A Million Gods

Neo-Atheism is filled with crazy people

2012-03-03T00:02:00.000+05:30

I recently read Bryan Appleyard's critique of the new atheist backlash against the more moderate atheists who wish to not be seen as a rabidly anti-theistic.

I don't know... I am torn between both camps, it's a pretty ridiculous issue being made by both sides. Atheists are not immune to stupidity, I have mentioned that I know anti-vaccine atheists and many animal liberation fanatics are atheists too. Doesn't make their stupidity free from criticism, nor should it ever be.

But at this point? I don't think either of these two extremes is right. Not if actual death threats were made.

On the one hand we have a group of passionate individuals who don't want to appease religion. Which is all fine and dandy and great! New Atheism is something I identify closely with, but I also am a lot more moderate. My faith was not personally ruined and I was lucky enough to be educated in more than one faith (I am aware of Islamic, Hindu and Christian philosophy and to some extent about Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism alongside the Animist faith of my ancestors). Lucky because faith and religion has so little a hold of me because I am aware of all the differences.

I don't feel the urge to go rub it in the average religious person's face. I feel that one can be completely civil about atheism as such. By all means fight against religious intolerance but don't become intolerant yourself. I see no issue in insulting the crazies while being as civil as possible.

However on the other side we see a more accommodating group. These atheists think we need some spirituality in our lives and that we should have a "temple of atheism" and maybe outreach programs to present a more likeable face. It's not for me, but as long as it's not spreading woo and nonsense I have no qualms about them.

And there we have it. The problem in our argument is that we as a group of people do not have a structure like faith. We have huge differences as atheists even in what we believe in. Despite all accusations, there is no arch-atheist. At our core we simply do not believe in any gods. With that in mind let's deconstruct the arguments in a more sensible way.

De Botton is the most recent and, consequently, the most shocked victim. He has just produced a book, Religion for Atheists: a Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion, mildly suggesting that atheists like himself have much to learn from religion and that, in fact, religion is too important to be left to believers. He has also proposed an atheists' temple, a place where non-believers can partake of the consolations of silence and meditation.

We do have a lot to learn from religion! It's just that me and De Botton have different ideas on what we can learn from it.

I have no issues with the different ways religion inspires people. It does do that, the question remains is, how can we do the same thing. My opinion?

Religion is basically a story, not one like Harry Potter but one with a rich heritage and history. There is not many things similar to it because of the age of the material. So let's just take science as an example.

Art? Architecture? Music? It's all there. The thing is religion may have inspired these things, but so can many other things. One doesn't have to believe in Zeus to like the Parthenon. Atheism doesn't inspire these things because there isn't anything in atheism to inspire. We don't have biblical imagery. We don't revere anyone in particular in the same way that people revere Shiva. We don't have "atheism only buildings" so we don't have an architectural style that we like beyond personal taste.

So let's say a sense of society. Can we as atheists learn something about this? Well we can, and we should learn! Many religious groups have a strong sense of community, can we not match that? Can we improve on their model and make it even more inclusive as we have seen recent. We don't have to have a temple, but we can make our meetings a bit more friendly to everyone involved.

It's not stupid to realise that there are some things (like charity) that religion does better than us. It's not stupid to try and improve ourselves to match or exceed them.

However we can improve these in a way that makes sense. Catholic Charity would be very good if they sent more doctors and less priests, more condoms and less communion wafers. Why not be that? Why should their sermons not be matched with our classes on science, our better women's health, or teaching modern farm theory. Why not start secular missionary work?

There have been threats of violence. De Botton has been told he will be beaten up and his guts taken out of him. One email simply said, "You have betrayed Atheism. Go over to the other side and die."

This is probably true. If there is one thing that we know about the internet is that it's easy to say things like this. This isn't indicative of new atheists, this is the problem of the internet where people post without thinking. De Botton has merely portrayed a version of religion where he ignores all the bad and just looks at all the good. Rose tinted atheism if you will.

De Botton finds it bewildering, the unexpected appearance in the culture of a tyrannical sect, content to whip up a mob mentality. "To say something along the lines of 'I'm an atheist; I think religions are not all bad' has become a dramatically peculiar thing to say and if you do say it on the internet you will get savage messages calling you a fascist, an idiot or a fool. This is a very odd moment in our culture. Why has this happened?"

For the same reason that writing "I am an Atheist" will get "Repent or Die Messages" or "I work on vaccines" would get you "Child killing torturer and Mengele fan" on your wall.

First, a definition. By "neo-atheism", I mean a tripartite belief system founded on the conviction that science provides the only road to truth and that all religions are deluded, irrational and destructive.

See this is where we begin to disagree. Science is a system where we test and retest hypothesis to form theories of how the universe functions based on observation, experiment and inference. Religion is merely the confused writings of people from ages ago about how they perceived the world and is very often wrong. They are deluded to a phenomenal level. The entire point is we can simply ignore that and look at how they function and learn a few lessons. Of things to avoid and of things to do.

Atheism is just one-third of this exotic ideological cocktail. Secularism, the political wing of the movement, is another third. Neo-atheists often assume that the two are the same thing; in fact, atheism is a metaphysical position and secularism is a view of how society should be organised. So a Christian can easily be a secularist - indeed, even Christ was being one when he said, "Render unto Caesar" - and an atheist can be anti-secularist if he happens to believe that religious views should be taken into account. But, in some muddled way, the two ideas have been combined by the cultists.

Secularism is the idea that in the work place and in government there should not be any arguments based on the belief in an imaginary friend. That no religion should be given a leg up by the government. Atheism is an entirely physical metaphysical position and leads onto secularism as a political position. Caesar's position was unchangeable by lay christians. Render unto Caesar merely states the opinion that christians should go along with Caesar. In a democracy the vote affects the people and "Render Unto Caesar" means "Tough No Abortion" or "Tough, you are now being taught stupid sex education" or "Tough, Earth now 6000 years ago, Jesus rode a Stegosaurus". Religious views should not be taken into account because the arguments are not based on logic but on frankly insane beliefs.

Do you seriously think we should discuss banning women from public places because muslims, LDS and some Jews think so? Some religious views are fine and dandy, some are just backwards and nonsensical and should be treated as such. Not everyone's opinion is good. I don't see why I should have to listen to the Pope's opinion on women's healthcare and sex education since he clearly has no fucking clue what's going on. Secularism is just the stance that we shouldn't let religious officials have a say in the functioning of our government, nor should we do things solely because of our faith in a god.

To put it in a simple way, if you don't believe women should have abortions, then you don't have an abortion. Don't force other women to follow your religion's rules.

The third leg of neo-atheism is Darwinism, the AK-47 of neo-atheist shock troops. Alone among scientists, and perhaps because of the enormous influence of Richard Dawkins, Darwin has been embraced as the final conclusive proof not only that God does not exist but also that religion as a whole is a uniquely dangerous threat to scientific rationality.

No. Darwinism is merely the insult used by religious people to describe modern evolution theory by comparing it to a belief system rather than a fact like gravity which is also explained by a theory (like gravity). It's used to denigrate an actual science in the USA (the term has no negative connotations in the UK) by making it seem like evolution is without facts, evidence and logic and is more akin to a religious belief.

It's not an AK-47, it's more like a battleground where Christian, Jewish and now Muslim faithful have suddenly realised that they aren't the divine spark of magic within a clay shell like their book says but the product of evolution and they are "just" a very intelligent ape. It's not a bad thing, but when we say ape, these individuals assume that this is carte blanche to behave like a chimpanzee.

Religion is a uniquely dangerous threat since despite evolution being fact, it is still under threat by religious fanatics who try and shovel their Jesus into science at the cost of evolutionary theory or co-opting it to give credence to their arguments. 45% of the USA do not believe in Evolution which is like saying that 45% of a nation believe that gravity is caused by the gravity fairy.

“There is this strange supposition," says the American philosopher Jerry Fodor, "that if you're a Darwinian you have to be an atheist. In my case, I'm an anti-Darwinian and I'm an atheist. But people are so incoherent on these issues that it's hard for me to figure out what is driving them."

Well it's a good think Jerry Fodor is a philosopher! Because it certainly is the only field where you can happily say that you don't believe in evolution and not be considered a moron.

The neo-atheist cause has been gathering strength for roughly two decades and recently exploded into very public view. Sayeeda Warsi, co-chairman of the Conservative Party, was in the headlines for making a speech at the Vatican warning of the dangers of secular fundamentalism, which aims to prevent religions from having a public voice or role. Warsi, a Muslim, subdivides propagators of this anti-religious impulse into two categories. First, there are the well-meaning liberal elite, who want to suppress religion in order not to cause offence to anybody. Second, there is the "perverse kind of secular" believer, who wants to "wipe religion from the public sphere" on principle.

Let's see, because all religions have to live under a single set of rules and we cannot have Sharia law for Muslims, Catholic law for Catholics and so on. We live under one law and the law that works the best is secular law. The gripe of these people is that they are being made more and more unnecessary in a modern world and they can no longer get handouts to their faith based on who they know.

And yes, it shouldn't be in the public sphere. Because nearly every religion is either equal to a secular government where decisions are made sensibly, or worse. I don't think any Abrahamic faith has anything to give modern society that cannot be gained from a non religious source.

As Warsi was on her way to catch her flight to Rome she heard Dawkins, the supreme prophet of neo-atheism, on Radio 4's Today programme. He was attempting to celebrate a survey that proved, at least to his satisfaction, that supposedly Christian Britain was a fraud. People who said they were Christians did not go to church and knew little of the faith. Giles Fraser, a priest of the Church of England, then challenged Dawkins to give the full title of Darwin's Origin of Species. Falling into confusion, he failed. Fraser's point was that Dawkins was therefore, by his own criterion, not a Darwinian. Becoming even more confused, Dawkins exclaimed in his response: "Oh, God!"

We don't follow Darwin anymore in biology. The idea of evolution that Darwin proposed and what we have are entirely different beasts. Darwin's books are actually for all intents and purposes "Wrong". Accusing someone of being a Darwinist is like accusing someone of being an Aristotlean. We don't actually study Darwin's work because it's now part of literature.

“Immediately he was out of control, he said, 'Oh, God!'" Warsi recalls, "so even the most self-confessed secular fundamentalist at this moment of need needed to turn to the Almighty. It kind of defeats his own argument that only people who go to church have a faith."

"Oh God!" is a stock standard phrase derived from blasphemy in the same way that I say "Jesus Christ" when I swear. It doesn't mean I am turning to Jesus who to me is about as fictional as Asterix the Gaul, it means I am swearing.

It's a statement of exasperation. No one who says "Oh My God!" is invoking a god but is expressing disbelief with a stock phrase.

“He has taken a very strange position. He's unusual, in that he came from an elite British Anglican family with all its privileges and then he had this extraordinary career, and now he stands at the head of what can really be called a cult . . . I think what happened was that he has been frightened by the militancy of religious people he has met on his travels and it has driven him to the other side.

“It smacks of a sort of psychological collapse in him, a collapse in those resources of maturity that would keep someone on an even keel. There is what psychoanalysts would call a deep rigidity in him."

Hardly. Dawkins has been subjected to criticism from within the new atheist movement. Like every celebrity, he has fans but he doesn't speak for most atheists.

I ask Fraser what he thinks are the roots of this ideological rigidity among the neo-atheists. “It coincides with post-9/11," he says. "The enemy is Islam for them. That was true about [Christopher] Hitchens in an obvious way and Dawkins said something like 'it was the most evil religion in the world'.

“With Hitchens, it was bound up with liberal interventionism. It is also clearly an Americanisation. It has come over from their culture wars . . . People are pissed off with Dawkins because there is a feeling that we don't do that over here."

Actually, most New Atheists live in the USA. There is a massive USA centred movement about them (and indeed this is seen by the demographic) and they are mainly anti-christian. Those who are in the UK however are mainly anti-islamic in their mindset since in the USA the big threat to secular values is Christianity while in the UK the rise of islamic fundementalism represents a threat to secular values particularly in the fact that there are only two opinions in the UK which range from "Islam isn't so bad" to "Muslims should be put on a plane to wherever it is they came from!". There is no middle ground between Sharia Court and BNP. It's frankly irritating that the people who shout "Yeah!" over your shoulder when you criticise Islam are people who want to throw me out with the Muslims!

Islam has MASSIVE problems. It's a violently reactionary religion. It's a religion with a terrible history of the treatment of women. It's a religion which is incredibly anti-education. It's a religion that doesn't encourage scientific thought and discourse. It cannot handle criticism rationally. In short? It's a massive elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about.

When we do talk about it we have charges of islamophobia or racism levelled at us, leaving atheists incredibly puzzled as to why in the UK we have things like Sharia Courts and tolerate the thuggish behaviour of some islamic groups.

For me, the events of 9/11 were certainly a catalyst, the new ingredient that turned the already bubbling mix of anti-religious feeling into an explosive concoction. Coming from a scientific family, I had accepted the common-sense orthodoxy that religion and science were two separate but complementary and non-conflicting entities, or what the great evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould called "non-overlapping magisteria" (NOMA). I first became aware of my own complacency in this regard when I interviewed Stephen Hawking just before the publication of A Brief History of Time (1988). He had become - it was his then wife who told me this - vehemently anti-religious. And in my presence he was contemptuously anti-philosophical.

Hardly. September 11th just made Islamic Terrorism a bit more personal and less about distant people dying in third world nations. It was basically a taste of what people have to go through across the world to a group of people who didn't have to experience that kind of fear. Atheists came out in force because it was a perfect demonstration of the ills of evil. But remember so did Christianity which nearly turned the war into a bloody crusade.

There had always been an anti-religious strain in science, a strain that had been present since Galileo and which, indeed, had grown stronger after Darwin. In the postwar period, both Francis Crick and James Watson conceded that one of their main motivations in unravelling the molecular structure of DNA was to undermine religion. It was strengthened even further in the popular imagination when Dawkins expounded the outlines of the neo-Darwinian synthesis in his fine book The Selfish Gene (1976). In the 1990s it became routine to hear scientists - notably in this country Peter Atkins and Lewis Wolpert - pouring scorn on the claims of philosophy and religion. They were, for entirely non-scientific reasons, in a triumphant mood. The sales of A Brief History of Time had sent publishing advances for popular science books soaring, and the more astounding the claims, the better the money.

Watson and Crick were atheists from a young age and the structure of DNA was a race between Oxford and Cambridge. There were three people who should be credited with the discovery of the structure of DNA. Rosalind Franklin was one of the discoverers of the structure. And yes, why shouldn't we laugh at religion and indeed philosophy? It's a group of people who don't do experiments about the observed while discussing the unobservable while making claims about their conclusions that are not based on an ounce of empirical data.

While observing this, I became aware that the ground had shifted beneath my own cosy orthodoxy. Scientistic thinkers were no longer prepared to accept NOMA, the separate, complementary, non-conflicting realms. In the early 1990s I was engaged in a debate with Dawkins at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He said, to much applause, that the existence of God was a scientific issue. If, in effect, God could not live up to the standards of scientific proof, then He must be declared dead. There were no longer two magisteria, but just one, before which we must all bow.

Are we to simply declare the giant elephant in the room as taboo for discussion. Religion claims to have an entity that is not only external to the universe but also fully capable of breaking the laws of physics through magic and we are to blindly accept this and carry on with our science and not even take a single measurement? Are we to simply ignore the man behind the curtain?

It was in the midst of this that Fodor and the cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini published What Darwin Got Wrong, a highly sophisticated analysis of Darwinian thought which concluded that the theory of natural selection could not be stated coherently. All hell broke loose. Such was the abuse that Fodor vowed never to read a blog again. Myers the provocateur announced that he had no intention of reading the book but spent 3,000 words trashing it anyway, a remarkably frank statement of intellectual tyranny.

It was not highly sophisticated. It was a book written by a philosopher with a poor understanding about evolutionary biology, writing about a theory that was nearly 100 years old by that point and had grown based on newer proof.

The argument was a philosophical one and one that simply doesn't hold true in nature. It wasn't all hell breaking lose so much as people calling them out for their inherent mistakes when they tried to play scientist. Basically? Real Scientists in the field simply tore their arguments to shreds because these two individuals failed to realise that science has progressed a lot since the days of Darwin.

Ultimately, the problem with militant neo-atheism is that it represents a profound category error. Explaining religion - or, indeed, the human experience - in scientific terms is futile. "It would be as bizarre as to launch a scientific investigation into the truth of Anna Karenina or love," de Botton says. "It's a symptom of the misplaced confidence of science . . . It's a kind of category error. It's a fatally wrong question and the more you ask it, the more you come up with bizarre and odd answers."

No it wouldn't. The truth about Anna Karenina would be fascinating. Are we to suggest that archeology and paleontology isn't fascinating because they deal with the past? Love as a study into neurology would be intensely fascinating while not altering it's meaning one bit. So what if it's just chemistry? Knowing how it works doesn't make it less special. The entire point of science is you can ask any question and get an answer through empirical thought. Simply stating that you shouldn't answer some questions is a ludicrous idea.

The answer demonstrates the futility of the neo-atheist project. Religion is not going to go away. It is a natural and legitimate response to the human condition, to human consciousness and to human ignorance. One of the most striking things revealed by the progress of science has been the revelation of how little we know and how easily what we do know can be overthrown. Furthermore, as Hitchens in effect acknowledged and as the neo-atheists demonstrate by their ideological rigidity and savagery, absence of religion does not guarantee that the demonic side of our natures will be eliminated. People should have learned this from the catastrophic failed atheist project of communism, but too many didn't.

However we can oppose it's grasp on our children and indeed on our daily lives which are being influenced by people who lived 2000 years ago and had no idea about the world. Really? Do we honestly think that "Gay Marriage Is Anti Christian" is a logical and sane answer to the modern issue? No! You would have to be a madman to say that you refuse to accept two people's marriage solely because you believe in the same things as people did 2000 years ago!

It is better to know that we know nothing than claim that we know everything. That's the difference between science and religion. Science may be truly small but it will get bigger and bigger as we understand more of how the universe works. Religion assumes it knows everything which is why it stagnates and why it's god is so small, petty and insignificant.

The ideological savagery exists in atheism, but should we point out the actual savagery of faith? The savage verbal assaults on the four gentlemen mentioned earlier are no different from ones we have all faced. This is a problem of humanity irrespective of faith. The problem with faith is that it can encourage a lot of people to assault a single concept. The problem with faith is that it can drive people to actual savagery.

Happily, the backlash against neo-atheism has begun, inspired by the cult's own intolerance. In the Christmas issue of this magazine, Dawkins interviewed Hitchens. Halfway through, Dawkins asked: "Do you ever worry that if we win and, so to speak, destroy Christianity, that vacuum would be filled by Islam?" At dinner at the restaurant in Bayswater we all laughed at this, but our laughter was uneasy. The history of attempts to destroy religion is littered with the corpses of believers and unbelievers alike. There are many roads to truth, but cultish intolerance is not one of them.

So far this article has been one of strawman after strawman. If it was about learning from religion and genuine criticism about the atheist movement and how to improve ourselves then it would be fine. Instead it's a ridiculous assault on evolution, mixed in with complaints that people called other people out for making the ridiculous assault on evolution finally culminating in the idea that religion will always exist because people are too stupid and if we get rid of one we would have to deal with a crazier one.

There are many roads to the truth but the truth is singular. The truth of religion and of science are entirely different and science is based on proof and evidence while religion is not. Science does not accept anything as true until proven, while religion accepts things as true before finding proof.

Speaking as a Mother - Anti-Vaccine Fallacies

2012-02-26T22:04:00.001+05:30

Society commonly labours under the assumption that people know what's best for their body. This is generally the case when we discuss the lay public, but when it comes to medicine? The most common mistake we see in anti-vax is that they are willing to use their motherhood as a qualification. That somehow they know what's best for their child even when they blatantly have no idea about something such as medicine. Oh we liberals look smug, but how many times do we say something like "men don't have a right to tell women what to do with their reproductive health". Well Sarah Palin is a woman who got women to pay for their own rape test kits while Dr. Warren Hern faces routine death threats and the death of a partner (the late Dr. Tiller) while being the focal point of an entire movement to deny women's rights. Their gender doesn't make an ounce of difference in their arguments. Sarah Palin is plain bad for women's healths despite being a woman and Dr. Hern's courage ensures women have genuine medical care and support while making a difficult choice. Their genders are not as important as their understanding of the issues.

With this in mind, I would like to talk about the fallacy of "speaking as a mother". That ignorance of medicine is encouraged by this kind of attitude mainly because it enforces the ignorance as a good thing.

I received this list from someone who is anti-vaccine stating that she would only vaccinate her kids if these criteria were met.

That's fine...it truly is a personal choice to vaccinate, and I respect your decision to vaccinate just as I hope you respect mine to decline them. My own research has debunked many of the long-held and unchallenged beliefs concerning vaccinations. Vaccinating my children would demand all suspension of my critical thinking and common sense. Here are 6 points you would have to convince me of before I'd ever consider resuming vaccinations.

If it was a personal choice, you would be held responsible for the transmission of disease. We have only prosecuted a handful of people for willing spreading a disease by their actions. Why should we respect a stupid decision? We try and encourage you to vaccinate in the same way that we encourage people to wear a seatbelt. Because it's for their own good and people are for the most part ignorant outside their field.

A simple response to this? What critical thinking do you gain as a mother that cannot be gained through education? The ability to have sex and get pregnant doesn't give you knowledge about the function of the human body any more than being able to walk gives you knowledge about orthopaedics. There is a medical reason for vaccination based on science, experiments and testing. And yet all that evidence has to be ignored by in order for your so called "critical thinking and common sense" to come to this conclusion. Ignorance of fact, knowledge and evidence does not make your thinking critical.

1. Believe that vaccines are 100% effective, yet the CDC acknowledges they are not. Far from it.

-- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep;53(18):389-92-- 2004- 5-14
In Michigan in 2003 there was a chicken pox outbreak. Vaccination was verified for 485 students, resulting in a vaccination coverage of 95.7% (485 out of 507).
-- http://www.nvic.org/vaccines-and-diseases/Rotavirus.aspx

According to the CDC in 1999, rotavirus was causing 20 to 40 infant deaths annually in the US when the first rotavirus vaccine, RotaShield, was introduced. It was estimated that about 50,000 hospitalizations occurred in the US because of severe diarrhea and dehydration. Today, even though almost all US infants receive vaccines for rotavirus, and despite efforts to improve the management of childhood rotavirus-associated diarrhea, hospitalizations of children in the U.S. with the disease have not significantly declined in the past two decades: the CDC says rotavirus infection is still responsible for an estimated 400,000 doctor visits; more than 200,000 emergency room visits; and 55,000 to 70,000 hospitalizations in the US.

A case-control study has shown that 41 percent of meningitis occurred in children vaccinated against the disease. The vaccine's protective efficacy was minus 58 percent. This means that children are much more likely to get the disease if they are vaccinated. ~ JAMA, 1988, Osterholm et al., 260: 1423-1428

No one ever said that vaccines were 100% effective. Vaccines produce immunity by subjecting the body to the antigens of the disease without the virulence of the disease. It stops MOST infections, not all. This wanes over time, but so does natural acquired immunity you gain from contracting the diseases. Nothing works 100% of the time. I mean, cars crash all the time, does this mean that you will never drive? Close to a million people die a year from drowning, does this mean you will never learn to swim? Seatbelts sometimes kill people, does this mean you will drive without one? Bullet proof armour doesn't work all the time, does this mean we should send soldiers into battle without it?

In the USA out of 1000 children born, 6 will die. Does this mean that you shouldn't have kids because 100% of them will not survive?

This is without the sheer outright ignorance in this argument.

The Michigan chicken pox outbreak is comparing raw numbers directly comparing numbers of afflicted individuals without any thoughts of ratios of their normal populations. Raw numbers mean nothing. Otherwise the USA has 1 million cases of HIV as does Malawi which means that the USA has the same amount of HIV (it does not... 1 in 300 people have HIV in the USA while in Malawi it's 1 in 15). With that in mind if I recall correctly in this case it turned out that of the people afflicted roughly 16% of people who had a single vaccination of chickenpox (as opposed to the double vaccine) contracted the disease while more than 80% of those who were not vaccinated contracted the disease. And this is without the sharp drop in virulence of those vaccinated who tended to recover quickly and not show as many other effects.

It's statistics used to befuddle, badly applied and that doesn't mean anything. It shows a core lack of mathematical understanding being used to create a complete lack of awareness and indeed con people who lack an understanding of stats into following this kind of silliness. It's the mathematical equivalent of saying that 3 = 4

The rotavirus stats are from before the introduction of the US vaccine. This is an outright lie. " In the United States, before introduction of a live, oral pentavalent rotavirus vaccine (RV5) in 2006, rotavirus caused an estimated 20 to 60 deaths, 55,000 to 70,000 hospitalizations, 205,000 to 272,000 emergency department visits, and 410,000 outpatient visits annually". If one reads the article one notices that the overall rotavirus season just one year shows a massive difference with a peak 11 weeks later than it's normal median in December and shorter seasons lasting around 14 weeks rather than 26 weeks. There was also a drop from roughly 3500 positive cases of rotavirus to 1300 cases in the same number of people tested.

Meningitis vaccine being used protects against Haemophillus Influenzae B (HIB) the major cause of bacterial meningitis is Meningococcus. There are other viral, parasitical and fungal causes too. But these are two different species of bacteria. Meningococcus vaccines are still undergoing testing and where rolled out are experimental. Roughly 54% of meningitis cases are due to Meningococcus and therefore HIB vaccines would not protect against it. Again an argument from ignorance of the fact that meningitis is caused by a variety of organisms.

2. Believe vaccines do not contribute to the spread of these illnesses, yet the CDC acknowledges that they do.

-- http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol6no5/srugo.htm Vaccinated adolescents and adults may serve as reservoirs for silent infection and become potential transmitters to unprotected infants (3-11). The whole-cell vaccine for pertussis is protective only against clinical disease, not against infection (15-17). Therefore, even young, recently vaccinated children may serve as reservoirs and potential transmitters of infection.

Except they don't spread as much of the disease as a fully infected individual does because pertussis is spread by air and not coughing means fewer pathogens are released. In addition vaccinated individuals get rid of the disease far faster and are therefore infective for far lower amounts of time. In addition vaccinated individuals are also harder to infect...

In short? You are less likely to run across someone with pertussis. This is called herd immunity. It's effect is well documented considering this quoted an article about Rotavirus which showed a decrease post vaccination even in unvaccinated children due to the effect.

3. Believe that vaccines are 100% safe and do not cause encephalopathy and other complications, yet the US Vaccine Injury Compensation Court has paid out over $2 BILLION to families with vaccine-injured children.

http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/statistics_report.htm
http://www.ebcala.org/areas-of-law/vaccine-law/analysis-finds-evidence-of-autism-in-many-vaccine-injury-cases

“The Committee has set forth Comment K in this bill because it intends that the principle in CommentK regarding ‘unavoidably unsafe’ products, i.e., those products which in the present state of human skill and knowledge cannot be made safe, apply to the vaccines..." ~ http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-152.pdf

-- Vaccines can cause death in Immunocompromised Individuals "The administration of vaccines presents a problem in children with immune defects...No live virus vaccines should be given since there is a risk of causing disseminated infection that may be fatal. Even with killed virus vaccines, the patient will not make antibodies in response to the injection."
Essential Pediatric Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology ~ Raoul L. Wolf, pp. 15

Nothing is 100% safe. As we discussed before.

