Lucifer Baphomet

No.

Buddhism is a religion (yes it's a very philosophical one, especially if you look at schools such as zen) but it is still very much a religion.

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DanielRavenNest

What do you have to say about Carbon-13 ratios in the atmosphere? Plants slightly prefer Carbon-12, the lighter isotope of carbon, because lighter atoms react slightly faster. Thus plant-derived CO2 has a different isotope ratio than inorganic CO2, from souces like rock weathering or volcanoes.

In addition to the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere going up, the isotope ratio is changing. Therefore the added CO2 is coming from plant-derived sources. The only source of enough plant-derived CO2 is fossil fuels + deforestation, both human caused.

Kara Spengler

"today class we will be fingerpainting the charkas"

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Kara Spengler

Actually, yes there is a difference.

You are free to decide for yourself what you will do about an issue with your own body. As long as that solution does not affect anyone else (like your kids) of course.

You are not free to make that decision for someone else.

Kara Spengler

Now that is BEYOND laughable!

Aimee Weber

In my experience when it comes to religious discussion, there's a tremendous amount of wiggle-room in word definitions. I'm not sure why that is, but that's how it is.

Spiritual could mean "a belief in spirits", "supernatural matters" or even a completely non-supernatural "sense of wonder one feels from the natural world" (it is in this way folks like Carl Sagan might be described as spiritual). It took a while (and many forum discussions about religion) before I finally figured this out. I see it a lot with words like religion, spiritual, soul, theist, atheist, agnostic, faith, believe, Christian, etc.

The best thing I can think to do is to ask the other party about their particular definitions of these words, and then just go ahead and translate my ideas using their definitions for the time being so I can make my point (knowing that I'll have to re-translate for other people joining the discussion who will probably come with their own set of definitions.)

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All the cool kids are following me on Twitter! http://twitter.com/aimee

detrius

11. Abstract algebra is too dang complicated: "Unlike the 'modern math' theorists, who believe that mathematics is a creation of man and thus arbitrary and relative, A Beka Book teaches that the laws of mathematics are a creation of God and thus absolute…A Beka Book provides attractive, legible, and workable traditional mathematics texts that are not burdened with modern theories such as set theory."—ABeka.com

This is worse than believing Earth is only 6000 years old, that evolution is an atheist conspiracy, global warming doesn't exist and that UHC results in death panels... combined.

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Kara Spengler

I wonder if that was the redneck way of saying "math is hard"?

The other one that particularly irked me was this:
Ignoring the fact that the christian religion with its "you are superior, go forth and multiply" attitude was the root cause of that mess in the first place.

Richie Waves

The semantic debates are what made the 500 page epic threads, though!11

Aimee Weber

Depends on what you mean by "semantic".

Surreal

Wut?

You're free to decline or accept chemotherapy for yourself too.

Autonomy != spirituality (as opposed to religion)

Perhaps your muddy thinking comes from an inability to compare and contrast like sets.

Ishina

It's often tactical. A common tactic in religious apologetics. To purposefully use vague wording and ambiguous argumentation so that there is a lot of room to manoeuvre. It allows the apologist to flip-flop back and forth between definitions depending on what the argument is, depending on which definition suits them favourably at any given moment. It allows one to abandon logical assertions and statements of fact that didn't stand up to scrutiny and retreat into the abstract without conceding.

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Kara Spengler

What in the world? I was not responding to anything about spirituality, reread my post. What I had quoted was about someone choosing what to do to resolve a medical issue that affected *themself*. The only word I can think of to describe my argument in that post is libertarian (if you think hitting yourself with a rock will help you go for it, you are free to choose).

Aimee Weber

Yeah, there seems to be a lot of subtle and overt motivation for it. Like you said, apologists enjoy the maneuverability of bait-and-switch definitions. In other cases I think control of the language provides control of the argument. To modify one's own Christian noun to accurately communicate one's brand of Christianity (like Emo Philips' "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879 Christian") is to cede control of the (very powerful) word Christian (and, of course, you and I have experienced first-hand this power play on the part of theists who assert a theist-centric definition of atheism (basically "poopie-head")). The objective here is not to communicate, but rather to own words such that perceived meaning can be steered to one's liking.

But it's also cultural. If the Eskimos have many ways to say "snow" (a myth, apparently) then English fails to give us the verbal tools to accurately describe the nuances of the un-quantifiable.

Casey Pelous

Oh, I dunno. Maybe 'cause they're talking about shit that doesn't exist, ya think?

That said, I'll remind Jahar that neither "unproven" nor "spiritual" necessarily mean "total bullshit", and that some of the very coolest stuff about being human isn't present on the physical plane. How much does "caring" weigh? What's the calculus of "love"? These are nonsense questions of course, because some of human experience is not really amenable to the scientific method.

Does reiki work?

Meh, probably not by invisible waves of undetectable chi.

Maybe it's as simple yet profound as the act of one human paying full, empathetic attention to another. Maybe the hand movements and whatnot facilitate the practitioner's ability to do that, and/or the recipient's ability to perceive it. That doesn't seem insanely unlikely to me.

