how ludicrous. And the internet has provided a platform for this silliness to reach worldwide. A recent post on the BBC website made me do some investigation. The BBC story is really about EVP – Electronic Voice Phenomenon. EVP, as Wikipedia tells us, is: …electronically ……… click below for more ↓

The other conspiracy theories….

2013-02-02 2013-02-02 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Faith / Internet & Social Media / Memes; Internet & Social / Social Order & Disorder4 Comments

After writing about the nonsensical “chemtrail” conspiracy theory and its tin-foil-hat brigade believers, I amused myself by reading up on some of the other conspiracies-du-jour on the internet. And no, I don’t mean your garden-variety secret-mushroom-farm, PRA dome, lobbyists-and-rec-facilities, aliens-in-disguise-running-the-library, Eddie-Bush-is-falling-down, Scoop-is-working-for-the-town or other local conspiracies. I mean real conspiracies: meaty stuff shared by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of wingnuts. Maybe millions… Wikipedia – gotta love that site, even though it may be a conspiracy itself (see below) – has a list of popular conspiracy theories. Now it’s not a full list (there’s not a single mention of ……… click below for more ↓

Four words about the Mayan Apocalypse

2012-12-21 2012-12-21 Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Memes; Internet & Social / Science & Technology / Social Order & Disorder3 Comments

For all of you New Agers who expected something momentous to happen, December 21, because an obscure, millennium-old calendar ended on that date, and are disappointed that the world didn’t end, I have four words for you: I told you so. Let me further educate you with a few choice bits of practical wisdom in case the lesson of Dec. 21 hasn’t yet sunk in: Astrology isn’t a science. Homeopathy isn’t a science. UFO-ology isn’t a science. Numerology isn’t a science. Iridology isn’t a science. Reflexology isn’t a science. Allopathy and aromatherapy aren’t science. Bioharmonics isn’t a science. Acutonics isn’t a ……… click below for more ↓