Autism has increased because we have expanded the definition of autism which includes a lot more people

Encephalitis has gone down in occurrence since the introduction of vaccines since some of the major causes of encephalitis are rabies, japanese encephalitis virus, west nile and polio all of which are vaccine preventable and this is withouth HIB and Meningococcus. Even if vaccines did cause it directly of which there is no actual evidence with a quick google finding mainly results from Mercola and Whale.to and a few reports of people getting encephalitis after a measles vaccines that is corrected with medication and indeed with little to no correlation.

This argument is that some immunocompromised children cannot produce antibodies to vaccines. This we know. We don't vaccinate those children. Those children are protected by the herd immunity. It's why in the west these children usually are infected by non pathogenic species such as fungal infections and normal commensal infections rather than say diseases like tuberculosis or cholera or typhoid. Seriously? We are discussing normal healthy children and you bring in the one group of people who aren't benefitted by vaccines directly.

4. Believe that vaccines are produced for the improvement of our health, yet the manufacturers are SO concerned about our health, that they include this disclaimer on every vaccine package insert, "_________ has not been evaluated for its carcinogenic or mutagenic potential, or its potential to impair fertility."

http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedProducts/ucm101580.pdf (page 6/13)

They also use pesticides, components of antifreeze, excitotoxins, known endocrine disruptors, and formaldehyde - why? If our children drank these components, we would call poison control. http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/appendices/B/excipient-table-1.pdf

Er.. this is just one vaccine package. And it is being honest, we haven't done any research into that aspect of it. It should not cause any issues because diptheria, pertussis and tetanus themselves don't cause cancers, so expecting their toxoids and antigens to cause the effect is bonkers. However Diptheria and Tetanus straight up do kill people.

Concentration is important. The amount in vaccines is miniscule often in 1000th of a milligram to 1000000th of a milligram. Do you use spirits to clean wounds? Congratulations! You have just consumed more formaldehyde than in a vaccine. Do you drink beer? There is a tiny tiny amount of methyl alcohol in there which is converted by the body to formaldehyde. Have you been bitten by an ant? Formic acid is broken down by our body to formaldehyde. Ever used rubbing spirit to clean a wound? Methanol again. In fact you MAKE formaldehyde since it is a precursor for DNA. Seriously? There is 0.02 to 0.005 mg (or 20 to 5 micrograms) of formaldehyde. A newborn weighing 3 Kg has roughly 240 ml of blood which works out as a concentration of 20/240 = 0.08 micrograms per ml or 80 nanograms... In short? Insanely small amounts. Most of the "scary stuff antivax love to worry about" are things like this.

5. Believe that these infectious illnesses - each and every one for which there is a vaccine - are highly contagious, deadly unless vaccinated against, with no effective natural remedies, and that permanent immunity is inferior to vaccine-induced inflammatory responses. If that were the case, the human race wouldn't have made it this far. You and I would not be here because previous generations would have died out. Knowledge is power.

A chance my child could have serious convulsions after the DTaP vaccine? 1 in 1750: American Academy of Pediatrics. Pertussis. In: Peter G, editor. 1997 Red book: report of the Committee on Infectious Diseases. 24th ed. Elk Grove Village, IL: American Academy of Pediatrics; 1997. p. 394-407.

A chance my child could die from pertussis? .00011%. http://www.exemptmychild.com/56401/56690.html

So the argument is that the vaccines worked so well in the USA that you don't want to vaccinate anymore because the disease is rare and will continue to do so until the disease comes back and kills more children?

The incident rate in the USA at one point was 1/300 per year for Measles before the measles vaccine was introduced. Now measles isn't so dangerous in a first world country. Only 1 in 1000 children get encephalitis there, so we can work that out as roughly a 1000 lives ruined a year... By comparison now? Only maybe 5 to 10 people ever get that sick because of the vaccine.

Measles had a 95% transmission rate. Measles also killed an empire. It shows the level of education in the USA that the most powerful and advanced native american civilisation's history is not taught. The Aztec Empire's fall was helped by a measles epidemic brought by the conquistadors.

My grandmother had 9 children, my mother has only 4 brothers and sisters. My great grandmother has 8 children but only 2 daughters and 1 son. I wonder why... You are merely the product of those who were lucky to survive. In the USA 6 per 1000 children born die in the first year. In India it's 60. In Nigeria it's 120. Vaccination and medicine make the difference. Evolution does not care about those who die, we do. If we had today's survival rates, I would have a lot more uncles and aunts.

Diphtheria, Pertussis and Tetanus still exist. They still kill. They can come back and many of these diseases have come back before. Diphtheria was on the rise in the USA again due to reductions in vaccinations. Diphtheria and Tetanus are horrible ways to die. Pertussis is just a lousy disease. You may not die from it but it will really really suck. In the USA 50 - 100 people a year contract tetanus. ALL unvaccinated or lapsed. It takes 4 - 6 weeks of ICU care. Each day of ICU care is 15,000 dollars. Each day is a day you may die. You may need tracheotomy to help you live with all the complications that entails. Diphtheria's name used to be the Strangling Angel. It's not a name that's very fun and still kills between 25 to 30% of it's victims EVEN with medicine. Pertussis can make you cough so hard that your ribs break. It's not like a movie, a broken rib is enormously painful and feels like you are dying. Every breath is painful and it simply robs you of oxygen.

6. Believe that pharmaceutical companies, the CDC and the FDA truly have our best interests at heart.

Pharmaceutical Companies are not in bed with the FDA or the CDC.

The FDA is an independent watchdog for medication safety. It takes between 12 to 15 years to gain FDA approval via independent testing. No drug tested outside american soil can be sold there without testing by the FDA

The CDC is a medical statistics organisation that charts disease spread and the like allowing medical professionals to react appropriately to epidemiology. Their main role is charting disease spread of diseases and ensuring doctors are prepared to deal with it.

Both actively add controls and regulate the pharmaceutical industry. This argument was mainly created by quacks who complain that the FDA doesn't validate their nonsense. Mainly because their quackery doesn't work.

i. Congress's 1986 Vaccine Injury Act removed parents' right to sue in state/federal court, protecting vaccine manufacturers from liability, and created a special vaccine court that could accept/reject claims at its leisure http://www.nvic.org/injury-compensation/origihanlaw.aspx

This is due to the fact that a court of law is a lousy place to try a medical issue because debate and rhetoric and uneducated juries are poor adjudicators of biology. A vaccine court uses trained lawyers and judges and isn't bound by a jury.

ii. BRUESEWITZ v. WYETH - US Supreme Court decision upholding the 1986 "unavoidably unsafe" language. Parents do not have the right to sue a vaccine manufacturer - even if catastrophic side effects result from their unsafe products. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-152.pdf

This is plain foolish since this streamlines the process by which money is given to vaccine claimants. And there are unavoidable unsafe effects. Such as allergies and the like. If you are allergic to latex and put on a plaster (band-aid), then you will have an allergic reaction. This is not the company's fault. It is an unavoidable unsafe effect. In short? The article complains about legislation that makes claims EASIER.

iii. Johnson & Johnson “cozy” relationship with FDA http://www.seattlepi.com/health/1500ap_us_jj_recalls_congress.html

Article Removed. Also if the relationship was so cozy, the FDA would be hamstringing AstraZeneca, Bayer and GalaxoSmithKline who are not american companies and who are J&J's big rivals.

iv. Avandia and the FDA http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/06/health/06fda.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1181134287-GoZ27pFnLfDZW+O8VgbuHA&oref=slogin

I note that the people who actively noticed and created the black box label were doctors not quacks. Take a hint... Medicine is distributed by people who are actually quite good at statistics and who routinely write papers.

v. Vioxx and FDA http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/8625

You mean Dr. David Graham... The Associate Director of the FDA... The man who blew the whistle on a prior drug using actual science?

vi. Bayer and Factor 8 - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/22/health/main555154.shtml

So Bayer is evil for distributing a vital drug needed for haemophiliacs that contained an unknown virus that was only discovered 5 years after the distribution... Oh right! Hindsight is 20/20... And Bayer placed it's safety precautions because of fears of Hepatitis rather than HIV.

vii. Menaflex Knee Implant Approval (admitted undue influence from Congress)- http://documents.nytimes.com/f-d-a-review-of-the-regen-menaflex-device#p=1

Perhaps you should be more worried about Congress placing pressure on the public body than the FDA.

viii. FDA/CDC cover up actual swine flu numbers http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/24/Superstar-CBS-Reporter-Blows-the-Lid-Off-the-Swine-Flu-Media-Hype-and-Hysteria.aspx

I buried kids who died from swine flu... It's not a hype. Swine flu had the Haemagluttinin 1 and Neuroamidase 1 variation which was famous in the Spanish Flu outbreak. Which killed between 50 to 100 million people (because we don't know how many died in India and China and Africa). At the low end of the estimates it killed 3% of the world's population... Let's just say we were rather scared of what it could do since the last time it fucked is over quite badly and we hadn't tested modern medication on it. We were also worried at what it would do in places like India and Africa where a lot of people wouldn't have access to the medication.

And this article is from Mercola who encourages a lack of vaccination solely to sell his own products. The man is a vulture selling vitamins at 120 dollars for 3 months worth of pills that cost around 5 dollars to make. Hell Boots in the UK sell multi vitamins at a WHOPPING 25 dollars for three months worth and that's pricey.

ix. The FDA approves a non-existent product from a fictitious company http://gaia-health.com/articles351/000378-system-sting.shtml

Gaia Health are stupid. Just plain stupid. They believe that you can wish diseases away and routinely give out health advise that would be laughable if it wasn't killing so many people in third world nations. Oh and FDA standard doesn't mean FDA approved. FDA standard are FDA quality controlled labs set up in many countries who want drugs to meet the standards because they do not have a standardisation board like the FDA. No drug tested abroad will be able to be sold in the USA unless it was tested in the USA as well. It's why most multi-national drug companies have R&D in the USA as well as Europe and any country with this kind of rule, where they test the drug simultaneously across the world in order to sell in various closed markets.

In short? Nearly every single one of the points made is foolish and not a single one actively indulges in anything remotely biological. I am fairly sure this is the usual anti-vaccine stance where ignorance about biology and medicine is a badge of honour, but not one of them so far has been able to explain the basics of immune systems and the mechanism of action of something like a vaccine.

In short? This is pretty much par for course. A tapestry of lies and half truths created via quote mining and misrepresentation of data.

Don't Stop Reporting II

2012-02-23T15:44:00.000+05:30

I didn't really do a blog post celebrating a year of A Million Gods, but today's events kind of reminded me of when I started.

Today Marie Colvin and Remie Ochlik were killed in Homs as part of the Bashar Al-Assad Government's offensive on the Syrian people. It is rumoured that they were killed as a deliberate attack on journalists.

This reminded me of when I wrote about the sexual assault of Lara Logan. It's almost precisely a year to the day...

I deeply admired Marie Colvin's work across the world particularly in areas such as Sri Lanka and the work of Remie Ochlik is frankly astounding considering his age. The world is a poorer place for the loss of these people.

I feel that this event shows the level of the brutality of the fighting in Syria and the indiscriminate shelling of civilians. Her final report was about a child dying as no one could treat him. It does make your eyes prick between bath and pre-lunch beers. But we so quickly forget that there is a world of suffering.

The war journalist and photographer brings war to life. We forget that in this day and age of easy publishing the value of a professional observer in the ground has reduced. Their lives are more unsafe than ever since a press pass is no longer the protection it once was. We shouldn't forget their sacrifice and the best way we can do that is by being aware of the international world rather than the latest celebrity gossip. And by acting on this information. The information to put pressure on the Syrian government is in our hands. The question remains is whether we actually use it to try and create a democratic society in Syria or do we go back to our beers.

Cults and You

2012-02-20T17:45:00.000+05:30

I spent most of the weekend reading the very lovely Suzanne Schumacher's blog about leaving a cult. The cult is quite famous as the Follower's of Christ. They were involved in a bunch of people refusing medical care for their children and praying instead.

I advocate reading Does Air Exist, but urge readers to be respectful. Her beliefs are a product of a cult and she is not an atheist. It's hard to be polite regarding this sort of thing considering the level of information control the average cult has.

It's a good read to see what life was like in a cult and she has said that she will be having a faith healer on it as a guest blogger. It's interesting to see what the medical luddite movement really believes in and it's interesting to see what arguments they use as a learning experience.

The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers

2012-02-18T16:12:00.000+05:30

My good sir! It's so nice to meet you! I couldn't possibly trouble you for a
sausage in a nice bap with some good cheese?

I saw this little bugger in the pound when I was taking a dog there to get rescued after it had accidentally got run over after it fell asleep under a car and kind of fell in love with him. I figured I was moving to a new house and that I wouldn't mind taking him in for the time being.

His name is Tigger and he is dopey and funny and attempting to eat fudge and climb on me at the same time.

Oh his name is a spelling mistake. It's supposed to be Tiger, but he hops around if he wants things so I figure the name is appropriate!

The Ninth Commandment

2012-02-17T03:21:00.000+05:30

It amazes me how easily some christians breaks the commandments while claiming to be good. I have no qualms about someone who isn't a "holier than thou" christian not following the more stupid rules of christianity. I have no issues with them. They realise that their faith isn't perfect and adapt it to fit the reality of modern life.

There are plenty of catholic women who use actual birth control rather than wishful thinking and there are plenty of catholics who think the church's behaviour is reprehensible. And then we have the American Life League whose lying bullshit is so noxious that one can scarcely believe that they can actually claim to uphold the ninth commandment.

A few points?

Abortion is not Killing. Life is not viable in any significant way till around the 24th week. Claiming it is life is completely true while also being completely dishonest since it is discussing potential life. By this logic life never really starts and stops but is a continuation. The idea is that conception is this mystical act which imbues a zygote with a soul which is a laughable concept since there is no soul (It's an illusion. The soul is wishful thinking that our brain's thought pattern will survive the destruction of the brain.) The sperm and egg are both alive. By this argument abortion may be murder, but ejaculation is genocide.
Mountains of birth control sounds like a good thing. One notices that the Catholic church encourages it's members to not use birth control but doesn't actually feed the children born from the lack of birth control. The ability to decide when and where we have children enables us to provide the best situations for our children. The game is quality not quantity and sensible people understand that.
Obsession with Sex is planned parenthoods job. Their entire job is to encourage people to have safer sex, use contraception when avoiding pregnancy and finally to provide abortions if all that advice falls on deaf ears. A fairly health attitude to sex. While the Catholic church is just as obsessed with sex. Only with an unhealthy attitude of celibacy, masochistic beliefs, unsafe sexual practice and plain stupidity. The rules of catholicism with regards to female health are drawn up by a bunch of celibate men, many of whom are virgins whose qualifications are not based on science and medicine but in the idea that somehow belief in an imaginary friend entitles you to discuss biology, sociology and genitalia that you are unfamiliar with.
Plenty of catholics use sex toys and have wide and varied sex lives. Sex isn't bad. Of course a bunch of celibate people are going to think it's bad. They aren't having sex. They don't know how good it is and indeed how to be safe and following their advice is a terrible plan.
Vagina Macaroons sound pretty awesome
The things that play a central role in planned parenthood's community activities just sounds retarded. One can easily say that alcohol, biscuits and crushing guilt feature heavily in catholic activity but that isn't strictly true. The silliness is a means to an end, which is the discussion of safe sex.
For a group of people whose clergy have become synonymous with paedophilia, these catholics are awfully daft at accusing planned parenthood of perversion. What's truly shocking is the double standards we apply to priests many of whom have escaped prosecution or been handed light sentences. Perverse? Sex is fun. Teaching kids to be safe and have respect for themselves is what sex education should be about. Because teaching them that about evil vaginas and penises just is a lie.
Planned Parenthood may get government money to teach "unrestrained sex" but the catholic church pays no taxes.
Only morons would think science and pornography are interchangeable. Oh baby, your fallopian tubes make my vas deferens spasm. Enough vocalisation, let us engage in coitus.
I don't think sex is that addictive. Sure it's nice, but I don't get sick if I don't have any sex.
Masturbation is not a gateway to sex. By their logic eating is a gateway to obesity so you should NEVER EAT.
It's Perfectly Normal is about puberty and the changes that occur. It teaches that the hormonal feelings are perfectly normal. The changes are perfectly natural. And the desire to masturbate and explore sexuality is perfectly natural in the context of a respectful relationship. Obviously the church wouldn't like this. How can they make people feel guilty of unnatural desires if people figure out that those unnatural desires are actually pretty natural.
Cartoon people having sex is funny. Not sexy.
Anatomical drawings are informative, even if they are cartoons. Not sexy. Do you know what kills most people's masturbation? Seeing cutaway sections of penis.
If a dirty old man showed these things to a kid in a church, he won't be arrested either. There is a massive difference between paedophilia and sex education. A dirty old man wants to fuck the kids. Planned parenthood prepares kids for these kinds of situations by teaching them respect.
I don't think I was told anything stimulating and intimate about sex in Sex Education. How sexually repressed do you have to be to find sex education titillating?
A lot of their argument consists of "ZOMG PENIS! VAGINA! DRAWINGS! Good grief? I have dissected human vaginas and penises and even helped in sectioning cadavers for educational cross sections. Trust me, it's not sexy to see anatomical drawings of the damn things. At no point have I masturbated to Netter's Anatomy.I am sure someone somewhere has but different strokes for different folk. I prefer my ladies real and alive and without cross sections.
Oh no! Planned Parenthood are telling the truth about mastrubation! Now catholics cannot say that it makes you go blind or that masturbation can cause your cock to fall off.
Orgasms are pretty sweet (if you hadn't had one? Look forward to it). Anal Sex isn't for everyone, take precautions and you will be fine. Oral sex is amazing. Just thought I should state the obvious. Good grief, this video paints a dire picture of catholic sex.
All sexual orientations between consenting adults are perfectly acceptable. The ALL's guilt tripping nonsense is responsible for the culture of bullying and hatred towards homosexual teenagers that results in their higher than average suicide rate. It can only get better when we completely marginalise people like these from modern society and make them irrelevant to normal discourse.
Encouraging the use of condoms and dental dams reduces pregnancy and the spread of STDs. Abstinence doesn't work. It really doesn't because sex is hardwired into human beings. It's why catholic priests fuck up so easily. It's because the most unnatural thing on earth is denying sex on purpose solely because you believe that it gives you magic powers to talk to some magic being.
Being gay is precisely like being left handed. I didn't have the best childhood upbringing as a left hander. I was routinely treated by other indians as broken and people did try and correct my hand usage. You are born left handed, the catholics once beat the fuck out of you if you were left handed. Today it's the gays. The word Sinister comes from "left handedness". Incidentally if you want a fun fact of trivia the opposite of Sinister is Dexter.
Oh noes! The kids will have to meet gays. Seriously? Have you seen what the average 13 year old watches on TV? Have you seen a Rihanna video? The Pussy Cat Dollz? Christina Aguillera? How is this any different from that?
1/4 girls has an STD. That is true. The majority being HPV. Nearly 90% of STD cases are due to HPV. Not all STDs are alike.
Planned Parenthood throws sexy parties? That seems unlikely.
This man's definition of sexy scares and terrifies me. Raise your hands if you think penis tentacled monsters are sexy. Raise your hands if you think condom balloon kama sutra is funny.
Showing people dressed up as genitalia during a demonstration about sex rights is pretty retarded. It's planned parenthood supporters making a stand. Planned Parenthood probably don't dress up as penises and vaginas for normal work. If they did it would be highly amusing but also highly inappropriate.
It doesn't matter what a woman wears, no means no. Neither Burkha nor Bikini are permission for rape of any sort.
This fisting kit blatantly says "how to make a dental dam" on it. And straight people like fisting too. It is estimated that more straight men enjoy receiving anal sex than gay men. And if that is the case? No glove! No love!
Japanese culture has a penis festival? They sound pretty awesome.
Planned Parenthood gives out free contraception. I don't know about you but "get the kids addicted to sex so we have to give out more contraception" doesn't seem like a solid business strategy. Remind me again, in order to run a business are we supposed to make money or put it into condoms that we give out for free?
Birth control in the form of condoms reduces STD tests and Abortions

These are roughly all the lies. I lost count, I really did. Do any real people believe in this nonsense or is this group a parody? I cannot tell.

But just to be on the safe side, fund Planned Parenthood. At the best, your money will go to guaranteeing your children and your daughters in particular receive healthcare and education about sex that is untainted by people whose qualifications are belief in magic. At the very worst you will piss off the ALL.

I disagree with JT Eberhard - Valentine's day is actually kind of fun

2012-02-15T13:51:00.001+05:30

I actually disagree that Valentine's Day sucks. I quite like it, it's a silly day where you are encouraged to be silly and romantic. You don't need that excuse on other days but sometimes it's nice to be part of the crowd.

Look, days like Christmas, Valentine's Day and all the other days are just days where people do something special. The meaning of christmas to some people is Jesus and all that jazz, but I was a Hindu. Christmas was about sitting with your family and laughing as you try to make "white people food", complain about it being too bland and then spicing up the recipes (My turkey used to be cooked in a tandoori and we had curry rather than gravy). You can still enjoy something even if it doesn't mean the same thing to you.

Yes, it sucks to be single on Valentine's Day. But you know what? If you are single and you think it's a problem then every event where you are in contact with people in relationships is irritating. A simple dinner with my cousins often turns into me looking awkwardly at the ceiling while they discuss "married people things". Being an odd numbered wheel sucks sometimes. Being the odd wheel around a public display of affection sucks. The only difference between Valentine's Day and any other day is the quantity of people who are doing the whole PDA thing. It's the same at Christmas or Easter or any day where people get together in large groups with their significant others and you are on your own around a lot of booze.

And I had to spend Christmas holidays this year by myself locked in a room with medical textbooks instead of with my family. I had a break for a few days for a friend's wedding but my holiday was mainly educational. Let's just say that calling it a "depressing holiday" is an understatement. Imagine knowing that you HAVE to sit and study while every person you know is out eating, drinking and having fun? Imagine seeing all your friends get married, settle down and have a kid while you don't even have the time to go out and get a beer. It all sucks when you aren't getting it but you know what? It's my choice to trade in my 20s in exchange for a medical degree and it's my choice to get my degree in India. So I can complain but I cannot change the reality of the situation.

I have been single for 2 years and 8 months now. In that time period I have had a single proper fling and that was less about a feasible relationship and more about "high school reunion with someone who I fancied and vice versa who lives on the other side of the globe and who I hadn't seen since I was 15". And it frankly sucks, but what makes it suck isn't the fact that all the people in relationships are having fun or have a day where they rub it in my face. It sucks because I have an issue with it. I mean that's like saying that I shouldn't hit on women around my friends who are in monogamous relationships because they cannot. I am pretty much doomed to a bare minimum of another 3 years of being single. I pretty much live and work in a place where

The normal dating arena is way too expensive for me. I make roughly 700 rupees a week. A drink in a bar is 120 rupees .Entry into most clubs is often more expensive than what I get a week as a stipend and my stipend mainly is spent on food and treats.
Where I have a completely different cultural upbringing to the people who surround me and so have absolutely nothing in common
Where my baldness is a major issue to the point where people have stopped me in the street to ask me if I had an accident or cancer and where people actively pity me for my hair loss at such a young age.
My course treats me as a dog's body and tends to give me the worst jobs. HIV/AIDS patients are the modern day lepers and thus I am stuck working with them. My choice of who I work with makes me a social pariah to a lot of people.

And what would insult me more is if people treated me like my feelings were so delicate and fragile that I would be insulted if I were to see people having fun on Valentine's Day. No more so than my feelings being insulted for seeing people having fun on Christmas or Easter or St. Patrick's Day or pretty much any other day of the year. And you know what? One day I will not be stuck here, one day I will be back home and one day I will have a social life. And at that point, I wouldn't want to have to pussy foot around someone else worrying about their feelings with regards to my relationship.

So don't worry about us single people. We don't have someone to date, it doesn't mean we are big giant babies. Most of us can handle Valentine's Day just fine!

Valentine's Day Massacre: Indiana's Drones and the Temple of Dumb

2012-02-14T21:39:00.000+05:30

Why are we even discussing whether religion and science should be taught on the same footing in a classroom? It is 2012, and we have touched the moon, made smallpox extinct, created the internet and routinely chose to hurl ourselves through the air in metal cylinders powered by dead monsters.

And somehow despite all this technology that science has created to make our lives better in every single possible way, you still have people like the members of the Indiana Senate who tried (and will probably try again) to get a bill that allows for the teaching of creationism in schools.

It’s such a faulty premise that something that has been repeatedly proven to be true has to be taught alongside the notion that the world was created as it is by magic. It beggars belief that we are even discussing this in this time period with what we know. At its heart it is an attempt to shoehorn Jesus into children and hammer home the idea that religion also has answers that should be treated as equally valid to science. After all, it’s rather embarrassing to claim divine knowledge and be so ignorant about the functioning of the world. Science just makes religion look bad by exposing the depths of wilful ignorance that it encourages.

The teaching of Creationism irrespective of its source does not align at all with reality and therefore with science. They are stories, nothing more and nothing less than that. Teaching them in a classroom as fact doesn't harm you. It harms your children by creating a group of people who do not question things properly and who simply blindly accept the fact that magic exists.

As a United Methodist pastor, I am part of a Christian tradition that looks to Scripture, church tradition, critical thinking and relevant experience to reflect on God and make decisions about life in relationship to our Scriptures. Within this framework, there is plenty of room for science, including the science of evolution. What can be measured and tested and studied through scientific methods informs my theology, and my theology informs how I understand the results of that scientific method. I am not an expert on other faith traditions, but I imagine that many of them could make similar claims.

Brenda Freije doesn’t get the point in the best way. Her attitude is that reconciliation between science and wishful thinking is possible. She chooses to treat the account in Genesis as a guideline or story, stating that there is tremendous wisdom in the bible as its defence. There is tremendous wisdom in Harry Potter (honour, courage, intelligence, hard work, bravery, friendship, sacrifice, doing what’s right, love, responsibility and universality) but I wouldn’t want it to be read in schools in lieu of actual science. To me the bible has some really terrible things in it. So does Harry Potter, but the terrible things in Harry Potter are done by people who are clearly villains while a lot of the terrible things done in the bible are due to the direct action of men who are considered “good” and by the deity who claims to be good. Her vision of Christianity is a very mellow and mild one that simply ignores a lot of the text of the book.

Rather than stating that science is right because it is based on experiment and proof and that the biblical account is based on allegory, she goes for the “we don’t know what’s right” argument. The truths in the Bible have been repeatedly proven empirically wrong and the only way to deal with that is by claiming that there is mystical truth that only comes from belief and study.