That "paying full, empathetic attention" is something that, when practiced by doctors and nurses, has been shown to make a difference in clinical outcomes, most likely by increasing compliance with tx programs.

It isn't a wild leap into screwball metaphysics to think a little care, kindness and attention might do us all a world of good - even if it doesn't come from *gasp* a licensed professional.

Now, should we be pissing away a fortune through the NIH to test every orgone box wielding colonic technician with a crackpot theory? I don't think that's been money well spent, frankly, and why should it have been when by definition these Alternative Therapies couldn't provide any sort of non-metaphysical rationale for their efficacy. And of course they shouldn't be substituted for proven therapeutic regimens.

I'll grant there has been a long history of quackery in this area.

But that doesn't make the practitioners here frauds, ignorant, dumb, nor science illiterates.

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"I am not more than a lossy Human being, and think that we all are equals..." - Wasted Engineer

"Casey, I've already established that you have no idea what you are talking about." - Perphides

Eris

Richie Waves

I ran out of them in the naughties...

Ishina

There is a fair amount of resistance to the idea that one should define one's terms and stick to them. And when you insist, they are like "You're so closed-minded. So sterile. So inflexible. So set in your ways." And I'm like "No, actually. I'm just trying to navigate your steaming mound of wishy-washy, unsophisticated, vacuous tripe to try and find some semblance of a point. Gimmie a god damn toehold!"

Void

funny, but ultimately misleading and false
/pendant

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- These eyes can do more than see

Jahar Aabye

Eh, could go with:

Dopamine anticipates you!

or

Acetylcholine: The only thing you need to remember.

And then maybe a micrograph film of a synapse with porn music in the background and the axon saying "oooh baby, I'm gonna pop a vesicle!"

Yeah, I think it's probably bedtime.

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He pulled a Captain Ahab and Jaharpwn'ed her. - Trout

Maggiedoll Alter

I think you're giving the average elementary school teacher way too much credit.

I had one good elementary school teacher. (My 4th grade teacher was this awesome geek who gave out nerds [candy] for answering trivia questions and talked about Star Trek a lot.)

The rest were fucking idiots who didn't actually know anything beyond the grade that they were attempting to teach.
The arguments I had with teachers as a child... And, you know, they could have just pointed out that what I was saying would be confusing and not helpful in an elementary school class, but they didn't.
Like the insistence the the sun was completely static. You know, never mind the expansion of the universe or the 828,000 km/hr at which the sun orbits the galactic core, those were apparent figments of my imagination.
*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

jacqueline trudeau

To be fair, that book in the OP was written in 1990. Our understanding of the mystery of electricity has jumped by leaps and bounds in the last 22 years!

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Trudeau Classic Sailing Yachts

Kara Spengler

In one math class in HS I would typically get the entire homework assignment done while it was still being handed out. I would soon get bored and the teacher would have to point out to me that some people in the class actually had to *work* to get the answers and did not need me distracting them. He eventually solved it by getting into discussions with me on things like how to calculate pi.

Ishina

Yeah, we shouldn't judge them too harshly. It was only half a century after Nikola Tesla.

Oor

Agree with this entirely. However, there are unscrupulous people out there who will take every opportunity to sell voodoo to desperate people for ridiculously large sums of cash. While I don't think the NIH should necessarily fund research into every complementary therapy that's dreamed up, the more 'established' ones should get a little of our attention (especially if someone's at a loss for a PhD thesis subject). And to tie that point in with this thread, so should science education.

While I tend to lean toward libertarian thinking - which causes me to believe that everyone should be able to get as many needles stuck into them and as many super-diluted potions prescribed to them as they wish - I do also think that it's important that people are equipped to make informed decisions about these things, and that the information that practitioners of alternative therapies dole out should be required to be accurate.

The sad fact is that if you open a business and call it a 'clinic', put a few letters after your name and wear a smart suit or a white coat, most people are going to look upon your opinion as authoritative. I know someone who's done just that. The letters after his name are “BA”, and yet he persuades women who are desperate for children to use acupuncture in place of IVA therapy to conceive. It's sickening. He gets 5 vacations abroad a year while his 'patients' get prolonged agony and false hope from him posting pictures of the two babies that have been conceived (naturally) by his many patients in the last 5 years.

I'm not suggesting that the people posting here are this sort of predatory scum – but the point remains that their opinion will be viewed as authoritative. I see nothing wrong with legally prohibiting practitioners of alternative therapies from giving out information or rationale that is demonstrably false or unproven. This information affects people's decisions about their healthcare, after all. I think requiring practitioners to state that 'we're not quite sure why it works' or 'this therapy is not a replacement for traditional medicine' as a matter of course would be a good thing. Those that are responsible will already be doing this. And the evil shits like the man I mentioned above will be forced to do it, or shut shop. If they want to be able to say, unequivocally, that their treatment is effective, they can fund studies to enable them to do just that.

Aside: Does anyone have links to aforementioned methodologically sound studies regarding the effectiveness of acupuncture (or other alternative therapies)? I recently had cause to look over some papers regarding acupuncture effectiveness and was unable to find any that were both methodologically sound and concluded that acupuncture was effective.