Science and religion ask different questions and apply different methods of study. This doesn't make them incompatible. It does make them distinct. Claims about God as the creator of life are claims of faith. Claims that there is no divine power behind the created order are claims of a different kind of faith. It is the role of parents and our communities of faith to teach about these claims and to help our children think critically about the science they are learning.

Science asks questions, religion makes up answers. Science does study and experiment and test while religion does not. The claim that there is no divine power in the universe is based on the observable fact that there is no divine power in the universe. To date not one person who claims to believe in the divine has been capable of providing evidence that the divine exists. The day proof is provided; we will accept a god exists. But till now there is none.

Next we have Donald Lacy, a United Methodist Pastor.

First, and likely the most difficult, has to do with what understanding(s) of creationism is to be presented to students. I suggest the place to begin for our great state is to seek out scholarly representatives of those that can trace their beginning to Father Abraham: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Perhaps the Senate itself could do this. But what branches of each should come together? Christianity alone has numerous denominational groupings. Potential chaos? Is consensus possible?

Firstly, the USA has a establishment clause banning the promotion of religion in a classroom. It doesn’t matter what god you believe in, you cannot flog it in a classroom. And none of the Abrahamic faiths have a grasp on how old the earth is by a factor of nearly the entire existence of the earth. Islam has been around for less than 2000 years. The world has been around for 4.5 billion years. This isn’t philosophy where all views are equal. This is science, and it’s not a democracy. It’s a meritocracy. If your view has evidence then your view stands. If your evidence is flawed then your view falls. And the evidence for all abrahamic faith is faulty at its very core. It doesn’t matter how much you agree about it if you are agreeing about the existence of unicorns.

Second, if some agreement can be reached on what is to be taught as creationism and implemented, we must look into the future. Who or what has the authority, responsibility and accountability to decide the validity of such teaching by providing objective testing? We may very well have a menacing wall that only partially comes down. Will each proponent insist on his/her way? Again, is consensus possible?

Secondly, creationism shouldn’t be taught. Not until they can provide empirical evidence. Because so far there has been no empirical research out of the movement let alone anything that substantiates their proof. We hear about research but close examination shows it to be laughable and unacceptable at the level at which a 12 year old child would do science. We cannot and should not teach anything this faulty.

Third, we must at least mention Buddhism and Hinduism. Our state definitely has devotees. In the late 1950s, we had a brilliant Christian professor at Butler School of Religion (Christian Theological Seminary) whose name was Joseph Smith. I relished every minute of his comparative history of religions and wrote essays on both religions. Often, after classes, I was ready to convert or find a way to incorporate them into Methodism. Well, dear friends, is consensus possible?

Thirdly, Hinduism’s creation mythos is clearly entrenched in magic. And hindus themselves tend to not believe in their own creation mythos relying heavily on science because that explains the world better. The Buddhist mythos varies wildly depending on the influence of Hinduism but it was originally a atheistic/agnostic belief system with the flaw being that it believed in a series of personal laws that apply to behaviour. Neither of these religions have enforced creationist mythos to the same level as the nonsense portrayed by the Abrahamic faiths. Encouraging them to be just like you just adds to the whole problem. And their creation mythos is completely alien to Abrahamic Faith.

Fourth, the crossing of lines between church, synagogue, mosque and state is probable. Aligning creationism with science may simply seem politically practical. Simply? Really now, it gets at the heart of who and what we are. We Christians should seriously propose a major interfaith event -- inviting Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists to a spacious classroom for prayers. The governor, legislature, Supreme Court and state superintendent of public instruction should join us.

Fourthly, Why? This seems like a giant waste of time and money. The USA has a tonne of problems regarding education without dragging magic into the mix. And it does not get at the heart of who we are as human beings.

We are the product of 3 billion years or so of evolution. We are a product of death, destruction and pain since the wheel of evolution is based on the deaths of others. Those who live to breed were lucky or were the best. We are the product of that. We have evolved to use tools and to solve problems using tools. And those two skills have allowed us as humans to break the normal cycle of evolution and become a force of nature unto ourselves. Our tools and brain have allowed us to create a society where we are not subject to the normal pressures of evolution. We have come from a history of incredible cruelty, brutality and strife to create a society that doesn’t need to be those things. We have the luxury as people to explore ideas such as kinship, universality and knowledge. At the heart of it, a human being is a powerful brain coupled with artifice mixed in with the right measures of cunning, dexterity and brute force to have become the most powerful and most self aware species that we are currently aware of. And it is these abilities and the appropriate application of them that allow us to get along with each other and become more.

To claim that we are the magic offspring of some mythical entity is to insult our true nature, and to forget what we truly are.

And finally we get to Greg Manship. An instructor in ethics at the University of Indianapolis.

Creationism aligns with science because both seek to bring understanding to the origins and fundamentals of the material world as we know it. Both science and faith help us to understand ourselves as human beings living with other human and nonhuman beings in a finite, material world within an infinite universe.

Creationism is not science, it is faith. It tries to ally with science because every time it has raised its ugly head it’s been defeated by empirical evidence which is what science is based on. It is trying to pass itself off as science in the same way that chiropractors and homeopaths try to pass themselves off as doctors. It does so in order to get acceptance into schools and so that it can replace genuine education with “Jesus”.

By faith, we understand the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Scriptures to reveal God as creator of the sun and the moon as "great lights . . . to mark day and night." By science, we understand the nature of the sun's light to be a massive release of visible and invisible electromagnetic energy, and the nature of the moon's light to be the reflection of the sun's light.

Why has this man been hired to teach at a university? This man blatantly doesn’t even grasp how stars are formed. In this idiot’s world the sun and moon’s existence are to mark day and night as the world's largest clocks. That god created the goddamn sun (a ball of nuclear fire that is a million times larger than the earth) solely for us to be able to tell when morning begins. Does God not intend for us to live in the Arctic or Antarctic where the sun often doesn’t set for months and where night can last an entire winter? No! Because that is clearly moronic because the “Ancient Hebrew Text” assumes the sun exists solely for human benefit.

On the other hand, by science we understand that the Higgs boson is a hypothetical subatomic particle that is the theoretical cause for mass and matter, which constitutes material reality as we know it. And by faith (defined by the author of the Book of Hebrews as "confidence in what we hope for . . . evidence of what we cannot see") we understand that despite the lack of evidence so far, with more experimentation and explanation, the Higgs boson (which the media have labeled the "God particle") will be found, thus completing our understanding of the material world (according to the Standard Model of particle physics).

I will raise my hand here. I do not understand the science behind particle physics. I understand it is science, but my education diverged from physics down the route of biology which is closer to chemistry than it is to particle physics. To me it is a mysterious world of strange names and I feel like the average physicist when confronted by the strange names of medicine. However? I understand that there is a logical position on why physicists make the statements they do. I understand that they test their hypothesis and are not making assumptions or guesses but are working towards understanding the world slowly and painfully.

I will not however assume that a bunch of 3000 year old Jews knew anything about the Higgs Boson just because a single line in a book, nor apply the term faith to what is effectively an educated guess or a prediction. The Higgs Boson is a prediction; mathematics and logic postulate the existence of the Higgs Boson in much the same way that Mendeleev predicted the existence of Noble Gases and even left space out for undiscovered elements in his periodic table. These were not based on faith but logic and actual hard science. A biological example would be the Darwin Orchid, where Darwin predicted it was pollinated by a moth whose tongue was of unprecedented length. 21 years after his death the moth was discovered vindicating his theory based on the fact that the plant had honey whose sole purpose is the attraction of insects, but it was honey placed deep within the flower which had a long flower that needed a long tongue. So since Darwin noticed no hummingbirds that would have the necessary tongue and bill to drink, he postulated it must be a night living moth since he hadn’t seen the creature and humming birds are diurnal. His education in entomology and biology allowed him to make the postulation. It wasn’t a leap of faith but a calculated jump made using knowledge and understanding.

There is no faith without science, for even Jesus challenged Thomas to gather empirical evidence by touching Jesus' resurrected body. And there is no science without faith, for even scientists have faith and believe in the possibilities of what they have not yet seen with their own eyes. We fail our students and we fool ourselves when we "believe" we have "proof" of the "incompatibility" between science and faith.

And finally it’s the assumption that faith in science and in religion is equivalent to each other. Faith is the absence of science, and the faith of a scientist in possibilities that are yet to come is not based on faith but by the theoretical application of a new discovery or an existing piece of technology. We do not live our lives based on that technological future and we apply logic and common sense to it as we develop a greater understanding that religion simply does not.

What fails the American student is the introduction of non-real things to education. We are not discussing creationism, we are discussing magic. We are discussing a belief in a hypothetical entity possessing the ability to break the known laws of the universe at whim in order to create an entire universe solely for the benefit of around 7 billion people who have to worship it in order for an unknown benefit that is poorly defined. Creationism is not science; it is superstition attempting to masquerade as science in order to flog more superstition. It is entirely incompatible with science as science requires proof.

If creationism is allowed to enter our schools, then science should be allowed to enter your church. After all, if we are trying to be fair and balanced we should be fair and balanced in all aspects. All in favour say aye!

Valentine's Day Massacre : Secularism denies History and Destroys Identity

2012-02-14T00:26:00.002+05:30

Hello whine whine whine? I would like to call a Waaahmbulance for Tim Stanley.

The argument he makes is one made by racists and morons across the fair isle I like to call as home. And it can be summarised as....

"My privilege! How dare you stop me from exercising my right to be privileged! Don't you know we are a Christian nation? How dare you destroy that! Can't you see you are destroying culture with your heathen ways of secularism!"

It beggars belief that we have people who think like this. This man who thinks that British history being defined by faith is a good thing. Our history is filled with complete and utter bastards because of religion. The British Museum is a museum and also a crime scene in progress from all the stuff we nicked and all the stupidity of religious intolerance. It's the past but it's also the truth. We stuck flags in various places and took a lot of stuff from people who didn't have the maxim gun. It's the truth. We really cannot change that truth. We also did a lot of fairly insane things when the UK went through it's fundie christian phase. When we were running around stabbing other christians because they believed in a slightly different set of events in the bible.

" She opened with “Tim, they’re trying to outlaw Christianity in England.” I think she had slightly misread the effort to ban prayers at council meetings, but I understood what she meant. My mom is an unapologetic, born again Baptist, and – from her perspective – she lives in frightening times. "

It just shows how silly this is. No one's trying to outlaw christianity in the UK. It's just that we don't think prayer is inclusive, sensible or acceptable as a public option. We have grown out of our christian nation and become a humanist secular society. And it is for the better. Our society is much better off than it ever was even in times of a recession. The only people who don't like it are the religious right (who are thankfully rare) and the racists (who are surprisingly not).

One of the things that I love about America (I’m currently living in Washington DC) is that it’s a country where religion is part of the geography and language of everyday life. For someone who grew up in a religious household, that’s normal and nice. But it’s certainly not the norm for most contemporary Britons. Religion has been slowly squeezed out of mainstream British culture. I find – and I recognise that this is a subjective appraisal – that this makes the UK quite a sterile place to live. For you don’t need to believe in God to see the cultural value of belief. For good and bad, it has shaped global history for thousands of years. To eradicate it from the public sphere is to eradicate one’s own history. It leaves us without a shared identity.

Indeed! We should be more like America where they would NEVER have elected any member of the GLBT to their equivalent of parliament because of the choice of who they love. We should be like America where millions of people think the most important skill of a politician should be how much he believes in their god. We should be like America where they regularly attempt and sometimes succeed in denying the basic rights of a woman to access healthcare and contraception. We should be like America where 45% of the people believe that the man on our currency is wrong (Darwin) and that humans were divinely created from two individuals who lived around 4000 BC.

We do see the cultural value of belief. We see it when hypocrites such as the Catholic Church deny sex education, contraception and abortion to women across the world while they protect paedophiles from justice and indeed give them the opportunity to offend again and again. We see it in the various protestant groups whose anti-science stances and anti-gay stance makes them a danger to freedoms of all. We see it in the various muslim groups who routinely threaten free speech and indeed encourage and validate young men and women to fight and die for a stupid cause while treating women as little more than property. We see jews being guilted into supporting Israel whose behaviour recently has been nothing short of super villainous. We see hindus being conned by little more than stage magicians and being whipped up into a frenzy over a variety of nonsense. The culture of belief is frankly one of terrible ideas that belong in a museum. You can believe in a god or gods as long as they do not harm anyone and as long as you keep your belief away from how society functions.

Where has Britain’s once proud religiosity gone? In America this week,Barack Obama attempted to force Catholic organisations to provide contraception as part of their employee healthcare packages. The American people rose up in outrage and he backed down. He won’t try that again. Why is it that a country that has separated church and state in its Constitution is more respectful of faith than a country that has an established church? It is a question that the Anglican hierarchy needs to address as soon as possible.

And you are proud of that? The Catholic Church's stance on contraception is infamous for being part of the problem in which roughly 23 million people in Africa are going to die from HIV and AIDS. DIE. Not get hurt, or get crippled but DIE. The Catholic Church may think that sex education is a muttered warning about Father Smyth, but the rest of us think that a bunch of virgins and celibate blokes who have no idea about sex shouldn't be giving advice on how to have it. And that in the USA there is no NHS so women do not have access to equal levels of healthcare and that in areas where catholics are giving out healthcare, they may ignore basic healthcare.

It has been empirically proven that a sex positive attitude to sexuality is the best. Sex positivity is the idea that sex is fun but you should never be pressured into having sex that you don't want and you should respect yourself. Even if your fantasies are the most degrading ever (I have dated someone with a rape fantasy before), they are explored in a fashion involving consent and respect and boundaries. And one of those is contraception to prevent unwanted pregnancies and unwanted STDs. This actually reduces pregnancies and empowers a lot of women and men who have healthy attitudes to sex. The american method of abstinence is like not providing soldiers with body armour while claiming that the best way to survive a gun battle is to dodge bullets. True, but it is incredibly impractical and the bad guys do so very much insist on shooting at you rather than around you. And it's a lot harder to deal with an actual pregnancy or a STD when you could have simply avoided it by insisting your man friend puts a condom on.

We have come a long way as a country because we have embraced multiculturalism and secularism. We will go a long way because of that. The USA should serve as a warning that any country can become a near theocracy if we simply don't pay any attention and fight for what is correct rather than what is discriminatory and superstitious.

Back to the Grind

2012-02-12T16:26:00.001+05:30

So I am done with exams (finally!) and can get back to regular posts and the like. And this seems like a good time to discuss the whole abortion issue that has raised it's ugly head.

See the problem with abortion is that it's not a good thing. None of us like abortions, even the doctors who do them. An abortion isn't celebrated with balloons and ice cream and get well cards. It's a tragic but necessary procedure. The final throw of a dice to deal with a pregnancy. Not one person says "I LOVE ABORTION". Instead it's a serious decision made when people cannot care for a child at all.

Oh it's easy to say "Spend 9 months being pregnant then give it up for adoption!". To which our response is "sure". First find a way to adopt every single bloody child from the already full to the brim adoption system and foster care system. There are always more children than people willing to adopt. And while new born babies are easier to adopt, you are placing pressure on a system which is already full to the brim.

Abortions happen whether you like it or not. The difference between a Medical Termination of Pregnancy and some yahoo with a coat hanger is that it's safer (by a lot) to get it done by someone who knows how all your bits function. It's also less traumatic since some abortion methods are the equivalent of being punched in the stomach or having bits jabbed into your cervix and uterus which can cause infections or even shock and death. (Trigger Warning)

A non medical abortion is a terrifying incident. If the likes of Mitt Romney have their way this poor girl who was so terrified into harming herself in such a horrific way would be prosecuted for murder. Do you think it's right or fair?

It's insane that we can even discuss the banning of abortion as a legal alternative. Will the Republicans fork out money to care for these children? Not bloody likely! Quantity of life is not quality of life unless you think that somehow more people = better which simply makes you dumb. It shows a complete lack of grasp of any reality in the republican and indeed the various Christian denominations which rally against abortion.

The truth remains that it matters if you ban abortion. It's not that abortion rates drop but it's that abortion safety drops. Abortion rates drop with the adoption of responsible sex education and placing the onus on both genders to keep safe. Pro-life education however is a big fan of abstinence only education. And these are things that americans who are pro-life do know about.

Many pro-life organisations in the USA do missionary work in the Philippines. I have wrote about them before and I feel it's only fitting for us to revisit the topic. If only to see what a world would be like where pro-lifers have their way. It's a terrifyingly graphic article with graphic videos produced by Likhaan. It may not be suitable for all.

But I do feel it's worth seeing what the reality on the ground is in a country with no choice. The reality on the ground in places like the USA was before the legalisation of abortion.

It Gets Better - Do Something Good

2012-02-05T13:58:00.000+05:30

Rolling Stone carries an article about the war on teenagers who merely belong to the GLBT minority and it is heart rending to read.

Show your support. Don't just say that "it will get better in some nebulous future", try and make it change now.

Be the change you want to be. Don't let people suffer in silence. Bullying is wrong, and society sponsored bullying is just as unacceptable.

Clearly you are a moron if you think medicine works anything like this.

2012-02-03T04:01:00.000+05:30

Some people have some very strange ideas on what we do in the medical field. It's quite strange that people explicitly spread such utter bullshit and indeed believe such nonsense. I write this article in response to an anti-vaccine comment that medicine is close minded because it matches these ideas. And I figured I should break it down. I shall post their arguments here (It is a TL:DR post so I am warning in advance) as well. As a short key all points labelled (a) refer to medicine, all points labelled (b) refer to quackery in general (really? Take your pick)

1a. One-sided: Different or opposing views are either ignored, misrepresented, under-represented, or denigrated. 1b. Many sided: Issues examined from many points of view; opposition fairly represented.

1. We only represent evidence. In the same way a science class is not going to teach you about how the aztec gods sacrificed themselves to create humanity or the stork theory, science isn't going to accept anything that is not grounded in demonstrable proof. Not all points of view are equal.

2a. Uses generalizations, "allness" statements, and lack of specific references and data. 2b. Uses qualifiers: Statements supported with specific references and data.

2. Generalisations are for the lay public. You clearly cannot understand what we say so we are forced to use generalisations to help you understand. Because you don't have the necessary education to understand in much the same way that a theoretical physicist would have to generalise things for me to understand.

3a. Card Stacking: Data carefully selected - even distorted - to present only the best or worse possible case. Language used to conceal. 3b. Balanced: Presents samples from a wide range of available data on the subject. Language used to reveal.

3. We actually have to compare worst case outcomes and state those. We also have to use our rationale in using a middle figure between best and worst figures and we do post all our stats and have to ensure they are available.

4a. Misleading use of statistics. 4b. Statistical references qualified with respect to size, duration, criteria, controls, source and subsidizer.

4. Actually it's because anti-vax simply do not understand stats. There is a 100% decrease in the amount of smallpox cases from 1985 to now because we made it extinct by vaccination. Prior to the 1970s roughly 2 to 3 million people would die from it across the globe and prior to european vaccination schemes roughly a million people would die from it in Europe alone. The earliest mass vaccination scheme for smallpox was actually seen during the American War for Independance where the americans adopted smallpox vaccination while the british did not. The deaths were spectacularly different from smallpox. (It was balanced out. The british rum and lime rashion ensured they never got scurvy.)

And medical statistics are famous for their use of controls, duration, sizes of research and sources use have to be heavily documentated as plagiarism is treated as a serious crime in medicine. It's career suicide to plagiarise someone's work particularly in the world of the internet. And I assume subsidiser means sponsors? Plenty of research is government sponsored.

5a. Herding: Ignores distinctions and subtle differences. Attempts to bring together superficially similar elements together. Reasons by analogy. 5b. Discrimination: Points out differences and subtle distinctions. Use analogies carefully, pointing out differences and non-applicability.

5. We actually realise that most people are basically the same internally. No matter how special a flower you think you are, your bowels still function like everyone else and your faecal samples still smell and are filled with bacteria just like everyone else.. There are few exceptions and we recognise those better than the alt med quacks. The Alt. Med however recognise non existent differences which is completely bonkers. We may as well determine which people are sanguine and which people are choleric.

6a. False Dilemma (either/or): Only two solutions to the problem or two ways of viewing the issue - the "right way" (writer or speaker's way) and the "wrong way" (any other way). 6b. Alternatives: There are many ways of solving a problem or viewing an issue.

6. There are multiple ways to solve a problem. There is however the most effective way and lesser effective ones. The problem is that the alt. medicine way is practically as useless as a chocolate teapot made with poisoned chocolate.

7a. Appeals to Authority: Statements by selected authority figures used to clinch an argument. "Only the expert knows" approach. 7b. Appeals to reason: Statements by authority figures and concerned parties used to stimulate thought and discussion. "Experts seldom agree".

7. Doctors treating people is not an appeal to authority in the same way that licensing a car driver is not an appeal to authority. A doctor is someone trained and tested in treating patients while a car driver is someone who is trained and tested in driving cars. They are both licensed for a reason. In addition you wouldn't hire a non qualified person to wire your electricity, you wouldn't hire some guy on the street to represent you in a court of law and last I heard NASA and the LHC aren't given to asking lay people to make decisions for them. I mean, I wouldn't give you my car to repair. I would give it to a qualified mechanic. I know I am not qualified to repair the damn thing. I know the mechanic is. It's not an appeal to the mystical authority of the mechanic. It's an acceptance that mechanics have knowledge that I do not, and know how to apply that knowledge. I could learn if taught but I have better things to do with my life.

And not every "expert" is a good one. There are plenty of "experts" who think laetrile is good for treating cancer. Doesn't make them right! It makes them dangerously stupid.

8a. Appeals to consensus or bandwagon approach: "Everybody's doing it so it must be right". 8b. Appeals to fact: Facts selected from broad data base. Logical, ethical, aesthetic and psycho-spiritual aspects considered.

8. Medicine has made incredible stances on really bad practices ranging from installation of sewages to construction of clean drinking water. The original cholera epidemics were combatted by doctors. The father of epidemiology was a doctor with a wrench who would steal pump handles in cholera striken areas to stop the spread. Added to which our stance on exercise and healthy eating is well known even if you don't chose to recognise it. No proper sane doctor has recommended eating burgers or pies. We accept that those things are delicious so we say "Make it a treat" because life is to short to go without burger and pie. Similarily our drives to get healtheir eating habits for children at schools and to stamp out smoking and to decrease the amount of salt people consume are all well known.

And the application of the words Logical and Ethical to alternative medicine is frankly oxymoronic while aesthetic and psycho spiritual healthcare is just plain moronic.

9a. Appeals to emotions and emotional responses: Uses words and pictures with strong emotional connotations. 9b. Appeals to people's capacity for thoughtful, reasoned responses: Uses emotionally neutral words and illustrations.

9. The Autism MMR campaign is the textbook defintion of this. And medical textbooks look at suffering objectively. It is testament to the fact that anti-vax have never read a medical document in their lives. If you think we use charged and emotional language in medical literature then you must be a vulcan. An illogical vulcan.

But that's the catch 22, if we use charged language your response is "See they are appealing to your fear and compassion. How dare they!" and if we treat it objectively your response is "How can you soulless automatons treat human beings like that? Don't you feel anything inside! You logical bastards!".

10a. Labeling: Uses labels and derogatory language to describe proponents of opposing viewpoint. 10b. Avoids labels and derogatory language: Addresses the argument, not the people supporting a particular viewpoint.

10. The individual who prompted me to write this is clearly extremely smart and a wonderful person which is why she is incapable of understanding the most basic of science and math, fails at reading and comprehension, and is actively delusional to the point of being a textbook case of it. To top it off she actively deny the deaths of millions of people across the world to diseases and are actively part of the group of people whose ideology helped spread the disease going so far as to support the work of the South African president Mbeki who was responsible for the infamous Salad Bar at a HIV and AIDS conference and is responsible for nearly 3 million extra HIV cases due to his policies which caused an increase in rate as he pulled money from functional HIV programs and retroviral therapy to put money into vitamins and "healthy eating". Clearly she is a role model for all time. Quick! Let's take down statues of Albert Schweizer and put up statues of her! Oh wait, she is clearly a moron of the highest order and an all around opposing force to human development and progress. It's a statement of fact. I don't have to respect idiots. If you came out and stated that NASA shouldn't be allowed to fly rockets lest it punch a hole in the tapestry on which the stars are held up we would call you a fucking moron. Same rules apply here.

11a. Promotes attitudes of attack and/or defense with the aim of selling a position or product. 11b. Promotes attitudes of openness and inquiry. Aim is to discover.

11. This point doesn't even make any sense. We attack and defend our position because it's not a game to faff around with. It's actually people's lives. Alt. Med are parasites feeding off the fears of real medicine portraying their bullshit as harmless. Either treating healthy people as if they were sick or convincing healthy people that they must use supplements that are often extremely expensive while charging them for water and things that simply do not work while encouraging them to ignore things that do work with horrific consequences. And lest we forget that Alt. Med do not work for free and charge (often quite steeply) for their consultations.

12a. Ignores assumptions and built-in biases. 12b. Explores assumptions and built-in biases.

12. We don't make assumptions. They are confusing educated guess with assumption. If you have a painless lesion and peripheral neuropathy with systemic infection signs, but with no viable culture, I can use my knowledge of disease to infer that it is leprosy because it fits the hallmark of symptoms and M. Leprae cannot be cultured in vitro. We can culture it on mice feet but you know what? It's simpler to start the treatment and poke around 10,000 fields (yeah that's right... 10,000 microscope fields) for Acid Fast bacteria from the exudate of the lesion. And we actually are phenomenally good at identifying bias. It's why we keep hamstringing the frankly criminally stupid posts of the anti-medicine luddites. We can clearly identify bias, we clearly understand your motivations for lying and we clearly point it out. We are completely unforgiving to other people's research. We don't accept research without hardcore evidence and often repeat research.

13a. Language promotes lack of awareness and unconsciousness. 13b. Language usage promotes greater awareness and consciousness.

13. What does that even mean? I shall assume it means the language is difficult and confusing to them.

It's very very simple. Offside! Now this word means a lot to the average european or the average african or the average south and central american. To the average USAmerican? Fuck All. Do you know what travelling is? No? The average american does. A googly or a doosra? Or Reverse Swing? Most brits will not, american simply would think I am having a stroke, but ask an Indian or a Pakistani and they will go into immense detail about such cricket terms. Now why do these terms exist? Because they describe things that occur in a specific context and allows people withing that context to communicate. The same rules apply to car mechanics who know names of parts of machines that I do not and to people who understand things like quarks and indeed to medics. It's because you are uneducated in medicine that you do not understand the language and terminology. It's there for us to communicate specifically with other doctors across the globe using the same notions and terminology about things. It's not there for obfuscation purposes since we actually explain terminology online and are willing to explain it.

A lot of the terminology you see is infact pharmaceutical short hand which stops errors from occurring. It's just short hand to ensure we can write a lot of information in a single line of note paper so that pharmacists can read it easily. 300 mg. Paracetemol. Stat means patient can take 300 mg of paracetemol when the fever requires it. If we wanted to obfuscate we would actually use the old medical terminology in Latin or not tell people our secret language on the bloody internet. A lot of the names we use are descriptive. I mean Bone tumour is just cancer to you but there are different types of bone tumours ranging from benign to malignant. Osteoma, Osteosarcoma, Giant Cell tumour, Haemangioma, Neurofibroma, Multiple Myeloma, Osteochondroma... And many more. Each are different and each have different prognosis and outcomes. An osteoma is awkward and painful. An osteosarcoma is practically a death sentence if it's not caught early since it metastasises easily.

14a. Can lead to tunnel vision and bigotry. 14b. Can lead to breadth of vision and understanding.

14. Most medical practitioners are extremely broadly based. And many are insanely talented at many other things. And the medical profession are some of the least bigotted people on earth. I think you mean bigotted against bullshit. As I said, empirically prove your nonsense. We will give you a million dollars. Because not one person has been able to prove in a moderated and unbiased test that their nonsensical quackery actually works. In the words of Tim Minchin.

Science adjusts it’s beliefs based on what’s observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved.
If you show me
That, say, homeopathy works,
Then I will change my mind
I’ll spin on a fucking dime
I’ll be embarrassed as hell,
But I will run through the streets yelling
It’s a miracle! Take physics and bin it!
Water has memory!
And while it’s memory of a long lost drop of onion juice is Infinite
It somehow forgets all the poo it’s had in it!
You show me that it works and how it works
And when I’ve recovered from the shock
I will take a compass and carve Fancy That on the side of my cock

15a. Referenced studies conceal conflict-of-interest funding sources.. 15b. Referenced studies reveal conflict-of-interest funding sources.

15. While anti-vax refer to people such as Mercola, Andrew Wakefield and Mike Adams who directly profit from their research. Most papers are published as part of hospital research with little to no funding or with hospital grant funding such as my friend's reasearch into GPU heart modelling or another friend and his medical research into detection of patent foramen ovale through ultrasound and microbubbles. They actually don't get any money from "conflicting interests" and even when sponsored, doctors tend to be incredibly untrustworthy of non transparent research. We often compare multiple independant studies before we adopt a medicine. It takes roughly 10 to 15 years to adopt a new drug.

16a. Statistics always presented to show maximum damage from problem and minimum damage from solution. 16b. Statistics presented to show many aspects of problem, not always from a non-max/min approach.

16. Statistics show minimum effective dose and maximum tolerable dose to provide a therapeutic dose value. And it's the maximum damage from the problem we are trying to prevent. I mean if 80% of the cases of untreated meningitis is death, why are we so worried about the 20% of cases. I mean good grief we also take in median values of cases and a whole bunch of other statistics.

17a. Emphasis on removing symptoms. Aims for quick results. 17b. Emphasis on removing causes through knowledge and its integration into living habits. Aims for long-term results.

17. Shows that the individual clearly has no fucking grasp of medicine beyond chronic diseases. We have plenty of treatments for acute diseases. The treatment for amoebic dysentary are both symptomatic and causative. Metronidazole for causative organism (Entamoeba Histolytica), ORS for rehydration, anti-pyretic for fever and stomach ache and anti motility drug to reduce diarrhoea. Three symptomatic reductions and one curative. We rarely even use a single drug for most things because we understand what synergistic drug use means. We understand that we can combine drugs to improve their effect far more than the individual drug and we understand that many diseases require combinations that work together to both alleviate symptoms and cure causative agent. The diseases that are treated purely symptomatically either have no cure (Eg. Diabetes Mellitus because we cannot yet regrow bits of pancreas or Atherosclerosis because we don't know how to reverse fatty infiltration once it gets past the initial stage or HIV because we don't have a cure yet.) or aren't worth the cure (the side effects of interferons aren't as bad as the actual effect of the common cold.) One day we will have a fucking cure, just 15 years ago we didn't have a cure for endemic stomach ulcers, now we do. (Omeprazole 6 weeks, 2 weeks clarithromycin and amoxicillin) We keep curing things all the time. It's just that the average anti-vax conveniently ignore the hundreds of cures out there.

18a. Emphasis on management and control. Professional "manages" while patient "follows orders". 18b. Emphasis on patient participation and recovery. Professionals "give guidelines" and patient directs his own therapy.

18. Patient management is the ability to see multiple patients over a day. Patient management is also the ability to increase compliance with a treatment regimen because people who don't follow treatment regimens do poorly. Patient management is giving a child a lollipop so they associate visits with lollipops and come more often. And we expect patients to follow our instructions because not following instructions has dire consequences. We don't write "Take before food" on medicine for shits and giggles. We don't say "finish course of antibiotics" for no reason. There are reasons for that. Not following instructions is pretty much how most people hurt themselves with medication. Do not exceed this amount means do not exceed this amount. Take before food regularly means take before food. Do not miss dose means do not miss dose. Keep sugar pills on you means keep sugar pills on you. These aren't suggestions but orders for a reasons. If you fuck up then it is our job and our livelihood on the line. Every Single Death That Occurs In A Hospital is subject do a mortality and morbidity meeting. Where department heads get together and discuss how and why each death occurred and indeed discuss deaths that could have been prevented. And believe me, if it is a doctor's fault they will attempt to get you struck off unless the fault was patient centred.Since every death is a bad statistic. Even if a patient comes to the hospital with multiple gun shot wounds, the M&M meeting takes place for someone who clearly died from being shot.

19a. Assembly line methods geared for profit. 19b. Client-centered methods geared for autonomy.

19. Mercola and Mike Adams run stores... For Profit. As does every single homeopath out there. Last I heard most people in the western world live on money that they earn by working. So I don't know where this "profit is bad malarky is leading" but alt. med actually have higher profit margins since homeopathy is basically water that's been smacked around and is effectively marked up by a ludicrous amount. Some of the biggest charities in the world are the Red Cross and Doctors without Borders who are medical charities where doctors work for free often in warzones and places where no one else dares to go.

And there is autonomy in medicine, we offer a range of treatments to suit the needs of people. However in some cases you have no choice because there are few actual options.

20a. Reliance on technological intervention and substitution, e.g., organ transplants, insulin injections, surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, synthetic and frequently toxic drugs and vaccines. Focuses on replacing organs or systems and their functions. 20b. Reliance on harmless, noninvasive therapies and substances. Focuses on regenerating organs and systems and restoring their function.

20. Organs don't always regenerate and many organs such as the brain and heart do not heal ever. I would like to see them regenerate a heart or a simple brain lesion... And seriously? They are bitching that we like to use technology? How the fuck do you diagnose a pregnancy without a HCG test? How the fuck do you diagnose a heart arrhythmia without a steth and an ECG. How the fuck do you diagnose a broken bone without an XRay and by very definition superficial examination cannot tell you any fucking thing about internal anatomy because unless your surname is Kent you cannot see through a human chest. It's such a laughable little thing to claim "Well they use technology and technology is bad!". Of course! Without technology a lot of diseases are wishy washy rather than concrete things and you can bullshit a lot of money out of people by making grandiose claims from superficial examinations rather than someone pulling out hard evidence from something like an MRI.

Without technology a lot of those diseases are eminently fatal such as diabetes and cancer. And a lot of toxic drugs are quite useful. I don't know how we would ever treat Myasthenia Gravis without neostigmine (poisonous) or pesticide poisoning without atropine (also poisonous).

21a. Cost and dependency escalating. 21b. Cost and dependency de-escalating.

21. Cost of medicine actually has gone down. There are some really expensive things in medicine but we don't need to use them all the time. And the profit margins on homeopathy are phenomenal considering it is just water... For example the Patrick Holford monthly nutritional pack is £60... In the UK we give out Insulin for a price included in your taxes. It costs the government £30 for Insulin which is recombinant DNA technology and insanely fancy technology. The price has actually gone down since the cost of hasn't risen with inflation. When human analog insulin came out in the 1994s it was £28 ($50) and now it's £30 ($55) while inflation should make it cost around £50 ($75) if the cost of production stayed the same. Cost of medicine drops all the time to the point that I can get a week's worth of retrovirals for HIV (one of the more expensive drugs) for just $2 when during the 90s it was $20 a day... In short? The people who wrote this are lying.

22a. Disease and disability seen in terms of victimization and melodrama. 22b. Disease and disability seen as preventable.

22. We actually produce a lot of drugs to improve quality of life and to reduce melodrama. Many HIV patients live long lives. My dad has had diabetes for nearly 30 years now and hasn't died because of the medication. Untreated it would have killed him in 3 to 5 years. Hell my aunt survived for nearly 20 years with no functioning kidneys because of dialysis machines. She actually would work in the mornings then come home in the evenings and go on the machine because "she could work" and "it gave her something to do". And her work wasn't "She works in a shop". My aunt was a orthopaedician. She was a fucking doctor and she died unretired as a doctor and as an all round badass.

And we live in the world where medical science in ortho has reached the point where able bodied people are refusing to run with disabled people because disabled people may have an advantage. We live in the world of Oscar Pistorus. The Fastest man with no legs.

This man is insanely badass.

We are actually at a stage where we are seriously considering whether or not to regard some disabled people as normal because prosthesis technology has reached the stage where they have human equivalent movement. We may actually be on the cusp of a technological advance where artificial legs exceed the capacity of a human leg. We may actually see people replace healthy limbs with artificial limbs to improve functionality. Plenty of people today would like to undergo below knee amputation to use a prosthesis which functions better than say... a foot with palsy or partial paralysis or a fused ankle. It's a matter of time before someone says "You know what? A robot leg would make me better at my job" or "That robot hand makes me insanely good at what I do" and treat it as no different from purchasing a screwdriver. We are seriously getting close to that level of technology and the idea of a cyborg. And all because we told disabled people that they can live a normal and healthy life and we provided them with technology that lets them do so and tried not to stop them and cuddle them like they were made out of glass.

23a. Mechanistic: Body seen as mass object containing discrete parts. 23b. Organic: Body seen as mass under which lies energy, living patterns and interacting fields.

23. We are biomechanical entities. Not "energy, living patterns and fields". Our muscles work by a molecular ratchet mechanism. One molecule isn't much... A couple of billion however is a force to be reckoned with. And energy? Seriously? Energy in our body is transferred via a chemical energy currency called Adenosine Triphosphate. And that the electrical field we generate is by calcium ion depolarisation which creates a net electron flow and is indeed chemically mediated?

Of course not. Because they have fuck all idea how the body works and would rather it be "mystical energy" than "ATP". And we don't treat the body's systems as discrete. Holy fuck this is stupid and I really need a drink to deal with this tower of ignorance. Are they seriously confusing the speciality of a doctor as the assumption that the doctor only understands his system? A doctor's speciality simply means that he sees cases pertaining to his speciality but he also knows how the rest fit together.

24a. Fragmented: Body and mind treated separately. Parts of body regarded separately and treated singly. 24b. HolisticL Body-mind treated as unity. Parts of body treated in relation to other parts and aspects of the body-mind.

24. The mind is a construct of your brain architecture and psychology is taught to every doctor. We actually know the value of psychology. We can prove this in motorcycle injuries since they normally show up with head injuries which shows that changes to brain architecture result in changes to personality and mind. Infact... the whole "mind" as a unique unchanging thing is just an extension of the religious soul concept. It's this nebulous thing used by quacks to make it seem like they take care of your brain somehow.

25a. Atavistic: Disease seen as entity separate from patient. 25b. Contemporary: Disease seen as process inseparable from patient.

25. Diseases are breakdowns of normal physiological function... They aren't normal. And they are part of the patient. Because I know of things that kill 100% of cancer cells but you simply cannot use in a normal human being... (Let's see. Cyanide, Rattlesnake venom, Anthratoxin, Pneumolysin, Perfringolysin O) because they would also kill normal human beings. Nearly every disease is treated in context of a normal human being.

26a. Adversarial: Disease seen as enemy. 26b. Unifying: Disease seen as reflecting a self-corrective aspect of body-mind complex in response to internal change in body environment.

26. Disease is your obviously your friend! HIV just loves your CD4 Lymphocytes so very much that it hugs them to death... C. Perferingens loves you so much that it wants to move in with you and change all the curtains in your legs.

You can pray all you want to whatever gods you may have chosen to believe in. You can grovel in front of your quacks but not one of them can save you from acute appendicitis. Not one of them has cured a single leper and not one of them could treat a meningitis case or a case of Status Epilepticus or Pneumonia. Because your mind and body relationship means fuck All when compared to real physiology, pathology, biochemistry and neurology. Fuck A Duck point 26 is the most inane nonsense ever.

27a. Externalizes Casuality: Focus is outside the patient: viruses, bacteria, and stresses in the environment, while ignoring toxic environmental factors in the food, water and air that may be grounds for corporate litigation. 27b. Internalizes Casuality: Focus on patient, choices, attitudes, habits, and reactions to environmental influences.

27. Now look who is generalising. Diseases have various causes. Microbial, Genetic, Environmental, Habit, Dietary, Age, Gender, Trauma, Psychological, Psychiatric. I take that back... Point 26 ties with point 27 for retardedness because I just fucking named eight more causes of disease than "Duhh... Environment". They all cause diseases. (Common Cold, Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy, Hypothermia, Emphysema, Atherosclerosis, Parkinsons, Testicular cancer, Hypovolemic shock, PTSD and Schizophrenia if you need examples of each).

28a. Disease Oriented: Focuses on labeling, controlling and destroying disease entities. Research focuses on nature of condition as represented by symptoms, not causes. Absence of disease seen as result of technological intervention. 28b. Health Oriented: Focuses on support of natural healing, immune system, and addresses causes of conditions instead of symptoms. Absence of disease seen as by-product of health.

28. There is an entire field of medicine called preventative (or Community) medicine. Which is about education and infrastructure. You don't see many practitioners in the UK (They basically are GPs) but in many third world nations they are the frontline doctor. SPM (social and preventative medicine) are the cutting edge of response to infectious disease in third world nations. Oh and labelling disease is vitally important. Because knowing what the disease is lets you treat it and recognise it earlier. Natural Healing? Oh good fucking lord! If you naturally healed from disease we wouldn't give two fucking fucks about the disease. Do you see doctors bitching about Common Cold? No? Rhinovirus is not dangerous. Does this moron seriously think that not treating syphillis is a good way of treating T. Pallidum infections? Because it generally clears up after 3 years of dealing with lesions and being infection city. (T. Pallidum is so infective that mere contact with healthy skin can transmit it even through such thick skin as palms). So you should totally walk around for 3 or so years without having any sex or touching people! Oh and it can also go quiescent after 3 years and return as neurosyphillis which is a horrible disease. But then again what do I know. I just treat early syphillis in the time it takes to give an IM injection and late syphillis in under a fortnight of pills and don't really see any cases of neurosyphillis because I can treat syphillis in under 10 minutes and have it clear up in under two weeks. Now I am no mathematician statistician whizkid but I am of the belief that 10 to 14 days is a smaller number than 3 years. Maybe someone else can check my mathematics...

29a. Uses military rhetoric: "building defenses", "fighting", "battle against", etc. 29b. Descriptive language suggests harmony and cooperation.

29. Seriously? By that logic then one can use that argument to bitch about football too? I mean Attack, Defence, Midfield General and Goalkeeper are all also military terms. As are flanking and formation. It uses military terms because it's the easiest way to describe a infection in terms of what people understand. And seriously? Do you know the level of cooperation your body's immune system possesses to defend your body? Of course not! And because the army has no idea of harmony and cooperation at all. They just line up and run screaming at their enemies.

30a. Monolithic and coercive. 30b. Pluralistic, voluntary and multi-optioned.

30. Not all opinions are the same value. It's why NASA doesn't give credence to flat earthers and gravity fairy experts. Everything that works is medicine. We don't give any value to stuff that doesn't work. It's not monolithic and coercive, it's just that alt. med bullshit doesn't work at all or doesn't work as well as the alternatives.

31a. Negative: Builds on fear and distrust of the natural world (Darwinian Paradigm). 31b. Positive: Builds on cooperation with the natural world. A system of healthcare.

31. Darwinian Paradigm? Darwin's Theory Of Evolution is basically the idea that nature selects against deletrious traits via the idea of "nature's war" which eliminates the weakest members often preventing them from breeding. AKA if a strategy lets you breed then you are more likely to breed even if your strategy is likely to kill you. Eg. Peacocks. Their plumage is a liability. However the male peacock only has it and is basically a very flashy sperm delivery system. His death means bugger all in terms of survivability as long as the females survive and have sex with males before they get eaten by whatever predator catches them. Female Peahens are actually very drab and camoflauged. Survival of the whole species matters, the individual does not. Which is why plenty of species have really horrible life cycles such as "lytic birth" where the parent animal is eaten by it's young from inside. Nature is not this nice cuddly thing.

The deer and buffalo are food for the tiger, we are food for pathogens. Now the deer fights back with speed but eventually it will get old then the tiger will catch it. The buffalo fights back with power and devastating horns. Eventually it will get old and the tiger will catch it as it can no longer fight. Eventually... the tiger will get old and either starve or be killed by a buffalo. That's how life is. Horribly brutal and not some magic happy place. It's sad to think but that's what we came out of as humans and that's what shaped our skills. .

The disease is a tiger. Sometimes we can beat it, sometimes we cannot. Medicine is a monsterous equaliser which means that more often than not we can beat it. In the same way that the spear turned us into the predator of the tiger rather than vice versa. This is the most hippietastic bullshit ever. It's the assumption that even in a quiet field of grass nature is in some mystic harmony rather than a series of competitive species. Just because the animals that die are very small doesn't change the fact that it's merely a smaller scale equivalent of a tiger eating a baby deer.

Or a Crocodile

One of the best descriptions of nature comes from the phenomenal Terry Pratchett

"I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children." - The Patrician

The problem with the anti-vax movement (Or should that be the anti-medicine movement?) is that they simply live in a delusional fantasy. Where you can somehow reason with bacteria and viruses and that the power of wishful thinking, prayer and self belief somehow can overcome bacteria.

Age of Kali - Freedom to Insult and the Satanic Verses

2012-01-31T23:20:00.001+05:30

What gets me the most about Indian secularism is it's unwillingness to insult a religious belief that is blatantly unreasonable. That religion is sacrosanct and cannot be criticised or complained about.

A society cannot function on the whims of extremists. India is no different. I understand, it's the land of a million gods. Everyone and their dog has one, but this means you cannot walk for tripping over someone's beliefs and nor should it mean that these beliefs ever come into consideration.

And India's problem? It is conservative and, it's willing to satiate death threats to people. It's unwilling to improve itself because it is entrenched in the notion that there is some mystical value of indianity that we can

And it shows again with the Indian Government's frankly cowardly position on Salman Rushdie. You cannot express yourself as a free nation or as a modern nation by banning books. Any book!

Instead what the Indian government has demonstrated is a core weakness. A fragility to threats. That the belief of a few anti-progressive muslims (Or Hindus!) can dictate government policy via threat and that free speech and expression can be stifled if someone threatens someone loudly enough.

And the ultimate irony? How many of the people bitching about The Satanic Verses have actually read the book? Do they even know what the blasphemous bit is?

It refers to the Prophet by a epiphet used during the crusades (Mahound), it calls the city of Mecca by a different name (Jahilia). A movie star becomes Gibreel (Gabriel) and Saladin becomes shaitan. The prostitutes in Jahilia have the same names as the prophet's wives and it gives a muslim name (Ayesha) to an Indian girl whose pilgrimage ends in a deadly fashion.

The equivalent prophet is portrayed as not holy but opportunistic and that it is impossible to not break the rules created because they are so banal and pointless and it's so easy to take offence. But what irks people the most? There is a single line in it. That calls attention to the sheer madness of Hindu and Muslim relationships.

"Fact is, religious faith, which encodes the highest aspirations of human race, is now, in our country, the servant of lowest instincts, and God is the creature of evil"

That's it. That's what caused such a big fuss. A couple of names and a statement that implies that God is a creature of evil. And in response? Muslims proved his statement right. India proved his statement right, that religion and the belief in God allows you to commit real evil. That the claim that you are aspiring to some greater truth comes at the cost of greater ignorance and a violent ignorance that not only ignores reality but also threatens it. The highest aspirations of the human race are replaced with a group of people who are so fanatically devoted to a single book that they do not really grasp anything else. That islamic faith has created a massive anti-science drift which is a far cry from it's hey day. That a sizeable amount of muslims respond to any sort of criticism with either the rallying cry of Islamophobia (Which exists. However genuine criticism also exists too.) or with death threats and violence. That the ultimate true evil in the book is a bitter line about a man who regards the partition of India and Pakistan and the religious violence that ensued as a horrible manifestation of faith and a demonstration of everything that is wrong with religious belief. That 12.5 million people migrating simply because some people believed in one mythical being and another in a whole bunch of others is an exercise in madness. That even after that there are wounds so deep that it has spilled over as mass violence time and time again. That at no point did anyone stand to think about how utterly insane it was?

If any group of people says "If you don't do as we say we will do x and it will be your fault", and you cave in to them, then it is people attempting to subvert freedom of others solely for their own benefit.

The Indian government response is nothing short of stupid. It has ranged from "Well Rushdie isn't that great an author anyway!" to "Indians always think foreign authors are so much more better! This is foreign author syndrome!" and "India never stopped him from entering the country".

Show a spine. Religious extremists of all sorts should not be allowed to derail the idea of free speech.

And if you are Indian? I urge you to break the ban on Rushdie's book and have a read of it yourself. See what the controversy is. Because I guarantee you this, the people bitching about Rushdie's book haven't read it. Because if they did they wouldn't have complained. By complaining they have proven the entire point and necessity of the Satanic Verses. It showed us decades ago what we are coming to realise today. That religion without criticism turns into an insular mess of ignorance that actively and forcefully defends it's ignorance.

It Gets Better - Invictus

2012-01-28T16:13:00.001+05:30

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

William Henley

William Henley's teenage life was a terrible one, as he suffered from tuberculosis until aged 20 he had both legs amputated due to miliary TB. The surgery was done prior to the widespread usage of ether and Henley did not have any anaesthetic while they sawed through his legs to save his life.

When lying in a dark room recovering from the horrific procedure, Henley wrote a poem to strengthen his resolve into words. William Henley went on to becoming a successful lawyer graduating from Oxford.

And the words of Henley live on in us. When I am at my lowest, I often read this poem to gain the fortitude and indeed focus my own desires to make the changes that I want or tough it out. When ever I felt like giving up, the words would come to me and encourage me to fight harder. I learnt about this poem from Nelson Mandela.

Mandela would write this poem down every single day he was in jail. When they took away his freedom it kept him free. When they took away his pen and paper, he carved it into the desk.

And I want to share that with people. Maybe they will see the same meaning in these words. In the idea that someone is truly their own master and that we can survive the odds. That no matter how bad things are we can do better and we can do something to make it better. Maybe it will encourage some person to keep trying to reach their goals. Maybe it will help some kid bullied at school to not let it hurt as much and give him the strength to persevere.

Because nothing describes humanity better than Invictus. Unconquerable. We are the only species that sought to get hit by lightning to see if it could be done and then did it again simply to see if it was just dumb luck or does lightning behave the same way every single time. And then we went off to see how we could make and use our own lightning.

And yes, every single one of us is capable of all the good things that we so desire. Love, Compassion, Care, Kindness, Honour, Intelligence and all those other conditions that we so desire. And it all comes from the fact that one of our best strengths is that we will not give up. The words that hurt us have meaning to us, then these words can have meaning too.

It does get better. Do not give up.

Stupidest Weapon Ever

2012-01-20T19:17:00.001+05:30

We medical business types have unleashed our latest weapon against the puny humans who inhabit the USA. The Rabies Bomb!

I don't even know where to start about the fears over this nonsense from usual suspect Mike Adams the health ranger.

Health Rangers are no match for my
swarthy tan and luchadore skills!

The article is a fine collection of anti-vax lunacy at it's finest. All the right ingredients are there, there is the conspiracy theory of the medical industry producing weird and wonderful weapons to defeat it's enemy. There is the collusion of a shadowy cabal. And there is the plan which is frankly insane.

The weaponization of vaccines just took another leap forward in America with the recent air-dropping of rabies vaccines by the Texas Department of State Health Services. Using a battery of small planes based out of Del Rio, Texas recently dropped 1.8 million edible vaccine packets over 7,700 square miles of rural Texas. The packets contain edible rabies vaccines dipped in fish oil and coated with fish meal to entice foxes and coyotes to eat them. Once consumed, the animal is "vaccinated" against rabies, researchers claim. Of course, what these researchers don't yet understand in their scientific ignorance (and arrogance) is that they are also engaged in a rabies DNA / RNA bombardment of Texas.

The price of a single vaccine is around $60, the price of a single cluster bomblet is $60... Do you know what's more effective than dropping rabies RNA (there is no rabies DNA on the basis of the virus is an RNA virus)...

In addition the vaccine being used is the V-RG (Recombinant Vaccine) which is often used in wildlife drops to reduce rabid animals in the wild. The virus is vaccinia (spreads cowpox not rabies) with rabies glycoproteins being expressed on their protein coat. Meaning it is harmless to animals and humans and that there is no rabies RNA in the vaccine.

Thus making it the absolute worst weapon ever. Do you know what's more dangerous? Taking 10 dollars worth of 1 cent coins, melting them down into a block and hurling that at people. I am sure we could kill or injure more people that way than burning our money on $60 worth of fancy viruses that don't even kill humans. Since when have we been so incompetent? The only way this could injure someone is if some moron choked on it.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has already conducted bizarre experiments on genetically engineered mosquitoes that carry vaccines to be silently injected into unsuspecting humans. And that same foundation has also invested heavily in covert vaccination technology that could, for example, vaccinate you with a spray mist used at airport security checkpoints

Yeah... I cannot read anymore. I cannot stop laughing.

Who takes this lunatic seriously? Is he seriously one of the major proponents of the anti-vaccine movement? And he believes that we are weaponising mosquitoes to spread vaccines rather than say the three deadly diseases that mosquitoes already spread? Surely this is a drop in deadliness than say using Malaria, Dengue fever and Yellow Fever...

And we are expected to take them seriously.

I am sure he has learnt his lesson

2012-01-13T20:38:00.000+05:30

Epic Sarcasm

Rights of the Silent Majority - Vagina is Evil and Must be Punished

2012-01-12T17:14:00.000+05:30

Female Circumcision (Genital Mutilation) is one of the major problems facing women in large parts of the world. The practice is seen from parts of Indonesia through some areas of the Middle East to (it is thankfully rarer but it still occurs) to Africa where the practice is widespread due to a long history and the lack of a concerted effort to stamp it out. I will write a warning and say that this article is NSFW and not suitable for those of a nervous disposition as the subject matter is deeply uncomfortable. In addition due to the use of anatomical drawings I will suggest that this article be treated as not safe for children unless you as a parent wish for them to learn about a darker side of the world.

To begin with, let's discuss what constitutes FGM

There are four classifications of FGM according to the WHO

Type I - Clitirodectomy. It is the removal of the clitoris and the clitoral hood. Normally? There is only one indication for this procedure medically. Metastasis of cancer to the region may require removal of the clitoris.

Type II – Includes the type I procedure and removal of the inner labia.

Type III – Is called infibulations. It involves removal of the clitoris, labia and fusion of wound leaving a small hole for passage of urine and blood which is reopened for childbirth and intercourse.

Type IV – Miscellaneous acts such as symbolic pricking, piercing of clitoris and labia, cauterisation and cutting into the vagina to widen it or usage of corrosives to tighten the vagina.

Type I and II are the most common. Type III is predominant in Sudan, Somalia and Djibouti. Type IV is seen across the world including voluntary FGM as seen in body modification and piercing circles in the west.

Now I know I am going to get a lot of flak for pointing out that body modification and piercing circles undergo Type IV FGM, but this is the WHO classification of the act rather than mine. It’s also important to point out the difference between body modification and piercings where an individual volunteers to have the piercing when compared to someone who is forced or coerced into having it done. I have no issue with volunteers, it’s your body and if your happiness lies in putting metal through your genitals then godspeed you fancybastards!

But for these women it isn’t a choice.

And the defence of the practice is frankly reprehensible.

Not only does it defend a practice steeped in superstition and culture as a good thing, it also does so by invoking a divine mandate followed by a billion people across the world that isn’t prone to criticism and honest debate.

Let’s face it, Islam does not like debate. When Christians complain that Muslims get a free ride from atheists, it’s mainly because muslims do have a small but significant minority who don’t listen to reason and who are quite happy to kill someone for their perceived involvement in an attack on their faith. It’s extremely hard to criticise someone who threatens you with death and acts on it.

We see here a marriage of the worst attitudes of faith and woo. The perceived medical benefit married to the blind faith in a book written by someone who could not fathom our knowledge and understanding. This is deadly beyond comparison and it shows. The 1997 figure for FGM states that roughly 135 million women had undergone the procedure. The number certainly hasn’t gone down since there isn’t a big drive to halt the procedure.

We can say a lot of things about the British Colonial period. A lot of horrible things were done by Great Britain across the world. But as most Indians will realise (even if they don't like admitting it) Great Britain created India as a solid unified body. Without them? India would be a balkanised series of tiny countries rather than the rising giant it is today. The erstwhile masters unknowingly created nationalism, they gave India the tools to set itself free from all masters be they gods or men even if Indians do forget that sometime. And one of the things the British did in India that I am sure most Indians are thankful for was to give a legal impetus to the Hindu anti-sati reforms. A coalition of Indian reformers and British lawmakers helped stamp out the practice. And likewise we see a similar move in Africa where in Kenya the British attempted to stamp out the practice through the church and law resulting in revolutions as many kenyans perceived a british plot to destroy local culture to the point where the practice was actively defended as a Kenyan cultural issue.

The real argument lies not in the defense of the general surgical operation or its details, but in the understanding of a very important fact in the tribal psychology of the Kikuyu—namely, that this operation is still regarded as the essence of an institution which has enormous educational, social, moral and religious implications, quite apart from the operation itself. For the present it is impossible for a member of the tribe to imagine an initiation without clitoridoctomy [sic]. Therefore the ... abolition of the surgical element in this custom means ... the abolition of the whole institution.

The above quote came from the first prime minister of Kenya who resigned himself to the idea that fighting the practice somehow removed from the culture of kenya and that somehow cutting the bits off another woman (the practice is strangely enforced by other women rather than men) was what you needed to be part of a society. That it was unfathomable to turn the practice into a symbolic one in much the same way as the modern Kali worshipper offers up a red liquid and cuts up pumpkins rather than the traditional offering of blood and human skulls. Granted this may turn into something like the practice now currently seen in Indonesia where the clitoris is pricked to draw blood but not removed, but it's a step forwards and it's a step that can be further progressed to a purely symbolic ceremony until it is completely stopped as an actual practice.

Islam may enjoin or forbid something and the people – or most of them – may not be able to see the wisdom behind this command or prohibition. In that case we are obliged to obey the command or heed the prohibition and to have certain faith that the laws of Allaah are all good, even if we cannot see the wisdom behind them.

Circumcision is one of the Sunnahs of the fitrah, as is indicated by the words of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him): "The fitrah is five things – or five things are part of the fitrah – circumcision, shaving the pubes, plucking the armpit hairs, cutting the nails, and trimming the moustache." narrated by al-Bukhaari (5889) and Muslim (257)...Circumcision is prescribed for both males and females. The correct view is that circumcision is obligatory for males and that it is one of the symbols of Islam, and that circumcision of women is mustahabb but not obligatory.

Great! The defence of female circumcision is that we cannot understand why it’s being proscribed by Islam. We should blindly obey because we cannot wrap our tiny minds over what some guys in 500 AD thought about the world but we can build the Large Hadron Collider.

So circumcision is mentioned in Islam and proscribed, mainly for men; but it doesn’t explicitly state that women shouldn’t be circumcised and it uses the vague language in the Koran to imply that it’s a good thing.

That's where Dr. Hamid al-Ghawaabi comes in to provide his expert medical advice as to why it's a great idea.

The secretions of the labia minora accumulate in uncircumcised women and turn rancid, so they develop an unpleasant odour which may lead to infections of the vagina or urethra. I have seen many cases of sickness caused by the lack of circumcision.

Rancid secretions? It is indicative of a bacterial or a yeast infection. Roughly 75% of women will have one in their lifetime. It's a fact of life. The correct answer is proper hygiene and cleaning your genitals.

And I haven't noticed any woman whose vagina smelt so bad that I had to lop bits off. Maybe if she has gangrene but that's it! And that's a very specific case! But a normal vagina?

Circumcision reduces excessive sensitivity of the clitoris which may cause it to increase in size to 3 centimeters when aroused, which is very annoying to the husband, especially at the time of intercourse.

And there in lies the crux of this of the argument. The same reason why male circumcision occurs is applied to women. It's because it reduces the sexual drive of individuals. And I fail to see how a normal clitoris during the act of sex somehow is irritating.

Another benefit of circumcision is that it prevents stimulation of the clitoris which makes it grow large in such a manner that it causes pain.

Pain? I don't think the clitoris grows so much that it causes pain! Then again it's been a long time since I had sex and I may have forgotten that bit.

Circumcision prevents spasms of the clitoris which are a kind of inflammation.

No it isn't! Inflammation consists of the classical signs of redness, heat, swelling and pain as a generalised tissue response to an infection or a foreign object. Not what happens when a clitoris is stimulated.

Circumcision reduces excessive sexual desire.

Why is this even a problem? Oh right? Because all abrahamic faith is fascinated and repulsed by human sexuality and thinks that the first sin is the acquisition of knowledge and the greatest is the idea that humans can enjoy sex. Well emasculation reduces excessive sexual desire too but I don't see the good doctor suggest we lop off the meat and two veg...

Then Dr al-Ghawaabi refutes those who claim that female circumcision leads to frigidity by noting: Frigidity has many causes, and this claim is not based on any sound statistics comparing circumcised women with uncircumcised women, except in the case of Pharaonic circumcision which is where the clitoris is excised completely.

Does Al-Ghawaabi seriously think women have any say in whether or not sex occurs or if there is any onus on providing sexual pleasure to a woman when one of the reasons given for cutting off the clitoris is that it is irritating to her husband? It doesn't lead to frigidity, it leads to a loss of enjoyment of sex since by definition the procedure is done to reduce the female enjoyment of sex.

The female gynaecologist Sitt al-Banaat Khaalid says in an article entitled Khitaan al-Banaat Ru’yah Sihhiyyah (Female circumcision from a health point of view):
For us in the Muslim world female circumcision is, above all else, obedience to Islam, which means acting in accordance with the fitrah and following the Sunnah which encourages it. We all know the dimensions of Islam, and that everything in it must be good in all aspects, including health aspects. If the benefits are not apparent now, they will become known in the future, as has happened with regard to male circumcision – the world now knows its benefits and it has become widespread among all nations despite the opposition of some groups.

Some groups? It's because women are held down and have their genitals cut off. The nations where it is widespread are mainly really poor nations where the practice occurs mainly due to tribal nonsense and because women have few rights and are unable to stand against the practice. The idea that Islam is somehow more knowledgeable than actual healthcare experts and that healthcare practitioners are willing to trade their own knowledge for a belief in the writings of someone from the 5th century AD rather than modern science is frankly insane.

Fitrah, Sunnah and Koran do not dictate medical science. As for male circumcision (a completely different topic due to the relatively benign status of the procedure), it's actually dropping in levels across the world since there isn't any actual benefit from removal of the foreskin that cannot be attained from condom. And the practice of circumcision in women is illegal in many parts of the world with the UK's government going as far as making it illegal to perform on it's citizens rather than just in it's jurisdiction meaning that going abroad to get your female child circumcised is also illegal. This is a movement that's growing across the world and it's rising in importance.

Instead we have a list of frankly stupid reasons to mutilate someone's genitals.

Then she mentioned some of the health benefits of female circumcision and said:
It takes away excessive libido from women
It prevents unpleasant odours which result from foul secretions beneath the prepuce.
It reduces the incidence of urinary tract infections
It reduces the incidence of infections of the reproductive system.
In the book on Traditions that affect the health of women and children, which was published by the World Health Organization in 1979 it says:
With regard to the type of female circumcision which involves removal of the prepuce of the clitoris, which is similar to male circumcision, no harmful health effects have been noted.

I already went over the stupidity of the other points. With regards to harmful health effects?

1. Recurrent bladder and urinary tract infections
2. Cysts
3. Infertility
4. Marked increase in both maternal and child deaths
5. Type III FGM is prone for infections and gangrenous infection of the labia majora
6. Marked pain
7. Loss of pleasure during sex

The WHO in 2011 says that there are no health benefits, only harm that comes out of FGM.

FGM is illegal in many parts of the world. In most of the west the only removal of damage to the female genitalia that can be done is either voluntarily in the case of piercings or in the case of medical conditions that require removal. In every single instance of the FGM seen it is not done for the sake of the girl but for the percieved notion of culture, purity of women, religion and reduction of sexual libido. There is no medical reason to do so, and the practice is forced or coerced upon young girls.

So how to make a stand? Support your secular charities. Medicin Sans Frontier, The WHO and Red Cross all stand against the practice and actively try and stop it from occurring. A lot more needs to be done but we have to make a stand now. Amnesty International as well has a very strong campaign against it.

It can be done, it's just that we have to do it right now. There is no excuse for this, not culture and definitely not belief in any god.

So far it is encouraging. But there is the odd individual who expresses his desire to behead me.

2012-01-10T20:00:00.000+05:30

Show your support to the brave people behind the Pakistan Atheists and Agnostics group. The interview is quite awesome and shows some of the hatred faced by atheists across the world and indeed some of their triumphs.

Moshe Averick II - Electric Boogaloo

2012-01-10T00:39:00.002+05:30

If a man lies with a man
as one lies with a woman,
both of them have done what is detestable.
They must be stoned.
Well... If you think it helps.

We continue with Part 2 of dealing with Moshe Averick's litany of hate constructed of the finest of strawmen.

Many of the hundreds of comments posted were thoughtful and insightful, but most were angry and indignant push backs from non-believers who felt I was accusing them of child-molestation. Many also charged that it was unfair and misleading of me to cite statements from atheistic philosophers of “ethics” that seemed to indicate that there was nothing inherently immoral about pedophilia. The most common complaints were (a) that I falsely implied that these philosophers approved of pedophilia and (b) I was guilty of presenting a sweeping generalization that atheists have no moral values.

Apparently I got it all wrong when I missed the subtext behind his post titled "Paedophilia is Next on the Slippery Slope". Oh well that's alright then! I must have completely misunderstood the part which implied that my moral code accepted child and animal abuse and was somehow inferior to those of the Torah on which we based the utter foundation of western society. Now if you would excuse me, I need to go tell my slaves to bring in that virgin I captured when I exterminated her village after which, I shall go stone some gays.

Atheists certainly have values and principles that guide their lives and decisions. The word(s) that one chooses to describe or conceptualize these values – morality, ethics, utilitarianism, humanism, etc. – is beside the point; the values are whatever they are, no matter what one calls them.

Sure. Moshe implied that atheists have ideas that allow us to fuck children and animals and explain it away since Moshe forgets that the law against owning slaves is not enforced by the vague threats of divine being but by the angry fist of humanity wielding rules forged by men over time. We forged the equality of man with human blood and that means more than any divine rule since it is something we recognise. Be it the blood of nameless slaves who fought their masters to those who fought for the right to be free in our modern world. Gandhi, King, Havel and Mandela fought because they were human beings, not because of some divine inspiration or magical spark.

Basically what he created was a clumsy attempt at spin in order to imply that atheists are capable of justifying anything and all it needs is a justification.

I have never called into question the existence of atheistic values; it is the significance of atheistic values that is the crucial issue under discussion. In other words, it is an attack, if you will, on the concept of atheistic ethics and morality, not an attack on atheists themselves.

Of course not! I didn't call you atheists "dog fucking child rapists", I merely implied that you theoretically could make love to a dog and a child. Well by his logic he is a genocidal rapist and murderer who is quite prone to keeping women in a locked cage. I mean a potential genocidal rapist and murderer who is quite prone to keeping women in a locked cage.

I have never accused any of the so-called atheistic philosophers of “ethics” – be it Peter Singer, Joel Marks, Michael Ruse, Michael Tooley, (Sam Harris?) et al – of approving of pedophilia. I accused them of laying the philosophical groundwork that could pave the way for the acceptance and approval of pedophilia.

Except for the fact that the philosophical groundwork for the criminalisation of paedophilia was laid down by humanists rather than religious people who often opposed it since it was quite fashionable to marry children. That and you are implying that we approve of paedophilia.

The central point of my presentation was that an honest, consistent, and candid articulation of an atheistic worldview must admit that “ethical” values (including those on pedophilia), have no significance at all outside of the heads of those who espouse them. They have no objective reality and any actual significance ascribed to these values is rooted squarely in the human imagination. They are desperate attempts to create the illusion that human actions and decisions have real purpose and meaning. In other words, they are as foolish and illusory as (what the atheist would consider to be) my imaginary notion that God spoke to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai.

The ideas that mankind espouses are much more than that because we can implement them. The idea is based on the fact that kids cannot understand what sex means and indeed do not show any inclination towards it bar as a sort of self discovery and vague interest. These are concepts that we as people have discussed in producing a kind of world which we would like to live in. We accept due to the medical knowledge of children and the effect of child abuse that paedophilia is harmful to children. We accept that children by their natural naivety and lack of understanding of what consent means and the repercussions of said consent cannot give it till they reach an age we set at 18 (the end of secondary education) for the most part where they will be legally considered an adult and may make decisions of a nature pertaining to who they sleep with. It's arbitrary but no more arbitrary than say considering a girl ready to be married immediately after her first period.

Human beings have an innate sense of compassion, empathy and the ability to love. Human beings also have an innate sense of selfishness, the ability to hate, dominate, and the desire to act with brutality and cruelty. From the viewpoint of the intellectually honest atheist, none of these – in objective reality – are “better” or “worse” than the others. How an individual views these different emotions and drives and chooses to prioritize them are matters of personal preference. If one so desires, he can label these personal preferences with the words moral or immoral; theword that one chooses does not change the fact that they are nothing more than personal preference or perhaps societal conditioning.

Ira. A famous child soldier.

No. Compassion, empathy, love are all learnt expressions. A child brought up to be a cold hearted killer will probably turn out to be a cold hearted killer. The world is filled with children who never had the chance at compassion, empathy and love. There are children brought up with hate, fear and ignorance and many of these children will grow up to hate, fear and be ignorant.

Society is what drives and protects humanity and makes it move forward. The selfish, the haters, the violent and the cruel damage society as a whole. Thus we treat those attributes as undesirable. These are immoral to society because it harms humanity as a whole if we behaved like that since it reduces our ability to survive.

We gain our values from our parents. It is why jewish children are born to jewish parents and hindu children to hindu parents. It's our parents that teach us the values they value based on their experiences. In time these children grow up building on these values or rearranging them to what they think is important but the core values rarely change. I may not value prayer as much as my mother does. The assumption Moshe makes is that atheists label their values arbitrarily rather than by experiences and what we learn out of them.

To put it a different way; in an atheistic world, the terms morality and personal preference are identical and interchangeable. Examples: (1) I believe it is immoral to put Down-syndrome babies to death so as not to waste medical resources that could be used more efficiently = Mypersonal preference is that Down-syndrome babies not be put to death…etc (2) I believe it isimmoral to sodomize young boys in a shower room = My personal preference is that young boys not be sodomized in a shower room. In many cases the term societal conditioning could also be substituted: I have been conditioned by my society to believe that young boys should not be sodomized in a shower room.

Hardly. One person's personal preference can be categorically regarded as immoral simply by logic and debate. I believe it is immoral to kill children with Down's Syndrome while being bang alongside proper screening of older mothers where Down's is more common and offering the option of terminating pregnancies.

And my opinion of the sodomisation of young boys relies on one important question. How old are you and how old is the boy? Because see we live in a world of grey, not of black and white. What if you are under the age of consent and have consensual anal sex in a shower with another person (Gender isn't important, Age is) who is also under the age of consent? You can't charge them for paedophilia? What if one of them is 17 and the other is 18 (assuming age of consent is 18)? See... that's the thing. It's not a simple world we live in.

I assume this is the Penn State Sodomy issue that Moshe is trying to imply? The rules regarding consent and minors applies here. And yes, society dictates that we don't sodomise underaged people be they boys or otherwise (good grief! Why do religious people think women and straight men don't enjoy anal sex? If the gays like it does that mean straight people won't give it a whirl?). In the same way society doesn't like it when you rape women and puts you in jail rather than asks you to pay a fine and then punishes the woman by forcing her to marry her rapist.

Here, Ruse is clearly stating that morality is purely subjective. It’s not like he is the first thinker to come to this conclusion. To most believers it’s rather obvious. Bertrand Russell said the same thing: “I cannot see how to refute the arguments for the subjectivity of ethical values, but I find myself incapable of believing that all that is wrong with wanton cruelty is that I don’t like it.” In Russell’s atheistic world all values are subjective and the only thing that could possibly be wrong with wanton cruelty (or pedophilia, for that matter) is that he doesn’t like it. Ruse understands the dilemma quite well. A subjective system of morality is nothing more than a rickety shack with no foundation; it will collapse in the first good wind:

Subjective morality can come to absolute truths. A child by it's nature is naive, it is a survival mechanic. A human child is blessed with human inquisitiveness but not human judgement because judgement comes with experience. We can TEACH children things. It's why we encourage schools and education, it's why children tend to believe in a Santa Claus. Because we teach them maths and science and a relatively harmless little traditional religion called Santa Claus. However if you couple this naivety with an adult trying to take advantage of a child then you have a terrible situation because children cannot give consent. It is a crime of coercion and threat and force.

Therefore it is safe to say that this is rape or the sexual assault on an individual through the use of force or coercion against their will. This will not change. We have quite categorically realised that children cannot be trusted to make decisions regarding what cereal they should eat, and Moshe somehow thinks that any person who willingly listens to Willow Smith is capable of making rational decisions. Kids are great! Don't get me wrong, I love kids. But they are stupid by the standards of adults and thus are incapable of giving consent. There is an adult case for this kind of action in the abuse of the mentally ill who may not be capable of giving consent for instance in the case of severe mental retardation where the individual cannot comprehend the value and meaning behind sexual consent.

I find this is a more rigorous form of morality than the rules dictated by bronze age Jews.

We are back where we started fromWe are, of course, right back where we started from. In an atheistic world there is nothing inherently wrong with pedophilia or anything else for that matter

Well that's the thing. There is no outright condemnation of paedophilia in Abrahamic faith. It is actually a construct of our developing morality. And no, there is nothing inherently wrong about paedophilia. We as humans recognise the harm paedophilia does to children and we recognise the kind of mentality that it requires since we as human beings value our children in a different way to early jewish people. That jewish people themselves have outgrown the morality of their predecessors.

Put it this way. Abraham is a terrible father. I have no respect for such a character who would rather sacrifice their own kid. Do you know who I would put up as a good father figure for a kid?

God has nothing on a man that dedicated to getting his
daughter back. And that's the kind of father I want to be.
Not one who sells out his kid for fear of his own life.

We all know of course that human preferences are notoriously fickle. What is the deadly, logical outcome of Dr. Marks’ atheistic moral philosophy

“I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime…if a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? (Jeffery Dahmer)

What is the point, indeed? If we are not accountable to a higher power for our actions, it only becomes a question of “am I psychologically able to jettison the societal conditioning to which I have been subjected?” Please ask yourselves the following question: If I had the sexual desires of a pedophile, how would I view the actions of Jerry Sandusky? If there is one thing we have learned from the horribly bloody history of the 20^th century, it is that there is nothing that human beings are not capable of doing.

And now he is implying that we are all going to turn into homosexual rapist murderers? Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer and by definition was crazy. Fobbing off his crimes on the Theory of Evolution is really low. For instance the fact of evolution doesn't change, that we as a species have no divine spark or magic impetus and are merely a product of natural selection as seen in our DNA in the same way that we are attracted to the earth due to our mass. The Theory of Evolution has nothing to do with Dahmer's behaviour. This is just another straw man to make atheist seem like closetted homosexual psychopaths rather than normal people who just chose to not believe in a divine god called Yahweh.

And if there is one thing we have learnt about the 20th century is that theism breeds a special kind of hatred that is unmatched. Lest the good rabbi forgets... The Nazis didn't kill the most people in WW2... (It was the Japanese and their belief in Shinto)

I repeat my original plea to atheists:

“The choices before us are clear: we will either seek a transcendent moral law to which we will all submit, or we will seek our own personal and societal indulgence. If we turn to God in our quest to create a moral and just world, we have a fighting chance; if not, we are doomed to spiral into the man-made hell of the human jungle.”

Atheism stands for nothing, signifies nothing, and affirms nothing except for one thing: All the moral aspirations of the advanced primate we call a human being are nothing more than a cosmic joke….and not a very funny one at that.

The God of rape, genocide and slavery is not the god for mankind. It is a god of fear and death. It is a twisted Santa Clause, a Bogeyman. It is nothing but a meme that feeds on your fear of the dark and creates ignorance so that you forever live in the dark. Moshe may want a single divine law but it's not the divine law of the Hindus or Muslims or Christians that he wants. It's his specific Judaic law. When any man claims that God's Law exceeds the morality of Man you are almost guaranteed to see him somehow consider our current world as immoral rather than being one of the most moral societies that has ever existed.

Human actions and decisions have real meaning. Moshe lives in some fantasy world where he assumes the trappings of human jungle dropped like manna from heaven rather than created by the ideas, the actions and the decisions made by mankind. The decisions I make affect those around me and those who I matter to. Ultimately? In the grand scheme of things? It's pointless since the entire universe will stop one day, but we are alive NOW. The universe is still working now and we have a planet under our feet and everything is relatively golden. And so the actions of mankind at least to other members of mankind matters and that makes these actions even though they are transient and small the most real of all.

Forged in the fires of Mount Pharmacology

I wear a ring, it means nothing to anyone else but it means the world to me. Even if you offered me money beyond compare I would feel uncomfortable parting with the ring. It's not that it has vaguely established magical powers that make me the Dark Lord of Mordor, it's just that it was worn by a friend who died. She died thinking she was unloved and alone when she was not and I wear it to remember her and to remember myself that even when I feel alone and small that there exists hope and love and all the good things in the world that we ourselves as human beings have to be in order to make the world better. To me this worthless piece of titanium and artificial diamonds that cost £15 in an Argos means more than anything else in the world, to you it's just a ring. The value of the ring is relative and indeed transient. It's original owner didn't see it as anything but jewellery. To the average person it means nothing, but to me it means something because the actions of another human being make it mean something. And that's what matters. We all have things that mean this much to us not because we are greedy but because the value of an object isn't determined purely by monetary value. The feelings that I feel are not made better by the ring having magic powers or being tied to the mystical spirit of my dead friend. There is meaning in an atheist's world, it's just not a meaning attributed to mythical creatures. To me the ring is not a memory of her death but an affirmation of her life and the things she loved.

My faith in mankind and human beings changes the world every day so that we live in a place without fear. My friends, family and loved ones drive me to be the best that I can be as a human based on what I think is right. It is not blindly following a set of rules without thinking of the consequence. It is a cogent thought process born out of the idea that all humans are equal.

What does Moshe's do?

M. Averick - Less of slippery slope and more of a cliff

2012-01-06T09:48:00.002+05:30

Moshe Averick took on atheism producing an argument that is effectively summed up as "Atheism leads to Paedophilia and Beastiality". This was a while back but in light of his recent addition I feel we should go back to setting his entire argument on fire. His older one consists of.

"It is axiomatic that in the world of the atheist there is neither morality nor immorality, only amorality.This is often misunderstood to mean that atheists have no values. That conclusion would clearly be erroneous. To associate atheism with amorality is not to say that atheists have no values, they certainly do; amorality is a commentary, not on theexistence of values, but on the significance of those values. Since in the atheistic worldview we are nothing more than upright walking primates, our value systems have no more significance than those of our jungle dwelling relatives. In the Darwinian view, the human is to the cockroach as the cockroach is to the paramecium. To imagine that we are something “more” is just that: a product of the human imagination."

Let's just say that I think rats are pretty awesome.

On the contrary. Our value systems are based on things humans have come to value and the idea that all human beings are equal irrespective of their gender, colour or creed. Our morality has exceeded the constraints of the bronze age god of the Abrahamic faith long ago and thus we see it's practitioners consider us as immoral simply because we do not fear and loathe idiotic things.

How can one be so blinded as to think we are something less merely because we are an animal. Does Moshe ever wonder about the elegance of function and the biochemistry within a paramecium? Does Moshe really think that cockroaches are not wonderful? They certainly are. I may dislike them as a creature but their ability to survive rivals our own and is frankly astounding. Humans share a lot with the rat and the cockroach because we like them are consummate survivors. We may not like them because they spread disease and eat our food but I can atleast appreciate the complexity they represent as life. And what's this Darwinian View? Darwin merely stated that organisms evolve by those that survive the rigours of life and those that survive are the fittest by the mode of their survival and their genes shape the next generation. Nowhere does it speak of value systems.

And the human value system. AKA rules and morality is a survival skill. Human beings are weak and useless on their own. In groups our survival rises exponentially mainly because we can specialise in our efforts and make technology that enables this. You need a specific number of hunter gatherers to have a stone chipper who makes hunter gathering more effective. You need a specific number of carpenters to help make houses but to support them you need wood cutters and to support them you need farmers and to get all the different people to support each other we need a system of rules that helps us get along. That is what morality and rules come from. It's evolutionarily sound since societies without moral codes aren't nice places to live in while ones with liberal accepting codes are seen as nice places to live in. For instance Somalia plain sucks and is like living in a post apocalyptic wasteland, Saudi Arabia while a lot nicer than somalia excludes a lot of people and it's strict moral code means it is very exclusive but the UK has nice social rules that are accepting of a variety of people and thus is liked. The social acceptance of various groups in the UK makes it stronger than Saudi Arabia and Somalia and a much nicer place to live in because of that. It's why people want to go to the UK to live and work and not to Saudi Arabia or indeed Somalia.

Somalia AKA Call of Duty - Reality

It would be absurd then for the atheist to suggest that any particular individual or society has the authority to dictate to all human beings what their values should or should not be; it would be even more absurd to suggest that the pronouncements of any individual or society obligates others to behave accordingly. For the atheist, morality is simply a word that is used to describe the type of system that an individual or society subjectively prefers. Each society establishes, maintains, and modifies its values to suit its own needs.

Humanist morality does not stem from a single source. It is a system of ideas that guide the way you live your life based on the fact that all men are equal irrespective of caste, colour, creed, genitalia or what adult they chose to spend the rest of their life with.

Morality is subjective. What one does in duress and what one does when not are entirely different things. I have no qualms about people who steal when they are faced with starvation. I cannot fault their logic, they steal to live. I have no qualms about those who have eaten human flesh to survive such as the Andean Plane Crash survivors. Lying is bad, but if my lie saves a life it is good. That's the point of having a system of morals rather than a system of hard and fast rules. It's that a system of morals guides us to use our minds to decide whether something is right or wrong without having to refer to a series of rules written by bronze age shepherds and applying their morality to what we have at present without applying any of our knowledge to it.

There is nothing that atheistic societies are incapable of rationalizing and accepting – including the sexual molestation of children.

The sexual molestation of children is more common in history than today. If we use the Old Testament (I don't speak Hebrew so cannot comment on the Torah directly but I am aware that the OT carries the same information) as a guideline one notices that slavery, rape and genocide are all perfectly acceptable behaviour. I am sure Moshe will defend slavery in one of two ways. Either stating that "people back then didn't know any better" which begs the question as to how one can use a moral code written by people who didn't know any better. Or by stating that the Jewish rules for slavery isn't real slavery. Rape was treated as property crime and indeed women would be forced to MARRY their rapist... And this is without going into the idiocy of a Rabbi speaking about a moral code that protects genocide if done by people who were told to do so by God... In fact the people who made it a crime to molest children did so against the grain of the religious texts as not one part of Abrahamic faiths make a stance on paedophilia. By the text of the bible, the Catholic child molestation cover up was not wrong in any way shape or form bar the breach of the catholic priest rules on marriage.

So my argument is this.

1. Children cannot give consent as they are incapable of understanding what consent entails
2. Children who have sex with adults tend to do so out of force, compulsion, survival and psychological reasons.
3. Any adult forced to have sex out of force, compulsion, survival and psychological reasons is considered to have been molested or raped.
4. Therefore children cannot give consent because they are incapable of understanding what the consent implies and any person wanting to have sex with a child therefore uses force, compulsion, survival or psychological manipulation to get what they want.

It is therefore a form of rape and rape is wrong because it breaches the basic human right to say who they have sex with and a right to not be forced to do so, since by definition a child cannot give consent, no more so than an animal can.

Singer went on to explain that he is a “consequentialist.” For the benefit of the philosophically challenged let me explain “consequentialism” in a nutshell: If you like the consequences it’s ethical, if you don’t like the consequences it’s unethical. Thus, if you enjoy child pornography and having sex with children it’s ethical, if you dislike child pornography and having sex with children it’s unethical.In an article entitled “Heavy Petting,” Singer likewise gave his stamp of approval to bestiality. As a reward for producing such pearls of wisdom, he has been granted the privilege of teaching our children “ethics” at an Ivy League university. Moreover, he is by no means the only atheistic philosopher industriously engaged in greasing the precarious slope on which Western society totters. Hence, my “plea” to atheists, for the philosophical groundwork for the acceptance of pedophilia has already been put in place by such philosophers.

Again, bestiality is animal abuse. Animals don't have the capacity to give consent. They are technically property with special laws pertaining to their living status. So while I am perfectly allowed to take my laptop outside and set it on fire and dance around it, I am not allowed to do so with my cat since my laptop is not alive and my cat is. We believe against unnecessary cruelty to animals because we can afford to do so and we don't think it is the right thing to do. (Nothing in the OT about it either).

So it's abuse of an animal.

The recognition that there is something inherently and intrinsically abominable in child molestation renders the act immoral,rather than merely not to one’s taste. Morality implies that there are principles of behavior that are part of the very fabric of reality; principles which Dr. Marks understands can only have significance if they come from God. Preference, on the other hand, is subjective and notoriously capricious. As in: Iprefer chocolate ice-cream over vanilla. I prefer jazz to hip-hop. I prefer that people have sex with adults instead of children and the family pet.

The idea that sex with a child is immoral is a relatively recent idea with plenty of literature dating back to the late 18th century about child marriage across different societies. In most of the world, a boy would be considered a man at any point between their 12th to 14th year and women would be considered of marriageable age immediately after menses. In fact I used to be Hindu. Child marriage is a major problem in Hinduism because it was acceptable until quite recently. I know my grandmother married my grandfather at a really "old" age of 15. I am sure Moshe would be pleased to hear that so i shall throw a specific shot at his faith.

The Talmud specifically mentions that a female child between ages 3 to 12 can be married off depending on her father's wishes. The choice of anulling the wedding was treated as quite abhorrent. Child marriage was common in Hassidic Judaism until we told them to knock it off.

Infact child marriage was only made illegal in Europe in the 1920s with a series of bans and many of them were fought quite strongly as anti-cultural and communist.

In plain English, this is a symposium whose goal is to facilitate the removal of Pedophilia from the American Psychiatric Societies official list of Mental Disorders (DSM). B4U-ACT has already coined a bland, innocuous, and inoffensive term to make the idea of child-sex more palatable: “minor-attracted persons.” This phrase sounds almost pleasant, distinctly unlike those nasty and soon-to-be-politically-incorrect words like “pedophile” and “child molester.” (How does pedophobic grab you?) Not surprisingly, the featured speaker is Dr. Fred Berlin of Johns Hopkins University, a colleague of Dr. John Money. Child advocate, Dr. Judith Reisman disclosed that the conference is part of a strategy to condition people into accepting pedophiles: “The first thing they do is to get the public to divest from thinking of what the offender does criminally, to thinking of his emotional state…to empathize and sympathize…You don’t change the nation in one fell swoop, you have to change it by conditioning.”

Not all paedophiles abuse children. Many recognise that they have a problem and seek help for it. The entire point of the DSM is to catalogue diseases and the B4U-ACT is there for psychiatrists to speak to people who are attracted to children (Paedophiles are associated with child abuse so even a non abusing paedophile who admits it is bound to be lynched SOLELY because he admitted to a sexual obsession.). The entire point of such meetings is to produce a series of diagnostic criteria to improve on diagnosis and care for such conditions. The current DSM treats the action of child molestation as paedophilia but the attraction as not. Which is frankly idiotic. DSM V is planning to treat both the molestation and the attraction as different forms of paedophilia.

Many people molest children out of power rather than because they are attracted to children, are we to define them in the same category? Really? How stupid. The entire point of the DSM is to understand mental conditions such as this, categorise them and learn how to diagnose and prevent them. Not about making the public feel happy about them. And the DSM campaigns for mental health issues. I don't see why we should punish people who merely have inklings. The difference between thought and action is huge (irrespective of what religious people think) and someone thinking about molesting children seeking help is admirable. Someone who acts on that is not...

The atheistic notion that life emerged randomly from ancient Earth’s prebiotic slime, coupled with the Darwinian belief that humans are no more than intelligent chimpanzees, leaves us morally bereft. In a society whose schools consider it a noble undertaking to teach a teenage boy how to use a condom, but streng verboten to teach him that God has forbidden us to steal or murder, how can one anticipate anything other than a gaping and ever-expanding moral sinkhole? While there exist real challenges in determining exactly what God requires of us in the moral sphere, let us, at least, agree on the following before it is too late, and move forward from there:

It's not a notion. Evolution is fact, just like gravity. Stating that humans are no more than intelligent chimpanzees is like stating that NASA is filled with orbital planeteers.

Your version of god also accepts genocide as perfectly normal, rape as acceptable and keeping slaves as okay while not saying a single word on child molestation. The gaping moral sinkhole Moshe fears is utterly idiotic. We live in some of the safest societies on earth and murder is amongst the most harshly punished crimes. Murder is immoral because it takes away another human life against their will, not because some mythical being said so. We are amongst the most moral societies on earth at this point, lest Moshe forget what moral societies existed during the 60s where men could not be free because of the colour of their skin. Or during the 40s where men were killed because of their percieved inferiority. Whether they be jewish, gypsy, mentally ill, slavic or atheist. Whether they be chinese or indonesian, or burmese. (Remember readers. A lot of not white people died in that war). Or during the 20s where women were denied the right to vote. Or during the various periods of time in the past where people followed religious law rather than the laws created by men and men did terrible things to each other.

What Moshe argues is a slippery slope argument. That somehow the liberalisation of sexual mores (I assume his slippery slope is going to start with allowing homosexuals to exist and find love) between two adults will turn into child and animal rape becuase he is is incapable of understanding the difference between adult and child and animal.

All men are created in the image of God and are therefore inherently and intrinsically precious.

All men have evolved. This is utter truth and can be verified by the genetics. On the other hand there is no evidence that a god of any sort has been involved with the creation of any human being.

All men have been endowed by God with unalienable rights and among these are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Which is why the Old Testament lets you keep slaves. The right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness were terms coined by humanists. It's an extension of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite which was the slogan of the French Revolution

Thou shalt not murder.

This rule predates Judaism. My old faith is older than Judaism and has this rule in it. So did the ancient egyptians. You cannot build pyramids that that many years without rules against murder.

Thou shalt not steal.

Again. Every culture that predates Judaism has this. Must be some sort of cryptic time travel malarky... Or you know stealing reduces the survivability of a group of people and having a law against it is kind of good.

Thou shalt not bear false witness.

Again... Predates Judaism.

Thou shalt not commit adultery, incest, or bestiality.

Predates Judaism... And I wonder how Noah had sex...

Thou shalt not have sex with children, and if you do you will be looked upon as a disgusting and contemptible criminal and will be treated as such.

Not in the Old Testament. This is a new law.

Thou shall teach these laws to your children.

We teach our children critical thought. The entire point of laws and rules is to understand that there is indeed some situations where murder is acceptable. If my future children are threatened then I do not think I shall have any qualms killing anything that threatens them. None of these laws come from any god, these are laws that have come about as you require them to run a society and more complex societies are more survivable and these laws help create such a society as the more complex a society the better it's survivability. We see this historically when tribal leaders such as Temujin (Ghenghis Khan) came to the fore from a society of brutality and became emperors. You slowly see them shed their tribal ways and instead place laws and regulations often quite rapidly. Temujin himself after uniting the clans of Mongolia made laws to protect this coalition and resolve conflicts which would normally have caused these clans to go to war over. A society without these rules is a mess of tribes much like Afghanistan where the tribal families go to war over the slightest of insults because there is no rule that stops this kind of behaviour and no drive to create such a rule.

Claiming that these rules came from a divine source of the abrahamic god ignores the fact that nearly every society EVER has had these rules because it is impossible to run one without these rules. It's just that recently we created more rules (except the child molestation one - that is a recent addition) and removed some of the more pointless ones. Does Rabbi Moshe serious expect me to believe that the correct treatment for pimples is quarantine until they are sure it isn't smallpox? Does Rabbit Moshe seriously think that Dapsone is against god's will (cures lepers who used to be said to have been cursed by god for their sins like Uzziah) and that we should cast them out to be dressed in sack cloth? Does Rabbi Moshe think rape victims should marry their rapist? These are also the rules of his god.

Part 2 to come...

Age of Kali: When it rains, it pours

2012-01-02T20:54:00.001+05:30

Sometimes words cannot express how utterly insane and disgusting people can be.

I don't even know what to write about this. How do you blog about human sacrifice and the hold that these priests have on the population? You can condemn it but so does everyone else.

It's also terrifying that it isn't the only human sacrifice that has occurred that year with atleast two other children being sacrificed and a factory worker beheaded at a temple. Sufficient amounts of people believe in it to go through with the idea of killing someone else for the purpose of gaining a benefit from a non-existent being.

It's utterly shocking that there is no drive to stamp out these witch doctors and priests who utilise people's ignorance to drive them to such horrific crimes and scare them into behaving like the monsters they are supposed to fear.

Age of Kali: Using Religion as an Excuse

2012-01-02T19:04:00.000+05:30

Religion can be used to excuse a lot of things. Religious war, terror, rape and even assault and battery.

Indian newspapers range from the delightfully staunch supporters of journalistic integrity to the vaguely sycophantic. Often one has to read between the lines to find out if a person is condemning an action or not.

The fact remains is that different cultures have different boundaries on personal space and what is acceptable or not. However the fact also remains that in a civilised country mob rule is not encouraged. I see no action being taken about the assault of two people who for all intents and purposes probably had no idea about Indian Cultural and Social Rules. Hell even I didn't the first time I came here and I am indian by ethnicity. I used to eat with my left hand back home because I found it more comfortable, in India I have to eat with my right. I am quite used to women treating you like you are normal in the UK, in India they treat you (IMHO) like you are a rapist with a contagious disease. The first few times it actually hurt my feelings but then I realised that it's just the culture. I cannot change it and I am sure when they come to the UK they too think that british women are promiscuous simply because they treat men as equals. Cultural differences exist and sometimes they are insulting to other people. I genuinely worry about the instance in this case because the reporter's relatively coy language belies the seriousness of the assault. The paper clearly shows two heavily bloodied men with head injuries and treated it as if the citizens of Tuticorin involved with this attack were upstanding citizens rather than brutal thugs.

It is however shocking that the police didn't consider assault by a mob of people as an acceptable reason to issue a warrant for the crime of assault and grievous harm (Or injury as it is called in India - I have had to study Forensic Medicine in India as part of my course and it deals with junk like this).

What shocks me even more is that these men are being charged for a crime... Section 295A is a law that states that

"Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.— Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of [citizens of India], [by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise], insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to [three years], or with fine, or with both."

Wait a second? Doesn't that mean that any atheist can technically be charged for the crime of merely existing since a lot of faith treats us as an outrage? That I can technically be charged for speaking out against religion as I am critical of it's actual flaws? I am deliberately criticising religion and I am sure this outrages many people. And many people do get insulted by what I write. It's quite an insulting post to take when you criticise the many mores, follies and failures of any faith.

The scary bit is the use of the word attempt. This entire law has so much weasel words in it that it can apply to anyone. The mere phrase of "Goddamnit" if offensive to someone could theoretically apply the law to me. In fact I am pretty sure any damn person who has complained about a religious activity can be jailed simply because someone got insulted.

This law is the death of free speech and rational discourse. It is a law aimed at the heart of dissent and can be applied to anyone who doesn't believe in a god at whim. It is a law that can be used to protect sadhus, priests and other charlatans from the derision of rationality and it is a law that can definitely be invoked to crush the freedom of speech.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T16:02:00.001+05:30

You know? You can celebrate holidays by doing your own thing right? I never really celebrated christmas becaus I was a Hindu (Duh! Why don't you guys have a day where you get drunk and throw paint at each other? Why don't you guys have a festival solely devoted to money? Why don't you guys have a festival every other week?)

You can celebrate a holiday in way that means something to you. Infact that's what people do for christmas. Mine goes and volunteers because we never really had a religious obligation. I used to work for the samaritans. Before that, my aunt and me would cook dinner and we would all spend time together. Because the time you spend with loved ones is more important than any god. You don't need there to be a god to enjoy a holiday.

And that's something Bill O'Reilley would never ever understand because he thinks that belief in a specific entity allows or prevents you to enjoy a specific day in the year.

To him the meaning of christmas is kowtowing to a mythical being. Not family, not friends, not the people you love. That somehow people are missing out from the spirit of christmas by staying at home with friends and family rather than going to a church. He probably assumes that there is something fundamentally wrong with anyone who doesn't pray to his format of god on that day. And that is one thing I adore about Hindus in India. Holi is for everyone. Pongal is for everyone. Diwali is for everyone. The party doesn't stop if you are a christian, or if you are a muslim. The prayer to Lakshmi is incidental to people lighting fireworks and spending time with family and friends which is far more important. My muslim neighbours know I am not very religious but still send around biriyani and sweets on Eid because that's what being inclusive means.

Tim Tebow is mocked because he mixes faith and his sport a bit too much. While most players are fine with making the sign of the cross as they run onto the pitch or (there are fair few muslim players in football) reciting a short prayer in their heads. Tim Tebow disrupts the game with his worship and so draws ridicule. It also implies that God is more interested in Sport than say... feeding poor people (Then again since mankind made god in his image, Bill probably thinks god hates poor people).

And Jesus was not born into poverty. Jesus was born to a bloody carpenter. A job which at the time would have made Jesus middle class. The entire story boils down to "Mary had contractions while on holiday".

I wouldn't class Jesus as the most influential human being on earth. It's rather insulting to real human beings whose influence changed the way we live our lives. Diamler Benz invented the Motor Car, more people rely on one than on Jesus. Fritz Haber invented artificial fertiliser, guess how many people across the world live due to his invention? The world is a sadder place with the loss of Steve Jobs but we have to remember the world works via Windows not OSX and thus Bill Gates would be more important than Jesus. I would also bring up Gandhi and Nehru whose work inspired billions across the world to freedom from Martin Luther King to Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel. Others? Nicholas Tesla? Edison? Newton? Alexis Carrel? Alexander Fleming? Mary Curie? The Rolling Stones? The Beatles? Pele? Maradona? Zidane? Sachin Tendulkar? The man who first saw fire? The man who first saw the wheel? The man who brewed beer? And these are just the good examples! Not every influential person was good. Hitler? Stalin? Mao? George W Bush Jr? Ghenghis Khan?

So no, I can name people more influential than Jesus or Shiva or Allah or any god out there. Because that's the difference between normal people and Bill. We can see the good in people and we can appreciate the good parts of humanity and revile the bad parts of humanity. We don't ignore the achievements of real people. And that we as humans need to realise that there were countless people behind these names who worked to achieve their influence on the world. That the reason for for the season is not just axial tilt but also the things that humanity has to offer.

Pimping Is Easy

2011-12-20T15:54:00.000+05:30

I also have a gold keyboard!
And my mouse is encrusted in rhinestone.

A friend of mine has recently decided to start a blog and I quite liked his first post and figured that you guys may too.

D-Michaels makes an excellent point with regards to how a separation of church and state could be applied to corporations to prevent corporate interests from sticking their fingers into every single pie the US has and how we should place legislation to prevent the current shenanigans from ever happening again.

If you enjoy my rants then you will certainly enjoy his diatribe.

A weird week

2011-12-19T10:12:00.000+05:30

There goes a saying, celebrities die in threes. Over the past two days, two more men who shaped the world passed away. Kim Jong Il was obviously the more famous of the two, but the one that saddened me the most was Vaclav Havel.

Havel is the man who gave us the Prague Spring, and the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia. In my time in Prague everything I read about this man spoke volumes to me, He was an artist who fought for the freedom of his tiny nation on the very front lines eventually helping in the fragmentation of the Soviet Union via peaceful revolution. His humanism and his compassion freed a nation and saw it through some incredibly trying times including a partition. The Czech Republic and indeed the world has lost a great human being who upheld the humanist tradition in the best way possible.

It is a truly sad week for the world as two great men who did a world of good have passed away.

The Lost Horseman

2011-12-18T16:41:00.000+05:30

It is said that a man does not truly die until his name fades from the lips of those who still live.

Christopher Hitchens passed away from pneumonia that arose as a result of his oesophageal cancer.

We remember Hitchens as the wolverine of atheism. Completely unapologetic, completely tough and utterly willing to fight against entities of spirituality and faith the majority of atheists wouldn’t dream of touching. It was Hitchens who took on Mother Theresa, pointing out that despite the millions her charity received (and the exchange rate which means that back then you could do a lot with a dollar in India) her Home for the Dying was still a grim pit of suffering while her sisters built more convents and more private schools and that her attitudes towards contraception was entirely laughable. It was Hitchens who pointed out that Gandhian philosophy’s Luddite nature that was so impressive in creating a credible defence against the British Raj would also doom India to be forever a village economy. Even if we ignore Hitch’s atheism, we can safely say that he brought a healthy dose of reality to figures we automatically deify and reminded us that at their core, people are people. They are filled with little flaws and foibles and mistakes, and that we should bear that in mind. He also made us realise how truly great some of these achievements were. Say what you want about Mother Theresa’s faith but the woman was willing to work in TB wards and with Lepers at a time when most people would have run screaming from such diseases. Say what you want about Martin Luther King’s faith but the man fought for black freedom. Say what you want about Gandhi’s Hinduism but the man put himself on the line too. The fact that these people did these acts, out of pure human ability rather than the powers of the divine is a testament to what humans can achieve.

People say that atheism doesn’t deal with grief and death in a productive way. We are all different; we all want different things from grief. Some of us are happy to think that our personality and memories live on as a soul in some paradise. To me that is false comfort. It is the equivalent of telling a child that a dead dog has gone off to live on a farm. Some of us are happy that we have a life well lived (a luxury most of us cannot enjoy). I feel that what would please me most in life is that Hitchens lived his life well and enjoyed it. Lest we forget that sometimes life is its own reward.

There is life after death, just not in the way we think about it. We don’t persist but our body does. The elements and compounds that make up our intelligent reaction do not falter and will not falter till the very heat death of our universe. To me the line that gives me most peace is from The Amber Spyglass.

“Even if it means oblivion, friends, I’ll welcome it, because it won’t be nothing. We will be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we will be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we’ll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was”

Our mortality is almost guaranteed, our life is however ours to live. We can chose to do what we wish with it. Hitch lived his to make us think, to make us question ourselves and to make us grow as people because we question our own beliefs.

You don’t have to agree with what other atheists say. We are a group of people bound by the ability to not agree with anyone and that includes each other. The writings of major atheists are equally subject to honest critique, they aren’t gospel. I and Hitchens sorely differ on our attitudes to the war on terror and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact his support for the Iraq and Afghan wars is counter to what I consider as a sane solution. I understand Islam sucks but no religion accepts change at the barrel of a gun, least of all Islam. That tarring the entirety of Islam with the Wahabbist brush or the Iranian theocratic brush threatens to harm our own movement as it is intellectually bankrupt. It’s the reason I don’t like the work of Pat Condell, who treats muslims as a single entity and who simplifies the issues facing muslims without realising underlying issues.

Hitchen’s misogyny was also well known and quite honestly? I don’t think the cigarettes, cigars and heavy boozing did him any favours. One can squarely point a finger at the cigars (a known causative of throat and oesophageal cancer).

But that’s the point. Hitchens is not immune to criticism on points that he was wrong on. Nor would he have wanted to be immune to such criticism. His entire message was that no man should be free of criticism if it is honest and true (otherwise it's just slander).

Hitchens doesn’t just live on as the molecules that make up our word. A man is more than just the molecules he is made up of. Hitchens lives on his writing. I don’t think we should treat his writings as a bible, but we should certainly keep reading and critiquing his works for many of us grew as atheists because of them and atheists to come can learn from his work. It can inspire us to leave works of our own. The world is all we have and it is our responsibility to do what we can. To leave the world slightly better for our children and those who come after us. To leave them stories of real people and real achievements rather than the tired rules and morality of those who came before us. We need to build on that.

“That is why we need our full lives; we wouldn’t be able to build it. No one could if they put themselves first. We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind curious and patient and we’ve got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds and then we’ll build... The Republic of Heaven”

The world has lost a marvellous human being.

Age of Kali/Rights of the Silent Majority - Clothes don't Rape. People do.

2011-12-05T19:59:00.001+05:30

The Bangalore Slut Walk was supposed to take place yesterday to highlight the increasing levels of sexual violence and rape. In essence it heralds a new wave of feminism in the old entrenched world of Indian chauvinism.

For most people who are unfamiliar with the goals of these walks, the Slut Walk is an empowerment movement amongst women who are attempting to hammer home a simple point; that a woman is entitled to wear whatever she feels like and that blaming her attire for rape is an argument of rape apologists who are unwilling to realise the failings on the part of the society and culture that protects rape.

And rape is common in India, in fact marital rape is so common that there are no statistics for it. It's regarded as "acceptable" and normal. There are women who adamantly state that the marriage contract entitles men to sex whenever they feel like without any opinion of the woman and so therefore rape cannot occur. I am sure that no part of the civil or religious ceremony goes "Do you agree to have sex whenever the man feels like it, till death do you part?". In fact, I am actually considered quite weird for actually asking "Why is it acceptable".

The Bangalore Slut Walk was broken up by police who used the "For your own safety" argument. The reason? Right wing Hindu religious groups threatened violence should the march take place. And these groups have support from politicians who are often indistinguishable in India from criminal thugs. The message of the walk was simple; Clothes don't rape people. People do.

The organisers were threatened by far right Hindu extremists from a variety of sources including so-called women's rights groups who threatened to "beat them with broomsticks". For instance the Ram Sena (A Hindu Right wing group that can happily be called Neo Nazi and had a direct influence on me becoming an Atheist) offered the statement of

"I thank the police for taking these people into custody. They are spoiling the culture and are encouraging women to indulge in obscenity."

It's okay! It's an Indian dress! The cleavage
is cultural and not obscene! Unlike jeans.

Indian culture once glorified the burning of women in Sati. Indian culture still encourages the ostracisation of widows (men are of course free to get married). Indian culture treats women as a burden, so much so that gender selective abortion and female infanticide are rife to the point where there are roughly 900 women to every 1000 men.

1 out of 10 potential women either meet their ends as sex selective abortion or infanticide. In some parts of India women are nothing more than sex holes and beasts of burden. A drain on the economy of the family due to the practice of dowry and a source of misery to the point where killing a female child was often seen as necessary.

Frankly? These are parts of Indian culture that should die. I am sure Indian culture would be better off without the sexism. Do you know what spoils culture? Holding onto to things that are blatantly harmful to it until it corrupts the good bits of Indian culture. I don't see these arseholes complaining about Indian movies whose heroines who could happily be replaced with a dressmaker's dummy for all the difference they make to the plot. I say that denigrates women because it inculcates the cultural idea that women cannot be strong characters without a "man to tame them", that a woman can only demonstrate her sexuality around her "one true love". I don't see these arseholes complaining about the sexual harassment that is rife within the Indian male population (which is playfully referred to as eve teasing) which is a mix of japanese grope culture and full on sexual harassment. What I do see is people blaming the victims of sexual harassment and rape.

And it's insulting to both genders. That women somehow are at fault for being amazing and beautiful and all that to men. That Saris and Salwar Kameez are rape armour and that the Purdah stops rape? That men cannot control their gonads around women? That man's attraction for women is based on how much skin they are showing? I am half surprised that the Ram Sena didn't come out and say that women would be less likely to be raped if they stayed at home and wore paper bags over their heads rather than work in a man's world where they would turn good, honest, hardworking young men into slavering rapists with their vaginas. Fuck it! Why not go the whole distance and scar women's faces so that young men are never enticed by beauty!

Or you could stop encouraging a culture where sexual harassment and rape isn't a big deal.

The ultimate irony is in arresting some of the protesters and breaking up the march, the Police of Bangalore proved the point they were trying to make. That slut shaming and victim blaming is rife in Indian culture and rather than punishing the perpetrators of crime, the victims are forced to acquiesce to their ridiculous requests.

This is the purdah, an idea
similar to the islamic one of the headscarf
or the burkha

The correct option would have been to provide protection for these women and men who were willing to march for a better future. To let them march, to make the point that women have an equal role in India and that equality is coming. That the clothes you wear doesn't change the person you are. The correct option would have been to tell the religious right to "go the hell away". The correct option would have been to realise that victim blaming and slut shaming is the defence of the rape apologist.

All the Bangalore police have done is satiated male chauvinists and hindu extremists. It has proven that they are complicit in slut shaming and encourage the notion that it's the woman's fault if she is raped due to the location and the clothes she wears. In short, they have proven the need for such events such as the Slut Walk.

Show them some love, their facebook page needs it.

Sexual Camel

2011-11-27T20:37:00.000+05:30

Let's just say that God likes to play the Sims.

I recently started reading the Pervocracy by Holly, in particular for her hilarious reviews of Cosmopolitan magazine, a magazine I have long regarded as hilarious for it's terribad advice given to women. And it has inspired me to take my own whack at Christian Agony Aunt/Uncle.

Which lead me onto this lovely post about Marriage without Intimacy. It's advice given from a christian perspective on marriage and it is just as vapid and misogynistic and misandric as Cosmopolitan could ever be. It's filled with crass generalisations about individuals and indeed the idea that there exists a single marriage in everyone's life. That marriage only occurs once in a person's life and it's always to "the one", the only person in the 7 billion people on this planet who happens to be the exact match to us, possibly predetermined by God.

The intimate connection that results from sex is often the glue that holds a marriage together. As human beings, we are hard-wired to crave a special sense of intimacy with another human being. That is why people who are in a sexless relationship feel lonely, hard, depressed and emotionally unfulfilled.

The problem is that often only one spouse no longer wants to have sex while the other one still craves it. And rather than deal with these vital issues, oftentimes the one spouse that is without such intimacy attempts to fill the void by being extra active in other areas of their life, such as church ministry, sports, hobbies, etc.

And while these areas of activity “sound” good, it is not only wrong, but it is an almost impossible unsustainable task to “go without” intimacy simply by sheer fact that God made us this way. Intimacy comes from God. The devil perverts it outside of marriage, but intimacy and sex still comes from God’s design for our marriages.

An entire life devoted purely to sex and being creepy.

What about love? What about companionship? Honesty? Truth? Handcuffs? The american way? All that keeps your marriage together is sex? What about people who are asexual? Are they doomed to never have love simply because they do not enjoy the act of sex?

Are we really suggesting that marriage is about sex and sex alone? That intimacy cannot come without spraying DNA at each other? (Don't be silly! This is a christian advice site! There aren't any lesbian marriages!)

I mean the implication is that people have hobbies due to a lack of sex (Which may explain why my CV is so full) but can't a man go fishing without it having to be about sex? Sometimes a cigar is a cigar and sometimes the urge to go watch 22 grown men fight over a ball is about the urge to go watch them fight over a ball. Your loves and interests outside sex are what make you an individual and quite frankly if your entire personality is geared towards fucking then your entire personality will just be vapid and uninteresting.

Or you are a male anglerfish...

In particular, for us as Christians, this poses an added danger – infidelity. When the spouse is forced to “fend for themselves” it poses the potential temptation in their path, and many times the spouse that is withholding has no idea that their actions of not being intimate is in fact a key factor in pushing their spouse into infidelity.
It’s noted in many counseling sessions by many Christian counselors that when probing into situations of infidelity, many surprising twists and turns pop up that reveal that it’s not only the responsibility of the one that fell into adultery, but a surprising number finds that it is often the spouse that remained visibly faithful that oftentimes is the culprit of “pushing” their spouse into the cold, open field for the enemy to hunt down. Even many times not even realizing it!

Google Image Search accepts no responsibility
for what you type into it.

If you accept that you are in a monogamous relationship, then "cheating" is not acceptable. Especially if your excuses is "I cheated because you didn't have sex enough". Did anyone ever think that the reason for infidelity was the lack of love in a relationship? A lack of respect? The personalities involved? Is it always because someone wasn't putting out enough?

And really? The very idea that the people who you cheat on your other half with are some sort of Sex Shark who prowl around looking for people who are a bit sexually frustrated? And really? Are you suggesting that we humans are simply slaves to our genitalia? That at the slightest bit of horniness we would fuck anything with a pulse?

"I have heard every excuse imaginable – whether it’s not having enough time, being worn down by housework (not to mention that he (meaning the husband) doesn’t help with the housework or the children), needing to unwind from a long workday herself, being unhappy with her body, being repulsed by his body, working through resentment against him for something he did this morning, last week, ten years ago…I have truly heard some doosies...But an excuse is an excuse is an excuse no matter how cleverly or eloquently phrased it is. And apart from 6-weeks postpartum recovery, other physical conditions that prevent a couple from being able to have sex, and/or damage resulting from abuse, truthfully, there just isn’t any excuse that holds up for a wife not “giving it up” regularly... Here’s the deal: Sexually active men need sex often…not once a month, not once a year, not only on holidays – but often. Websites, books, television shows overflow with information about the difference between the sexual needs of men and women. Some wives (and even a few husbands) are like sexual camels, able to go years without sexual intercourse. But most healthy husbands need sex just to function. I can’t imagine that there is an adult woman breathing who is not aware of this fact. But just in case there is, let me make it plain."

I note this is dropping women in it. Having sex when you don't want to have sex is a survival tactic and it's very close to rape. What we are seeing here is the suggestion of marital rape.

Let's face it. You read the article just to see
a picture of a Sexual Camel

And these are all valid reasons why people don't want to have sex. And reasons why honest conversation is vital to any marriage and indeed why a healthy sex education and frankness regarding sex is required. If you treat sex as a job then you will see people shirking on it because doing what you love out of duty and obligation really sucks the fun out of it. These aren't excuses, these are valid points as to why you don't want to have sex. The entire point of sex is not to placate men or to stop us from shagging other women. It isn't payment for our affection and attention, it is part of it.

The excuse that holds up for a wife not wanting to have sex is the simple "She doesn't want to have sex". If someone doesn't want to have sex with you then they don't want to have sex with you. Tell them the truth if it bugs you, but if they are being coerced to have sex against their will then how is it gratifying? It's just rape. It's you forcing someone to do something they are not comfortable with.

Women like sex too. If we told our young ladies that sex isn't something to be ashamed of and is something to be enjoyed particularly with good communication then they too would see sex as something positive. Men may enjoy sex, but women enjoy it as much as men do. Also the idea of a Sexual Camel is quite possibly the most disturbing mental image ever rather than something sane.

Men don't need sex to function, I find that idea highly laughable and insulting that the idea that men physiologically require sex to exist is even used in a serious format. By the logic of this article, I should be a horrendous wreck of a man doomed to live a half existence until some lady has sex with me (in the context of a heterosexual monogamous marriage of course).

There are some obvious signs that alert you to the possibility of your marriage going the sexless way. The first of these is when the frequency of regular intimate contact begins to decrease dramatically. Of course, in most marriages, the initial fervor dies down after some time. Still, many couples work out a pattern that keeps them both satisfied. But if you find that even the smallest and simplest of gestures is unwelcome, then you may be in for trouble.

And this would not be a problem if people didn't marry out of obligation and didn't treat sex like it were a Fabergé egg. Communication is very romantic, knowing what your partner likes and what they don't and making adjustments to your sex life to match that is vital. Your partner thinks sex should be as vanilla as possible while you prefer restraints and a whip, then you may have a problem. Did anyone consider the issue being that the lack of communication about sex and indeed the relationship as a whole may be the actual fault rather than someone being forced to do something they don't like?

• Make it a point to think thoughts that are related to sex with your spouse throughout the day.

Me simply thinking about sex with someone isn't going to make me want to have sex with someone. I can think about having sex with a man all day but it won't make me want to have sex with men. Likewise if you don't like your spouse then no matter how much you think of sex with that person you aren't going to be enjoying it.

• When you were dating, you daydreamed about your future husband. The image of him, his voice, waiting for letters in the mail, phone calls, his kisses, his cologne, etc. it's been said that men (Christian or not) have a sexual thought every 20-40 seconds. It is vital for the relationship to be healthy that the wife must develop the habit of thinking about sex for her husband.

I use L'eau d'Issey,
Ladies and gay men, you may
start your fantasies.

Whoever said that is a fucking idiot. I am thinking about sex right now because we are discussing it. However when I am eating food, I am thinking about food rather than sex. Men are fully capable of spending minutes to hours not having thoughts about sex. If you start thinking of sex for your husband then you will stop enjoying sex and if you stop enjoying sex you will have less of it.

And by day dreams you mean sexy fantasies. If you are imagining a man's cologne (I use L'eau de Issey by Issey Miyake. Ladies and gay men... start your fantasies!), his letters and phone calls then your sexual fantasy is either very tame or very very kinky. Whichever it is, good on you! Tell the man in your life these things, if men know what makes the woman in their life tick then men will do that. It's vital to a relationship that people communicate and know what the other likes and dislikes, that way you don't have to think about "sex for your husband" and can start thinking about sex that's for everyone involved.

Oh baby I would like to collate your figures till they
make a nice round number...

o As stated by Sheeri Mitchell, "Instead of letting your mind wander to the bills, the kids, the bills, your aging parents, the bills, learn how to fantasize about your husband." This falls under the scripture, "Taking every thought captive."

Wow... If your mind is wandering during sex, then someone is doing it wrong. Or someone is not really in the mood for it. And why are you thinking about your parents? Or your kids? This is turning into the Aristocrats.

• Put it in your schedule or on the calendar.

Oh it's sexy alright but it makes it really hard to type.

The only time you are allowed to even consider this is if one of you is dressed as a sexy secretary. The entire problem with Business Time is that both of you are going through the motions to have sex. That both of you are doing it to "save a marriage" or just because some guy on the internet told you to. In which case this can arguably be the only case where both people involved in having sex don't want to have sex resulting in the weirdest definition of marital rape where both parties involved are the victims who have been coerced into having sex by a calendar.

Bork...

• Make it part of your routine. This part is for your husband. Your part is when there is what's called "gourmet" sex, when there is extra long, special romance and time taken.

Is special romance the same as foreplay? Because one finds that vital to sex in the first place. I don't think many men are into sex purely for the penetration. It's not too much to ask that sex be a give and take situation where both people's desires are met.

And way to categorise men as nothing more than single minded sex fiends. We kind of like the bits before sex too.

And gourmet sex just sounds like food is involved or that your about to have sex with a chef.

• Pursue him more often.

Ah! How to combine sex with the Most Dangerous Game of all. By all means assert your own sexual needs, this is the only piece of advice that I can actually consider as halfway sensible in this entire article.

• Make it a point to instigate sex and chase him down for sex. Be the first and you will have his heart in your hands to trust.

Only if he wants to and only if you want to. Sometimes men don't want to have sex. And I do like the laughably naivety of a suggestion that assumes that a woman asserting her own sexual requirements will somehow cause the man to love you forever and buy you a pony.

• Read positive books and resources that give you better understanding.

Not Cosmo! Whatever you do, do not read that!

• Do not talk with your friends or church friends about your bedroom life. You are destroying your trust and relationship with your spouse.

You should instead listen to some random stranger who used the term Sexual Camel.

• If your schedule and business is making you too tired for your husband, then you are too busy period. Get rid of something to accommodate. You are telling your husband that he is not as important as your list of items on your to do list. This will destroy your relationship.

How dare you have a career? How dare you have any interests bar pleasing your man! Of course you are equal to men, just a different sort of equality! Now stay at home and learn how to touch your ears with your ankles. You don't want your marriage to explode now do you?

Or you know, learn how to make the most of the time you have with each other rather than blaming the woman's career. I mean if the man is busy it's because he is hunting mammoths to feed you, but if the woman is busy then it's a case of a frivolous fascination with utilising all that equality that's enshrined in the law.

• Many do not realize just how bad they need the intimacy until after having intimacy.

Is sex such a bad word that we have to use intimacy in it's stead?

• We get used to routine as creatures of habit. Even negative routines. When we continue the negative cycle, we think this is "normal" simply because we have been doing it continually for so long. That's the farthest thing from the truth. We can deceive ourselves out of a life of richness and love that comes with being close and intimate often. Intimacy is healing and will continue the bond between husband and wife that absolutely nothing else will.

Forget all that nonsense they tell you in school about respecting yourself, love, conversation and sharing interests and a connection based on personality. What you need to make your relationship work is sex and only sex. Conversation can go fuck itself because you will be fucking your husband. After all, all men want is sex.

I just wanted to use this image
because it makes me laugh.

• Deal with the problems preventing WANTING sex, but be effective.

I don't even know what this means. I mean aren't they supposed to be giving advice? If your advice consists of "Solve your problems" then you aren't really giving advice.

• Saying goes, "ready, aim, fire!". You may be ready to heat things up a bit, but before you start doing things to re-ignite the passion, "aim first." First find out exactly what is causing the lack of desire. THEN deal with those things.

Oh? I was about to suggest you let problems build up until they explode into a barrage of insults, yelling and the hurling of small objects but this idea is much better.

• Many times a partner will try all kinds of things they think would kindle the fire, only to be burned themselves by frustration that it seemed like it didn't do anything. Aim at your target. Don't just shoot, aim. Find out specifics by discussing this in depth with your partner. Then shoot at the target. Bullseye!

Does this have to do with the whole "pursue him" argument. This boils down to the whole "have a conversation" and "be honest about what you want" advice that most sane people give. Rather than the whole "sacrifice your whole life to be a sex slave even if you don't want to be one" advice that the author also gave.

I think reading this article dropped me into the shallow end of an entire genre of agony aunts/uncles who give atrociously bad advice to women based on theology and frankly lunatic ideas. And it puts me in mind of the various Men's rights activist forums I used to mock when I used to read Manboobz regularly. At worst we can laugh at it, at best we can fight this sort of bad advice which prolongs loveless marriages, increases bitterness and wastes life.

Atheism United and Me

2011-11-24T23:12:00.000+05:30

Come February, I will be moving the blog to a new server at the new Atheism United project as part of the initial set of bloggers. At the moment we are fundraising for a new server to host all our cool stuff that is in the works, and for that we are accepting donations.

If you look to the left you can see the chip in widget through which you can help us out.

A special thanks to any reader who helps us out and to all my readers who view the site.

I am also gearing up towards my finals, so will probably not post all that heavily until they are done. I shall still probably have a few posts in my downtime but they will be sparse.

If you wish to show your support and be part of the new community please join us on facebook. And don't worry, we have even been pharyngulated so you know we can do something impressive. And yes we are still looking for new bloggers who want to write for us.

Logical Coherrance

2011-11-21T18:05:00.000+05:30

Mr. Kohlmayer certainly thinks that our arguments lack logic and coherence while cherry picking a single quote from a skeptical website.

The argument we make is based on a simple concept. If god is completely a non-physical entity then how does he interact with the universe? How does he affect believers? How does he implement his magic? How do miracles function? Surely in the action of these events he has achieved physicality or at least disturbed the waters of reality sufficient for detection. I mean if he is affecting fairly grandiose changes in people then surely we should be able to detect that. We can detect a single particle but not the massive effect of a god?

But even as the atheist tries to make his point, he unwittingly falls into a trap: If his worldview were true, then the principle of non-contradiction – or any other rule of logic – would be void of meaning.
Why? Because within atheism reality is ultimately composed of only matter and motion. If atheism is true, then everything in the universe must be explainable in terms of these two.
Rules of logic, however, possess properties that cannot be explained in terms of matter and motion. After all, rules of logic are immaterial, abstract, universal and unchanging.

The rules of logic are determined by humans and are routinely refined as new concepts come up. Atheism is based on a simple concept. That no god exists because there is no evidence of him bar written texts from dubious sources. There is no repeatable empirical events. There are no gods, not Shiva, Jehovah or Allah.

Everything in the universe is a explainable through science. If not know, it will be. Just because we don't know something now doesn't mean we won't later.

Many of the earliest scientists argued about the nature of light. How fast it was, people tried to measure the speed of light. They mostly got it as instantaneous, so many assumed it was, however a few smart souls realised that light had to have a speed, a very high speed that they couldn't measure. They predicted other people would find out. They didn't deem it to be the realm of god. They deemed it to be something for future generations to understand when the technology caught up.

The thing about gods is that they are always behind the next theory, the next great mystery and in the great unknown. They have to be hidden lest they be exposed to science and rationality.

I mean if "there is probably no gods and these 2000 year old books are wrong" is not rational but "doing specific things on specific positions of the earth to the sun so that you get a benefit of a non physical entity that likes it" is then frankly your definition of logic isn't a very good definition at all.

Uniquely and Singularly Dangerous

2011-11-19T21:05:00.000+05:30

Oh bombs! They are so entertaining!
Can't you see how happy he is!

Ah, Animal liberation nutters are at it again, with Camille really crossing the line from vapid lunatic to dangerous vapid lunatic again. Not only offering such lovely educational material as this device to make a firebomb (and also by happy coincidence a real bomb) which she claims is also for entertainment. (Coming up Next! Avicenna’s handy torture guide! For you edutainment!)

She hosts literature from the Straight Edge Vegan criminal, Walter Bond who is in jail for arson. You know, that crime where you set stuff on fire causing property damage and potentially killing someone with fire?

This work is pure straight edge philosophy which is fine if you keep it to yourself. If you start preaching a straight edge philosophy, then you come off as a dick. And it doesn’t help that the movement is filled with people who suffer from what I like to call “holier than thou” syndrome. It’s where you refer to other people as less than you simply because they have made a choice. Sure in the grand scheme of things some decisions are patently idiotic (Anti-Vaccine/Anti-Medicine/Creationism/Animal Liberation) and should be treated as idiotic stances but you never stop treating the individuals who follow these flawed ideas as human beings.

And Walter Bond fails miserably here. Co-opting pro-life literature to assault women’s rights as if a foetus were equal to a fully developed human beings, he not only denigrates the actual struggles of women across the world that are fighting and indeed dying to get abortions but also fails to realise that human cells does not equate to a human being. It’s not a right of convenience and pleasure, for many women it’s a right to care for children in an appropriate fashion. For the first 20 to 24 weeks of life the foetus is incapable of independence and even after that the foetus is heavily reliant on medical technology (which Walter Bond is against) to live. A testament to medical technology is that at 24 weeks the survival rate of pre-term infants is 96%. In most third world nations it’s around 25 to 40% depending on availability of technology. To put it in perspective the actual survival rate of all infants in India is 96% (ours in western nations is around 99.6%).

At what point is a foetus sentient? Babies certainly are not when they are just born. Sentience and self awareness can arguably be considered to develop post birth since due to the nature of our giant craniums we as human beings are not born fully developed. (it’s one of the reasons why we have such a phenomenal infant mortality rate without medical technology compared to other animals considering how phenomenally tough and survivable we are). Our weak and incompletely developed babies undergo a series of developmental milestones that include identification of self and response to names... and even then they aren’t as fully developed as the young of other animals. The consciousness of the foetus isn’t used as a determinant on abortion; it is the viability of the foetus outside the mother. To medics, the lungs are more important than the brain. The 24 week limit is due to the developmental milestone of lungs. Prior to 20 weeks the foetus has no lungs to speak of and cannot survive. In short, even if born it cannot be a viable entity. In most western nations it’s 24 weeks because we can save a baby with partially developed lungs. Most nations consider personhood to begin at 28 weeks for the same reason.

So... Cannibalism?

But Walter Bond obviously considers anyone who aborts a foetus to be equal to an animal murderer (which is anyone who eats meat or does research on one) and equal to a real murderer. Which is a step above the crazy of most pro-lifers, and we know Mr. Bond is capable of dangerous acts. Endorsing this vile human being is no different from the people who endorse the actions of Scott Roeder and Camille doesn't disappoint in sinking to such depths.

And is it surprising at all considering literature from such individuals as the Animal Liberation Front’s Dr. Steve Best (a Ph.D. in philosophy rather than someone you would call in an emergency. Well in a real emergency, I suppose you call him if you have an existential crisis.) regularly features on her site?

His idea of Peace and Justice is like the ranting of Osama Bin Laden, if Osama Bin Laden were a Dr. Seuss fan. And if this is indeed his work then I would suggest that the University of Texas reconsiders their relationship with him. Because this is nothing short of a statement of the encouragement of terrorism and should be taken seriously. Lest we have another George Tiller incident.

Let’s just say that if we did what he wanted we wouldn’t have any farmers nor would we live in a society free of disease and vermin. I assume alongside his Ph.D. in philosophy, he knows how to till the land and produce food on a scale that can feed people reliably.

It's pretty much this...

We wouldn’t have animal rehabilitation programs and we would lose animals to the scourge of poaching and people just not doing anything. If people have been paying attention, the only hope for the Western Black Rhino to ever return to the wild is captive breeding programs in zoos. One notices that animal liberation aren’t out there having gun battles with poachers to protect tigers, rhinos, elephants and thousands of other endangered creatures, in fact they actively attack the people who engage in these activities.

We wouldn’t have any meat, because everyone vegan lives a rich healthy life with their tiny inefficient farms. What Walter wants is a Cultural Revolution, much like Mao. Only instead of attempting to force an entire country to make a Great Leap Forwards, he wants a Great Leap Backwards.

He obviously doesn’t want any medical experimentation, or products there off. He specifically mentions antibiotics and steroids being present in meat (yet not one single mention of steroids being present in Vitamin D tablets. Vitamin D is a steroid.) without realising that cooking would destroy most of these things. Possibly he assumes that carnivores like myself prefer to eat our food alive.

He doesn’t want shelters, he would rather us spend money on animals getting nice homes when we can barely ensure our humans live in nice homes. Because heaven forbid we try and do something about homeless people and poverty before the kitties.

In specific he advocates that the biggest ecologists on the planets (AKA biologists) be tortured and killed (brutally no less, because professors of philosophy seem to have a lot of time to think up inventive ways of killing people) for daring to experiment on animals. I have a friend who has worked on research involving Von Gierke’s disease by testing in dogs. Apparently this friend deserves torture simply for trying to alleviate suffering by understanding the world. And I am classified under this since I am in medicine and by extension my entire field and lifestyle is built on suffering both of the animals experiment on and indeed of the patients who receive relief from their suffering. Oh and like Camille Marino’s earlier outbreak I assume he intends to target those selfish patients who chose to utilise the technology derived from animal experimentation to save their lives and those of their loved ones rather than die.

For someone whose existence is practically guaranteed through technology, he is awfully luddite about it. Does he really think the internet will run in his utopia of no technology or that people would indeed keep feeding him for philosophical discourse? Surely this is an individual who ranks amongst the least likely to survive outside the constraints of civilisation?

I suppose a response to this rant is in order. After all, someone needs to call him out on the nonsense he purveys.

Dear Stephen Best

I disagree with everything you stand for, you are an odious human being, a chancre on humanity. You stand against everything that is good and right with this world. You bandy a world view that encourages suffering and pain for actual human beings while being safe in a delusion from the suffering and pain you inflict because you yourself don’t get your hands dirty. To me you are no different from those mullahs who fire their devotees up with rhetoric and faith and send these young men to kill and die for their twisted ideology while you remain safe to spread your poison.

Go stand in front of the families of those dying due to disease and tell them that their loved ones deserve to die rather than some animals. Tell them that their children, their brothers and their lovers are less valuable than a mouse in your eyes. You say we are without compassion? I suggest you see how we treat human beings. Pain, Suffering, Starvation, Disability, Poverty are all facts of life for some people, and your philosophy would only increase that. I find it a shocking betrayal of educational ethics that you would be even allowed to lecture at a university for advocating terrorism particularly with your association with Camille Marino who actively threatens students with death.

You are a parasite, no different from Camille and indeed Walter Bond. Individuals who have benefited from modern society which tolerates their nonsense because we are a society filled with excess. I shall assume that like Camille, should you require the aid of “medical care derived from animal experimentation” you too will show the same sort of fortitude and double standards that she has. I shall assume you have never been to a country where there is no concerted effort to keep animals off the streets and keep pest populations down so don’t know what it’s like dealing with rat borne diseases. In short I shall assume (quite rightly so) that you are a privileged hypocrite.

I am not a good man, I never claimed to be. I try my best to do what is right and believe me what is right is standing up for those who you torment and threaten as many of them cannot. Because some of them are my friends, some of them are my family. The others are people who rely on us for a cessation of suffering. Yes, you may slander my character and call me a torturer and hundreds of other things but ultimately the people who I meet tend to not think so.

The ultimate irony is the biggest reduction of use of animals in experimentation is not by the actions of your luddite breed but by the actions of the very people you attack. The biggest protectors of animal life isn't the placard waving celebrities PETA acquires to flog their viewpoint or terrorists like Walter Bond, but people who know how animals work and who experiment on them and learn.

I would call you vultures but vultures form a useful part of the ecological chain. There is no animal as patently useless as you are. And to prove that I am just as good as rhetoric as you are... Your movement is a disease and you are nothing more than cyst to be lanced with education and understanding. Throughout history men have stood in the way of humanity and progress. All have fallen before education and knowledge. Do you think you are any different from them?

What you need is a Doctor.

Avicenna

(Doctor to be. A real one)

I do seriously wonder what the University of Texas is doing keeping such an individual on their teaching register. Perhaps I can hire Abu Hamza to teach Media Studies.

Yar har, fiddle di dee,
Being a Terrorist is alright to be,
You should really go on a huge murder spree,
You are a terrorist!

Modern Slavery

2011-11-17T14:35:00.000+05:30

It's been a long while since I was back home, I am a Mancunian and I do miss it all the time. But things seem to have changed since I left.

This is frankly despicable, it's not a scheme that encourages labour, it's a scheme that encourages slavery. You know that thing where you work and you don't get paid for it? These individuals are working 30 or so hours a week (6 hours for 5 days) and should be taking home roughly £30 a day rather than £50 for an entire week.

This isn't a back to work scheme, this isn't even an internship that encourages people to work for any and all jobs such as small businesses. This is a massive scheme benefiting multi-billion pound enterprises by providing them part time labour under the guise of keeping people working and teaching them the skills they need to be productive members of society.

If the government were honest about this being a system to encourage people to work, this scheme would apply to any business of any size rather than just big retail chains. And ultimately they are working for less than minimum wage.

That in my book is slavery, and it actually hurts the economy since paying these individuals a minimum wage would just mean more money is being ploughed back into the economy since it is very difficult to save on minimum wage and it is much easier to just spend it on things in the hear and now. Like food, clothes and entertainment.

Until then, it's just a shocking way that the UK is giving big businesses a monetary boost. By all means, give people money for doing a job, but don't take money away from them for not.

Depths of Sleaze and Depravity and Children's Literature

2011-11-13T20:24:00.002+05:30

Sometimes I read the Huffington Post and a post by the user Jesus Germanotta irked me ever so much. The entire comments section contains such lovely gems as these.

I think this is precisely the problem that Greta Christina talked about . The idea that porn is somehow bad if everyone involved wants to be in it. That somehow anything Miss Grey does from now on is polluted by the fact that she once used to have sex for a living. And that this precludes any other achievements in life.

See Sasha has acted in real movies, ranging from experimental art house movies such as The Girlfriend Experience to the upcoming I Melt with You. She has released an electronica music album. She has released a photography album. But you know what? That never comes up.

Would we see this kind of outrage if Ayn Rand read there? No? Ayn Rand's philosophy is far more toxic than simple sex or even very complicated sex. Would you require a permission slip if the Pope (A man who has actively helped protect paedophiles) decided to read there? Would you need one if a barely literate american footballer decided to read there? A certain ex-president? Dick Cheney?

Then why the hell does it matter that she did porn? Is she not a human being? If you cut her does she not bleed? If you tickle her does she not laugh? Is sex okay or is it some dirty little secret we hide from kids? Will you be telling these kids that they are a product of some sort of immaculate conception rather than 5 to 30 minutes of exertion and weird noises? Does any of this even matter if someone who has had sex in the past reads a children's book?

And it shows the utter hypocrisy that we as humans are happy for her to take her pants off on our screens and be objectified but heaven forbid the object of your masturbation deems to be more than a picture on your screen. Everyone one us has had sex, some more than others. We are all a product of sex. Letting kids know that, isn't wrong and never has been. We all have sex and if anything the catholic church has proven that leaving your kids around people who don't have sex tends to end poorly. I think the genuine issue is that society has conditioned us (and yes, I had to have an introspective moment to recognise that even I have the same problem) to regard porn stars as vacuous dummies who hate their job, their objectification and end up as burnt out husks in the evil porn industry. We cannot for the life of us understand women such as Dr. Brooke Magnanti who are smart and either trade/or have traded sex for money. We as a society cannot accept them being normal, or even happy because we are conditioned to treat porn as something shameful and so cannot accept when it stops being fantasy on a screen and starts being a reality. And we especially cannot accept it if it decides to show up and teach our kids to read.

Spoilers!

So we accept that it's not because she had sex, but because she accepted money for having sex. Sasha Grey's biggest problem is that she had sex for money. She will never be taken seriously because people cannot disengage the idea that she had sex for money from the fact that she is a human being. And I see the semblance to the issue which atheism has in that she as a human being is not being judged for what she is doing but rather for doing something a bit sexy. It's sad, that the worst issue of pornography is not that the public assumption is one that all pornography is degrading, abusive and exploitative. It's that the public cannot accept anyone who doesn't fit into the stereotype. Not even liberals....

She's quit porn, but has a lot of fans and was part of the sex positive movement including producing some female friendly alt. pornography because *spoilers* women do like porn of their own *spoilers*. So people like to keep in touch with her via the twitters. Compared to other people in the industry she had a good time in it and is smart enough to realise that porn careers are transient and she has used that popularity to springboard herself into other careers including one in Education (which is a degree that she is apparently pursuing).

Oh Sasha! You simply cannot
cope with the depths of sleaze and depravity
that I can foist upon children!

And it is utterly sad that she will be tarred with the brush that somehow she is stupid or talentless and shouldn't be allowed around children for this. Are we simply going to suggest that everyone who did a job that's demonised in society be prevented from hanging around kids? Are politicians and lawyers going to be banned from schools? After all one must not tell lies. Are we going to ban soldiers? After all one must not kill. Are we going to ban doctors? Because doctors give out drugs? I was once a telemarketter. Does this mean I am not allowed around kids lest I sell them broadband and arguably access to more pornography than dear Sasha?

Myths versus the Truth of Homeopathy

2011-11-12T19:09:00.000+05:30

Now listen very carefully Avicenna!
When you click the pen three times in a row,
it will break and you will have to go get a new one.

Apparently we in the medical industry are heavily paid (yeah right) by Big Pharma to spread a disinformation campaign about homeopathy. And apparently the secret to everlasting life is in stationery since the only things I have ever gotten from a pharmaceutical giant for free are supplies of stationery. Basically my pen says Disprin on it and it probably like any other click ballpoint pen out there, except that exploding one from Golden Eye.

Homeopath is the biggest quack group out there, their infiltration into the third world (Homeopathy is very big in India and China) is aided by poorly educated and corrupt politicians who themselves don’t know what it’s about and ignorance. You see, homoeopaths do not portray themselves as anything less than an equal to a doctor. The entire persona of a homoeopath is designed to provide the illusion that they are the equivalent of a doctor.

In response, I shall start wearing
a fez.

For instance, the white coat is actually being slowly phased out of medicine on accounts that it is a great way to spread disease and it honestly impedes the doctor. However, patients do expect the perceived uniform of a doctor to be present, somehow thinking that modern doctors with their short sleeved shirts and lack of extreme formal attire somehow are less professional than their coat wearing counterparts. .

So homeopaths have adopted this symbol wholesale, indeed often boasting actual trained doctors within their ranks. Doctors who seem to lack a basic understanding of biology and chemistry, but doctors nonetheless. Any website boasting a homeopath portrays them as visionaries with intimate knowledge of human physiology and pathology which even doctors don’t claim to possess while normally posing around in photos in a white coat.

Homoeopathy is portrayed as a economic alternative to conventional medicine, with money going to homeopaths rather than doctors and indeed the shadowy cabal of nefarious individuals known colloquially as “Big Pharma” who seem interested in killing you for unknown profit rather than selling you a product for a known profit. Big Pharma’s conspiracy theories involve them being guilty of everything from the crime of being rich and making profits as a business, to the crime of making expensive medicines that involve vast amounts of research and investment that needs to be paid off and even to such lofty crimes such as genocide by vaccination. Natural News, steps up to defend homeopathy against the alleged myths being spread by us nasty medicine folk.

“The homeopathic approach to healing maintains a deep respect for symptoms of illness as important defenses of a person's immune and defense system. While conventional medicine often tends to assume that symptoms are something "wrong" with the person that need to be treated, inhibited, suppressed, or biochemically manipulated, homeopaths tend to assume that symptoms are important defenses of the organism that are most effectively resolved when treatments nurture, nourish, or mimic the symptoms in order to initiate a healing process. Ultimately, these two different approaches to healing people have led to various conflicts.”

Conventional medicine doesn’t treat symptoms as something wrong rather than something indicative of an underlying problem. Symptoms range from “cough” and “fever” to “burning urination”, “repeated sore formation”. Some of these can be simple such as cough and fever (Cough and Fever can also be indicative of more deadly diseases). Some of these are serious depending on the nature of the individual (like diarrhoea) and can and should be controlled. Some symptoms are heavily indicative of serious issues (a rash that does not disappear under cold pressure). Some symptoms are treated (Headache, Diarrhoea), while others are given relief or are plain ignored.

Conventional medicine tends to leave symptoms alone unless they would harm or otherwise affect the patient negatively since feeling better is half the battle. It tends to treat the underlying condition as well as the symptoms to improve patient condition. So a symptom of cholera is a fever and watery (described as rice water) diarrhoea, this symptoms are classical of the disease. The treatment would be an antibiotic to fight the cholera causing bacteria, anti diarrhoeal medication so that the person stops defaecating themselves to death and finally rehydration to replace lost water. The patient is also given an anti-pyretic so they don’t have as high a fever so that they are comfortable. Thus the underlying cause (bacteria) and symptoms (diarrhoea/anti-pyretic) are both treated.

Homoeopaths claim that they would increase the symptoms by giving you something that causes a fever and a laxative, despite knowing full well the cause of death in Cholera is the diarrhoea which is “just a symptom”.

Homeopaths contend that increased rates of cancer, heart disease, chronic fatigue, and various chronic diseases for increasingly younger people may result from conventional medicine's suppression of symptoms and disease processes.It is therefore no surprise that conventional physicians and Big Pharma have a long and dark history of working together to attack homeopathy and homeopaths.

Increase in chronic diseases such as cancer and heart disease are due to the lifestyle we lead. This includes simply not dying from huge numbers of very common diseases as we see in third world countries. Nigeria for example has a very low death rate to cancer and heart disease but has a colossally high death rate to nearly everything else. The average life expectancy measures in at around 47 years. In the past, people simply didn’t live long enough to die from cancer and heart attacks, or in the past no one cared about the vast majority of people who died and so didn't keep records.

Medicine doesn’t stop death, it merely delays it. It gives you time. From just 10 seconds to say goodbye to the people you love to 10 decades to live your life as you see fit. The time it gives depends on the technology it has available to treat a specific disease. As per the technology, every single one of us will die. You are going to have to die of something. For most of us it will be heart attacks (and we are the lucky ones), some of us will die by stroke, some by respiratory failure, some by cancer and some by accidents. Some of us will die maliciously, some will die unexpectedly and some of us will know it's coming and try to make our peace with those who we love and cherish. Medicine is the tool by which we do that.

However? The thing is for the time being these are diseases that we cannot prevent but can forestall. Even medication exists to reduce the time frame of these diseases, placing controls on them to reduce their effect on our lives until it is the unfortunate day that we die. We are working on fixing that and indeed we have given people a second chance at life through technology that wasn't possible before.

With this in mind let’s see what Myths, me and the other big pharma stationery club members have perpetrated on its quacks.

Myth #1: "There is no research that shows that homeopathic medicines work.

In Case you didn't get it.

The argument they use is that homoeopathy is not standardised. It is tailored uniquely to fit the needs of each individual patient as if the homoeopath in question has the ability to discern your physiology through questions (He cannot) rather than tests. The assumption in medicine is that everyone is the same inside except in rare cases which are mentioned. The most common case of people being different on the inside depends on whether you can write your name in the snow or not.

In fact we do tailor our drugs for gender and indeed per person depending on reasonable assumptions we can make such as height, weight, allergy profiles and previous drug interactions and lifestyle.

Dana Ullman's argument is that homoeopathic drugs don’t work the same for each person (unlike real medicine which works the same for most people with a few variations courtesy of the person’s innate physiological make up. All of us work roughly in the same way with a few “silent mutants” whose physiology varies but is still functional enough. These people suffer from adverse reactions called idiosyncratic reactions, where they react in weird ways to the drug. Eg. In India there is a caste called the Arya vaisya chettiyars who live in Tamil Nadu. They suffer from a fatal allergy to suxamethonium chloride which is a drug is given to induce muscle paralysis over short periods of time during intubation.

So this means that according to Dana, a single homoeopathic drug cannot be tested against a placebo. This is a rather weird argument since surely some of the patients would have received sufficient benefit to atleast implicate some level of action rather than producing an effect equal to the placebo.

Myth #2: "The research studies showing that homeopathic medicines work are 'poorly conducted studies'."

When you claim that water that’s been shaken causes massive effects in patients over and above the placebo then yes... your work does get tested more. Mainly because you are making a fantastic claim that requires testing.

The Lancet does not TEST hypothesis and theories. It merely publishes papers for other doctors to test out and analyse. This is called peer review. When a homeopath posts a paper, the ensuing backlash is due to doctors reading the experiment and writing out various ways the experiment is faulty ranging from a lack of control, a lack of proper blinding and lack of sufficient rigour in statistical analysis including very tiny populations or papers such as homeopaths logging their water versus a drug’s side effects rather than effect.

In fact many of the arguments against the placebo show wild variations on retesting because many homeopaths don’t understand bias or how placebos must look like the drug and so on. A simple example of how efficient a placebo effect could be is a simple test of a placebo IV injection versus a homeopathic pain medication in pill or capsule format. The pill would do worse than the injection due to the placebo effect. Homeopaths often assume the number of pills given doesn’t make a difference but it does.

So a real test would be a homeopath who writes out a diagnosis and Rx and the Rx is filled either with a cocktail of whatever quackery he writes up or placebo of those. Then the overall efficiency of homeopaths versus the placebo can be tested as a group for a symptom rather than as an individual medicine. The homeopath cannot oversell/undersell as the Rx would be delivered to the house. I am pretty sure in this scenario the results would be the same. That homeopathy is generally the same as the placebo.

And this is without mentioning that homeopathic testing is done in an incredibly subjective manner even including dream states and feelings of the individuals taking the drugs rather than by physiology.

Myth #3: "12C is like one drop in the entire Atlantic Ocean."

For those who aren’t aware, homeopathy is based on the claim that water has a memory and that the less you use of the active ingredient, the more you have an effect due to the claim that water somehow behave like a solid with the imprint of the molecules present in it rather than like a liquid that are all well aware of.

If it helps, picture all this mathematics being
taught to you by the Count.

The logic is incredibly stupid. Water is a dipolar liquid, the molecule of water is itself neutral but the hydrogen area of the molecule has a net +ve charge as the electron is dragged towards the oxygen molecule. This is called a dipole and is based on the fact that electrons behave like probability densities of negative charge rather discrete particles. This causes water’s unique properties such as how it acts as a solvent and how it expands when it freezes and it’s lack of volatility as a compound. However it still is a liquid and so any dissolved substance is normally spaced out evenly in the solution. When the dissolved substance is removed the water reverts back to normal.

So water has no memory even if you smack it against a leather table board and dissolve it. And here I must post a disclaimer. What follows is some mathematics that is VITAL to understanding why homeopathy is bullshit.

The second problem with this argument is the problem of concentrations, in particular the C. 1 C is what you get when you take 99 parts of distilled water and 1 part of the substance. A 2 C solution is taking 1 part of a 1 C solution and diluting it with a 99 parts of distilled water and so on with each increasing value of C taking 1 part of the prior solution and diluting it with 99 parts of water.

The formula for this would be 1/(100)^n where n = the value of C. So 1C would be 1/100, 2 C would be 1/10,000 and 3 C would be 1/1,000,000. And you can see what the problem is right here. I apologise, what we are going into is some serious arithmetic and it’s vital to understand how this works.

3 C is one part per million which is a very small amount. The number given in this example is 12 C which is 1/1000000000000000000000000. So there is one molecule of active ingredient in 1000000000000000000000000 molecules of water. We are actually pretty smart ourselves. We can work out what those many molecules of water weighs via the avogadro’s number which is constant of number of molecules within one mole (a unit, not a mammal). Chemists prefer using it since working in molecules is highly irritating and because moles are linked to molecular weights which are the weight of one mole of any substance (so 1 mole of hydrogen weighs 1 gram, 1 of helium weighs 2 and so on...) 602300000000000000000000

1000000000000000000000000 molecules of water = 1000000000000000000000000/6.023 x 10^23 = 1.66 moles

Hydrogen weighs 1 gram per mole and oxygen 16 grams per mole. So water would weigh 18 grams per mole since it is made up of 2 hydrogens and one oxygen atom. This works out at 18 x 1.66 = 29.88 grams of water. Water by happy fortune is the key unit of the SI scale so 29.88 grams of water would occupy roughly 29.88 ml, a shot glass rather than an ocean of water to contain a single molecule of active substance.

However the concentration most homeopathic medicines range from 24 to 50 C with 30 C being the most common. Not 12 C at clinical doses. 24 C isn’t double the strength of 12C... Remember each progression of C is a dilution by a factor of 100.

Using the previous formula, the dilution factor of 24 C (the highest concentration and therefore the least stupid value) we come up with a concentration of 1/1x10^48.

Which is one molecule of active ingredient in a stupidly huge amount of molecules. This we can work out the weight of.

1x10^48/Avogadro’s constant = 1660302174995849244562510.3768886 moles

The weight of which is 29885439149925286402.125 tonnes which occupies a volume of 29885439149925286402.125 cubic metres or 29885439149.925 cubic kilometres.

On planet earth there is approximately 1.3 Billion cubic kilometres of water in our oceans, lakes, rivers and ice. This is 29.88 billion cubic kilometres of water required to carry just 1 molecule of the active substance.

The argument (if you haven’t blown a fuse with the mathematics/chemistry lesson) is that there is no active ingredient in the homeopathic preparation since it is so dilute that there isn’t anything in there but distilled water. Even if you are working on a small scale by batch no. 14 or 15 there is probably nothing but distilled water in each test tube since by serial dilution you have pretty much eliminated any active ingredient.

And this is without going into the sheer nonsense that a 50 C concentration would entail.

Myth #4: "There is nothing in a homeopathic medicine. It is just water."

Well, if you waded through the mathstravaganza then you would realise that yes, it is just water.

And I call shenanigans on the Indian Institute of Technology, (which is an esteemed engineering university in India and not some hack science mill) for sponsoring such industrial grade garbage as the research quoted in this article. The paper seems poorly written and I wonder how long it took to find such nanoparticles and whether this holds true across the board of all samples or that they found it in one bottle out of hundreds.

And this is without levelling the charge of performing lousy science to give credence to an industry of snake oil merchants who are often given free rein to practice in India with deadly repercussions to their patients who cannot tell the difference between a homeopath and a real doctor.

Myth #5: "If we do not presently understand how homeopathic medicines work, then, they cannot work. It's witchcraft."

If we don’t know how homeopathic medicines work, then why the hell aren’t homeopaths the slightest bit interested in their function? Why does homeopathic cyanide have no effect unlike homeopathic medicine? Why aren’t homeopaths producing irrevocable proof that water has a memory? Why are instead homeopaths so content to not change and not do any research? Why are all their papers posted in tiny magazines and peer reviewed only by people who understand the arcane proofing system rather than a scientific test? Why is there no conclusive data like actual medicine and no logical explanations on how the drugs function?

Homeopathic medication functions on a similar effect to the placebo effect, this is well known. There has been no repeatable, conclusive experiment to prove that homeopaths produce a discernable physiological effect similar to actual medicine. These aren’t myths, these are facts.

Homeopathy isn’t witchcraft. It’s bullshit. Industrial grade bullshit that is killing people in third world nations by passing itself off as real medicine in order to make a quick buck of the suffering of people. This is also a fact.

The proponents of homeopathy utilise fudged research in third world nations to flog expensive treatments in the west. This is a fact.

The proponents of homeopathy utilise the fact that stupid people in the west who buy their drugs are held in high esteem by poor people in third world nations. They use this to flog their drugs to people often telling the people to throw away their medication. This is a fact.

People have died from taking homeopathic medications. Not because of the homeopathic contents, but because of the lack of an effect. This is also a fact.

One doesn't need to spread myths about homeopathy. Not when the truth will suffice.

Age of Kali: Birthdays are Bad!

2011-11-11T14:58:00.000+05:30

Darul Deoband thinks birthdays are a product of the west and possibly aimed at destroying islamic civilisation through the practice of giving presents on a day where the sun and earth are in roughly the same positions as they were when you were born.

Oh they finally cottoned onto us. Quick! Let's try destroying them through Valentine's day and New Year's eve too!

Age of Kali

2011-11-10T21:26:00.001+05:30

So you don’t believe in any gods? Well neither do I. In fact the day I realised that there were no gods, I probably lost a great deal more of them than most other atheists, you see I am an ex-hindu. An atheist of a million denied gods and denier not of the original sin but of the Age of Kali.

I am a British medical student, ethnically Indian from the fair city of Manchester. City of football and Oasis. I do study in India and for me it is rather weird. I am expected to follow all these traditions solely because people expect it from someone who is brown. I am in the same boat as Hemant Mehta (the Friendly Atheist); both of us don’t really come from religious backgrounds that treat atheists as badly as the abrahamic faiths.

See Hindu gods are weird compared to the abrahamic gods that we all know and love (or hate) so intimately. Islam, Christianity and Judaism are all essentially born out of the same original belief and so are familiar to us. The Ten Commandments, the bearded messiahs, the desert, misogyny, hate masquerading as love. Hinduism is different, it is old and primal, a religion of sex, drugs and magic while at the same time influenced heavily by Victorian culture which revels in the excesses and in ideas such as purity.

Hinduism is a contemporary of faiths such as the Greek and Roman ones. People who worshipped Ra were around at the same time as people who worshipped Rudra (a version of Shiva). It is ancient, and the most people know about it is that it is filled with a million gods and you aren’t allowed to eat cows. A few people go further and may know something about the caste system and may even bring up Sati.

It is a bipolar religion, the lack of a solid structure to Hinduism means that you don’t quite know how Hindus will respond, mainly because Hinduism is huge. Most of its followers do not have a holy book to read unlike the bible or the Koran instead passing on practice by word of mouth. For instance the effect of missionaries on my grandmother means that she has a small picture of Jesus next to Krishna. Its followers used to be told (much like the Catholic Church) what to do by the priest caste. It still is. Few Hindus have read the Vedas and Upanishads, most. The Bhagavad Gita is more of an additional chapter of the Mahabaratha (an epic) rather than a book like the bible but it is well read due to its themes of duty and loyalty and honour. There is no Hindu pope and there is no central authority, thus creating wild variations in the application of faith.

The Hindu gods are admittedly a tad more fun. There are jolly little gods such as Hanuman and Ganesh, there are trickster gods such as Krishna, there are wise old men such as Brahma, warriors such as Durga and Rama and monsters such as Kali. They make for a great ensemble cast of a soap opera with drama and love and fight between the myriad of gods and their enemies the asura. But this is forgetting the cost of their worship has included everything from human sacrifice (A practice that occasionally rears its ugly head in rural parts of India, but thankfully rare), Sati (the encouragement of widows to cremate themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre, also thankfully rare) and the caste system which is not. Hinduism was a lot more tolerant of other religion but it does have a mean streak underlying its beliefs especially against Islam mainly owing to the history of the two religions rather than any underlying issue with the beliefs.

The caste system, the sexism and the religious intolerance are what drove me to atheism. The cultural uptake of Victorian ideals drives this. The caste system is not dead, it’s digital now. It is necessary for everything and dictates for most Hindus what you do from birth to death. All attempts to shatter it are met with the attitude of “in your right place”. Should I date the daughter of a Brahmin, I would be ostracised by her family should she still follow the caste system and many still do. The person that I am means nothing to what my caste is. Hinduism also has a practice called the Purdah which encourages women to hide away and not show themselves in public. It fits right in with the Victorian morals that India and indeed many Hindus possess.

And last but not least is the violence that Hindus are well and truly capable of. The antics of Bal Thackeray and the various Saffron Terror groups are not that well known outside Hindu circles. Many Hindus treat them as protectors of the faith against the rise of Islamic terror groups and conversions by Christianity which often contains direct attacks on Hinduism. Hindus don’t see conversion as acceptable, one comes to Hinduism voluntarily and by choice rather than by compulsion so Christian mission groups often rub Hindu groups the wrong way due to their conversion efforts.

When I was 7, a massive Hindu riot occurred in India killing thousands of Muslims. The reason being? In the 15^th century when the Mughals first invaded India, they sacked a town called Ayodhya allegedly burning a temple to the ground. The temple was meant to mark the site where Rama, the avatar of Vishnu was born. In its place a mosque called the Babri Masjid was built. The mob was driven by their leaders to violence and destroyed the mosque with anything that came to hand. They literally pulled it apart with nothing more than pickaxes and brute human force. In their frenzy they attacked and murdered Muslims all across the north resulting in counter riots and revenge attacks. It was my first step towards denying faith. In traditional fashion my family would quietly state that those weren’t real Hindus, they were uneducated and poor, that they were taken in by the promises of their leaders or were just out for mischief (if you can call murder and rape mischief).

But they also believed that there should be a Rama temple. Many Hindus did. They didn’t see it as property destruction followed by looting, murder and rape; they saw it as the unfortunate behaviour of people who couldn’t wait to get what was rightfully theirs. To them a real Hindu would have waited, rather than acting out so aggressively.

Anti-Muslim/Anti-hindu sentiment has a long history in Hinduism and the history of India. In India Hindus and Muslims slaughtered each other in giant riots during the partition and the India/Pakistan divide was along the basis of faith. Babri Masjid became a rallying cry for the Hindu right wing movement to rise. Saffron Terror as it’s called in India, a far cry from the genteel Hinduism I was familiar with from the UK.

I went on a pilgrimage to the Rama temple that housed the idols that were meant to go on the new temple that was to replace the Babri Masjid. I was searched twice and was not allowed to wear any electronic items for fear of Islamic reprisal. You then queue in chanting lines for hours before finally getting to the idol and all you are greeted with is a doll that looked like it had been thrown together by kindergarteners. Maybe the aesthete was lost on me after the large bronze and granite idols of my south indian heritage, but to me it was something put together by kindergarten arts and crafts. I was 15 and was surrounded by adults who honestly thought that this doll should be kept at a specific location. That these adults condoned the killing of human beings if not outright, but by their silence, so that this doll could take its place a few a little distance away. That these people were so blinded by their faith that they could ignore the fact that they were being herded like bleating sheep and being fleeced of money by a faith they didn't understand.

It stopped making sense and I quietly stopped praying and stopped really following the rules of Hinduism that were silly (Basically? I started eating beef. Hinduism’s situation morality is pretty much what we use today anyways since it is less a divine code and more a human one.).

Ultimately Hindus and Muslims butchered each other when I was seven over a palace for a silly doll. The entire thing just seemed so childish a reason to hate someone. It slowly became more and more clear to me, every faith was like this. The Christians excused their behaviour through Christ, Muslims through Allah, Jews through Jehovah. Every religion utilised their faith as an excuse for their behaviour. That it was all so unnecessary.

I suppose I was a sceptical child, my parents encouraged me to be good at science and didn’t really force me to follow religion staunchly. We didn’t fast or really strictly adhere to faith so it made giving it up easier. My parents still make statements about how they are praying for me but that’s out of concern (Hindu gods are a lot more fun loving than the dour god of Abraham. Even Kali is known to have a sense of humour while Shiva is a genial and loving destroyer, a kind of hedonistic party god rather than the no sex, no booze, no fun Jehovah).

I still participate in the social aspect of faith, standing with family when they pray but not actually praying. Sure I avoid temples but slowly my family actually saw the wisdom of some of the things I believed in and they even do some of the things I do instead. I prefer donating time and money to charity rather than to the priests, and my family as a whole adopted this practice. It makes you feel just as good as praying but you would have genuinely achieved something. I wouldn't be lying when I said that I get the same feeling I got from religion when I do charity work. Then again I feel that same thrill when watching football or rugby or cricket in a stadium. This says a lot about the nature of faith and why people feel that sense of euphoria. It’s nothing more than the feeling that you are genuinely doing well in the world (even if you are not) mixed with the feeling of euphoria brought about by being part of something big.

Humans don’t need religion; we are inherently capable of utter good and utter evil by choice of our actions. Religion just takes the perception of this choice out of our hands. The lack of responsibility means we listen to someone else about what we should do, that we simply become like sheep that follow what the shepherd tells you.

The world is filled with wonders enough without having to invoke a god. I speak through a box made out sand and metal powered by tame lightning to people halfway across the globe! Should I chose to I can hurtle through the air to meet any of the readers here faster than any bird in a metal tube powered by burning monsters! We can travel the fastest, the furthest, the highest, and the deepest. We even touched the moon and we still have more to achieve. And God? God is just too small to fit on this planet let alone in this universe. Humanity has outgrown our security blanket and our invisible friends.